Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  She looked at me, then stared through the windshield again. She had never been so far away. If I had robbed a bank she would have stuck by me, but not for this. She said, “So what are you going to do.” She didn’t sound especially interested. I told her I would do whatever the Bolgers wanted. She started the car and took me back. After letting me out she drove away fast. MR. BOLGER WAS too busy that week to arrange my service with the Welches, but I did not know that. I came into the store after school each day expecting to be told to go back outside and get in the car. I came in, and hesitated, and when no one said anything I walked lightly into the back room and put my apron on and began to do my chores. Chuck and I used to work together, talking, joking around, snapping dust cloths and goosing each other with broom handles. Now we worked by ourselves, in silence. I dreamed. Sometimes I thought of the Welch farm and of myself there, drowning in mud, surrounded by accusing faces. Whenever this thought came to me I had to close my eyes and catch a breath. Toward the end of the week Father Karl came in. He talked to Mr. Bolger in the storeroom for a few minutes, then called me outside. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. We followed a footpath down to the river. Father Karl didn’t say anything until we were at the riverbank. He picked up a rock and threw it into the water. I had the cynical suspicion that he was going to give me the same sermon the chaplain at Scout camp had given to every new group of boys on their first day last summer. He would walk up to the edge of the lake, casually pick up a handful of stones and toss one in. “Only a pebble,” he would say musingly, as if the idea were just occurring to him, “only a pebble, but look at all the ripples it makes, and how far the ripples reach . . .” By the end of the summer we camp counselors all held him in open scorn. We called him Ripples. But Father Karl did not give this sermon. He couldn’t have. He had come by his faith the hard way, and did not speak of it with art or subtlety. His parents were Jewish. They had both been killed in concentration camps, and Father Karl himself barely survived. Sometime after the war he became a convert to

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  didn’t know the Welches. I had no right to see them this way. I had no right to feel fear or pity or disgust, no right to feel anything but sorry for what I had done. I did feel these things, though. A kind of panic came over me. I couldn’t take a good breath. All I wanted was to get away. Mr. Welch had said something to Chuck, something I could not hear, and Chuck had stepped aside. I understood that his apology had been accepted. Mr. Welch was waiting for mine, and the attitude of his waiting told me that this business was hard on him. It was time to get it over with. But I stayed where I was, watching the Welch boys pull up mud. I could not make myself move or speak. Just to stand there was all I could do. When Chuck realized I wasn’t going to say anything, he murmured good-bye and shook Mr. Welch’s hand. I followed him to the car without looking back. MR. BOLGER KNOCKED on our door when we got home. That small courtesy was full of promise, and when he came in I saw that he was eager to be forgiving. It made me sad, being so close to his pardon and knowing I couldn’t have it. He nodded at us and said, “How did it go?” Chuck didn’t answer. He had not spoken to me since we left the Welch place. I knew he despised me for not apologizing, but I had no way of explaining my feelings to him, or even to myself. I believed that there was no difference between explanations and excuses, and that excuses were unmanly. So were feelings, especially complicated feelings. I didn’t admit to them. I hardly knew I had them. Chuck surrounded himself with silence. We were close to our breaking point. I couldn’t keep up with him in debauchery, and now I had failed him in repentance as well. Mr. Bolger looked at me when he got no answer from Chuck. “Chuck apologized,” I said. “I didn’t.” Mr. Bolger asked Chuck to leave us alone, and sat down on the other bed when Chuck had gone. With a show of patience, he tried to understand why I had not apologized. All I was able to say was that I couldn’t. He asked for more. “I wanted to,” I said. “I just couldn’t.”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  with any menace, but just to see what was going to happen. I could hear the post- holer slurping up the mud with the same sound our shoes had made the night before. Chuck waved at them and they both nodded. We looked at them for a time. Then Chuck went to Mr. Welch’s side and began to talk in a low voice, telling him how sorry he was for what we had done. He offered no explanations and did not mention that we had been drinking. His manner was weightily sincere, almost tragical. Mr. Welch watched his sons. He did not speak. When Chuck was through, Mr. Welch turned and looked at us, and I could see from the slow and effortful way he moved that the idea of looking at us was misery to him. His cheeks were stubbled and sunken in. He had spots of mud on his face. His brown eyes were blurred, as if he’d been crying or was about to cry. I didn’t need to see the tears in Mr. Welch’s eyes to know that I had brought shame on myself. I knew it when we first drove into the farmyard and I saw the place in the light of day. Everything I saw thereafter forced the knowledge in deeper. These people weren’t making it. They were near the edge, and I had nudged them that much farther along. Not much, but enough to take away some of their margin. Returning the gas didn’t change that. The real harm was in their knowing that someone could come upon them in this state, and pause to do them injury. It had to make them feel small and alone, knowing this—that was the harm we had done. I understood some of this and felt the rest. The Welch farm seemed familiar to me. It wasn’t just the resemblance between their house and the house where I’d lived in Seattle, it was the whole vision, the house, the mud, the stillness, the boys lifting and dropping the post- holer. I recognized it from some idea of failure that had found its perfect enactment here. Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out—a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across a river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and were still doing it when I crossed the river. They were part of the dream from which I recognized the Welches, my defeat-dream, my damnation-dream, with its solemn choreography of earnest useless acts. It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols of other people. I

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  I had to get some things before Jimmy came back. I just remembered. Okay? Are my answers good enough? What are you, a special prosecutor or something? And what do you mean about the lingerie? —Never mind, Hood said. —Hey, wait just a second— —I thought when you didn’t turn up that you were hiding somewhere. I thought maybe you— —You what? He began slowly, but then, as Hood re-created the details, he became a sort of erotic revenant. He gulped the last of his drink—his equilibrium was really beginning to fall away, like the first stage of an Apollo rocket. He reveled in the hot flashes, in the indignity of his predicament. —I searched the house. I figured you were hiding, in a merry widow or something, in the closets, or else behind some piece of furniture. I figured you were there. I thought there was more to it than there was. So then I got to the bathroom and I saw the lingerie. I thought that it was part of a trail, a romantic trail or something, or it was a reminder of you. Something to be contemplated, you know, drunk in or something, you know? I was looking around, that’s all. —You need help, Benjamin. That was just out to dry. I was leaving things out to dry. Delicates . What did you do with my clothes? He was flattered by the degradation of his adultery, and as he told the story he felt its shame and joy. He knew he wished to be caught, that it was always the cuckold or the betrayed who was honored by the adulterer. And he was a liar, too, an exaggerator. Hood’s past lies swirled in this next moment of fiction, these past lies fluttered and squirmed in this liar’s chrysalis. He was thinking about padded expense accounts and cheating on exams as he spoke: —I took it, the garter belt, to your dresser and buried it with its compatriots, with the lacy underthings, with the slips and panties and bras and stockings. —Jesus, you are a mess, Benjamin. You’re a case history of hung-up behavior. Where’s your wife? —I don’t know. She was a little upset about the, uh, bowl out front. She ran in ahead of me. Probably in the kitchen. Planning something, some covert activity in the kitchen. He snickered desperately. They moved over to the couch, a Stendig, designed by Ennio Chiggio and arranged in a semicircle with a big apostrophe at the end, where Hood now rested his weary feet. An earnest bunch of locals, dressed in plaid shirts and skirts and jackets, in double-knit trousers, in gray flannel, in velour and polyester, was conglomerated at the end of the couch, the system of islands. Dave Gorman, a fixture at the promiscuous events of New Canaan, was plundering the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.—the Dresden fire-bombing and Ice Nine—in an effort to impress a young and attractive woman beside him.

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  “The Jews, Who Killed the Lord Jesus and Oppose Everyone” In the earliest document in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, written about 49, Paul seeks to comfort his gentile audience facing not only the death of some of its members but also local persecution. He writes: For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews (Ioudaioi ), who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved. Thus have they constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last. (2:14–16) When I read this text to groups ranging from synagogue members to church members to students in the classroom, the general reaction is one of shame and often horror. Arguments insisting that the text should not be seen as anti-Jewish suggest a similar sense that, at least on the surface, the words are embarrassing to those interested in interfaith conversation. Much discussion of 1 Thessalonians 2 begins with the claim that Paul is not talking about the “Jews” who killed Jesus, but “Judeans.” The Greek of 1 Thessalonians can support this reading, for the term Ioudaioi can mean either “Jews” or, more narrowly, “Judeans.” However, to speak of “Judeans” implies Jews, just as to speak of “residents of Vatican City” implies Roman Catholics or “students at Bob Jones University” implies “conservative Protestants.” Maybe not all Judeans followed Jewish ritual or belief or even identified with “Judaism,” however defined, but the majority did. Paul speaks of Judeans, not Hawaiians, Aleuts, or Maori. On this point, we might recall Luke’s description of the Pentecost scene, where there were present “devout Jews (Ioudaioi ) from every nation under heaven, . . . Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, . . . both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:5, 9–11). The Thessalonian Christians hearing Paul’s words would not have restricted their understanding of Paul’s language to a geographically determined population, but would have heard a reference to all who identified with the Jewish way of life. Another approach sees 1 Thessalonians 2:14b–16 as an interpolation, a passage not written by Paul, but inserted into the Letter after the apostle’s death. In antiquity, this was not an uncommon phenomenon. The “woman caught in adultery” passage, famous for Jesus’s comment “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone,” was inserted into the Gospel of John (7:53–8:11 ) after its initial publication. Also added later were the final verses of the Gospel of Mark (16:9–20), which describe Jesus’s resurrection appearances. The earliest versions of Mark’s Gospel ended with the three frightened women fleeing from the empty tomb.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  She helped Dot, who disdained caterers, load up the hors d’oeuvre trays. Then she had a conversation with George Clair, a man her husband couldn’t stand. Seemed nice enough. After this, her first stop was the bathroom, where she sat for a while crying and applying prudent amounts of the makeup before the medicine-cabinet mirror. Right then, it didn’t seem like much had changed or that much would change. But the fact is that most of us have mood changes as each part of our P-A-C (Parent-Adult-Child) makes its contribution to our behavior. “Sometimes the reasons for our mutability are elusive or do not seem to be related to any special signal in the present.” While Elena was crying, though, Mark Boland entered the bathroom without knocking—it had no satisfactory latch—and found her—legs uncrossed and panties stretched between her kneecaps like a fancy wrapping paper—applying tan lipstick. Combs surrounded her, stuck up on all four walls. Dot Halford collected combs. Boland blushed terribly, stammered an apology, and slammed the door. This was the real beginning of the evening’s comedy. When she emerged, she could sense the key party in the air like the grope games of elementary school. Spin the Bottle. Post Office. She was operating according to the promptings of chance now. She couldn’t go any lower anyway. She would talk to whomever she talked to; she would let the conversation rise and fall like the wind battering the house with its arctic freight; she would dance to records by Antonio Carlos Jobim, the master of Bossa Nova, or to Switched-On Bach by Walter Carlos, or to the Carole King LP everyone seemed to have; she would accept any hors d’oeuvre offered; she would accept token offerings of drug or drink; she would go with whoever was suggested by the serving bowl in the front hall. So when Elena emerged from the bathroom, it was as a butterfly sprung from the cocoon. Elena searched for the face of her seducer, wondering. Would he be hunched and remote? Would his posture be as perfect as freshly milled planking? And the first person this new Elena O’Malley Hood looked for was Mark Boland—the very man who had seen her in the bathroom. Mark, it turned out, was talking with Maria Conrad and her teenaged son, Neil. Both Boland and Maria were dressed in styles that had long since passed into attics and Goodwill bins. Mark’s rep tie could have come from any postwar fall sale. Maria was arrayed in a simple, dependable plaid skirt. Boland, who had lived for twenty years on Heather Drive, down near the Norwalk border, was an unofficial historian of the town in which he lived. As such, his dullness was legendary. He was a juggernaut of tedium. Even Elena, who on occasion sought out the bores of a party and built with them a fortress of social insignificance, had trouble with him.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  If the Spiritual Franciscans had been capable of taking secret delight in an adversary’s misfortunes, they would have had occasion for it in the widely spread charge that John was a heretic. At any rate, he came as near being a heretic as a pope can be. His heresy concerned the nature of the beatific vision after death. In a sermon on All Souls’, 1331, he announced that the blessed dead do not see God until the general resurrection. In at least two more sermons he repeated this utterance. John, who was much given to theologizing, Ockam declared to be wholly ignorant in theology.128 This Schoolman, Cesena, and others pronounced the view heretical. John imprisoned an English Dominican who preached against him, and so certain was he of his case that he sent the Franciscan general, Gerardus Odonis, to Paris to get the opinion of the university. The King, Philip VI., took a warm interest in the subject, opposed the pope, and called a council of theologians at Vincennes to give its opinion. It decided that ever since the Lord descended into hades and released souls from that abode, the righteous have at death immediately entered upon the vision of the divine essence of the Trinity.129 Among the supporters of this decision was Nicolas of Lyra. When official announcement of the decision reached the pope, he summoned a council at Avignon and set before it passages from the Fathers for and against his view. They sat for five days, in December, 1333. John then made a public announcement, which was communicated to the king and queen of France, that he had not intended to say anything in conflict with the Fathers and the orthodox Church and, if he had done so, he retracted his utterances. The question was authoritatively settled by Benedict XII. in the bull Benedictus deus, 1336, which declared that the blessed dead—saints, the Apostles, virgins, martyrs, confessors who need no purgatorial cleansing—are, after death and before the resurrection of their bodies at the general judgment, with Christ and the angels, and that they behold the divine essence with naked vision.130 Benedict declared that John died while he was preparing a decision.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Avignon, which Clement chose as his residence, is 460 miles southeast of Paris and lies south of Lyons. Its proximity to the port of Marseilles made it accessible to Italy. It was purchased by Clement VI., 1348, from Naples for 80, 000 gold florins, and remained papal territory until the French Revolution. As early as 1229, the popes held territory in the vicinity, the duchy of Venaissin, which fell to them from the domain of Raymond of Toulouse. On every side this free papal home was closely confined by French territory. Clement was urged by Italian bishops to go to Rome, and Italian writers gave as one reason for his refusal fear lest he should receive meet punishment for his readiness to condemn Boniface VIII.90 Clement’s coronation was celebrated at Lyons, Philip and his brother Charles of Valois, the Duke of Bretagne and representatives of the king of England being present. Philip and the duke walked at the side of the pope’s palfrey. By the fall of an old wall during the procession, the duke, a brother of the pope, and ten other persons lost their lives. The pope himself was thrown from his horse, his tiara rolled in the dust, and a large carbuncle, which adorned it, was lost. Scarcely ever was a papal ruler put in a more compromising position than the new pontiff. His subjection to a sovereign who had defied the papacy was a strange spectacle. He owed his tiara indirectly, if not immediately, to Philip the Fair. He was the man Philip wanted.91 It was his task to appease the king’s anger against the memory of Boniface, and to meet his brutal demands concerning the Knights Templars. These, with the Council of Vienne, which he called, were the chief historic concerns of his pontificate. The terms on which the new pope received the tiara were imposed by Philip himself, and, according to Villani, the price he made the Gascon pay included six promises. Five of them concerned the total undoing of what Boniface had done in his conflict with Philip. The sixth article, which was kept secret, was supposed to be the destruction of the order of the Templars. It is true that the authenticity of these six articles has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that from the very outset of Clement’s pontificate, the French king pressed their execution upon the pope’s attention.92 Clement, in poor position to resist, confirmed what Benedict had done and went farther. He absolved the king; recalled, Feb. 1, 1306, the offensive bulls Clericis laicos and Unam sanctam, so far as they implied anything offensive to France or any subjection on the part of the king to the papal chair, not customary before their issue, and fully restored the cardinals of the Colonna family to the dignities of their office.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  His manner was weightily sincere, almost tragical. Mr. Welch watched his sons. He did not speak. When Chuck was through, Mr. Welch turned and looked at us, and I could see from the slow and effortful way he moved that the idea of looking at us was misery to him. His cheeks were stubbled and sunken in. He had spots of mud on his face. His brown eyes were blurred, as if he’d been crying or was about to cry. I didn’t need to see the tears in Mr. Welch’s eyes to know that I had brought shame on myself. I knew it when we first drove into the farmyard and I saw the place in the light of day. Everything I saw thereafter forced the knowledge in deeper. These people weren’t making it. They were near the edge, and I had nudged them that much farther along. Not much, but enough to take away some of their margin. Returning the gas didn’t change that. The real harm was in their knowing that someone could come upon them in this state, and pause to do them injury. It had to make them feel small and alone, knowing this—that was the harm we had done. I understood some of this and felt the rest. The Welch farm seemed familiar to me. It wasn’t just the resemblance between their house and the house where I’d lived in Seattle, it was the whole vision, the house, the mud, the stillness, the boys lifting and dropping the post-holer. I recognized it from some idea of failure that had found its perfect enactment here. Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out—a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across a river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and were still doing it when I crossed the river. They were part of the dream from which I recognized the Welches, my defeat-dream, my damnation-dream, with its solemn choreography of earnest useless acts. It takes a childish or corrupt imagination to make symbols of other people. I didn’t know the Welches. I had no right to see them this way. I had no right to feel fear or pity or disgust, no right to feel anything but sorry for what I had done. I did feel these things, though. A kind of panic came over me. I couldn’t take a good breath. All I wanted was to get away. Mr. Welch had said something to Chuck, something I could not hear, and Chuck had stepped aside. I understood that his apology had been accepted. Mr.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  enough to be my father, and different from other men you might see in the Concrete drugstore. Without affecting boyishness, Mr. Howard still had the boy in him. He bounced a little as he walked. His narrow face was lively, foxlike. He looked around with a certain expectancy, as if he were ready to be interested in what he saw, and when he was interested he allowed himself to show it. He wore a suit and tie. The men who taught at the high school also wore suits and ties, but less easily. They were always pulling at their cuffs and running their fingers between their collars and their necks. To watch them was to suffocate. Mr. Howard wore his suit and tie as if he didn’t know he had them on. We sat at a booth in the back. Mr. Howard bought us milkshakes, and while we drank them he asked me about Concrete High. I told him I enjoyed my classes, especially the more demanding ones, but that I was feeling a little restless lately. It was hard to explain. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s easy to explain. You’re bored.” I shrugged. I wasn’t going to speak badly of the teachers who had written so well of me. “You wouldn’t be bored at Hill,” Mr. Howard said. “I can promise you that. But you might find it difficult in other ways.” He told me about his own time there in the years just before World War II. He had grown up in Seattle, where he’d done well in school. He expected that he would fall easily into life at Hill, but he hadn’t. The academic work was much harder. He missed his family and hated the snowy Pennsylvania winters. And the boys at Hill were different from his friends back home, more reserved, more concerned with money and social position. He had found the school a cold place. Then, in his last year, something changed. The members of his class grew close in ways that he had never thought possible, until they were more like brothers than friends. It came, he said, from the simple fact of sharing the same life for a period of years. It made them a family. That was how he thought of the school now—as his second family. But he’d had a rough time getting to that point, and some of the boys never got to it at all. They lived unhappily at the edge of things. These same boys might have done well if they’d stayed at home. A prep school was a world unto itself, and not the right world for everyone. If any of this was supposed to put me off, it didn’t. Of course the boys were concerned with money and social position. Of course a prep school wasn’t for everyone—otherwise, what would be the point?

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  Most women report learning this practice from their mothers, but some learn it from the media or friends, and many say they simply taught themselves. Given all the products on the shelves, the constant articles about vaginal maintenance, social media posts and YouTube videos, as well as the fascination with celebrity vagina prep regimens, it is easy to see how a woman who never heard about vaginal cleaning at home could quickly come to believe that vaginal neglect is a thing. It is likely that women who didn’t learn about douching at home can’t specifically remember where they heard about it because the messaging is everywhere. More than 50 percent of women who clean intravaginally report they are encouraged to do this by their sexual partner. Younger women are more likely to succumb to partner pressure; in one study, 77 percent of women aged 18–25 said they washed inside their vagina because that was what their partner wanted. The Dangers of Vaginal Cleaning Regimens Multiple studies tell us that douching is harmful. It damages the healthy vaginal bacteria and the protective mucus layer. This makes a woman more vulnerable to bacterial vaginosis (a bacterial imbalance in the vagina) and increases her risk of getting gonorrhea or HIV if exposed. Paradoxically, killing the good bacteria may actually increase vaginal odor. The dangers of wipes inserted vaginally, hygiene sprays (these are meant for the vulva, but about 1 percent of women report using them vaginally), and odor-control suppositories have not been studied, but many of them contain products that irritate and are potential allergens. Almost all of them contain fragrance. Wipes, sprays, and odor-control suppositories could very easily kill good bacteria and irritate the mucus and the lining of the vagina in the same way as douches. Every one of them also has damaging messages on the packaging, such as “effectively masks natural odors” and “wonderful tropical scent.” It’s a vagina, not a piña colada. Studies tell us that vaginal washing with soap increases the risk of HIV transmission by almost four times—whether this is due to damaging the lactobacilli or protective mucus or irritation and microtrauma is not known. Even washing vaginally with water increases the risk of getting HIV if exposed by 2.6 times! Natural or botanical products are no better. Herbs, lemon and lime juice, astringents like oak galls (basically nests for wasp larvae), and other tightening products have a high risk of killing healthy vaginal bacteria and damaging the mucus layer, as well as irritating the vaginal tissue, causing microtrauma. Just like douches, these products could paradoxically increase vaginal odor and increase the risk of irritant reactions and allergies, and increase the risk of sexually transmitted infections.

• From The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (2008)

  Even when we can “get away with it” and no one is the wiser, using porn as a sexual outlet often creates conflicting feelings that can start to take a toll on the user on an unconscious, internal level. We may experience a strong desire for it, but also be ashamed of doing it. When this happens, we are pulled in two different directions and our physiological and emotional systems get stressed. We can only endure this tug-of-war of emotions for so long before the consequences of our porn use spill out into other parts of our lives. Because we don’t usually feel comfortable talking to loved ones, friends, coworkers, or even health-care professionals about these conflicting feelings we’re having, many of us suffer in silence—getting angrier, more anxious, and more deeply depressed. Many former porn users tell us that as their porn use continued, they began feeling easily irritated and annoyed with things that in the past had been easy to ignore or be patient with. The driver behind us becomes an “asshole,” our significant other is “stupid” for forgetting to pick up an item at the store, our children are “annoying.” Without realizing it, we project our upset and negative feelings about our porn behavior onto situations and people in our lives. Bill, who is in his mid-thirties, said, “When I was using pornography heavily, I was angry a lot. I was not together professionally and I was not together personally. I’d compare myself to my wife and felt very inferior. She seemed so productive in her life. I was frustrated with my shortcomings, always defensive about things, and afraid of being caught. My feelings manifested as anger. I had a short fuse, a hair-trigger reaction to almost anything that bothered me. It was a huge side effect and I really wasn’t aware of its connection to porn at the time.” As unpleasant as negative emotions such as anger and anxiety are, they can also lead to increased porn use. Negative emotional outbursts create distance between a porn user and whomever he fears might discover his porn use. Many porn users take the old cliché “the best defense is a good offense” to heart. They strike out at others as a way to deflect attention away from themselves and their secret activities with porn. In addition, they may pick fights, harbor resentments, or hold grudges in order to justify acting out with more porn. Rudy, a former porn user, said, “While I was still using pornography, I was a very angry person—verbally abusive, mean, and controlling. My wife and I fought all the time. Then I’d go comfort myself by using porn and telling myself she drove me to it.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The connection of Pope Honorius I. (Oct. 27, 625, to Oct. 12, 638) with the Monotheletic heresy has a special interest in its bearing upon the dogma of papal infallibility, which stands or falls with a single official error, according to the principle: Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It was fully discussed by Catholic scholars on both sides before and during the Vatican Council of 1870, which proclaimed that dogma, but could not alter the facts of history. The following points are established by the best documentary evidence: 1. Honorius taught and favored in several official letters (to Sergius, Cyrus, and Sophronius), therefore ex cathedra, the one-will heresy. He fully agreed with Sergius, the Monotheletic patriarch of Constantinople. In answer to his first letter (634), he says: "Therefore we confess one will (qevlhma, voluntas) of our Lord Jesus Christ."624 He viewed the will as an attribute of person, not of nature, and reasoned: One willer, therefore only one will. In a second letter to Sergius, he rejects both the orthodox phrase: "two energies," and the heterodox phrase: "one energy" (ejnevrgeia, operatio), and affirms that the Bible clearly teaches two natures, but that it is quite vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies; for Christ by virtue of his one theandric will showed many modes of operation and activity.625 The first letter was decidedly heretical, the second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638) and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic doctrine.626 The only thing which may and must be said in his excuse is that the question was then new and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the orthodox dogma of two natures required the doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years longer. Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters to be a later Greek forgery.627 Others admit their genuineness, but distort them into an orthodox sense by a nonnatural exegesis.628 Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic, that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions.629 But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably Monotheletic. And this is the verdict not only of Protestants,630 but also of Gallican and other liberal Catholic historians.631

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Jaffé: Regesta, pp. 254–292. Milman: Lat. Christianity, Book V., chs.5 and 6. Gfrörer: Allg. Kirchengesch., Bd. III. Abth. 2, pp. 962 sqq. Baxmann: Politik der Päpste, II. 29–57. For nearly two hundred years, from Nicolas to Hildebrand (867–1049), the papal chair was filled, with very few exceptions, by ordinary and even unworthy occupants. Hadrian II. (867–872) and John VIII. (872–882) defended the papal power with the same zeal as Nicolas, but with less ability, dignity, and success, and not so much in the interests of morality as for self-aggrandizement. They interfered with the political quarrels of the Carolingians, and claimed the right of disposing royal and imperial crowns. Hadrian was already seventy-five years of age, and well known for great benevolence, when he ascended the throne (he was born in 792). He inherited from Nicolas the controversies with Photius, Lothair, and Hincmar of Rheims, but was repeatedly rebuffed. He suffered also a personal humiliation on account of a curious domestic tragedy. He had been previously married, and his wife (Stephania) was still living at the time of his elevation. Eleutherius, a son of bishop Arsenius (the legate of Nicolas), carried away the pope’s daughter (an old maid of forty years, who was engaged to another man), fled to the emperor Louis, and, when threatened with punishment, murdered both the pope’s wife and daughter. He was condemned to death. This affair might have warned the popes to have nothing to do with women; but it was succeeded by worse scenes. John VIII. was an energetic, shrewd, passionate, and intriguing prelate, meddled with all the affairs of Christendom from Bulgaria to France and Spain, crowned two insignificant Carolingian emperors (Charles the Bald, 875, and Charles the Fat, 881), dealt very freely in anathemas, was much disturbed by the invasion of the Saracens, and is said to have been killed by a relative who coveted the papal crown and treasure. The best thing he did was the declaration, in the Bulgarian quarrel with the patriarch of Constantinople, that the Holy Spirit had created other languages for worship besides Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, although he qualified it afterwards by saying that Greek and Latin were the only proper organs for the celebration of the mass, while barbarian tongues such as the Slavonic, may be good enough for preaching.

• From The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (2008)

  In this chapter, we will identify the most common problems caused by adult porn use, explain why these problems can be so difficult to see, and discuss the ways porn users rationalize their behavior even after they realize porn is causing them trouble. Through the stories of porn users and those who have stopped using porn because of its negative consequences, we hope to help you get a better understanding of how porn use can cause serious physical, emotional, relationship, sexual, and career problems. THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF USING PORNOGRAPHY People who are involved with pornography may be basking in the sunshine of instant pleasure, but like storm clouds, problems are brewing just over the horizon. In the words of people who have struggled to move beyond the porn trap, the nine most common serious negative consequences of using porn are: “I’m easily irritated and depressed.”“I’ve become isolated from other people.”“I’m sexually objectifying people.”“I’m neglecting important areas of my life.”“I’m having problems with sex.”“I’m making my partner unhappy.”“I’m feeling bad about myself.”“I’m engaging in risky and dangerous behavior.”“I’ve become addicted to porn.”Any one of these nine consequences can indicate a significant problem with porn, but the more consequences you experience, the more deeply entrenched and challenging your porn problems are likely to be. As you can see from the list above, the consequences of porn occur on both personal and interpersonal levels. Porn can affect how we think and feel inside as well as how we interact and behave with others. And we can encounter serious problems with porn without being “addicted” to it. Let’s look closer at each of these consequences. 1. “I’m Easily Irritated and Depressed” Whenever we do something privately that we feel bad about, it has an impact on our emotions, even if we’re not aware of why we’re feeling what we’re feeling. Becoming easily irritated at even little things and eventually becoming depressed are common occurrences for regular porn users. No matter how much pleasure they may be getting from their porn use, most users understand—at least subconsciously—that many people disapprove of their behavior. Most porn users keep their activities a secret, because they know that society as a whole labels people who use porn regularly as sexually “perverted” or “predatory.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His son and successor, Louis the Pious, as the Germans and Italians called him, or Louis the Gentle (le débonnaire) in French history (814–840), inherited the piety, and some of the valor and legislative wisdom, but not the genius and energy, of his father. He was a devoted and superstitious servant of the clergy. He began with reforms, he dismissed his father’s concubines and daughters with their paramours from the court, turned the palace into a monastery, and promoted the Scandinavian mission of St. Ansgar. In the progress of his reign, especially after his second marriage to the ambitious Judith, he showed deplorable weakness and allowed his empire to decay, while he wasted his time between monkish exercises and field-sports in the forest of the Ardennes. He unwisely shared his rule with his three sons who soon rebelled against their father and engaged in fraternal wars. After his death the treaty of Verdun was concluded in 843. By this treaty the empire was divided; Lothair received Italy with the title of emperor, France fell to Charles the Bald, Germany to Louis the German. Thus Charlemagne’s conception of a Western empire that should be commensurate with the Latin church was destroyed, or at least greatly contracted, and the three countries have henceforth a separate history. This was better for the development of nationality. The imperial dignity was afterwards united with the German crown, and continued under this modified form till 1806. During this civil commotion the papacy had no distinguished representative, but upon the whole profited by it. Some of the popes evaded the imperial sanction of their election. The French clergy forced the gentle Louis to make at Soissons a most humiliating confession of guilt for all the slaughter, pillage, and sacrilege committed during the civil wars, and for bringing the empire to the brink of ruin. Thus the hierarchy assumed control even over the civil misconduct of the sovereign and imposed ecclesiastical penance for ft. Note. The Myth of Johanna Papissa. We must make a passing mention of the curious and mysterious myth of papess Johanna, who is said during this period between Leo IV. (847) and Benedict III. (855) to have worn the triple crown for two years and a half. She was a lady of Mayence (her name is variously called Agnes, Gilberta, Johanna, Jutta), studied in disguise philosophy in Athens (where philosophy had long before died out), taught theology in Rome, under the name of Johannes Anglicus, and was elevated to the papal dignity as John VIII., but died in consequence of the discovery of her sex by a sudden confinement in the open street during a solemn procession from the Vatican to the Lateran.

• From Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex (1905)

  Results of Psychoanalysis.—In this manner it has been discovered that the symptoms represent the equivalent for the strivings which received their strength from the source of the sexual impulse. This fully concurs with what we know of the character of hysterics, which we have taken as models for all psycho-neurotics, before they have become diseased, and with what we know concerning the causes of the disease. The hysterical character evinces a part of sexual repression which reaches beyond the normal limits, an exaggeration of the resistances against the sexual impulse which we know as shame and loathing. It is an instinctive flight from intellectual occupation with the sexual problem, the consequence of which in pronounced cases is a complete sexual ignorance, which is preserved till the age of sexual maturity is attained.29 This feature, so characteristic of hysteria, is not seldom concealed in crude observation by the existence of the second constitutional factor of hysteria, namely, the enormous development of the sexual craving. But the psychological analysis will always reveal it and solves the very contradictory enigma of hysteria by proving the existence of the contrasting pair, an immense sexual desire and a very exaggerated sexual rejection. The provocation of the disease in hysterically predisposed persons is brought about if in consequence of their progressive maturity or external conditions of life they are earnestly confronted with the real sexual demand. Between the pressure of the craving and the opposition of the sexual rejection an outlet for the disease results, which does not remove the conflict but seeks to elude it by transforming the libidinous strivings into symptoms. It is an exception only in appearance if a hysterical person, say a man, becomes subject to some banal emotional disturbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual interest. Psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the sexual components of the conflict which make the disease possible by withdrawing the psychic processes from normal adjustment. Neurosis and Perversion.—A great part of the opposition to my assertion is explained by the fact that the sexuality from which I deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is thought of as coincident with the normal sexual impulse. But psychoanalysis teaches us better than this. It shows that the symptoms do not by any means result at the expense only of the so called normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or preponderately), but they represent the converted expression of impulses which in a broader sense might be designated as perverse if they could manifest themselves directly in phantasies and acts without deviating from consciousness. The symptoms are therefore partially formed at the cost of abnormal sexuality. The neurosis is, so to say, the negative of the perversion.30 The sexual impulse of the psychoneurotic shows all the aberrations which we have studied as variations of the normal and as manifestations of morbid sexual life.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  About the year 370, whether before or after his literary tour to Treves and Aquileia is uncertain, but at all events in his later youth, he received baptism at Rome and resolved thenceforth to devote himself wholly, in rigid abstinence, to the service of the Lord. In the first zeal of his conversion he renounced his love for the classics, and applied himself to the study of the hitherto distasteful Bible. In a morbid ascetic frame, he had, a few years later, that celebrated dream, in which he was summoned before the judgment seat of Christ, and as a heathen Ciceronian,354 so severely reprimanded and scourged, that even the angels interceded for him from sympathy with his youth, and he himself solemnly vowed never again to take worldly books into his hands. When he woke, he still felt the stripes, which, as he thought, not his heated fancy, but the Lord himself had inflicted upon him. Hence he warns his female friend Eustochium, to whom several years afterward (A.D. 384) he recounted this experience, to avoid all profane reading: "What have light and darkness, Christ and Belial (2 Cor. vi. 14), the Psalms and Horace, the Gospels and Virgil, the Apostles and Cicero, to do with one another? ... We cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the demons at the same time."355 But proper as this warning may be against overrating classical scholarship, Jerome himself, in his version of the Bible and his commentaries, affords the best evidence of the inestimable value of linguistic and antiquarian knowledge, when devoted to the service of religion. That oath, also, at least in later life, he did not strictly keep. On the contrary, he made the monks copy the dialogues of Cicero, and explained Virgil at Bethlehem, and his writings abound in recollections and quotations of the classic authors. When Rufinus of Aquileia, at first his warm friend, but afterward a bitter enemy, cast up to him this inconsistency and breach of a solemn vow, he resorted to the evasion that he could not obliterate from his memory what he had formerly read; as if it were not so sinful to cite a heathen author as to read him. With more reason he asserted, that all was a mere dream, and a dream vow was not binding. He referred him to the prophets, "who teach that dreams are vain, and not worthy of faith." Yet was this dream afterward made frequent use of, as Erasmus laments, to cover monastic obscurantism.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus was born at Stridon,352 on the borders of Dalmatia, not far from Aquileia, between the years 331 and 342.353 He was the son of wealthy Christian parents, and was educated in Rome under the direction of the celebrated heathen grammarian Donatus, and the rhetorician Victorinus. He read with great diligence and profit the classic poets, orators, and philosophers, and collected a considerable library. On Sundays he visited, with Bonosus and other young friends, the subterranean graves of the martyrs, which made an indelible impression upon him. Yet he was not exempt from the temptations of a great and corrupt city, and he lost his chastity, as he himself afterward repeatedly acknowledged with pain.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Wendy had never wished, even in her idle algebra class fantasies, that she was a hummingbird darting between the legs of Debby Armitage. Not really. Though she hankered after some association with the people of her town, some sense of community that stuck deeper than the country club stuff. On the other hand, there was something compulsive about the way she got entangled, as though Wendy herself had picked the posture and activity that would most make her feel ashamed. This strategy turned out to be pretty effective. Sally Miller talked her up. Talked up her transgression, her instigation, her perversion. Her reputation as a slut spread quickly along the corridors of Saxe and across the street to the high school. She could sense at a distance of twenty or thirty lockers the snickering threesomes of popular girls. Now Sally Miller entombed herself in the Saxe library, that resource of the uncool, and even abandoned her Friday elective across the street at the high school, co-ed sports, in order to avoid Wendy Hood. At the same time, Debby Armitage was Wendy’s friend for life, and actually Wendy didn’t like her that much at all. Debby was a whiner. So she changed the channel again, turned away from advertisements for the Shroud of Turin (Robert Conrad to host), to watch instead a Movie of the Week about a woman who was buried alive by avaricious kidnappers, buried alive and kept that way in a lighted, ventilated box (with one of those gerbil spouts in it, through which she could suck in water and nutrients). Ants swarmed over the woman. In the midst of this drama, Wendy’s brother called. —Weather reports are bad, he said, like much snow and sleet and frozen highways and byways. Wendy hadn’t heard anything of the kind. But the snow was already falling. —Well, you think I should come home now? Or should I wait until, you know, the absolutely last train out of Grand Central, which would be like maybe ten after eleven? She told him they were out and that guessing from her dad’s condition they weren’t gonna wait up for Paul. They would fall into bed swiftly and permanently. Which meant no car service, no car service from the station. He could take a taxi. He could come back whenever he wanted. —The thing is, Wendy said, you’re not being watched. Take a cab. —No one believes in the weather anymore, Paul said. He asked what she was doing and she described in detail the inside of the woman’s buried-alive coffin and her strangled, desperate screams. Wendy even simulated a scream, a little yelp of confinement. —But you know she’s the mother from Please Don’t Eat the Daisies , Wendy said, or one of those, Ghost and Mrs. Muir , so it’s not like she’s incredibly scary or anything. —You mean to say you are just gonna hang around the house on a Friday night when school’s out? —I’ve got plans, Wendy said.