What’s the formula for good sex?
TV shows offer one recipe. Take an attractive man or woman, add a nice restaurant dinner, stir in a few drinks and follow the trail of chemistry where it leads, and next thing you know you’ll both be lying back amid tousled sheets with smiles of satisfaction, having just had mind-blowing sex in which there were no awkward pauses and both people reached heights of bliss with no effort whatsoever.
Know what? TV can be a huge, unabashed, pants-on-fire liar.
One thing I know It’s hard to write a column about sex, shouldn’t a sex expert like Dr. Ruth be writing this? After all, I can only really speak about my own experience in this area. And no doubt there are some for…

Looking forward to a summer wedding, 28 year-old Ashley Dumas carried her wedding dress out of the closet and hung it on the door for all to see. Her partner, 26 year-old Jamie Levine, and their friends admired the gown for its simple linen cloth.
However, coming out of the proverbial closet has been anything but simple for this lesbian couple. Levine, a nursing student living in Massachusetts, remarked that “it is going to be a legal marriage now and it’s really stirred up my whole family.”
Levine’s family is not the only one that is “stirred up” about gay sexuality. The Catholic family as a whole also struggles with how to include its gay members within the faith tradition.…

“Can you come and see me?” said his ex-girlfriend over the phone months after they went through a bitter and hurtful breakup.
“And why would I want to do that?” said the scorned male, passively refusing the invitation.
“Because I’m dying and I just want to see you one last time.”
This was the dilemma that my friend was presented with just a few days ago. He thought he had pushed the pain of this bad relationship aside months ago only for it to infiltrate his mind again when he answered his cell phone.
Can you forgive and forget?His ex wanted his forgiveness. She had ruined their relationship and during the course of the break-up informed my friend that she not only never loved…

Editor’s note: Monday, August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. With this in mind we offer this two part series on Mary.

She’s called everything from Our Lady of Peace to the Mother of God to the New Eve. She smiles at us from Christmas cards and gazes serenely from Renaissance paintings. There’s no question that Mary is one of the most recognizable women in the world. Her significance in the Catholic tradition is indisputable.

But what is her significance in the lives of women today? How does this iconic figure speak to the twenty-first century female experience? Curious about Mary’s impact on modern women, I surveyed Catholic women from their early thirties to early…

“I can definitely see you as a priest,” my friend told me.“Thanks,” I said. This was a helpful insight, since I’d like to be a priest. “But the thing is,” he said, “I just can’t see you being celibate.”This was a less helpful insight since, as I understand it, Catholic priests tend to be celibate.
I actually would have agreed with my friend a year ago. If you would have asked me why I wanted to be a priest, I could have told you about how I wanted to serve others or how I felt preaching was a great way to use my talents. I could even talk about my deep passion for the Eucharist and the desire to share it with those around me. I’ve thought about being a priest…

Sex sells.
Or so they say. But I think “they” are wrong.
I think what they mean is that partly naked people, a hint of genitalia, and the bright (though often illusory) promise of sexual intercourse sells.
We limit sex or sexuality tragically when we talk about it only in terms of our private parts and intercourse (wonderful as they may be). Our sexuality, this most beautiful gift from God, is the very energy that allows us to be in relationship with others. Sexuality informs all aspects of being a self—social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical.
Can you relate?From the moment of our birth we are drawn into relationships with other people. A newborn instinctually roots for food from…

Many people have a hard time with winter. Up North where I come from the days are short and gloomy. The cold is bitter and winter is long. The holidays, cloaked in joy and celebration can be their own peculiar kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing. There are memories of loves and loved ones lost. There’s the extra stress of everything that needs doing. All that along with the expectation that we should feel happy, Christmas and New Year’s can have a nasty bite. My husband Greg has bi-polar depression and the winter is especially bad for him. If winter gets you down or you’re close to someone who struggles with seasonal depression, let this list be a starting point for you. Make your own list of mood…

After a long weekend of bars, booze, and boys, I make it a point to attend Sunday night Mass. As I repent for any sins I may have committed in spite of my good Catholic upbringing, I can’t help but notice the person in front of me is the same guy I saw cheating on his girlfriend the night before. And someone a few rows up looks exactly like the girl I saw pole dancing on the bar last week. In fact, the more I look around, the pews are filled with college co-eds living the same double life my friends and I have down to a science; faith-filled young Catholics in spirit, and sexually uninhibited college students by practice. At times, walking into mass on Sunday night does feel hypocritical. It is hard to reflect on the hedonistic…

Lynn Cassella’s profound experience as a child of divorce shines through in this small and practical guide for all those whose lives have been touched by divorce.
Divorce journeyCassella speaks of her own journey as a child of divorce and uses her experience and the experience of others as guides throughout chapters that focus on a specific hurt that the child of divorce may be feeling.
For Lynn Cassella, the pain of her parents’ divorce didn’t strike her on impact. It wasn’t until she was in college that she began to feel emotions like shame and guilt. Her relationship with her father became strained, and she began to hold unhealthy resentments toward him.
Cassella reveals so much of…

A few months back, I had a disturbing conversation with my mother. It went something like this:
Mom: You mean to tell me you’re going to marry someone you haven’t had sex with?
Me: Yes.
Mom: Really?
Me: Yes. I think it’s wrong. And I really don’t want to be having this conversation with you, Mother.
Mom: Well, I don’t want to be havingit either.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Mom: But you are going to have some sex, right?

This was the point where I would normally leave the room horrified and with my face about 1,000 shades of red. Unfortunately, we were in the car, and it took another 20 minutes of uncomfortable silence to get back home.
I’m not sure I’ve completely recovered…

I. Java Goddess and Garage Man
Renée: With our house-hunting completed, I can now list yet another way in which Jim and I are different.
Those comments I made during our early blissful engaged months about our similarities and compatibilities?
Whatever. I feel like tossing them out the window. Whether that particular window is block glass, facing south, or fuel efficient, I do not care.
A domestic goddess I am not—I care more about the neighborhood than the house itself. My primary requirement for any potential house was that it be within walking distance of a coffee shop, preferably locally-owned and non-chain.
Jim: I don’t drink the java, so what do I care about coffee shops? My primary requirement…

When my wife and I had been married two years, people would ask me, “How long have you been married?” I’d hold up a pair of fingers and reply, “Two,” take a slight pause, and continue “long.”
While holding my baby boy, people would walk up to me and say, “How many children do you want?” I’d look at them somberly and reply, “None.”
Then there were sixAh, those fun days were ten years and six children ago. I now walk through life with four sons and two daughters, ages ten years to three months.
This, of course, makes me something of a freak to contemporary ways of thinking. To mitigate this, I tell people, when asked how many children I have: “Four,…

In an article I read from The Washington Monthly (reprinted in the recent Utne Reader on “Erotic Intelligence” ), author Elizabeth Austin suggests––and you sense she thinks she is making a very bold suggestion––that the “rule” on Third Date Sex be modified.
Dating couples might wait a whole “six or eight­­­––maybe even ten—dates to make up our minds” about whether or not to either have sex or stop seeing each other.
You’ve come a long way, babyAs I read Austin’s article, the stunning contrast between the lived experience she described and the proclamation of sexual norms from the pulpits of our Catholic churches (“no…

The power actually browned out—gradually—in our section of midtown Manhattan on August 14 at 4:10 p.m. But before ten full minutes had elapsed, everything was completely gone.
Like for most of those affected, the information came in slowly. We assumed it was just our immediate neighborhood. Then we heard it was the whole City. Then: New Jersey and Connecticut too.
Soon we got our ‘D’ batteries from the local newstand and got the full report off the radio—fifty million people across the Eastern Seaboard up to Toronto and Ottawa in Canada.
New Yorkers, of course, remember the infamous Blackout of 1977, when looting caused panic and millions of dollars in damage. No one knew if a similar fate awaited…

By all accounts, Gay Pride Week in Toronto was different this year. Normally, the festivities draw thousands of tourists to the capital of Ontario and the annual parade?that took place on Sunday June 29?can attract hundreds of thousands. This year, however, tourism was down. SARS paranoia, it seems, still spooks Toronto’s image. Hotels normally filled with Gay Pride revelers remained half empty.
It’s not just SARS, though, that has changed Toronto’s Pride celebration: it’s marriage. On June 10, the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled that the province’s marriage laws were unconstitutional because they prevented same-sex partners from marrying. While the court’s…

We were on our honeymoon when Steve suggested I take a dive. SCUBA diving’s great, he explained. “The water, the fish-you’ll love it!”
I wasn’t so sure. In all my years of swimming, I always believed that the water’s surface was the place to be. What if I got cold or lost in the waves?
Steve, a certified SCUBA diver, thought I was nuts. And chicken. And he was right. For all the complaints of chill and disorientation, I was really afraid of being underwater and, of course, drowning. For the rest of our honeymoon and during the next year, Steve nagged me to dive. He said it was too divine an experience to miss.
Snorkel this
I took the plunge and, pathetically, snorkeled in our bathtub…

People like Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Lopez, and countless other show biz hotties, are renowned for their striking beauty and perfect bods. Some were born that way and others had a bit of help in the nip and tuck department. As for the rest of us? Either we apply for Extreme Makeover or get by with what we have, whatever that may be.
But aren’t we all just a nose job, chin or cheek implant away from being one of them? You know, one of those Beautiful People who stop traffic and turn heads like appetizers on a Lazy Susan? Perhaps it’s just my chunky thighs or short, pudgy nose with the flared nostrils that prevent me from being a drop-dead beauty, the kind that leaves people slack-jawed and gaping. One…

Recently a certain American Catholic bishop, who shall remain nameless, was characterized by a seasoned priest I know as “a man who loves order more than people.”
It certainly wasn’t meant as a compliment, but believe it or not, he made the remark more in sorrow than in bitterness, as part of a general lament about what life has come to in the United States.
In the U.S. we are very attached to order, and most of the time it is to our credit. The mail gets delivered. The fire department comes when called. You can get those grapefruit and chewable vitamins you need from your neighborhood grocery.
The human mess
But the desire for tidiness in our affairs can collide with the messy world of human relationships.…

Waiting (once again) on the primitive printer in our office, I stared out into space and thought idly about what I was going to eat for lunch. Times Square doesn’t offer much in the means of good food, so I wasn’t off in hungry never-never land for very long.
When I snapped out of it, an unfamiliar face was walking towards me. I work in a very small office where everyone knows one another, so this was an event. I didn’t know this mystery woman, but something about her seemed so familiar. As she got closer I realized that she looked a lot like this timid Colombian girl I knew in college. Hmm, I wonder…
Mystery womanShe smiled sheepishly as she approached and made to walk on past. I stopped her, “Excuse…

More than once the kindness and generosity of strangers has touched and surprised me. But sometimes friends also show the depth of their generosity and affection.
I experienced both of these when my trip to a job interview near Elkhart, Indiana, went seriously awry.
KaboomThe drive from my dorm in Columbus, Ohio to the hotel was supposed to take four and a half-hours. The interview would be the following day. I never made it to my hotel.
One moment, I was looking for something in the passenger’s side of my car, and the next moment, my car was hurtling down the grassy embankment. When I stopped, the air bag had deployed, my seat belt was ripped out of its holder, there was glass everywhere, and I was bleeding. A thin…