In Dappled Things — a Catholic literary magazine that delights in the speckled things that are all the lovelier for being irregular and surprising — Stefan McDaniel writes one of the best pieces I’ve read about chastity and sexuality. Here’s an excerpt:

Lewis says that there are three main modes of love: Need-Love (like that of a child for his mother), Gift-Love (like that of a mother for her child, or, in the extreme case, God for his creatures), and Appreciative Love (the love of aesthetic appreciation). Most friendships and erotic relationships in the real world contain elements of all three, but it seems, at least at first blush, that eros is primarily a Need-Love, while friendship is primarily an Appreciative Love.

Eros, as Genesis shows, is an expression of our radical incompleteness as human beings in need of community and, more specifically, as sexed human beings, who are only complete (and certainly only fecund) when conjoined. Eros is tyrannical and insistent in its demands. Its substratum, pure sexual desire (what Lewis calls “Venus”) serving as it does the fundamental biological imperative to reproduce, is in an especially crude sense a mere needy craving, and in itself lacks anything that a Christian would call love. Indeed its obvious selfishness…

In the bulk of his article, Mr. McDaniel describes how he thinks society doesn’t understand Chastity because it has confused friendship and erotic love.

You can read the full piece at Dappled Things. Also keep an eye out for future essays in First Things, where Mr. McDaniel now serves as a junior fellow.