2 of 5

And finally, Mr. Steinberg's crème de la crème: his enlightening theories.

Theory 1—Prohibiting Sex is the Entire Point of Religion. Gosh, if prohibiting sex is the entire point of religion, religion's doing a pretty sad job. People at my church are almost certainly having sex—and lots of it. After all, studies show that married people have sex more often than single people, and the majority of people at my church are married, so woo hoo! And in my experience with the "sham," very few sermons or homilies have had anything to do with sex in its premarital, homosexual or incestual forms. But perhaps the sermons were too subliminally subversive for me to comprehend their underlying anti-sex dogma.

Theory 2—Obsessing about Sex Cuts the Tedium of Faith. Mr. Steinberg confuses me. I am imagining him imagining how much fun shutting down sexual activity must be. …

Theory 3—It's Not Them, It's Us
Congratulations are due. Given the rest of his column, I'd say Mr. Steinberg nailed this one.

From Charles Collins

Murder is the most heinous of sins. This is a simple statement, and obvious to all who hear it. Yet, I never hear it condemned much in Church! It was not discussed, I was never told to never commit murder, no guides were put out to help me from committing murder.

In fact, I never thought about this much until five years ago. Visiting my sister in New Orleans, I stopped into an inner-city Catholic Church for Mass. Surrounding me was the usual assortment of business people and housewives you see at a daily Mass, plus the additional assortment of characters who show up at Church in a big city because its the best place to keep out of the heat. With the regular communicants were the homeless, gang members, and kids who looked like they should have been in school at that hour. For the first time in my life, I heard a sermon against murder.

At the time, New Orleans was the murder capital of the country. The neighborhood I was in is where a large proportion of those murders took place. The priest, quite a young man, told us about the love of God, and how it could overcome everything, especially our anger. He spoke of the dignity of everyone human person, and the sacredness of human life. He told us to never kill anyone.

I had never been told that before. Then again, I don't think he was talking to me. I think he was talking to those young people who had come in to escape the heat, and find a little solace with God. They lived in a different world than me, a world in which murder is an everyday part of life, where young men with hot tempers have to be reminded of that Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill".

I, however, live in the same world as Neil Steinberg, who finds it strange that the Brigham Young University, an institution of the Mormon Church, would question a student on the sexual activity that went on when she appeared on MTV's "The Real World". They did not question her about the what murders went on, nor, as Mr. Steinberg points out, did they question her on whether or not she was coveting oxen: Being that MTV is a promoter of sex, and not murder and oxen-coveting, they asked her about sex.

next page... |  2 of 5

share this page

July (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44