For those who do not sympathize with associating “concupiscence” with “wanton shopping, economic oppression, environmental degradation, or totalitarian power”, well, what about sex?

When it came to sex, St. Augustine – if you will excuse the pun – rose above all.  Augustine pinned the tail of lust, I mean, the “tale” of lust, onto the donkey of “concupiscence”.

Horniness can make a jackass of anyone.  I mean this in terms of ontology.  What if the creative act in which God forms the soul is somehow linked to this heaving and hoeing that is the concupiscent fruit of horniness?  Talk about sullied.  A woman may just as well give birth to a donkey.

Or maybe we can turn the table around, and see the donkey – the jackass – giving birth to the babe.  Now, that bumping and grinding, that unencumbered exhibition of “concupiscence”, is redeemed by a mystical moment – the moment of conception – where one of tens of billions of sperm – and one alone – penetrates the membrane of the egg.  It could just as well have taken place in heaven.  To be alive is like winning the lottery.

Now, put a thin, pliable, yet impenetrable barrier between the egg and those sperm.  Now, there is only “concupiscence”.  The mystical moment has been removed.