When she says a kiss can be good, pure, etc. I certainly hope she means a kiss like you'd give your sister...


A Catholic critique of a current notion of courtship
by Kathleen van Schaijik

A right understanding of human sɛҳuąƖity

The third serious defect of this method of courtship (also related to the first two) is in the way it treats human sɛҳuąƖity. It is not exactly a puritanical treatment, since it grants that sex is good and innocent in the right context, i.e., marriage. But still, it is reductive. When we compare a kiss to "putting a key in the ignition" and "challenge" young people to wait until they are married, we obscure the deepest meaning of human sɛҳuąƖity as the expression of our nature as persons created to give ourselves in love. We reinforce the disastrous misconception that sex is basically the satisfaction of an appetite (designed by God to induce us to marry and reproduce)--a pleasure process that begins with kissing, ends with intercourse and results in children. Since that appetite is so powerful--so the thinking goes--it needs to be strictly controlled until marriage, when according to God's law it may be satisfied without guilt. Therefore, the less we indulge ourselves before marriage, the safer we are. No mention is made of tenderness, romance, reverence, self-donation. Physical intimacy is reduced to sɛҳuąƖ foreplay, and sɛҳuąƖ morality is to its negative aspect of sin avoidance.

The truth is that a man may refrain from kissing his fiancee until their wedding day and still have an impure attitude toward her, because he views sex as a form of self-indulgence, rather than as a gift-of-self. And another man, who kisses his girlfriend with tenderness, may actually grow in purity as he does so, because he gives her that kiss as a sign and seal of his intention to love her and lay down his life for her. This is what a kiss between a man and a woman is meant to be.

In June of 1987, a year before Jules and I got engaged, Alice von Hildebrand asked me to drive her from New York to Virginia, where I was to take a summer course of hers. Knowing that my own courtship was about to begin, and wanting desperately to do it well, I asked her if she would share her thoughts with me. One of the many wonderful things she said to me that day was: "Reserve intimacy for only the most exceptional moments." It was only a few words, but they managed to encapsulate and communicate a profoundly true and beautiful image of human sɛҳuąƖity (one without any reductive tendencies) that served as a help and inspiration for Jules and me throughout our courtship. Her words were pervaded with profound reverence for the sɛҳuąƖ sphere, as well as with a humble awareness of its depth, seriousness and power, and therefore its potential to do great harm if misused. It is the kind of teaching I wish every young couple could receive before they approach courtship. (How much less unhappiness there would be if they did!)

People will say that I am too romantic and idealistic; that the sex-saturated culture of today demands that we get practical with young people if we are going to protect them from sin and devastation. But, I think we give much more genuine help when we teach single men and women reverence, when we hold up for them images that reveal the heart-melting beauty of a pure human love (in place of the obscenity, violence and vulgarity pop-culture bombards them with.) Once they see it, they cannot help but long for it, and, under Grace, aspire to it. Their aching desire for authentic love gives them courage and insight; they begin to recognize intuitively and shrink from the impurity that threatens their chance of attaining it...

I know this was true in my own life, and I know I am not alone.

The truth is that a man may refrain from kissing his fiancee until their wedding day and still have an impure attitude toward her, because he views sex as a form of self-indulgence, rather than as a gift-of-self. And another man, who kisses his girlfriend with tenderness, may actually grow in purity as he does so, because he gives her that kiss as a sign and seal of his intention to love her and lay down his life for her. This is what a kiss between a man and a woman is meant to be.

I think she is inferring a great deal about a man's mind here.  It seems to me like she is talking about tongue locking lipsmacking.  But it's hard to know for sure.  I think that the man who is avoiding intimate kisses may very well have a great deal of respect for his sweetheart's purity.  I also think that women are naturally more romantically minded, and they are fooling themselves to think that kissing their sweetheart is just a beautiful sign of purity or something.  I don't think that's how men react to prolonged kissing at all.

I don't know if she's talking about tongue-locks or not.  But if she is, I'm sorry, but that is foreplay.  And for a girl to lock tongues with her fiance, and then expect him to say goodnight is folly indeed.  Actually, I think it's kind of mean to get a man worked up like that.  But short, sweet kisses on the lips or on the cheek are fine.


Maybe she doesn't realize that there is nothing wrong with sweet kisses.... like you said, how you would kiss your sister. And is reading too much into what is supposedly said in Christian circles about avoiding the occasions of sin.

I've been a heathen most of my life, so I don't know what chaste courtship is all about.  Anyone here have any experience with it?  Was it void of romance?

It's clear to me the vast majority of Catholics reject a chaste Catholic courtship and unfortunately that extends to trads.

Try to be honorable, forthright and restrain yourself and you'll be kicked in the teeth and left without the one you love - it seems that way to me.