Another good book for the masses - Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Dr. Meg Meeker, MD.

One of the most significant take away's for me was that depression is the most common STD.

Maybe if we stopped teaching women and girls that they are bad for wanting and enjoying sex, we would have fewer problems.

Could you please cite something specific about who we refers to in your claim? This is not what JP II proposed in what is now his Theology of the Body, nor the direction that OP is discussing.

As @biptoe:disqus mentions, the complex nature of the body communicates something when it interacts with another body. Our intellect does not fully understand the nature of this communication or how it works. In my experience, most of us willfully refuse to acknowledge it at all. That said, it seems rather obvious to me that what little understanding we do have gets all out of sorts when we do things contrary to what the bodies are designed to communicate.

For instance... the act of a handshake communicates something like a salutation. It can communicate the feelings of the participants as well, like anger, apprehension, confidence, etc. The handshake, however, would communicate something entirely different if before the interaction, one of the participants put on a latex glove.

The hook-up culture is excessively contrary to what the bodies communicate during sex. In sex, the male body communicates something to the effect of, "I am giving myself to you, and together we should have a child." The female body answers, "And I give myself to you, lets go ahead and try." That message is completely lost in what we (I assume you mean society) teaches about sexuality, and completely what JPII proposes. In the hook-up culture, both bodies say, "You are a means to an end, which is my selfish pleasure."

Maybe if our society stopped shaming women for their sexuality, while simultaneously celebrating male sexuality, we wouldn't depression and anxiety in women at current rates.

Could you explain our society stopped shaming women for their sexuality? Perhaps we live in different societies, but I see US society as doing exactly the opposite. Shame doesn't seem to truly exist in society any longer, not at least in how I understand shame. Society would seem to propose that women should feel no shame and have no use for modesty.

P.S. sorry for the delay I realize Heather's comment is 22 days old. For whatever reason discuss summaries aren't very timely.

Among the professions with higher than average rates of depression are nursing home/child-care workers, social workers, health-care workers, and teachers. Does that tell us anything about the morality of entering into any of those professions? The profession with the highest suicide rate is physician. What does that tell us about morality?

Having said that, I very much disagree with MrsWolf and believe there are differences in male and female sexuality that are almost certainly rooted in genetics.

The trouble is your experiment is being tried and it is failing. Many girls are being encouraged to be promiscuous. Depression has gone up rather than down. Have you see this book?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Loser-Letters-Mary-Eberstadt/dp/1586174312

I agree. There is most definitely a double standard in regards to sex. Our society teaches boys one thing about sex, and out girls another. It is a good thing the catholic church teaches equality in regards to sexual behaviors, and advises both sexes on the joys of a loving, fulfilling, unselfish, committed sexual experience- and warns of the dangers of reducing a person to a means of gratification. I would hope you advise women to uphold an idealistic view of sex, rather than resorting to a watered down version put forth by our culture. If I am lucky enough to have children one day, I hope to share with my sons as well as my daughters the life giving truth (as Catholics believe it) about sex.

I get that you think it's a separate discussion. However, I hope you see why I think the two are intrinsically, biologically, and naturally linked. And if abortion IS the killing of a human life - I won't give you my opinion on that, since for you it's a different discussion, but IF it is - then this would have many implications about sex.

This has everything to do with why we Catholics view sex not as casual, but as life-giving and sacred.

Let me look. I ran across it by chance a couple of weeks ago.

Really - can you cite this research? What sort of effects were they looking for?

Me: "Yeah well there's a whole industry based on The Black Secrets of the Vatican."

Amos: "Well you'll get no argument from me on that score. What is it based on?"

Largely on the hundreds of years of anti-catholic protestant propaganda that was widely disseminated in northern european countries (and over time exported to the US) from the reformation period onwards. That's where the mythologies of the Dark Ages and the Inquisition's elaborate torture chambers and the mindless fanatical bloodshed of the Crusades arise from. When in the 19th century professional scientists replaced what was largely religious gentleman amateurs the myth of the War of Science and Religion was created, leading to very popular books such as John William Draper's "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science" and Andrew Dickson White's "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom", both of which (along with the whole conflict thesis) have been thoroughly debunked and discredited by modern, mainstream peer-reviewed academic historians.

Me: "But referencing a TV programme isn't really a slam-dunk argument."

Amos: "Neither was it supposed to be a slam-dunk argument, but tell me this, are the details outlined in the programme inaccurate? Are those immoral acts being done by individuals and the establishment, by Catholic standards anyway, uncovered in the programme that went all the way to the top, not reality? If so, then my point was made. So, refute or retract."

You haven't told me what was in the programme, so I am unable to refute anything. I'm just saying that if you're interested in real history and debating it online you need to be able to cite something more authoritative than 'something I saw on tv'.

Me: "Might I suggest you read some actual academic history books?"

Amos: "To what ends? If you have an issue, make it. Was it immoral to burn folk for having a different world view? Was it immoral to burn people for having the same world view, but wanting to read it in the vernacular? Was it immoral to rob the masses through lies and extortion? Is it immoral to cover-up and protect predatory priests? Is it immoral to force a narrow minded morality that is based on a book full of lies, deceit, debauchery, contradiction, forgery, error, etc., because an institute thrives on the power gleaned from such? Stop me any time Steve if you think those academic history books won't support any of the above. Have you read "Hitler's Pope"?"

You raise a lot of issues. Firstly I would say that if we start judging the past by today's standards then we might as well condemn the whole of human history - everything before about 70 years ago; but then it just becomes an exercise in chronological snobbery and self-righteousness. One needs to get a feel for the values, worldview, culture and society of any particular time, to enter imaginatively into it, before you can really begin to understand why they believed and acted in the ways they did. Otherwise they all appear to be mindless imbeciles - ALL of them. In carefully selecting one particular group for censure and condemnation and comparing their acts to our modern liberal values, cossetted as we are by our unimaginably wealthy and comfortable technological post-industrial societies and lifestyles, you are examining the past from a very skewed perspective.

I'm aware of Hitler's Pope. More recently and after a number of critical responses to the book John Cornwell has softened his views considerably - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Pope#Cornwell.27s_later_views. Have you read "The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis" by the Rabbi David G Dalin, or the Israeli consul Pinchas E. Lapide's "Three Popes and the Jews"? They write from a jewish perspective and tell a very different story.

If you look hard enough you'll find a book condemning, lambasting and denouncing any single person, group, philosophical, articistic or political movement, profession, race or gender you like. Human beings are often full of fear, anger and hate. It is important to be informed from many different perspectives. It isn't quite so satisfying, in that you can no longer maintain the kind of narrative where there are good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats, but it is both more interesting and more accurate.

One guy who's been an eye-opener for me is the history blogger and reviewer Tim O'Neill. He's an aussie atheist with a sharp tongue and wit, a champion of rationalism and proper peer-reviewed academic history and the fearsome scourge of bad and pseudo-history everywhere. He has a blog called Amarium Magnus, here - http://armariummagnus.blogspot.co.uk - but he pops us all over the place.

Amos: "Lying and stealing is deemed immoral, but most of us lie and steal at least some of the time, and some of us most of the time. Are immoral acts, not immoral, if done for moral reasons?"

Moral philosophy - fascinating subject.

Amos: "I'm not big on morality though. Especially that of religious institutions. They make it up to suit the situation and always have the cop out."

I'd disagree with you there. I also think you're confusing "morality" with "judgmentalism". One has to have some morals, surely?

Amos: "Our democratically elected governments are ordering the murder of people all the time. But at least they don't have the audacity to invoke divine command theory like so many religious do."

'So many' of them do? I don't really see any difference between murder for secular or religious reasons, it's still murder.

Me: "I'm not a catholic but I still maintain pornography is immoral."

Amos: "That is you prerogative. But before I can be convinced it is, you need to make an argument in support of your view, just saying it is, doesn't make it so."

I don't think you've read all my posts above. I set out why I think it is immoral very clearly. You don't have to agree with me but you can't accuse me of just flatly insisting you accept my argument 'because I say so....'

Amos: "It is because of religion and a particular set morals, or taboo's, that porn titillates that group differently.

Ironically, religious folk are more likely to feel addicted to porn, according to a study funded by the Templeton Foundation.

Grubbs and his co-authors speculate that feelings of addiction could be seen as "the religious individual's pathological interpretation of a behavior deemed a transgression or a desecration of sexual purity."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Why are they looking at it in the first place?"

Makes sense to me: they know it is sleazy and seedy and dehumanising, because they either have a moral conscience or their religious values have been drummed into them another way. Therefore they look at it and feel guilty and are aware it has an unwholesome power over them. They're looking at it in the first place because people are people and porn is exciting and stimulating. Just being religious doesn't - obviously - mean that moral behaviour comes effortlessly.