As Australians gather for World Youth Day, a young Catholic lawyer Down Under has taken on a new role, as apologist for the faith.

Take a look:

I am a young Catholic and I would like to apologise for my faith. By apology I do not mean an expression of regret. Rather, I am referring to the Greek origin of the word, meaning to defend.

To modern sensibilities, Catholic moral teaching can come across as rigid and non-inclusive. In this regard, Catholic teaching is often misunderstood. In contrast to modern secularism, which tends towards relativism, the Catholic Church unapologetically teaches that there are absolute truths.

At the core of Catholic faith is the belief that Christ is God and God is love. As followers of Christ we are called to love God and one another. As such, for Christians, life is not a meaningless experience but a beautiful, sometimes difficult thing to which there is a purpose other than mere self-satisfaction.

At the heart of Catholic moral teaching is an understanding of freedom that contrasts sharply with popular notions of choice. For most people, freedom is simply the ability to do what they want. For the Catholic Church, freedom is the ability to do good. It is easy to do what we want. It isn’t always as easy to do what is right. And when we choose to do right by another, especially when it isn’t our inclination or in our interests to do so, we exercise our capacity for love. In other words, love is not just some gooey emotion we feel for our parents, children or significant other – it exists most fully when we act in a way that is loving.

It is difficult to understand Catholic morality without first appreciating this context. Still, some people accept all this but question why the church persists in having so many rules – especially when it comes to sex. The church is not a 2000-year-old killjoy obsessed with ruining our fun in the bedroom. As the largest provider of health care and education in the world, it is focused on plenty of other things, such as helping the poor. But it does ask us to keep sex within marriage. Why? Not because the church is scared of human sexuality. Sex is understood as something created by God and, therefore, a fundamentally good and beautiful thing. It can, however, be misused and when it is, we can hurt other people and ourselves. Far from being oppressive, church teaching on sex is meant to be liberating.

One of the most common things I hear is that Catholic teaching on sex is impossible to live up to and that those who fail are condemned or hated by the church. After Pope Benedict visited Brazil last year, the Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen announced that today “no one is a virgin when they get married”. This is wrong. There are many Christians committed to living a life in line with church teaching. Despite my reservations about sharing this information, for the sake of proving my point I will admit that I was still a virgin when I married earlier this year.

This was something that I chose. It was not because I was ashamed of my body, scared of sex or frigid, and it was not because I lacked opportunities. I committed to it for myself and for God, and I do not regret it. I spent my teens and 20s not having to worry about pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases, and I did not have to digest artificial hormones by taking the pill. Surprisingly, the older I got, the easier it was – primarily because the discipline became habitual.

I know many young Catholics who made the same choice. Others did not. Do I judge them for this? Does the church? The answer is no.

There’s more, so visit the link for the rest.