Is Attraction a Sin? St. John Paul II Answers
All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
Ascension
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s happening in the human heart when we feel that sudden “spark” of attraction? Dr. Sri turns to the wisdom of St. John Paul II and his profound work Love and Responsibility to helps us to understand how to navigate our attractions so that they lead to authentic love—rather than lust and use.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, |
| 0:05.6 | videos, and resources, to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com. |
| 0:12.1 | Hi, I'm Edwards 3, and welcome to all things Catholic, where real faith meets real life. |
| 0:24.3 | Picture the scene. There's a young man at a coffee house |
| 0:26.9 | sipping his cup of chino reading a good book when suddenly a very attractive |
| 0:31.3 | woman walks in with her friends and he is immediately drawn to her beauty. |
| 0:37.1 | He looks down, reads a line from his book and he notices, oh, she's at the counter now, |
| 0:40.9 | and then he looks down, takes a sip of his coffee, looks up again to try to find her, |
| 0:44.8 | notices she's got her coffee and is moving to the table with her friends, and he is just |
| 0:48.6 | captivated by her good looks. |
| 0:51.4 | But it's more than a physical thing. |
| 0:53.0 | You see, he's noticed her here with her friends on |
| 0:55.8 | Saturday mornings before, which is why he's here again on this particular Saturday morning. And he's |
| 1:01.3 | been drawn to her warm personality. He notices that she has got a great smile. She laughs a lot. |
| 1:07.7 | She's very cheerful. So he's drawn to her charm and her personality, not just her physical good looks. |
| 1:14.7 | Attractions like this happen all the time. What's happening when there's an attraction? I mean, we don't have to really work at this, right? It just kind of spontaneously happens. You don't have to wake up on a Monday morning and say, Jesus, please help me to be attracted to somebody. It just happens. There could be a married guy |
| 1:32.0 | who's at the grocery store standing in line and all of a sudden notices a really beautiful |
| 1:36.1 | woman walk by and he notices a little spark of attraction. Is that okay? Is that sinful? What's |
| 1:41.9 | happening there? What's going on? What do we do with that? Or there could be a young single woman longing to find the one and she's at a daily mass and notices there's a new guy at daily mass and he's pretty handsome. And she gets to talk to him for a little bit after mass and she can't stop thinking about him and praying for him, |
| 2:01.8 | and she can't wait to go to daily Mass tomorrow, hoping to bump into him again. |
| 2:05.5 | Is that okay? |
| 2:06.4 | Is that real? |
... |
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