Babylon was a gold cup in the LORD’s hand, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore, the nations go mad.  (Jer. 51:7)

It’s like a virus, this thing.  It infects you.  We drink of the wine of Babylon and we go mad.  We don’t just get drunk, we go mad.

One of the symptoms of the virus that we’ve caught from drinking Babylon’s wine is a peculiar kind of madness that no people on earth have ever been victim of.  Many who have drained this cup become convinced that sex is just something physical you do with your genitals.  And nothing more.

Which is madness.

For every person who’s ever lived (until recently) understands that sex is more than just a neutral physical act, like walking or jogging or scratching or urinating.  Every person who’s ever lived understands that sex is spiritual, emotional, awesome, terrifying, exhilarating.

My wife, at least, understands this.  Gentlemen, all of our wives understand this.  If I were to tell my wife that I shook hands with the lady next door, she would be mildly amused.  If I told her that I shook something else with the lady next door, she would not be mildly amused.  She’d be furious.

But if sex is just a neutral physical act, which means nothing, which signifies nothing, which connects with nothing, then what’s all the fuss?  There should be no fuss, argue the Inconsequentialists, the heretics of our age.  And some of them are Catholic.

Only mad men in a very mad time could admire the Catholic Church as a beautiful and thrilling and living thing, but smile a kind of condescending smirk when the Church tells us that sex is a gift and a burden direct from God Himself and that we arrogate it to our own use at our eternal peril, jeopardizing the dignity of every man, woman and child around us.

Only that virus that comes from Babylon’s cup could have achieved this.