I sent that before I'd edited or checked it, so please ignore and read this one instead (if you can be arsed):



I'm going to take you on over several things, Joe. First, sex and the pulpit. There are several reasons why priests don't preach about sex from the pulpit. First, they are single men preaching to a largely married audience, and you don't have to be that bright to see that you would would have zero credibility as a bedroom advisor or pontificator. Second, most congregations will contain young children or elderly people for whom priestly sex talk would be highly inappropriate. Third, the Church's many edicts on sex are so well-established and so set in stone that there is little need for further priestly elaboration. The implication that the Church isn't too bothered about sex because it isn't good pulpit material is, therefore, misplaced. You and I both know that the Church is heavily into people's sex lives. It has strictures in place about contraception, abortion, the purpose of intercourse, homosexuality, gay marriage, masturbation, divorce , etc., that are seriously at odds with liberal thinking, even with some other Christian organisations. That is quite a hefty list of control orders for an organisation that purports not to make a "huge thing" of it, I'd say.

I would also take you up on your use of "divine". I have no clue as to whether I contemplate things more, less, or the same amount as you do. I love the world and I love nature, I marvel in it and I study it. I can look at a flower and revel in the thought that it took three billion years of evolution to make such a simple, beautiful and perfectly functional thing. I love not quite being able to get my head round it, but I can study the evidence and keep trying. I can look at the sky and celebrate not even beginning to get my head round the immensity of spacetime from my little scrap of a planet and the few puny years I have on it. It's all amazing and overwhelming and almost incomprehensible. But only almost, because I'm going to keep looking, even though I know I'll never get there. What I'm scared to death of is thinking that I've found something sacred or divine that stops me looking. I don't want answers that explain nothing. I'd rather do without answers at all and be able to keep looking. That's what I believe I'm here for, if I believe anything. The difference between you and me is that you are after deeper insight and appreciation, whereas I want to KNOW stuff and be edified through knowledge and be frustrated by the challenges of the search. Not mutually exclusive by any means, but different perspectives. You may call that earthbound, but I call it my intellectual challenge. I can't get that by seeing sacredness. Too much old baggage there for me. Not for you, which I do respect in spite of what I'm saying.