PERSONAL ESSAYS

Reader Feedback on "Critical Mass: My Thing for Catholic Boys"

You ask: He calls me Lisa Bright and Lisa Dark, and he says he likes Lisa Bright a lot better. Why do they gotta be dividing everything up like that? My answer: Because they're Zoroastrian dualists.
--RS
11/24

Oh, wow! Amazing. You capture every though, feeling and frustration I had with my former (Catholic) boyfriend of 4 years. The only difference between you and me is that now I have absolutely no desire to date another Catholic (or religious person of any nature). My Nice Jewish Boyfriend was the perfect cure (but don't get me started on his issues!)- Is religion always the death of sexuality?!?
--RL
11/04

I'm a 25 year old Catholic and have no idea what you're talking about. i think people are just jumping on each other's "hey she's right" bandwagon. quit trying to label a personality on a billion plus family.
--dc
08/08

Lisa, First I have to say your writting is incredible... I can see and feel nearly everything you describe... Great talent. I myself am a recovering Catholic... but I have an interesting twist... I went to both Catholic and Protestant services as a child and protestant sunday school and summer camp... so I am stuck inbetween... i don't think any of my past lovers have had any issues with the result of the mixed background... perhaps the best of both worlds?... I look forward to reading more of your work... Good luck. Kerry
--KMF
01/23

I don't understand the entire Catholic guilt thing and I was indoctrinated into their cult from birth. I disagree with the entire business. "Sex is bad, you should feel guilty, procreation only, marriage only, straight people only..." Shut up, already! I want my man and I want him now. Practically all hours of the day and night I'm ready to be on him, under him, whatever. He was raised Methodist and talks like I'm an immoral whore. Not. I just know I like to get my pleasure and give it, too. More than once. More than once a day, if I could. I'd have no guilt whatsoever about lying flat on my back in those soft white sheets, screaming until the plaster over our heads cracked. Hold me down and make me see my God. I'll glady repay the favor. Amen.
--JC
01/21

I do not consider myself a Catholic. I have not been to mass, save weddings, for 8 years, and my confession would take a full weekend. But what you describe is true. We need our hell, we need our instigator, and the she-devil to blame for being so bad. When we drink ourselves to death, (and we do) it is a woman's fault. We blame her not because she treated us badly, but because she treated us so well. She made us want her. It is an excellent way to keep people dating within the faith though. Because when you date a Catholic girl, you are both bad, you both know it, and in your silent penance much is said. She doesn't ask you to explain, she doesn't want to know your feelings about God, heaven, hell, or the sin you just committed because she already knows. Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.
--DA
08/21

I have never heard it stated in a more articulate way. There is a certain power in being able to put into words feelings and circumstances that defy them. You have in many ways presented my sexual self in a way that allows me to view it. Thanks. I make a lot more sense to myself than I have had in some 45 years! Its a sin! Ignatius Lyola is credited with saying: "Give me the first 7 years, you can have the rest." He started a community of men know as the Jesuits which have their own issues with sexuality; but it explains how we catholics got this way. Joseph M. O'Donnell x-alter boy x-choir boy recovering catholic sexually inhibited and working on the cure jmodonal@voicenet.com
--JMOD
01/14

Dear Miss Carver, Forgive the formality, but years of being married to an ex-Catholic boy have resulted in a type of neo-Victorian style approach to strangers. (Even if Queen Victoria was not a Catholic, many Catholics seem quite fond of her and the era named for her!) I married my Catholic boy, (he was nineteen at the time-I a year younger, and his mother still thinks my influence (sex) is what kept him from entering the priesthood! Attending a 1-A rural, Texas high school of lusty, second generation Lutherans, sex was mostly a mixture of football and farmyard mentality, with a smattering of 'burb perversity, but, oh, what a world was shown to me by this Catholic man-yes, some men are men at eighteen, trust me. Now, if only I had the courage to email this to his/our nephew, (named for him, in the grand old Irish-Catholic tradition common amongst 6th generation Texas/Southern/Catholic Irish!) The quandry-he is studying for the priesthood in SantaFe-do you suppose he would find this interesting or simply light a candle for me-his dear ol' auntie- who is on the right side of thirty and a Protestant to boot! MissMelanieJo@cs.com (I was curious, why are there so many Lexus', LandRovers, and BMWs at my local K-Mart, if it is truly a white-trash haven? I swear I bumped into a memember of the JuniorLeague last Saturday-shopping for her daughter's return to college-and not just dorm stuff-clothes!)
--MJ
12/08

I'm Catholic and she hit the nail on the head, masterfully
--AH
12/02

Dear Lisa, I grew up in the biggest catholic country in the world- Brasil- and know excatly what you're talking about, because I tend to be one of those catholic boys, sometimes. And yes I am a sensualist too. And yes I want to feel your tits! Anyway, surfing the net I came across "the nerve" and liked it a lot, your writings entertain me and show me "the other side", the sexual, protestant side in a manner that my sexualist, protestant girl friends were never able to disclose. Thanks for writing those lines and being what you are! I'll keep an eye on you. And if you ever want to find tons of man to study (get horizontal), the Colorado Rockies are the place, look up the snowboard instructors and maybe one day you might have some cold sex on the slopes! I send you a big, long catholic kiss!!!
--Mo
11/30

I'm from a predominantly Catholic country and you're article really struck a nerve in my Catholic upbringing and lifestyle. You're the kind of girl I hear about from friends but never actually meet. Growing up in a Catholic school and going to n an ultra-right catholic college, sex is really the only thing that interest all of us but never do. It's crazy! But everybody really chooses what they want to do. I just like to thank you for giving me a glimpse of what I'm NOT doing. P.S. I'm male 28 years old and has had sex twice, once with the girlfriend of my best friend and another from a lesbian. Talk about hell!
--AZC
11/05

OOOPS, Lisa. It doesn't help your argument to cite T.S. Eliot as a "Famous Catholic," since he was a Catholic at no point in his life. He was brought up a Protestant (Unitarian, I believe) and joined the Church of England in later life. Never a Catholic and in fact the WASP poster boy of all time.
--RE
10/20

Dear Lisa: I was recently reading Mademoiselle Magazine for the first and last time in my life, as soon as I read your article on "how to be the best lover he's ever had." I'm probably about 5 years younger than you, but I have more sense about the true meaning of a relationship. Oh yeah, and I'm Catholic. Everything to you centers on sex, not love in a relationship, which proves to be your undoing (due to the fact that you were already married twice). Let me tell you something, sex comes out of love, not vice versa, and a lot of people agree with me. For your information, you and your radically liberated ideas are a MINORITY in this society. Most people aren't drugs addicts or sex fiends like yourself. My second point is this, don't generalize about what you don't know. You have no idea about what Catholics are like in general. I bet you've never attended a Catholic service, much less read the Bible, or attended Catechism classes for nine years, like I have. Believe me, I know what Catholics, and therefore any religion is about. It's about being a good person and having morals. That doesn't mean you can't have sex, it just means you don't have sex with the first person to blink an eyelash at you. As far as I'm concerned, you can take you white trash ideas and shove them up your ass. You have no right to criticize others when you are a disgusting and shallow person yourself.
--TEB
10/11

Wow, Lisa I realllllly need to talk to you... Like really. Seiously, you have to email me, or call me or something just AH do it I can't write all I'm thinking right here email me at Juliesfanclub@hotmail.com do it damnit thanks :)
--jm
10/02

This is probably the most bizarre, confusing, and convoluted text on sex and catholicism i've ever read. On one end, i'm thinking "get this gal some counseling" and on the other, i'm laughing my ass off at the pretention of her statements. Can't help it really, i'm a cradle catholic without the guilt. In fact, "catholic guilt" is a myth, as much as guilt itself is a false emotion, an "issue," not a reality. Unfortunate that people get so stuck in their delusion (whether they call it "work" or "guilt") that they are sexually inhibited no matter which position they roulette out of the Kama Sutra or the Joy of Sex.
--JMP
08/07

Oh God is the only way I can deal with my wife's RC background to make it into some sort of fetish? Why did I think I could change her sexual being? Why didn't I marry a nice Jewish girl with no sexual hang-ups? Oh sure there are plenty of other hang-ups associated with nice Jewish girls, but sexuality is not one. Oh well there is something to be said for loving the person that you're married to. - A frustrated Unitarian-
--BZ
08/06

Wow, I've never felt so sexy about being Catholic in my life. Of course, I'm not to the extremes of the subject of her writing, but I am a little like that. Reading it made me think of a girl I was with about a decade ago... I really enjoy the site. I've only been looking at it for about 2 weeks and almost exclusively the daily photos (I'm into photography, beginner) and Lisa's was the first writing I'd read. I thought I recognized her name from one of QPB's monthly notables from several months back. I shall begin to read her books. Please pass along my thanks and appreciation of her style. The short essay was quite well done. I had no idea Protestants were like that.
--AC
05/08

I never noticed this in Catholic Boys before, although I must constantly remember that the men I know who were in Catholic School are no longer Catholic. If anything, they seem to suddenly feel the need to make up for that lost time and/or do just the opposite. I never know what to think. I must say that about 75% of the men I have been with were once Catholic altar boys, and let me tell you, there was NO hesitation on their part at all.
--CT
05/04

Lisa Carver has some interesting insights. I married a Catholic girl and a lot of the things that come across in her essay makes sense for females as well. I think if I could see more into my wife's spiritual, Catholic world, I would understand her sexuality better. Thanks for the meaningful article!
--JF
04/27

Lisa is right about the catholic guy shit. We are like that. Like Faust. In all of our sins and some of our graces...There is not a Catholic who doesn't love those somber Men in Black, fighting evil like Catholic superheroes. I am that Catholic. An Occult Detective and Irish Vampire Killer... We love that shit. We live for it. Somber morose and dark men. God bless the poor. Poverty is sacred. And in this vale of tears. I'll gamble it all away and then piss in the Irish sea. And battle the wee hooped-up beasts of my imagination. And make women like Lisa miserable. And happy. And miserable.
--SM
04/26

I must say I have never read anything like that Catholic boy article before. It was an interpretaion I would have never associated with. I went to a Catholic high school and I waited four years to have one of them sexually take my breath away. I've been waiting to get lost in that kind of sexual passion, but still have yet to find it. Granted, none of the guys I dated had much Catholic faith, and I was always looked at as the wild Catholic school girl, even though I'm not Catholic. So, are involved Catholic men really the answer to mystical and passionate sex?
--AG
04/21

Well, if Catholics are going to get this mystical sex and hang-up workover, let's be fair! T.S. Eliot was never a Catholic. He was an Anglo-Catholic (from St. Louis) and I don't know which of those facts explains his own peculiar relationship to his own fairly peculiar first wife. Nice story,
--PL
04/18

BINGO!!! Damn....Even that term has ben taken over by the guilt carrying and promoting Catholics. I was married to one and spent 20 years trying to figure out why no matter what went right, there was guilt and unhappiness.
--DP
04/16

I was raised in a primarily Catholic community, and I haven't really noticed any impact it's had on the sex here. Sure, it's pretty tame, but I think that might have to do with the fact that I live in a backwards rural village. I'm a Catholic (yeah, sure I am) and I don't think it's infleunced my sex any...Except occasionally during slow sex some random religious image will pop into my head, and I'll feel a little bad for thinking of it at such a time...Thinking of Mary during sex tends to be like thinking of any other family member...Ugh. Also, afterwards, when I skip my period and think I'm pregnant, I suddenly become very devout and say the rosary like a maniac. I do NOT need a child. Dear Lord, no. See. There pops out the Christian in me.
--SE
04/15

Never before have I read such a terse and honest and exciting and good portrayal of Catholic sexuality. It's definitely a piece I'll store in my hip pocket. Thanks much
--TA
04/15

I liked Carver's Critical Mass. Sounds like it was mostly "Mass Casualty" for her, though. Too bad, because we Catholic boys aren't all like hers.
--BS
04/14

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