Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and
this is Ascension Presents. So, sometimes these videos we make are
like, happy and awesome and like, "No problem! I can take it, I can receive that word ... easy." And sometimes, the videos we make are like
"Mmm, that is harder to swallow." This might be one that
is harder to swallow but I have kind of felt the need to make this
for a bit of time. Because I've noticed something that is becoming
more and more prevalent actually, more and more common. And it's becoming more and more common amongst
Catholics who are, in all other areas, really committed to the faith,
really committed to the Lord. Like, they go to Mass more than just Sunday, right?
During the week they have holy hours, they know their way around a rosary bead,
you know that kind of a thing? And that thing I've noticed is, more and more,
they have become accustomed —that when they're dating someone—
(to) spending the night, sleeping in the same bed. And what I hear a lot of times in these cases is,
"Well, yeah, we slept in the same bed but, you know, I stayed the night,
but we didn't do anything— we didn't do anything else, we just slept in the same bed. How is that possibly wrong?" And "I mean, because we could have done worse" —and I would grant that yes,
yes, you could have been doing worse, but that doesn't mean that
what you did was good, right? You know, like, you didn't do
the worst possible thing, so ... *claps slowly* There's something wrong,
and actually it's a sin, to live like that: to spend the night, to sleep in the
same bed as the person you're dating. Like, "Why? Where in the world would you get that?"
Well, at least, for three reasons. The first reason is what's called
the near occasion of sin. So, what the near occasion of sin is,
is when I intentionally enter into a situation where it is very likely,
or at least very possible for me to commit a sin. And, clearly, lying down in the same bed
overnight with the person that you're in love with opens up a lot of doors for
some very serious things to happen. Now you might say like "No, we never—
haven't done anything though -- we've never -- we do this probably three out of the seven
nights of the week and nothing's ever happened." I was like,
"Well, nothing may have happened yet ... physically, but there's something that does happen inside." You know, sometimes—
broad strokes—guys and girls being very different, guys and girls thinking—and this is
broad strokes—generally speaking, a woman might be cuddling with a man and thinking "This is just so nice, this is just so sweet. I just like this moment.
I don't need to do anything else." Meanwhile, the guy is going, like,
"Whoa, OK, here we go! Hey, you just give me the sign and I'm ready to take to whatever level you want." Now again, (that's) not every guy and not every girl,
but that's often, often the case, as well as in one's mind, when you're spending
the night sleeping in the same bed your mind can go to a whole lot of different places. Plus, you go to bed like "Now we're just gonna lay here" and you wake up in the middle of the night like
"Oh hey, there's a person that I love right next to me. I bet he or she would want an exchange ... uh,
expression of affection in this moment." And it's just so dangerous.
It's called the near occasion of sin. To intentionally enter into
the near occasion of sin is a sin. Number two is what's
called the sin of scandal. Now scandal isn't just like, "That's shocking,"
like, "I can't believe these people—they're shocking." That's not what scandal is.
Scandal is living in such a way that when people see your life what they
thought was bad they now think is good or what they thought was good,
they now think is bad. And then go in the wrong way, right? So here you are and you're a
faithful Catholic and people know you.
Jack and Jill, you guys are both faithful Catholics, and Jill's roommate sees Jack and Jill going behind their
closed door and sleeping together. Now she doesn't know
that they're not "doing anything else" but at that point it kind of doesn't matter
because of the fact that she now thinks —the roommate now thinks—
"Well Jack and Jill follow Jesus, they love Jesus. I know, I see how they follow after him in all these other ways. This thing that's wrong must be fine." You might say "Well, that's not my responsibility
to give witness to all these people. It's not my responsibility for their souls."
Well, actually, Jesus—when he came to scandal— he said if any of you causes one of
these little ones to sin, and if by my actions I'm causing someone — by my actions I'm saying this thing that's evil, this thing that's dangerous,
this thing that's a sin —they'd say "Oh no, but if a faithful Catholic does this,
it must not be a sin"— if by my actions I caused one of these little ones to sin, Jesus said it will be better for that person if a great millstone was placed around
their neck and they were thrown into the sea. That's how seriously Jesus takes the sin of scandal. And sleeping together in the same bed
is ... a sin of scandal. The third reason is, not only is it a near
occasion of sin, not only is it a sin of scandal, but also there's something incredibly intimate
about sharing a bed with a person that you love. Now is there anything intrinsically evil about
sleeping in the same bed with someone of the opposite sex? No, because of this: because of the fact that
you could be— the power could go out and you'd be in danger of dying in the middle of January, middle of February —in danger of dying if you didn't kind of
huddle together for warmth. So there's nothing intrinsically wrong about that. But this situation, even though it's not intrinsically wrong,
is situationally wrong. And so, obviously, we know that the circumstances
can affect the gravity and they also can affect the
morality of an action. In this case, the fact that,
here we are, we love each other, we don't have to cuddle together,
huddle together for warmth, we're doing this because of just simply
the affection or the pleasure that it gives us ... *Sigh* that would be an intimate moment that ultimately —as we know this, right?—
should be reserved for your future spouse. I mean, we kind of just, we're aware of this. It's a serious—this is a serious thing
that I think you probably recognize. A Christian, someone who follows Christ can't—
there's no room in our lives to do that no room in our relationships to do that,
for those three reasons. For the near occasion of sin,
the sin of scandal, and for this sense of, there's something
incredibly and powerfully intimate about this that really, ultimately,
should only be for your future spouse. I don't mean to be accusing anyone,
because Satan is the one who accuses. But hopefully the Holy Spirit is convicting you. The difference between Satan accusing and the Holy Spirit convicting—Satan accuses and says "See, you're wrong. You don't belong in the Lord,
you don't belong with Christ, you don't belong in the Church."
That's wrong, that's false, that's not true—that's Satan. The Holy Spirit convicting says, "OK,
this is what you did, let me lead you to holiness, let me lead you to confession,
let me lead you to reconciliation. You don't have to stay in the dark,
you can come into the light and realize that you're worth loving,
that you're still good even if you've made mistakes." Even sometimes ...
I've talked to some people who say "I didn't even know, I didn't even realize
that that was wrong." For any of you who are still kind of holding out and saying "I think it's fine, I think it's OK," I'm just gonna ask you to consider this: Who is your favorite saint?
Who's your patron saint? Say, like, my favorite saint is St. Teresa of Avila,
my favorite saint is St. Catherine of Siena, Mother Teresa—what an amazing saint—
John Paul the Great! If you were to ask one of them, "Hey Mother Teresa of Calcutta, my boyfriend and I really love each other,
can we just spend the night? We don't do anything else, we just stay the night lying in each other's arms, sleeping in each other's arms. Is that OK?" What do you think that she would say?
What do you think, what do we think that the holiest people that we know
would say about this action? At the very least they probably wouldn't say
"Oh awesome! Go for it!" At ... the reality, they probably would say
that is grave, and dangerous, and please stop. I know this is one of these messages, right,
that's just like so ... bahh. But, at the same time, it's worth saying
and it's worth being said. Hopefully it's worth hearing. From all of us here at Ascension Presents,
my name's Father Mike, the big, bad, negative, angry—I'm not angry—priest. I'm just looking out for you, that's all.
I just want you guys to go to heaven. Go to heaven! Like, subscribe, or leave your comments. Maybe you disagree with this, I don't know. *clicks*
God bless.
I just want to vent something out, Im typing the details for you all in a notepad and I will edit this comment as soon as I finish.
...
I made a friend, this christian girl. We were spending time together and she kept making advances towards me. I didnt know she was THAT christian, you know what i mean. And I was a considerably open atheist (in a religious town) so the fact that she was hitting on me was affirmation that it wouldn't be an issue.
For a while it wasn't. I wasn't in love at first but I never felt so close to a person. Then came the downhill slope. She started crying, seemingly for no reason, saying she is just emotional and it will be okay. It wasn't. When I tried to get it out of her as gently as I could, she confessed that it's because I dont go to church with her. I tried my best to be as honest as possible and explained that she knows I don't believe, but despite that I don't want to disrespect the congregation by attending an event I obviously don't want to be a part of.
She kinda understood, but it hasn't fixed anything. Sometimes we used to sleep in one bed together. I wasn't forcing it. She told me she wants me to sleep over so I dont have to commute to my place in the middle of a night. We were both virgins. Slowly we were discovering some things, but never the whole nine yards. She was enjoying it in a moment. For a while I felt like she is happy and everything could be okay. But then came the crying again. She didn't want to talk about it at all, but started refrain from the sleep-overs. When I asked her if shes ashamed of what we do, she opened up and said yes, that couples shouldnt sleep nor live together before marriage. Thats when it kinda crumbled for me, because she simultaneously started to talk about babies and weddings A LOT. I wasnt looking forward to rush into a marriage or having kids. In fact now I don't ever want to have kids. Back then I wasn't sure, but I was sure that I wasn't ready yet.
I thought about things a lot and tried to explain that I'm not happy and I probably wont be. Thats when she totally broke. Endless tears and begging. She was unable to explain herself properly but even when I had the intend to break up, I always kinda played it off to the side, hugged her and told her everything could be fine. And for some reason she believed that.
So there I was, stuck in a relationship with person that I love, but not to the point that I can sacrifice everything I believe in and what I want. I tend to live in a moment, so I felt happy in some moments, miserable in others. But the hapiness started to fade away completely.
Look, maybe this is pretty harsh thing to say, but as a young guy I was getting pretty sexually frustrated. As I mentioned we never really did anything of sort together, so, as a young guy, let me just say that sometimes you have to help yourself. So, she find out that I do it myself and went absolutely insane, telling me that basically I am cheating on her and simillar ridiculous stuff. In my supressed anger I (calmly) asked her about Jesus, and how can I sacrifice everything for her if im not even the first thing she loves. I told her how I hate the fact that her imaginary friend holds more value to her than I do.
After a while, things came to an end. And obviously it left me to be the bad guy, the angry atheist that can't accept the loving and caring christian. Because that's what men are supposed to do. Accept Jesus first and then "lead a woman".
Well, it didnt end completely. After a few months we refrained from speaking about religion but we often texted each other and was meeting again, like good friends. But we felt that thing underneath saying we can't be "together" ever again. We remained friends for a long time. But for some reason she felt she can't find another man if I'm still her friend. So she did it again, her way. Cried to tell me she doesnt know what to do. Over and over again. I finally did it (to be the bad guy again), told her we cant meet anymore or speak to each other again. With tears in my eyes, again.
This whole story is just a quick version. It spans over about 6 years of my life. I wanted to write it down for someone who could maybe understand me, to vent myself a little, so here I am. Today a mutual friend send me this video that she shared (shes a youth group leader now). I realized this is exactly what she believed in the whole time. That she is a mere sinner. It baffles me that someone can propagate such shaming and guilt with a smile on their face, like this guy does. Im disgusted.
Those who bothered reading to the end, thank you. I am very open to criticism and seeing things from a new perspective, so If you have some, Id love to read it. Or, for that matter, if you have anything else to say.
ANOTHER EDIT: Dont know how I missed this when writing, but I forgot about one thing that is perhaps the craziest part of the story. Shortly before we stopped seeing each other she wrote me a letter, explaining some things, reason being she cant articulate herself well without crying when speaking about serious stuff (yeah, I know). But there was one thing that she hesitated to disclose to me all those years, because she thought Id think she was crazy. Ready? Well apparently back then she started hitting on me just because she thought my deceased mother, who died of cancer when i was 18, appeared to her in a dream saying "take care of him". Which supposedly meant she should convert me back to Jesus. Yeah. Not crazy at all.
You were wiser than I was.
When I was 24 years old, I did not know the difference between "feeling sorry for" someone and wanting to share my life with them. So I got married and she got infinitely worse.
My then girlfriend (now wife) and I used to be extremely devout Catholics. We dated long distance for several years and got married at 22. We actually didn’t have premarital sex but got pretty close a couple of times. We were convinced it was sinful to sleep in the same bed prior to marriage but we couldn’t resist a few times because we loved each other, enjoyed being close, and it’s normal and natural to want to be intimate with someone you love!
The guilt was crushing and exhausting but the pleasure and happiness we felt exceeded the guilt. We’ve been married 7 years and both left Christianity about 5 years ago.
If we could do it again, we would have had a bunch of premarital sex lol! Our sexlife is good but it took years to overcome the guilt, self-alienation, and indoctrination.
Neither of us wish we had slept with other people, but it sure would have been great to be intimate in a more uninhibited and natural way, without fear that our instincts and love for each other were somehow morally corrupt, evil, and/or demonic. Hitchens was right, religion poisons everything.
Ascension presents are homophobic and transphobic, not exactly surprising.
Avoid wasting time in relationships (with fundies) that are going nowhere. 6y is a big chunk.