This is an edited version of the talk given at Human Life International's 13th World Conference held April 6-10, 1994 in Irvine, California.

Reverend Fathers, friends of pro-life, Chesterton wrote quite a few years ago that the 18th century claimed to be the age of reason. The 19th century claimed to be the age of common sense. He said the only thing that can be said about the 20th century so far is that it is the age of uncommon nonsense. I would like to add that it seems to me one of the tragic things about the twentieth century is that it is the age of irreverence. And reverence, as my husband put it in his book, the "Art of Living", is the mother of all virtues. As a matter of fact, every so called cardinal virtue presupposes reverence, and without reverence, no virtue can blossom in the human soul. Reverence is a response to the greatness, beauty, and dignity of being, whether God, other human persons, or God's creation. When man responds reverently, he looks up to things that possess an intrinsic importance and value. And this is always accompanied by an uplifting feeling of joy. It is so beautiful to look up to something that deserves our loving respect and admiration. This virtue is absolutely crucial in human life. And we can gauge the health and the sanity of a society in asking the following question: Are we reverent? And if the answer is no, it shows that we are on the road to moral decadence.

Reverence is a paradoxical virtue because from one point of view, when you look up to something you feel very humble. You know that there are things greater than you are. And simultaneously the reverent person, because he is reverent, becomes noble and great. He's not aware of it, but we are aware of it when we meet someone who is reverent; we look up to him in admiration. This is why Chesterton wrote these very paradoxical and beautiful words: Man easily forgets how tall he is on his knees.

The crucial importance of reverence in human life was already admirably perceived by the great Plato. Speaking about the heydays of Athens, and when Plato was living already the signs of decadence were to be seen; Plato says at that time reverence was our queen and mistress. He says that when a giant is reverent and reveres his parents, he pleases the gods. And he adds, I wish that parents could will their children reverence and not money. Now obviously it cannot be done. But it is highly desirable that it should be done. The most beautiful thing that you can give to your children is to teach them a sense of reverence. Now Plato was conscious of the fact that Athens was becoming increasingly decadent. And this decadence is always manifested: the very fact that children become arrogant, refuse to respect the authority of their parents, and the parents become intimidated and no longer use their authority. That is one of the tragedies of the world in which we live today, that people in positions of authority don't dare use their authority which is God given, because today they fear the news media.

Irreverence is like a spiritual termite that actually undermines our whole moral life and this inevitably leads to decadence and in very many cases to the death of a state. Why did Athens fall? Athens that was so incredible -- produced so many geniuses. Athens that was so incredibly elevated from an intellectual point of view. And the decadence came as soon as people became arrogant and irreverent.

St. Augustine tells us in his "Confessions" that every sin brings about its own punishment. And the the punishment of irreverence is blindness. Now we are going to see that even though some people can be extremely talented, as business people, as inventors, as computer geniuses, and the rest of it, nevertheless they can be blind as bats when it comes to questions that truly matter and cannot be understood unless you take a reverent attitude.

Now the world in which we live is a world steeped in irreverence. I could speak for a long time about the sad things taking place in our churches where you will notice more and more that we show very little reverence to the Blessed Sacrament. It is pushed aside, and you notice that people talk, joke, right in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and seem to forget that God Himself is physically present. We have abolished the very holy sacred tradition of kneeling when we receive the Blessed Sacrament. And in the western society, kneeling is an expression of reverence. Ask yourself honestly if Christ were to appear to you, you would stand up and say hello? You would kneel down and bow in reverence. Now Christ happens to be present. And this is something that we no longer realize or respect. We show irreverence towards the Holy Father. We show irreverence towards other people. Young people can be incredibly irreverent towards older people, no longer respecting the fact that because they are elderly, they call for special reverence, and sometimes for help. But there is one domain when irreverence is a catastrophe. The religious domain, and the sexual sphere. These are the two domains where irreverence is going to have such catastrophic consequences that actually it is inevitably going to destroy these fields.

Today this irreverence is shown towards one's self and one's own body. Take for example the way that young people get dressed, and I speak particularly about women, because as you shall see through my talk, I am going to stress the fact that the sexual mystery is particularly confided to women. They have some sort of a key to this mystery. And you see the way that young people get dressed nowadays. You just say to yourself, do they realize that their body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Do they realize that the female body is like a temple, a sacred place, where God is going to create new life? Now this is one of the tragic things in our society that even good young people, good young girls, have lost sense for the mystery of the human body to such an extent that their way of dressing, their way of walking, their way of sitting, what is called today body language, expresses irreverence. The don't mean to. The sort of general climate of society has undermined our sense of reverence to such an extent that we no longer realize that the human body is made to God's image and likeness because it is a body of a human person and therefore calls for reverence.

There are two main sources or two main reasons why people become irreverent. One of them is pride and the other one is concupiscence. Now what is typical of the proud person is that he looks down upon everything, considers himself to be superior to anyone else, considering himself to know everything best; absolutely convinced that he is so mature, that he can pass judgment upon every question; doesn't need help, doesn't need advice, and in this very moment these people are going to suffer the punishment of blindness; because as I said a moment ago they can be very clever in business matters, they can be extraordinarily talented in the technological matters; but when it comes to deep questions, metaphysical questions, moral questions, they're incredibly stupid. You know as a matter of fact, we all know that the greatest, the most dangerous errors and stupidities have been manufactured by intellectuals. They have the patent of stupidity. This is why Chesterton said, and I've mentioned here that the worst criminals are intellectuals. They are the people who dominate our education, people in schools and universities teaching young people that there is no objective truth, there are no objective moral values. It's all up to you. You decide, and afterwards we produce a generation of budding criminals, which is a necessary consequence of this type of teaching. Now Chesterton says these people are infinitely worse than thieves and bigamists. My heart goes out to them. Compared to these people, thieves and bigamists are fairly innocent; of course it's a very relative statement.

Now there is something very interesting in the fact that we are blind. All of us are blind to a certain extent. All of us need to say with the blind man in Jericho, "Lord, that I may see." But obviously our degree of blindness differs enormously from one person to another. And what is crucial is to have this longing for truth, to desire it with all the fibers of your being. Before his conversion St. Augustine said, "Oh truth, truth, how did the very marrow of my bones yearns for thee." Now many of us have no concern about truth. We've been so much taught that there is no objective truth, that it's all up to you, that we don't care. And this is why we become blind and we do not know that we are blind. Some people suffer from physical blindness, they are born blind or they are born with very bad eyesight, but they know that they do not see. But what is amazing about people that are spiritually and morally blind, people who advocate abortion, defend homosexuality, defend sexual perversions; they are convinced that they are remarkably clear sighted. They see what we so called stupid traditionalists do not see. They see there is nothing to it. Why make such a fuss about it? You have your life style and I have my life style. They don't see the abysmal difference between the noble exercise of sex and sexual perversions.

The great French thinker of the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal, once wrote the following words: "Why is it that when I see a man who limps, I feel sorry for him, but when I meet a limping mind I get irritated beyond words?" I raised this question to ten thousand students, and among my ten thousand students, I did not find one Pascal. They gave me lots of good answers, but the answer of Pascal is not only good, it is the answer of a genius. He said because the man who is limping knows that he is limping, whereas a limping mind accuses me of limping. This is genius because the limping mind doesn't know that he's limping. No, he is going to say you can't reason properly. You know if you simply say that abortion is false, people are going to say you are stupid, you are blind, you are prejudiced, you are narrow minded. They don't see that they are incapable of seeing, they just do not see. And this blindness is their punishment.

Now therefore pride is one of the main sources of irreverence, but there is another one which is concupiscence, the attraction of pleasure, the attraction of what my late husband used to call the merely subjectively satisfying. That you want something because it's fun, because it's agreeable, because it is pleasant. And you become so bogged down in this craving for pleasure, that you become absolutely blind to anything which is not related to pleasure because you see the whole world as being there for your enjoyment. The world exists in order so that you might have fun, and you might enjoy yourself. And if you don't, you are cheated. After all is it not said in the Declaration of Independence that we have a right to pursue happiness? I started discussing the notion of happiness. The students of mine said you know, give me a cigarette and a glass of beer, and I'm perfectly happy. Now, as I said, there is one domain apart from religion, which is not my theme, in which reverence is so crucial that if your approach is not reverent, you will necessarily misunderstand it. You will necessarily be blind to its true nature and meaning, and this domain is sex. Now why sex? You know I don't say hunger, I don't say thirst, I don't say sleep, I say sex. Because the gist of my talk is to try to show to you that sex differs radically and essentially from any other instinct. It is radically and fundamentally different. It is something so central, so crucial, that it plays a tremendous role in human life. And at times I'd be tempted to say, "Tell me what you think about sex, and I'll tell you the sort of person that you are."

Before you marry someone, make sure that you know what his attitude toward sex is, otherwise you might be in for extremely tragic surprises. It is something crucial. It's not something secondary, unimportant. Sex is very mysterious. It is something which is given to us and that we do not choose. We have no say in the matter. How undemocratic can God be? One day I discovered that I was a girl. And I've been one ever since, and truly getting used to it. Now even in eternity we shall keep our own sex. When our bodies are going to rise again at the end of the world, we'll be reborn male or female. And it just shows the depth and the meaning of this particular sphere. Now because I've been given a particular sex that I cannot change, thank God, in spite of the tremendous scientific discoveries, and the progress that we have achieved in this sphere, nevertheless it is of crucial importance that I understand the meaning of my sex, the mission of my sex. And we are going to see that sex is not only a biological feature. Obviously it has its own biological manifestations. Obviously a boy and a girl have a slightly different structure in certain ways, even though much of their bodies are totally identical. They have eyes. ... just imagine it's not so that girls have three eyes and men two and so forth and so on. But there are certain differences that I don't need to be explicit about because we happen to know them well. But the difference, the sexual difference between people is not only expressed in the biological sphere. It is also expressed in the spiritual sphere, in the intellectual sphere, in the psychological sphere, in the affective sphere. And this is one of the reasons why man and woman sometimes have difficulties understanding each other because they have a different structure. And it is one of the magnificent accomplishments of a happy marriage that you learn to transcend your own peculiar makeup and to try to understand how it is from the other side. A husband can incredibly enrich his wife, and visa versa. We are complementary.

Now I'm going to defend the thesis that the sexual mystery, and there is a mystery about sex, is very particularly confided to women. And I'm going to defend this thesis by mentioning the fact, the very strange fact, that in the history of the world, the very moment that a woman committed a sexual sin she was so much more severely judged than a man. And of course the feminists are going to say to you, you see how unfair, how unjust? Men are permitted to do what they please. They can sow their wild oats, and people are going to say what a male that is. He is truly living up to his mission. How extraordinary. But if a woman did it, she was looked down upon, and you know the people that are most abominably treated are prostitutes. And there'd be no prostitutes if men did not use prostitutes for their satisfaction. They'd be out of business overnight. So if there are prostitutes, we have got to realize that men have their heavy share of responsibility. But why is it that women are more severely censured than men? Now as my husband said in his book "Man and Woman", from a moral point of view, there is absolutely no difference, if a man sins sexually speaking or a woman does. The sin is equally grave. The sexual sphere is something serious. It's not a plaything. And therefore for this reason, every single time you fool around with it, it is something which is grave. Obviously we know that for it to be a mortal sin, other conditions have to be met, but in and by itself, it is a grave matter.

Now, why is it that all societies have always censured women much more severely than men? And the reason is that now if we abstract from the sin itself, the sexual sphere is so mysteriously related to women, confided to them, because it is in the female body that a new life will be created and will be born. Not in the male body. You know between us the role of male in procreation is quite secondary. I don't say that it's not important. Far from it. I know that much, but I simply say the very moment that a husband has fecundated his wife, that's all. It's over. And then comes the mysterious work, relationship between the woman who has conceived this new human being from the very moment of conception, and God. It is in the female body that God creates the soul, and therefore the female body has something of a temple, which you cannot say of the male body. This is why there is something so very different when a man runs around with very little on his body or when the woman does so. There's a tremendous difference. Because the male body has a different structure and a different function. But in the case of the female body, it is linked to a mystery. And a mystery calls for veiling.

I personally have always loved the custom that when women went to church, they veiled themselves. And then the stupid feminists have discovered that it is a sign of indignity, just indicates somehow that they are shameful beings and they have to be hidden. This is not only stupid but it is false. Once again if you go back to the meaning of sacrality, you are going to find out that when something is sacred it is veiled. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, after having seen God, or I could say, communicated with God, he veiled his face. You see the veil just indicates this is a mystery. And the female body calls for veiling because she has been confided, given a mystery, which is a mystery of life. She gives life. Eve was the mother of the living. And once again when you realize that Christ says I am the Life and that a woman is called upon to collaborate with Life in such a special sense, then you will understand why the Church thinks so highly of femininity, and why all the mysterious stupid feminist arguments against the Church because the Church looks down on women, are so fundamentally false.

Now this is a divine plan. But then came the tragedy called original sin. And the consequences of original sin are so tremendous that we can find no word that describes how serious, how grave these consequences were. I am not speaking about the theological consequences. You know them as well as I do. But I'm going to speak about the consequences as far as the relationship between Adam and Eve was concerned. Before original sin, Adam and Eve looked at each other in reverence, and their union was a union of love. The very moment that they turned against God, they turned against each other. I recall hearing from my husband many, many years ago, that he said, sin always separates the sinners. If you love someone, don't sin with this person, because otherwise you create a chasm between you and this person. And obviously, if you don't love him, don't sin with him anyway. Conclusion: don't sin.

Now what happened with original sin? Adam and Eve discovered they were naked. And this nakedness was something that they were ashamed of. Why? Our Holy Father has shed light on this in a very special and magnificent fashion. Because the very moment that Adam and Eve sinned, they lost reverence for each other, and then Eve's body triggered lust in Adam, and Eve all of a sudden discovered that she could seduce him. A great temptation for women. You know if they are clever at the game, very few are the men that are not going to fall into their traps, because they know how to do it. They know how to seduce, you know, the very very tragic temptation of seducing, which means showing no respect for another person, but just have him fall into your nets.

Now of course you're going to say this is a tragic picture, because from this moment on the relationship between man and woman became a tragic relationship, which is so clearly exemplified today in all these marriages going to pieces, in those tragic relationships that end in nothing but bitterness and resentment, or hatred of the other sex. You know basically lesbians are people who not only hate themselves, cannot stand their own sex, as Simon de Bouvoir puts it, they also hate the other sex. It turns into self hatred. But of course we know that Christ has redeemed us. We know that he has elevated marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. We know that we can be healed and that through God's grace this admirable complimentarity between man and woman can be restored in its primal glory, and this is precisely the sense of a Catholic marriage when husband and wife or bride and bridegroom solemnly promise before God that they are going to live their marriage with purity, honesty, and fidelity. And God is their witness.

Now, because of original sin, because the devil has such an easy time in making men and women fall into sexual sins; you know as a matter of fact I'm so convinced that as the devil has all possible vices, one of his vices is laziness. That he'd much prefer to have people fall into sin without making much of an effort and having to concoct different difficult plans. All you have to do in the majority of cases is just to trigger a sexual temptation, and the number of people that are going to fall in it is shockingly high, because we are so stupid, that we do not understand that this is a typical, typical temptation which is going to end in bitterness and despair. You see, the devil promises much and gives nothing. God tells us to step on the narrow path that ends in peace and joy and happiness. That is your alternative.

Now it is very interesting if we compare the nineteenth century and the twentieth century to see that there has been a radical change in our interpretation of sexual matters, because as you well know, the nineteenth century was dominated by Puritanism. You know that to speak about sex was shameful, it was ugly, it was dirty; which didn't mean at all that people lead pure lives. But they were so conscious of the fact that their behavior was dirty, that they took the kind precaution of hiding it. They remained in the closet. And that's where they belong.

Now, then came one of the great intellectual curses of the late nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, an intellectual called Freud, suddenly discovered that sex was a key to an understanding of human existence. In order to understand who you are, you have got to understand the working of your sexual desire and sexual life. It became a key to everything ... a metaphysical key, sex and sex and more sex.

Now we now that first of all he was an atheist. Number two, he was a materialist. Number three, he was the worst possible philosopher that you can imagine. But he claimed to be a scientist, and he started to make all sort of experimentation and experiments that he jotted down in these books that instantaneously became best seller all over the world. I mean I don't know if you realize that many years ago all universities were absolutely dominated by Freud. Thank God in the mean time, Freudianism has proved to be such a catastrophe, apart from certain valid discoveries because as Plato said, in the worst ... there is always something to the point. I mean sooner or later you are going to hit upon something which is valid, but much of it is junk. Many of my students, who were poor, spent their money in going to psychiatrists and after years and years of treatment they were worse off than before. Simply because he was incapable of answering these problems which are basically religious problems. Man longs for God, and if you eliminate God, well, the result is catastrophic.

Now what are the consequences of what Freud has done? Number one, that he treats sex not as a mystery, not as something which is deep and profound, but as a purely scientific matter. Hence the book of Master and Johnson when all this dirty work is done in so called laboratories and is presented to us as being scientific. Now the world in which we live is so crazy that as soon as you say well this is scientific people accept it. They no longer believe in the Bible, but they believe in scientific accomplishments, even though many of them are absolutely unscientific. All you need do is to put the label scientific, and then people swallow it. I mean very much as you say ... You know if you take this particular pill you are going to lose weight ... and of course you don't lose weight but nevertheless you say I have to eat a little bit more of it, and then you'll be better. You know this has invaded the sort of climate of our society to such an extent that whereas in the nineteenth century the word sex could not be mentioned. It is related in the life of Queen Victoria that somebody once made a faint allusion to sex, and she had a very stiff face and she said we are not amused.

Now today everybody talks about it in the most shameless fashion. But of course this type of philosophy, or erroneous philosophy, had catastrophic influences on priests and nuns particularly, should I say in California, if I am to follow what Dr. Coulson told us yesterday. Suddenly having been told that if you have no sex life you're a cripple, suddenly these elderly priests or nuns you know forties and fifties and the rest of it, says what? I have had no sexual life and this is why I have so many problems? Finally I know the reason why at times I don't like to be chided by my superior. I've had no sex life. Don't you understand the tragedy of it? I mean of course they are in terrible psychological shock -- I am a cripple, and the Catholic Church has cheated me into making these vows that actually are against nature. Because nature is so that you are given certain organs, and these organs have a purpose, and if you don't use them, well obviously you become atrophied. You become very sick. You develop all sorts of disturbances. And that was the key to the whole thing. You know this is why we lost so many nuns.

Now at any rate, let me look at sex from a very different point of view, which is the Christian point of view. Man is a being made to God's image and likeness. Man is not an animal as it is taught in secularistic universities. Now as you know I've spent my life in a secularistic university, and for eight years my president was Donna Shalala, now our blessed Secretary of Health and Social Affairs in Washington, and a close friend of Hillary Clinton. Now at any rate when you find yourself in a secularistic university, of course all these kids are taught that man is an animal. His brain happens to be slightly larger, but apart from that there is no basic difference.

I recall a student of mine taking a course in which I had spoken about the hierarchy of being, plants and then lower animals and higher animals and man. And he raised his hand and he said why do you place man above pigs? And it was at the beginning of my career and I was still very young at the time and I said what do you mean? He said that well you know I study zoology, and there is no essential difference between man and pigs, and he started telling me the length of the intestine and the weight of the brain and so forth and so on. I mean he was very scientific about it. He told me things I did not know at all. And then I caught my breath for a moment, I prayed fast, and I said to him you know, how long you have been going to Hunter? He was going at night, and then it takes about seven or eight years to get your diploma. He said seven years. And then I put on an extremely depressed expression and I said seven years, and you've curtailed your food and your sleep, and when you come out, all you know is that you're no better than a pig. Was it worth the effort? Well from this moment on he never commented upon what I was saying.

Now let us not forget that man is not an animal. He is a human person. And my husband always objected to Aristotle's definition of man. You know Aristotle says man is a rational animal. He is an animal but on top of it has reason. My husband said, you know this sounds a little bit as if we are basically an animal and then on top of it we have this little appendix which is reason. He much preferred the following formulation: Man is a person made to God's image and likeness incarnated in a body. My body is essential. My body belongs to my being a human person. But essentially I am a person, and a person incarnated in a body. Now comes the danger that because we have a body and because there are lots of similarities between animals and human beings, I mean for example we eat, we sleep, we need drink, we need fluid, there are very many similarities. Many of them have intestines and livers and heart, and things like that. But my husband said, and this is I believe a very profound statement, let us beware of misleading similarities. Two things seem to be very similar and this is a misleading thing. I know animals have sex, male and female, and so do human beings. So basically if you follow the pattern of animals then you're going to understand the workings of human sexuality. This is of course utter nonsense.

I recall another student of mine. She tried to convince me that evolution was a key to metaphysical questions. Now simply that means she was a Darwinist. And of course there was this constant evolution and then at one particular moment some animals remained apes and then some of us for reasons that cannot be explained developed a better brain. ... and then I was silent for a moment and I said to her now look, I happen to have some French blood in my veins as some of you might have heard and suppose that I spend a couple of months in Salt Lake City and after deep research I find out that way back in the middle ages one of my ancestors was a king of France. I guarantee you that in some subtle and modest fashion I will let my students know that I have blue blood running in my veins, even though it's very much watered down, but nevertheless, there might still be a bit of it. I said now you tell me that you're great-great-great-great grandmother was jumping from tree to tree in Africa and you seem to be proud of the matter. I say now if it is true I will accept it as a scientific fact, but I see no reason to be as happy as you seem to be.

Man is not a trousered ape. Man is a person, and the very moment that you understand that he is a person you are going to understand that all his instincts are to be elevated by the very fact that he's a person made to God's image and likeness. You can see this in the innocent sphere of eating. Now suppose that you invited me for lunch and the first thing that I would do would (be) to go down to my plate and lick my food from the plate. Well I imagine you'd be somewhat surprised. Now because you are polite you might say you know I thought she was better brought up than that but she has very bad table manners. She eats like a pig. ... And you realize that for any Christian worthy of this name every meal is preceded by a prayer in which we make an analogy between our earthly food and the divine banquet that we hope to enjoy in heaven. You know this is so strongly marked among Benedictines. Always the analogy between what is happening on this earth and our eternal home. Now obviously this gives to a meal a totally different character. But this is much more true of the sexual sphere. Because, don't forget that when animals procreate, they don't procreate a person, they procreate another animal. But in the case of man, procreation is linked to the becoming of a new human being made to God's image and likeness. It is something so awesome that if you want to understand this sphere you have to approach it in trembling reverence.

Now the sexual sphere and this is something that I am going to develop soon, is characterized by the fact that there is a very close relationship between man and God. Man becomes co-creator. We cannot create; we can destroy. We can blow up the world; we cannot create it. But in this one unique domain, the amazing thing is that man truly collaborates with God and becomes co-creator with God Himself. And in some way what we do in contraception, not to speak of abortion, is to push God out of the picture and see the sexual sphere not as animals see it as a means to procreation because animals do not relate to each other when the female is not in heat. They don't do it. They have other things to do. They have to fight and they have to eat and whatever it might be. It's only in this one moment for the purpose of procreation. In the case of human beings it is radically different, because a human female can only conceive two or three days a month. And nevertheless a union between husband and wife in love is meaningful, independently of the fact that she cannot conceive at certain moments of the month.

Now human beings are as we all know not terribly intelligent, or let us say they don't use their intelligence, or they use their intelligence badly. And we are some sort of geniuses at going from one error to another error without ever discovering truth. This is something mentioned in St. Paul's epistle, by the way. Now therefore there was Puritanism, there was a poo-poo attitude of the 19th century -- sex is dirty. It's ugly. It's disgusting. And today we go from the idea of poo-pooing sex to the idea -- no there is nothing to it -- well I mean after all we eat steaks, we eat veal, you know you happen to like veal better than steak, and like steak better than chicken, you know you like this life style and I like style. Well it's up to us. Now in other words we have replaced the sort of shamefulness that people experienced in the 19th century, by shamelessness. Shamefulness was false. Shamelessness is still worse. At least in shamefulness there was some sort of an awareness I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing. This sort of attitude that I have, whereas shamelessness is shameless. And if you go from shamefulness to shamelessness, you know what happens? You never reach purity.

My husband always objected to the Aristotelian formulation that virtue is between two extremes. Now suppose that you are extraordinarily avaricious. And you pinch every penny that you have, and you get very rich. And then you're getting older and older and suddenly you realize that you know, I might die. And I haven't enjoyed my money and I hate all my heirs. I don't want to leave them anything. And then you start spending, and then you spend more and more ... and finally you find yourself practically a pauper. Have you at any one moment from this transition been generous? No. My husband says truth is above errors, not between errors. Virtue is above vices, not between vices. And so I mean this is why I never liked this idea ... the pendulum has gone so far on one side, now it's going to fly back, and then things are going to be fine. Nonsense. We have to transcend the domain of errors and stupidity, and ascend to a higher level above these mistakes. Now at any rate, my husband suggested or says repeatedly in his various books, particularly in his book on purity that was reprinted and for which Pius XII wrote him a letter to congratulate him. He says that actually sex is a great mystery that calls for veiling. And in order to understand it we must approach it with reverence in what he calls holy bashfulness. Now to be bashful in and by itself is not something which is particularly positive. I mean you are so bashful that if I address you, you don't know how -- you stammer because you are so bashful -- makes communication sometimes very difficult. He says holy bashfulness. In other words, the realization of the sphere of sex is a mystery that calls for reverence. It's something which is very, very different to talk about it reverently.

Now the basic mistake of Freud is that he has seen love as a sublimation of sex. The basic thing that you want is sex, and then love is a sort of sugar coating that you put on it. But basically down, you know, scratch the surface and you are going to see all you want is libido. My husband is going to defend the idea, and the Christian idea, that sex cannot be understood independently of love, and a special type of love between man and woman, not possible between people of the same sex. And I mean this particular type of love presupposes that you see the loveableness and beauty of another person. You necessarily wish him well because love always wishes well to the beloved. And you desire union. You know I cannot say to you my dear friends, I love you very much and I hope never to see you again. If I love you, I'm going to say I hope I'll meet you again. I hope our paths are going to cross and the closer I feel to you, the more intimate this desire for union becomes. And in the case of the love relationship between a man and a woman, this desire for union becomes so profound and so deep, that at one particular moment they want to share their bodies. You know, in other words they want to give themselves to each other. That is the mystery of it. Obviously I am not going to share my body with a person that I hate. The very moment that I am going to give myself to another person it is the ultimate expression of the self irrevocable donation to this other person.

Sex is not a mere instinct. And I'm going to give you a series of reasons to defend my thesis. As a matter of fact, quite a few reasons. Number one, sex is always deep. You know there are things in your life and in my life which are superficial. And there are certain things that are deep, that are profound. Now sex always appeals to something which is very profound and if you approach it as if it were lighting a cigarette, or having Coca-Cola, you have no idea what sex is like. You are as blind as a bat. You are totally blind to the greatness and depth of sex. It is so serious that it's going to have an enormous effect on my whole personality, my religious life, my intellectual life, my affective life, my relations with other people. You know sometimes when you put on television you see these people talking and when you look at their eyes there is something that tells you -- poor fellow, you have no idea of the beauty of sex. You know somehow you see in their eyes there is a sort of vagueness about their expression, there is a sort of expression of lust and greed which is so unattractive, and so unlovable.

I simply say your sexual life is going to have an effect on your whole life. It's going to affect your personality for good or for evil. Now why is it so deep? For all sorts of reasons. Number one, because another person is involved. You know of course it is meant to be a communion. It is meant to be a self donation. It is meant to be an exchange and this sheds light on the horror of masturbation. Because all of a sudden you would like sexual enjoyment without the donation. You are just playing with yourself. And this is why in my experience when people have this tragic vice they remain immature to an extent which is unbelievable. They can be 50 and be like kids of five or six. And number two, they are totally self centered. Everything is always revolving around themselves. Whereas precisely when sex is properly understood, it is self forgetfulness, and self giving. Don't forget that in your relationship with another human being you can wound this person very deeply or you can give this person deep great joy. I cannot wound water. Suppose then I take this glass and I throw it out. Water doesn't care. It doesn't feel it. But if I have a relationship with another person then betray this person or behave cruelly or totally self centered, I can wound this person for life.

I was particularly unpopular in Hunter among my colleagues because so many students were coming to me and telling me about their lives and their problems and it was always the same thing all over again. I loved this boy and he abandoned me or I loved this girl and she betrayed me, again and again. Sometimes I feel sorry for priests in the confessional because I'm convinced that they have to hear millions of times the very same thing. I've been impure, I have a relationship and so forth and so on, you know the same thing all over again, with no understanding of the mystery and greatness of this sphere. Now because it is related to another person, it is something which is very profound. Necessarily, my relationship to you will affect you positively or negatively, and visa versa. Moreover, sex is intimate. You know there are certain things which are exterior. I mean for example after this talk maybe I meet one of you in the restaurant and say let's eat together. I don't know you, but I mean I'll eat in front of you, you eat in front of me. But just imagine the horror which is happening today constantly that you meet someone on the street and say well let's go to bed together. It's an abomination. You cannot reveal something which is so personal and intimate unless you have traversed a whole series of steps. As my husband has declared so profoundly in his book "Liturgy and Personality", the spirit of discretion. You cannot do that, simply. You have to wait until something has matured, very much as you cannot pluck a bud and open it. You'll kill it. It is a mystery. It is something personal and intimate and therefore it is veiled, therefore it is not shown. Now you will notice that there are things that we hide because they are ugly. Suppose that you steal. You look over your shoulder to see that no one is seeing you, and then you'll steal. But if someone comes you say hi, I was just ... and so forth and so on -- you hide it. Suppose that you have an ugly wound full of pus. What are you going to do? To cover it because it's disgusting. So we hide things that are ugly, but we also hide things because they are beautiful. It is said in the Gospel when you pray, close the door. Perfume your head, and don't let other people know that you are praying. Suppose I said to you come to my room at about 3:15, you will find me on my knees. The moment I do this, I am not praying. I am just trying to impress you and I hope you see through my game. You know there are things that we hide because they are personal, because they are intimate. There are very deep sufferings. I mean suppose that there was a terrible tragedy in your family. You keep it to yourself because it's something which is very tragic. Therefore the fact that we hide something doesn't mean that it's ugly. We hide plenty of things because they are beautiful.

St. Theresa when she had visions of Christ said that one of the worst things was she had to say to her confessor, I have these visions. She had to, to make sure that the devil was not tempting her. But I mean you know the fact that she was so favored was very humbling to her. She ... wanted to keep it from fear that people might say, oh look, she's a saint. The worst torture for someone who is a saint, but a great satisfaction for those that are not. Therefore it's not only intimate, but it is also that it is related to a tremendous mystery. The mystery of the coming into existence of another human being.

I don't get married to have a child. I get married because I love my husband. But the procreation of the child belongs so essentially to this unitive function that it is the first step which leads into it. If I were to say to one of you, you know I absolutely want to get married because even though it's late in life, I still hope to have a child. In other words I use you as a means for the sake of procreation, and afterwards you can go; I no longer need you. This is what happens among animals. No, you get married because you love, but in this love you understand that love is necessarily fecund. It produces -- it's fruitful. And I mean to cut the fruitfulness of love is to sap love in its bud, and therefore there is an essential link between spousal love and procreation that cannot be severed. But obviously the meaning of marriage is a self donation of oneself to another person in front of God. This is the meaning of marriage, this is the marital icon, I mean this is why a marriage that is childless, that when husband and wife love God and love each other, can glorify God as much as a marriage with ten children or fifteen if you want, or seventeen, to speak of Fr. Marx' family. It all depends on the amount of love that you have. But you cannot sever this bond because it is related to God. This is why you can say sex can only be understood as an external manifestation of love. And the moment you sever sex and love you misunderstand sex. And a special type of love because a love that I have for a friend or for a child, or for my parents, hasn't got this quality. It is a special type of love which we call spousal love -- the love between the spouses.

Sex is also a self revelation. Read Genesis and you are going to come across very deep words, "and Adam knew Eve." Which is a very delicate way of saying that they lived as husband and wife. He knew her. Then obviously the very moment that I unveil myself to another person, that I allow this beloved person in front of God to penetrate into the mystery of my intimacy, in this very moment this person, my husband, will get to know something about myself that other people do not know. It is obvious. It's a self revelation. And it is -- there is a beautiful nakedness, and there is an ugly nakedness. The ugly nakedness is the one experienced by Adam and Eve when they sinned. The beautiful nakedness is the one of a virginal grant, saying to her husband on the night of their wedding, "I have kept this garden closed in front of God, and now I give you the key, and God is our witness, knowing that you are going to penetrate into it with loving reverence."

Chesterton was so conscious of the fact that -- sense that -sex is a mystery that should not be spoken of, that should be hidden, that he says anyone who loves children will agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of physical sex. That was written in his great book Orthodoxy which was published I believe in 1906 or (1908), long before he became a Roman Catholic. What would he say today about sex education in our schools, in which an innocent child is taught different methods of birth control, different sexual perversions, the whole mechanism of sex, the death of depth, of sublimity, of reverence, of poetry, and of mystery. It is ruined. It is better for such people to have a maul put on their neck than to continue to pervert these innocent little children. Moreover every abuse of sex is base and degrading. It's a serious sin. If you eat too much it's definitely an imperfection, if you drink too much, I say refrain, but it hasn't got the ultimate seriousness that sins of the flesh possess. It offends God in a very particular way. And I believe it is in the message of Fatima that the Holy Virgin made it clear that so many people lose their eternal life because of sexual perversions and sexual abuses. Moreover, sex is in no way indispensable. You can live happy, deep, rich, human lives and remain a virgin. As a matter of fact, just imagine how ludicrous and funny and amusing it would be if one of us drops dead just like that, and when you drop dead, then of course, you have to find out the cause of death and an autopsy is going to be performed. And the body is cut up and the doctor comes out and says, you know, cause of death is very clear, virginity. And this just to show you the stupidity of it. There are innumerable people who have no sex life. You know, take priests who take their celibacy seriously, nuns who have made a vow of virginity, widows and widowers, and people who never found the right partner. Innumerable of them. And they survive. I mean after all it's not a necessity. It can be a great gift. And then we should gratefully acept it. But it is perfectly ridiculous to say if you have no sex life you are going to be a cripple. That's up to you. You can become a cripple in any situation if you choose to have the wrong and perverted attitude towards it.

You know by the way I said that women have been particularly confided the secret of sex. Have you ever been struck by the fact that in the liturgy, when we celebrate the feasts of popes and martyrs and so on and so on, when you turn to men, you have popes, you have confessors, you have doctors, you have martyrs, and so on and so on. When you turn to women what do you have? Virgin, non-virgin. Now it is very strange because after all priests who truly live their celibacy are virgins, but it's not mentioned. Just to show you as I said that the Church considers that the sexual sphere is particularly confided to women. And this is the extraordinary greatness and dignity totally lost sight of because of the feminists. They do not realize the privilege of being a woman. And thank God it is compensated by the fact men have the priesthood, otherwise you feel sorry for them.

What happens in celibacy and a vow of virginity -- that your donation to God is so total and so absolute that it includes the mystery of the sexual sphere? That remains sealed out of love for God. Have you noticed by the way that there is no consecration of one's digestion? Suppose that all of us said, dear God, I would like to consecrate my digestion to you. No. Because sex and digestion are very different things. In one case there is depth, there is a profound meaning. I told you at the beginning of this talk that St. Augustine says every sin brings about its own punishment. Now the punishment of a wrong approach to sex when it is viewed as a mere instinct, as fun, you enjoy yourself, you are going to have a good time, you're going to get a kick out of it, you know what the punishment is? That you can experience animal satisfaction, you can experience pleasure, you can experience what my husband calls the merely subjectively satisfying. That you can do. But you cannot experience the deep and profound feast of happiness that is experienced by those who have a reverent attitude toward sex. They have no idea. People who keep going from one woman to another and visa versa, have no idea of the beauty and depth and source of joy that this life can be. The very moment that you are reverent, sex will unveil itself to you in its whole beauty.

You must have read the book of Allen Bloom, some ten years ago. It was called "The Closing of the American Mind". In the mean time it is closed further and tighter. And in this particular book there is one, a couple of lines that are so infinitely sad. He overheard the conversation of two young girls. They're 18, 17--18. And one of them was saying to the other, ... you know Jane, last night I lost my virginity. What Shakespeare calls so beautifully, the precious jewel of her virginity. But she added, was no big deal. Now tears come to my eyes when you realize the depth and the beauty of this sphere, the mystery of this sphere. And this young girl of seventeen was treating it very much as you say, you know I tried a new steak and I've never eaten it before, nothing special. That is the fearful punishment that necessarily follows sin, and this is why people now have to turn to drugs, because it's more exciting and then you have to take more and more and more drugs because fun in the sexual sphere turns out to be such a disillusion. Yes indeed, it's only those who follow God's laws that are going to taste the sweetness of a beautiful love relationship in their marriage. Blessed are the pure, because they will understand the sexual sphere. Thank you.