Sex au Naturel: What it is and Why it’s Good for Your Marriage
Overview
Sex Au Naturel: What it is and Why it’s Good For Your Marriage by radio host Patrick Coffin is a bracing ride across the landscape of the Catholic sexual ethic. If you’re looking for intellectual ammo with which to defend and explain the teaching of Humanae Vitae, or if you reject it altogether, you’ll agree that Coffin approaches the topic from a wide array of new and persuasive angles.
With humor and enthusiasm—and a total absence of moralizing—you’ll learn:
- Why Paul VI’s landmark 1968 encyclical was widely rejected a generation ago and why it’s gaining new respectability now
- Where exactly the Bible teaches against birth control
- The differences between contraception and natural family planning
- The meaning of the natural law and how it applies to birth control
- How the dogma of the Blessed Trinity implicit condemns birth control
- That every single Protestant denomination rejected birth control until 1930
- Why the myth of overpopulation is used against the Church, and how to answer it
- How faithful adherence to the teaching of Humanae Vitae is causally related to marital happiness and longevity
- Why it’s not too late to start over, even if you’ve been sterilized
- How to rely on the ever-present grace of God rather than your own strength in faithfully following this challenging, life-giving aspect of Christian discipleship
In the Verbum edition, this volume is enhanced by amazing functionality. Important terms link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a wealth of other resources in your digital library. Perform powerful searches to find exactly what you’re looking for. Take the discussion with you using tablet and mobile apps. With your software, the most efficient and comprehensive research tools are in one place, so you get the most out of your study.
Want more guidance on marriage and family? This volume is part of the Catholic Marriage and Family Collection (6 vols.). Take a look at the entire set.
Key Features
- Connects solid Catholic teaching to sexual ethics
- Presents sensitive topics with humor and intellectual integrity
- Provides biblical sources and explanations for the Church’s teaching
Contents
- How We Got Here
- Escape from Dissent
- Who’s Your Daddy?
- Birth Control in the Bible
- Birth Control and the Blessed Trinity
- The Truth Whisperer
- Answers To the Pop Quiz
- How to Defuse the Population Bomb
- Planned Barrenhood
- N.F.P. vs. A.B.C.
- Made, Not Begotten
Praise for the Print Edition
In Sex au Naturel, Patrick Coffin presents a clear and compelling case for the timeless teaching of the Church on contraception. Coffin demonstrates the beauty, power, and joy that is possible in marital sexual love when a couple does not separate what God has joined—their union expressing life-giving love.
—Kimberly Hahn, author, Life-Giving Love: Embracing God’s Beautiful Design for Marriage
Opinion surveys report that, while most Catholics believe most Catholic doctrines, they overwhelmingly reject the Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception. Why? I think it is because no one ever explained it to them clearly and convincingly. ( When did you last hear Catholic sexual teaching explained well from the pulpit—or at all?) In this book Patrick Coffin succeeds in doing what many have failed to do—or have not even tried to do. He makes old truths new and not just new but winsome and liberating. He takes up every challenge to the Church—s teaching, makes that teaching accessible to everyone, and shows that sex au naturel is best understood as sex au supernatural.
—Karl Keating, president, Catholic Answers
Patrick Coffin represents a new generation in rebellion against the rebels of my generation, standing against the 1960s battle cries, ‘Keep the Pope out of my bedroom!’ (This was self-flattery: What made them think he wanted to be there?) Having once accepted the principles that separated procreation from union and love within sex, Coffin came to see the tragedy developing in his generation. Sex au Naturel describes the many intertwined but knotted and confused strands of thought about sexuality that are strangling the life out of society. By unraveling teachings on sexuality in the Church, Scripture and tradition, as well as in useful science, medicine and social trends, the knots come loose and the reader is surprised by one startled point of Christian sexual freedom after another.
—Fr. Mitch Pacwa, host, EWTN Live
I firmly believe that Catholic teaching on contraception will one day be vindicated around the world. Patrick Coffin’s own journey from dissent to discovery will resonate with a whole generation who were really never invited to ‘come and see’ this sublime vision of sexuality and Christian marriage.
—Christopher West, author, Theology of the Body Explained
Of all the Catholic Church’s moral teachings, its teaching against contraception is by far the most reviled and attacked precisely because it is so misunderstood by so many. Happily, Patrick Coffin has set about to remedy that problem with this new book. He explains how he went from rejecting Catholic teaching on contraception to wholeheartedly embracing it, and along the way he explodes many popular myths and misconceptions about Humanae Vitae. If you or someone you know has left the Catholic Church over the issue of birth control, this book will help set the record straight by showing you why the Church teaches what it does on this very important life issue.
—Patrick Madrid, director, Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College
Product Details
- Title: Sex au Naturel: What it is and Why it’s Good for Your Marriage
- Authors: Patrick Coffin
- Publisher: Emmaus Road
- Publication Date: 2010
- Pages: 160
- Christian Group: Catholic
- Resource Type: Topical
- Topic: Marriage & Family
About the Authors
Patrick Coffin is the host of Catholic Answers Live, the number-one rated Catholic radio show in America. He has published dozens of articles, essays, and interviews. Born in Nova Scotia, he is an alumnus of Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, McGill University in Montreal, and Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, where he received his MA in theology.
Want more guidance on marriage and family? This volume is part of the Catholic Marriage and Family Collection (6 vols.). Take a look at the entire set.
- Connects solid Catholic teaching to sexual ethics
- Presents sensitive topics with humor and intellectual integrity
- Provides biblical sources and explanations for the Church’s teaching
- How We Got Here
- Escape from Dissent
- Who’s Your Daddy?
- Birth Control in the Bible
- Birth Control and the Blessed Trinity
- The Truth Whisperer
- Answers To the Pop Quiz
- How to Defuse the Population Bomb
- Planned Barrenhood
- N.F.P. vs. A.B.C.
- Made, Not Begotten
Top Highlights
“There is nothing good about pleasure; it’s merely enjoyable. And there is nothing bad about pain; it’s merely unpleasant.” (Page 9)
“As long as the natural tie between sex and babies remains severed, the cult can flourish. Nothing like the imagined sound of a baby crying to spoil the picnic!” (Pages 8–9)
“The notion that sexual intercourse ought to always be open to the transmission of new life is not so much articulated as assumed in Sacred Scripture. Every biblical reference to fertility and birth is couched as a blessing; every reference to barrenness and sterility as a curse.” (Page 32)
“It has a clergy (Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, et al), sacraments (pornography, fornication, adultery), a special rite of absolution (abortion), a devotional practice (masturbation), a creed (the Playboy philosophy), and even an evangelical revival (the Sexual Revolution).” (Page 8)
In Sex au Naturel, Patrick Coffin presents a clear and compelling case for the timeless teaching of the Church on contraception. Coffin demonstrates the beauty, power, and joy that is possible in marital sexual love when a couple does not separate what God has joined—their union expressing life-giving love.
—Kimberly Hahn, author, Life-Giving Love: Embracing God’s Beautiful Design for Marriage
Opinion surveys report that, while most Catholics believe most Catholic doctrines, they overwhelmingly reject the Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception. Why? I think it is because no one ever explained it to them clearly and convincingly. ( When did you last hear Catholic sexual teaching explained well from the pulpit—or at all?) In this book Patrick Coffin succeeds in doing what many have failed to do—or have not even tried to do. He makes old truths new and not just new but winsome and liberating. He takes up every challenge to the Church—s teaching, makes that teaching accessible to everyone, and shows that sex au naturel is best understood as sex au supernatural.
—Karl Keating, president, Catholic Answers
Patrick Coffin represents a new generation in rebellion against the rebels of my generation, standing against the 1960s battle cries, ‘Keep the Pope out of my bedroom!’ (This was self-flattery: What made them think he wanted to be there?) Having once accepted the principles that separated procreation from union and love within sex, Coffin came to see the tragedy developing in his generation. Sex au Naturel describes the many intertwined but knotted and confused strands of thought about sexuality that are strangling the life out of society. By unraveling teachings on sexuality in the Church, Scripture and tradition, as well as in useful science, medicine and social trends, the knots come loose and the reader is surprised by one startled point of Christian sexual freedom after another.
—Fr. Mitch Pacwa, host, EWTN Live
I firmly believe that Catholic teaching on contraception will one day be vindicated around the world. Patrick Coffin’s own journey from dissent to discovery will resonate with a whole generation who were really never invited to ‘come and see’ this sublime vision of sexuality and Christian marriage.
—Christopher West, author, Theology of the Body Explained
Of all the Catholic Church’s moral teachings, its teaching against contraception is by far the most reviled and attacked precisely because it is so misunderstood by so many. Happily, Patrick Coffin has set about to remedy that problem with this new book. He explains how he went from rejecting Catholic teaching on contraception to wholeheartedly embracing it, and along the way he explodes many popular myths and misconceptions about Humanae Vitae. If you or someone you know has left the Catholic Church over the issue of birth control, this book will help set the record straight by showing you why the Church teaches what it does on this very important life issue.
—Patrick Madrid, director, Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College
Patrick Coffin is the host of Catholic Answers Live, the number-one rated Catholic radio show in America. He has published dozens of articles, essays, and interviews. Born in Nova Scotia, he is an alumnus of Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, McGill University in Montreal, and Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, where he received his MA in theology.