Sex Is Like Eating Pizza: The Pathetic Alternative to Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

This morning, I was sitting in the Catholic Center when a student came in and said, "I'm so glad you are here because I've got to tell you this."  The student proceeded to tell me about a training that he attended at BU.  The speaker for the training told students that sex is like eating pizza.  The trainer then went on to give examples.  "Can you eat pizza only with one person ever or can you eat pizza with whomever you like?"  "Can you eat pizza with just one person at a time or can you eat pizza with several people at a time?" Apparently, the examples continued.  Happily, this particular student has enough sense to realize the total depravity of what was being taught.  One would hope that many students have enough sense to understand that whatever exactly the point of this "training" was, it arises from a very sad, distorted, and pathetic view of the human person.

As the student was conveying this pathetic story to me, I wondered whether the trainer would agree that a 65 year old man could eat pizza with his 6 year old granddaughter? And I wonder if it would be okay to pay someone to eat pizza with you? I wondered whether it was okay for a married man to occasionally order delivery? Would it be okay for your spouse to occasionally have pizza with someone else in this analogy? The student said to me, "Father, I was sitting in this room and I was thinking, 'Even if you didn't have Catholic Faith or morals, wouldn't you have some sense that sex is something considerably more significant than eating pizza?'" It made me very happy that this student has been given the grace and wisdom necessary to realize the emptiness of what was being proposed in this training.

If this student's portrayal of the "training" that he attended is accurate, it is certainly a very sad reflection on the proposed view of the human person and of human sexuality. The view being imposed upon students by the "trainer" is that sex is really insignificant and is not an investment of the entire person. It reduces sex to a cheap form of pleasure and nothing more. What a very sad thing it is to require students to attend a training that takes one of life's greatest gifts and reduces it to something so base.

In case you were a student subjected to this kind of "training," and felt the inclination that what you were being told was faulty: Congratulations! That means that you have not been completely desensitized to the truth. You have not bought into the lie that what we do with our bodies is somehow extrinsic and meaningless.  It means that you still have the sense that you are created in the image and likeness of God and that you (and others) possess intrinsic dignity. If you listened to that training and thought, "This is sad," then you have reason to rejoice because you have not been enslaved by an agenda that seeks to brainwash you into thinking that sex is about cheap thrills and not about lifelong and life-giving love. 

St. John Paul II wrote beautifully on the meaning of the human body and the Theology of the Body. He wrote about how sex is the mutual self-giving between a man and a woman, ordered toward the pro-creation of children. He wrote so magnificently and urgently on the beauty and holiness of sex because he saw what the absurd and pathetic alternative was: Having a professional trainer teach young men and women that sex is like eating pizza.

So there you have it my young friends.  The Church lays out a vision of human sexuality that says that sex is an act created by God's loving plan, which enables a man and a woman who are united in a life-long union, to give themselves entirely to each other and become co-creators with God.  On the other hand, you have the "sex is like eating pizza" philosophy.  I hope that you think enough of yourselves and of other human beings to see which is truer, better, and more beautiful.