I think our interpretations of HV are in conflict. Sex for pleasure is considered unitive – it brings husband and wife closer, and is an important part of any relationship. Lust would be without love, more or less. Our hook-up culture is an example of this.

Not just me:

In minimally graphic language, the Catholic view is that complete sexual fulfillment (including pleasure, which is not forbidden!) must occur in the act of love with one’s spouse of the opposite sex: that one is committed to for life, and that the couple must be open to life and possible conception. Sexual acts engaged in apart from this circumstance are wrong and sinful. (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/darmstrong/sex-and-catholics-our-views-briefly-explained)

Or better yet: http://www.catechism.cc/articles/QA.htm #2 (please ignore the misspelling of marital for martial in one paragraph, though it is kinda’ funny)
** Pleasure and unitive goes together in a marital relationship. **

An example of marital non-unitive sex would be in a marriage where perhaps one is using the other as a way of jacking off/ getting off without concern or love for the other.
~~
If I ever disappear and they check my google searches to figure out what my have happened to me….

https://tinyurl.com/ycpw9yxs

Titled “Why don’t the (good) priests blow the whistle?”

Like R.C., I won’t be leaving either. I was raised a nominal Catholic, my parents having left the fold of weekly Mass attendance right after my first Holy Communion. I had a liberal upbringing, but upon having our first child (my husband-also raised a Catholic and required to attend weekly Mass through age 18), I rediscovered my Christian faith and when she was 18 months old, we were married in the Catholic church. By the time we had our 2nd child who was the only one baptized in the Catholic church (and the only of our 3 children who is a devout Catholic), I wanted to move on to a place I thought was more serious about the faith (Foursquare Pentecostal–Pastor Jack Hayford’s church in Van Nuys). My husband eventual made his way with me and we spent about 11 years in that denomination. I homeschooled my children and it was our study of ancient history up to the 1500’s and our trip to France that brought me back to the Catholic faith along with Cardinal John Henry Newman’s book Apologia Pro Vita Sua. At the end of the day, I came to the understanding that my faith in salvation through the saving work of Jesus Christ was founded on the eyewitness testimony of a handful of ancient men with first-hand encounter with God. For me the combination of the Manna from heaven in the OT, the miracles of the feeding of the multitudes,and Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist on the night before he died–something that has gone on since that night without interruption–form the foundation of my faith. I haven’t even touched on my personal encounters of the supernatural–quite frankly, miracles I have experienced first-hand that defy ordinary explanation. Jesus said not to worry. I do my best to obey Him. He is Lord of the Church and has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. If at this time the RCC implodes, God has a plan and He knows what He is doing. Faith….

Makes sense; entirely understandable.

For myself, I am a Catholic and will remain so.

I was raised outside Catholicism, in the Protestant-Congregationalist world. In that world, people take “faithfulness to Scripture” seriously because it’s the only doctrinal authority their presuppositions allow them. I think that’s a noble intention, and I have nothing but love and respect for my religious upbringing.

As an adult, I became a Catholic for a thousand intersecting reasons, with one of the more-important ones being that “faithfulness to Scripture” as an authority doesn’t even work unless you have access to some other authority outside Scripture to tell you what books belong in Scripture and what it even means for them to be so designated. (And even then it doesn’t produce unity unless doctrinal disputes are subject to definitive, irreversible judgments per the process in Matthew 18…but that requires a worldwide organizational structure: an objectively-identifiable judicial hierarchy.)

So in the end, much like Peter in John 6, I have nowhere else to go. I am convinced of the historical event of the Resurrection, therefore I am a Christian. And, I am convinced that if God Himself established unifying authority in His kahol, He’d come up with a plan less-stupid than Mohammed did; therefore, I am a Catholic Christian.

I mention all that to give context to the following: I won’t leave the Catholic Church over this scandal.

It’s not because I’m not scandalized. It’s not because I don’t think it’s horrifying. It’s not because I wouldn’t be strongly tempted to beat the ever-living crap out of the perpetrators, should I have the opportunity. (Tempted, I say! It’s a temptation I can resist. If one of these guys shows up pulped in a ditch next week, don’t come knocking on my door, because it won’t have been me.)

No, that’s not why I won’t leave.

I won’t leave because the moral saintliness or the moral nastiness of the current crop of Catholic clergy had nothing to do with why I’m Catholic.

If I’d been a Hebrew during the time of Eli, I wouldn’t have abandoned the People of God and hared off to Persia to start my own kahol over the sexual depredations of Eli’s sons, either. I’d just have steered my daughters away from them and kept on saying baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz.

(I’d have been tempted to punch said sons in the face, to be sure. Tempted, I say!)

I guess God establishes offices of authority for the sake reuniting the divided family of man with one another and with Himself. Then, inexplicably, He gets humans to occupy those offices.

(Humans! It’s always those double-d***ed humans.)

Sometimes those men are petty bureaucrats; sometimes they’re diabolical bastards, sometimes they’re sainly sages. Sometimes the saintly sages only emerge belatedly as reactions against the diabolical bastards.

Right now, I put most Catholic bishops in the first category, Ted McCarrick in the second category, and Cardinal Sarah tentatively in the third. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ll steer my son (!) away from anybody who seems sketchy, and keep on saying, “Blessed are You, Adonai, Eloheinu, king of the universe, who gives us the Bread of Life.”

And that’s my take on it.

(But I respect persons of good will who can’t bring themselves to stomach that approach. The last two weeks’ news have made me pretty queasy too.)

I wouldn’t put myself under the RCC’s authority ever again. But I’ve known good Catholics like Sr. Miriam Joseph and my friend, D. Furthermore, in my life I’ve noticed many people I’ve hit it off with turned out to be raised Catholic — or Jewish for that matter.

I think both religions teach that the stakes of life are high and significant. Whether one accepts or rejects the specifics of either faith, one is imprinted with that overall message. I never got that vibe from mainstream Protestants or white bread Americans.

Catholicism pushed me straight up against the wall to make an existential choice — not something I wanted at the age of 16. But I did some serious growing up when I rejected the Church. Much of who I am emerged from that choice.

neo: Well, to the faithful, conception is always a possibility, viz. Abraham and Sarah having their son Isaac when they were in their nineties.

But more seriously, the sticking point with the Church is whether one intentionally prevents conception, not whether it is unlikely or medically impossible.

One edge case which bothers some people is that the Church forbids condoms to prevent AIDS even if one married partner is HIV+. It’s an ugly thought but consistent with Church teachings.

The Church generally devotes slow, careful thought to its positions. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that currently there are four Catholic Supreme Court Justices: Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor and Gorsuch. Plus Scalia was Catholic, likewise Gorsuch, assuming he will be confirmed.

No, that’s not a response to the scandals. That’s a response to the demographic implosion of the religious orders. Ordinations to the regular clergy declined by 90% over a 35 year period. A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph told me that prior to the Council, about 30 women a year were entering her order. After 1970, the number averaged one a year. As for the diocesan clergy, the decline in ordinations has been much less severe, but they’re now shutting between multiple parishes and there isn’t the spare manpower to deploy priests to Catholic high schools (much less to the elementary schools).

But what about sex for married couples long past the age when conception is a possibility? Are they grandfathered in, as it were?

Faith2014: They certainly can fun. However, my point concerned whether the couple was having intercourse purely for pleasure . In which case they are having sex out of lust.

2351 Lust is a disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P85.HTM

Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Faith2014: I enjoy your comments and your faith, however…given that the average age of American nuns is mid to late 70s and the number of Americans nuns has declined from 125,000 when I was in school to 50,000 today, I doubt many nuns are teaching parochial school. Americans priests are a similar story though somewhat younger.

http://www.newser.com/story/200061/median-age-of-us-nuns-mid-to-late-70s.html

Perhaps it’s not a policy decision by Church authorities, but it is working out that few in Holy Orders are teaching parochial school anymore, which does indeed drive up tuition prices.