Jason Evert invites a youth from the audience to help with a visual demonstration at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Ashland on March 26. (Catholic Herald photo)
Jenny Snarski
Catholic Herald Staff
On Wednesday, March 26, teens and adults from Ashland, Hayward, Solon Springs and Spooner gathered at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Ashland for an evening of reflection, prayer, Eucharistic Adoration and confession led by international speaker and author Jason Evert.
Diocesan musician and contemporary Christian artist Aly Aleigha opened the event in song. The parish’s director of religious education, Anna Richardson, introduced Evert, and an opening prayer was led by parochial administrator Fr. Jerome D’Souza.
Evert gave two talks, with a short break in between, followed by adoration and multiple priests available to hear confessions.
Purified
Evert jumped right into his chastity content, inviting a youth from the audience to the front for a analogous demonstration of “How far is too far” in dating.
“Can we get specific?” he quoted a questioning teen boy from one of his presentations. He responded with another question, “What is it that you want to do with her?” and challenged the teen to think about his future wife: “How far do you want her current boyfriend to go with her?”
Throughout the fast-paced first talk, Evert made a series of statements and followed each one up by clarifying that he wasn’t condemning anyone who hadn’t lived out the church’s teaching and its high standard of abstinence and chastity.
Evert said young people have been lied to about what real love means, with the basic message today being that love is all about sex. On the other hand, he said, others feel if they have lost their virginity or had it taken, “it’s too late.”
Acknowledging that pornography is predominantly, but not exclusively, a “guy’s problem,” Evert advised, “Porn is the best way to shoot your future marriage in the head.”
He acknowledged the claim that viewing pornography doesn’t hurt anyone, then refuted it. Advances in neurology have provided scientific evidence that porn emasculates men in addition to gravely disrespecting the dignity of the persons whose images are being viewed. The porn culture has hurt women, he argued, making them think the only way they will attract a man is through their body and sex appeal.
Describing different relationship dynamics, he said, “Girls get seduced by what boys tell them,” and “Boys get seduced by the eyes.” Evert added that if a girl gives the guy access to her body too soon, he actually loses respect for her, whereas virtue in relationships draws deeper respect and attraction for marriage.
He said to the girls, “What will you do with your power? You will never convince a boy of your dignity until you convince yourself.” Evert shared examples of conversations with young men who admitted how confusing it can be to sense that “girls want to be treated like princesses when they act the opposite” at parties and clubs.
“Something starts to die in a girl,” he said regarding letting a guy’s expressed desires lead her to give him her body. After a few years, she will start to “define herself by the guys she feels wanted by.” He reassured the young women that they are gifts.
“You are not valuable because of your virginity,” Evert affirmed and clarified that love sees the unique individual, not the pleasure that any body, or image, can give them.
The speaker asked why there are feelings of guilt about a parent finding out what physical boundaries are being broken in a dating relationship. “Why is a guy afraid of a girl’s dad if he’s fooling around with her?” he asked, and answered, “Girls always pay the higher price.” Boys can walk away from a relationship much easier, but statistics show the earlier a girl starts having the sex, the more partners she will have.
“Love can’t wait to give. Lust can’t wait to get,” Evert emphasized. He sympathized with girls for maturing faster than guys but added that trying to replace missing affection from a father will “never be found in the arms of another man.” He challenged the fathers present to protect their daughters’ hearts by loving them and showing it.
He then offered “the love test – is she worth waiting for?” This was followed by the story of a young man who decided to choose chastity with his girlfriend after one of Evert’s presentations, getting practical by coming up with 100 ways to love his girlfriend without sex.
When sex comes first, all other ways of relating, communicating and getting to know each other don’t get developed, Evert explained. “If he loved you,” he said, “he wouldn’t be asking for sex. And if you loved him, you wouldn’t give him whatever he asks for.”
To the guys, Evert said that often they’re more motivated by the reactions of their peers than impressing girls. He said, “What’s needed with chastity is authenticity.” You can’t be one person in front of parents and another when you’re alone together.
To all the teens, he said, “If you’re not ready to be a parent, you’re not ready to have sex.”
“How do you start over?” he asked, whatever that starting point might be, and encouraged everyone to frequent the sacrament of confession. “Don’t just go to confession, make a great confession. … Go home tonight with your baptismal innocence restored.”
Evert concluded by addressing homosexuality and same-sex attraction, “The world will tell you either to hide it or to fully embrace it as your identity.”
“Attractions are not our identity,” he stated. “The deepest truth of your identity is that you’re a son or daughter of God.” He admitted how challenging it is to live and move in a world where sex is used to sell everything and where natural attractions are oversexualized. He clarified that not every attraction is sexual and emphasized the importance of developing good friendships.
“Take your time,” he said. Find your friends in high school, he encouraged, not your spouse.
Gender and TOB
Summarizing the first talk as “about sexuality as something we do,” the second talk was “sexuality as something we are,” or one’s dominant identity.
Evert began by explaining that gender ideology “cancels out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to deal with it” and is a reaction to some of the extreme stereotypes in play for men and women.
He stated that gender stereotypes exaggerate the differences between men and women, whereas the truth is that bodies are either male or female, but personalities can encompass a spectrum of characteristics. The disconnect, he explained, between a person’s body and their “experience” creates the distress that, in its extreme, is known as gender dysphoria.
Evert added that according to the statistics and historical medical practice, true gender dysphoria show itself at a very young age in a very small population of people. For 90% of cases, it resolves itself naturally before the end of puberty unless steps are taken to “affirm” the dysphoria.
Evert noted multiple medical issues that arise from medical interventions considered “gender-affirming care,” conditions like heart disease and osteoporosis in additional to the need to take hormonal pharmaceuticals for life because if they are stopped, the body’s natural sex hormones resurge although the physiological changes (voice, musculature, etc.,) are not reversible.
Evert shared that some states have lowered the age of consent from 18 to 14 for “affirmative care.” He said that when certain basic procedures require parental consent, young people can move forward with top or bottom surgeries, the only obstacle being the cost. He shared that there are tens of thousands of GoFundMe campaigns for these life-changing surgeries for teens under the guise of seeking to be “your authentic self.”
He said, emotionally, many are girls are unconsciously “fleeing womanhood like a house on fire with no place to go.” Gender-affirmative care is disguised as safety and an end-goal when he said the reality is that transgender people have a 19-times higher suicide rate after, not before, transition has begun. He said that reactions to these surgeries removing or adding external body parts range from joy, disgust at the next body part that needs to “fixed” to horror at what they have just done to themselves.
“The layers of complexity are flattened to one,” Evert noted. Rather than looking at the underlying mental health and trauma symptoms these people are experiencing, they are being told that if they just change their physical looks everything will be okay. “That’s medical malpractice,” he said when the multiplicity of issues is not being addressed.
He acknowledged the challenging environment that says if we don’t affirm these persons it amounts to hate and injustice. The answer, Evert asserted, is “accompaniment in truth and love … If you really love them, you don’t tell them they can be something they can’t.”
Evert continued with examples of how far people are taking this concept of “transitioning” to identify as how a person feels. For example, someone who identifies as Asian undergoing plastic surgery or a racial reassignment. These, he said, highlight the lack of common sense behind this socially acceptable trend to deny the reality of who you are.
“It’s permission versus possibility,” he said. “Sex isn’t what you’re assigned at birth, it is how your body is organized for reproduction,” something he said, in humans, does not have anything but two options. “Every single cell is sex specific,” fixed for men and women although he recognized that there are anomalies present in the animal kingdom, though in less than 1% of species.
How should Catholics answer those who want to be affirmed? Evert offered, “Reverent listening” and thoughtful questioning. He gave the example of one group of middle school girls who approached him during a presentation saying they were lesbian because they didn’t feel attracted to the boys their age. Evert explained to them that this was a completely normal reaction but didn’t mean that they were lesbians – it just meant they needed to wait for the boys to grow up.
“What’s the deeper longing?” and the truth behind the experiences are things to dive deeper into with charity and compassion. Evert explained that listening and asking questions that help clarify their struggles is going to be more effective than reciting church teachings.
“You don’t always have to be the mouth of Christ, sometimes you just have to be his ears,” he added. “Looking at someone with love doesn’t mean you have to affirm” choices with which you disagree. He encouraged holding onto “reality with one hand and them with the other.” Speaking truth out of love is not rejection but real relationship.
Evert explained that the explosion of this crisis is just coming to a head, with countries in Europe realizing that the data isn’t matching what they predicted gender-affirming care’s outcome to be. He spoke of the increasing number of lawsuits detransitioners are filing, and winning, against the adults who allowed them to pursue self-mutilation.
“This was bad medicine from the start,” he said, adding that in the United States there will be thousands of people in crisis in years to come as the realities come to light.
“When God is forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible,” he said. “This is where the church can step in – not with condemnation, but with clarity.”
“My beloved child,” he expressed as if speaking to a youth struggling with these questions, “You were not born into the wrong body. You were born into the wrong culture.”
Challenging and inviting all present, he reminded listeners that “We are all wrestling with something,” and reassured them that Jesus is truly the answer to every suffering of the human heart. He drew the connection between the gift of the sexual self and the sacrificial love that is offered up, as Christ did on the cross, for another’s truest good.
In closing, Evert led the attendees in a reflection on the Eucharist and the miracle of God’s gift of himself to us. He encouraged reception of the sacrament of confession and assured everyone that the best part of the evening would be their personal and direct encounter with Christ in the sacraments.
More information is at chastity.com and at “Chastity Project” on social media.
