A reader with the a deformed and scurrilous yet Homeric name of Thersites writes a well-formed and noble passage:
Oddly enough, the Church’s much-derided teachings on divorce, fornication, and contraception were just about the only Catholic teachings I agreed with back when I was an atheistically-inclined Church-hating agnostic around age twelve. I read a single quote in a secular health book from a man who waited until marriage, and instantly saw the self-evident logic of his position- “That’s what I’m going to do, too. It’s the only path that makes sense“. I had the same reaction in health class when our school nurse (very grudgingly, in retrospect, and probably under some school board mandate she secretly despised) pointed out that only abstinence was 100% effective at preventing conception- my twelve-year-old brain thought “Okay, why do we need to have this stupid and awkward class about condoms, then? I’m pretty sure I can keep it in my pants, thank you.” Even amidst all my blazing hostility to God and His Church, it was obvious to me that condoms were disgusting and unnatural.
My own history shares this feature with yours.
As a vehement and militant atheist boy and man, I was always a creature of unsentimental logic and moral rigor after the fashion of the classic Stoic writers, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and so on.
At the same time, in an unnoticed paradox of psychology, I followed the preaching of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein and other hedonists, who advocated adultery, fornication, and sexual deviance, on the grounds that no pleasure should be denied provided it harmed no other.
I was an avowed enemy of Christ, contemptuous of and hostile to every manifestation of the Christian worldview, which I took to be an empty-headed tangle of superstition, wishful thinking, gas, fairy-tale, and hypocrisy.
My best friend in the world was a Christian, who had been an atheist in days past. He was handsome and charming, and had always been something of a lady’s man at college, but after graduation, had neither sweetheart nor wife, nor any prospect of one.
A time came when we were discussing love and romance.
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