The Biggest Lie I Was Told As A Protestant

Converts tend to observe things that natives usually don't or take for granted. For example, an all-American boy may realize some of the formal subtleties in the Spanish language that a native Spanish speaker may have subconsciously forgotten. Or an immigrant can appreciate the virtues the USA better than what an American born citizen may have gotten accustomed to. I think the same can be said about religion. In this case, as I have come from Protestantism to Catholicism, I do want to point out some things about sex that I realize now as a Catholic is totally false about Protestantism, though at the time I didn't realize it.

I was told, as a Protestant, that there wasn't much to be said about sexual ethics. As a Protestant, with no knowledge of Catholicism at the time, I couldn't think of any books that dealt with sexual ethics. Here is proof of my ignorance. Then, as reported in the link, I attended an event at Biola University. I asked the Christian there, a professor and a familiar name in Protestant Christian intelligentsia, what material was out there concerning Christian sexual ethics? He said there was scarcely anything available, and he encouraged me to do work in that field. I took him at his word. I had good reason to. If I didn't see much, and he confirmed it and he is someone that would know, then I seemed justified. 

But I now know that is wrong. As a Catholic, I now know that there is a treasury of material. There is John Paul II's Love & Responsibility and Theology of the Body. You can draw a lot of great stuff from Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae. There is (now) Alexander Pruss' monster of a work, One Body, and he has been writing AND teaching about the subject for a while. J. Budziszewski has written a great book on the subject, On the Meaning of Sex, and I hoped he would have written this book when I read his chapter on sexuality on his How To Stay A Christian In College a few years earlier.

So, if all these resources are available, why aren't they known? Well, let me rephrase that question. If all these resources are available, why aren't they known to Protestants? I can think of one reason: anti-Catholicism. I might be wrong on that, but I don't know of any other hypothesis that better explains it. I think this is confirmed with the following observation. 

There is a strong unity among Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians on the issue of same-sex "marriage", in that we remained opposed to it. But as far as academics go, who leads the way? It's Robert P. George and his paper (co-written with some of his colleagues/students), "What Is Marriage?" Protestants ate it up. They're like, "OMG, this is the greatest thing since Chick-Fil-A and Hillsong!" It's brilliant, they said. Well, yeah, it's wonderful, I agree. But, from the worldview of Catholicism, is it really that surprising? Is it surprising if you've been a Thomist (ignoring, for now, the distinction between Classical and New Natural Law)? No, it's not surprising at all. It's what Catholicism has said for a very long time! Yet, if you're a Protestant, this seems like groundbreaking stuff. 

Another observation to made about the reaction to the George paper is its lack of application in Protestantism. The metaphysics in the paper also seem to entail the rejection of contraceptives. Yet, when I listen to my protestant friends talk about the paper, this doesn't seem to come to their mind. I took a class from a professor at Biola on ethics (with a large emphasis on bio-ethics), and the issue never came up, though we wrestled with PGD, adoption, surrogate motherhood, etc. and you would think this would come up, but no. Why is there a lack to connect? Again, I think the best hypothesis is that many Protestants don't seem interested in hearing what Catholics have to say because of a prejudice and for similar reasons aren't to open to Thomistic metaphysics (how many philosophy professors at Biola are Thomists?). 

This has consequences. It caused a student like me who was looking for good reasons for Christianities sexual ethics to be told there was none. Imagine the disappointment from my apologetically minded Protestant friends if they had heard of a story about a professor answering a student who had asked him if there were reasons for his faith in general by telling him, "No." There would be so many heads shaking at Biola, La Mirada would have recorded an earthquake. At this same lack of awareness, I shake my head at Protestantism, that told me there was nothing to defend my faith in Christian sex.