Of course, the Catholic Church makes claims about our bodies that are
at once broader and much simpler than those made by Reebok and the
makers of Fair Chase. As an avid long distance runner, I love
the idea that we were made to run. But I’ll concede that maybe running
isn’t the purpose of human existence. The evidence here isn’t
indisputable. The Church’s claims, on the other hand, are undeniable.
That is: men and women are sexually compatible, male and female
reproductive organs go together, and the product of this union is
children. We can say this without even having to credit a creator.
Whether our bodies are a product of intelligent design or evolution,
their purpose, sexually speaking, is clear. These facts are much more
obvious and widely accepted than anything to do with running. Yet most
in our culture would respond with outrage if you were to suggest that
the fundamentals of human biology could actually speak to our purpose or
that the design of reproductive organs says something about how those
organs ought to be used.
Part of this disconnect arises from the
exaggerated form of individualism we’ve adopted here in the West. This
individualism is so extreme that we refuse to let anything, even
biology, tell us how we ought to live. You can clearly see this now in a
culture saturated with contraception. Despite the obvious design of our
bodies, we insist loudly that sex and reproduction ought have nothing
to do with each other. We even believe now that gender has nothing to do
with biology. We are guided by a strange kind of secular-Gnosticism
with an internal knowledge so secret it cannot be observed or understood
by reason. This individualism really becomes a kind of nihilism as we
are literally guided by nothing.
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