C.R. Pakaluk, head of the Social Research area, published an article in the Public Discourse on love, economics and cheap sex.
According to sociologist Mark Regnerus, the birth control pill and the rise of internet porn decreased the cost of sexual access so substantially as to affect a fundamental shift from a world in which sex served higher goods to a world in which sex is the higher good.
Last month, the Catholic Church was rocked by a grotesque reminder that things are not all right for the institution that stands, singularly and without exception, against every form of “cheap sex”—masturbation, pornography, birth control, and divorce. Ironically, the allegations against Theodore McCarrick became public just days before the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical letter that condemned the use of the pill, reaffirming the ancient teaching of the Catholic Church against contraception. For many, the revelation of sexual abuse and cover-up at the highest levels in a Church that asks its members for seemingly unattainable purity is too much to bear.
But while journalists, commentators, and media outlets scramble to make sense of the rot in the Catholic hierarchy, most would do well to have another look at the latest and most ambitious monograph...
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