Volume > Issue > Note List > What It Means to Be A "Better Person"

What It Means to Be A “Better Person”

May 2005

In reference to the two previous New Oxford Notes, it’s funny how things come together. Meet Donna Freitas, a professor of religion at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, in the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont. According to a story on her in the Times Argus newspaper (Jan. 30) of Vermont, she’s written a new book called Becoming the Goddess of Inner Poise.

We pretty much know what the goddess is. But what is “inner poise”? Freitas defines it in part as “challenging yourself to be a better person.”(Garofalo and Seder, you gotta get this dame on your show.) So how do you become a better person? Well, for example, by having a better body image and better relationships. She writes in her book that abstinence until marriage is unrealistic because women marry later or don’t marry at all: “To deny ourselves as sexual beings until well into our 30s and 40s is, for most of us, simply an unrealistic and outdated expectation.” Freitas wants women to have free sex, guilt-free.

So, obviously, women need contraception and abortion-on-demand (just in case).