The Dawn Patrol on "De Profoundness"

Dawn Eden of The Dawn Patrol hits one over the bleachers with this post on abstinance, sex and media ghosts. She comments on Elizabeth Sandoval's recent column in USA Today, entitled "A Neo-Feminist's View of Abstinence." In this refreshing demonstration of Foolishness, Ms. Sandoval explains why she's chosen to abstain from sex until she marries:

I don't want to have sex. Clarification: I do want to have sex, but only with my husband. And I don't have one of those yet.

No, I am not an ultraconservative who is cohabitating with a houseful of cats and TiVo'ing Lifetime movies. I'm a middle-of-the-road 32-year-old who likes tattoos and loud music. And yes, I am cute (I've been told by friends and strangers alike). So you can put aside the notion that I'm bitter about not being offered the chance to have sex.

What I am is a neo-feminist. Definition: "One who respects her body so much that she won't allow it to be used as someone's playground."

Point. Set. Match. While analyzing this perspective, Ms. Eden observed the following:

The ghost appears at the end of the piece, when Sandoval suddenly introduces her belief that sex has an essential spiritual component:

Women are non-self-respecting because they willingly sacrifice such an important part of their being for just a few moments of pleasure. And they're oblivious because they don't contemplate the profoundness of sex.

Women give it up as if it's nothing. When in fact, it is everything.

I know why Sandoval saved that zinger for the end. Those who agree with her will know what she means about "the profoundness of sex" without her explaining. As for those who don't—well, Sandoval just doesn't have 2,000 words to explain the theology of the body.

Yet, even allowing for the limitations of space, there's an important spiritual fact of singlehood that's missing from her arguments: pain. Just before her observation on "non-self-respecting" sexually active single women, she writes:

Many women today are weak-minded in that they readily accept society's portrayal of sexual norms. The people on The O.C. are doing it. Paris Hilton, as she's hosing down that Bentley, appears ready to do it. And more important, many people they actually know are doing it.

As a fellow chaste woman in her 30s, I know it's easy to write off sexually active singles as "weak-minded." But I don't think it's truly wise to do so, any more than it is for a recovering alcoholic to label his old drinking buddies as people who just need a little more will power. Sexual activity outside of marriage is a search for pleasure and, like alcohol or drug abuse, it is very often an attempt to escape pain.

In making a conscious decision to be chaste until marriage, one is not merely guarding one's heart, as Sandoval suggests. One is allowing oneself to be, in a sense, more vulnerable—because one has to find meaning elsewhere in one's life.

Ms. Eden makes an incredibly Foolish point. People that have sex outside of marriage often desire pleasure--and many times, they desire pleasure to avoid pain. They demonstrate why the Reasonable pursuit of the One Thing that Matters is little more than a rationalization for an addiction.

I unfortunately learned this from experience. I wasn't always your humble Fool, as you may have surmised from my Profile. No, I once held the Reasonable line, in my own fashion, on so many issues. Including sex. Oh, I rationalized why I chose to ignore the "unrealistic" teaching of the Catholic Church on Sex. In fairness, I never heard of the Theology of the Body until long after college. Still, I knew enough to know I was making my own rules to replace the one I had resolved to break.

In any event, I said to myself, "Self, it's OK to have sex with a woman as long as you love her and are in a monogamous relationship with her." Well, what eighteen-year-old to twenty-something-year-old wouldn't like that rule. And what cradle Catholic that wants to know God but has reservations about "unrealistic" teaching wouldn't appreciate that? So, being young, dumb and full of...well, you get the point; I sailed out of the channel and toward the wild open sea.

What I hadn't learned was how much pain I carried. What I didn't know then was that I wasn't looking for relationships. I was looking for medication. I wouldn't abuse alcohol or drugs. I did, however, abuse the gift of sex, for I failed to realize it was a gift. I didn't even know it was something one could abuse like an alcohol abuses liquor.

One broken relationship followed another. More grief and pain filled me, for my sexual encounters, even in so-called "Relationships" medicated me for only so long. Soon, pain returned. Then the cycle started over.

All the while, I avoided the One who could truly deliver me from my suffering. I ignored the One that offered me a way out of the addiction I failed to see I had. I paid no attention to the One who had given me the gift that I abused.

Until, I gradually woke up. I came, came to and came to believe, as the visitors of certain rooms fondly say. I regained my Faith, reconciled with the Lord and began to grow up. I eventually encountered the Theology of the Body. After absorbing as much of it as I could at the time, I understood more clearly just how lost I had been.

Dawn Eden is entirely right. Those people that choose to wait make themselves more vulnerable than those who do not. They become capable of more genuine and immediate intimacy than those that refuse to wait. They have been true to themselves and to God; they can then be true to their spouse. Those that surrender to the culture--the addictive culture--find themselves incapable of offering themselves to anyone, let alone a spouse. Unless they reconcile themselves to God. Unless they awaken to the Truth.

I have been blessed with the opportunity to awaken. By the grace of God almighty, The Church's sacrament of reconciliation and my own broken pride, I received the chance to start anew. Thank God almighty, the Blushing Bride took me in spite of my baggage.

And baggage remains. They're called scars. The memory of my past occasionally haunts me. I struggle with these scars to some extent; some days are better than others.

God bless those that will never have to deal with scars. Witnesses such as Ms. Eden and Ms. Sandoval have much to teach our society that celebrates addiction while calling it freedom. May their Foolish testimony find a fair hearing. For all of our sakes.