Catholic Sex Blog

Have you ever asked yourself this question: Why are humans born male and female? Why don’t we reproduce asexually, like some creatures? Why weren’t we born bisexual? Okay, hermaphrodites are, but that’s a physical defect. Hermaphrodism is an anomaly.

Normal humans are created male or female. Why? If you don’t believe that humans are created, but evolved to be male or female, then let me rephrase the question: why have humans evolved to be male and female?

I would say that there is only one answer to this question, and that is: we are not made to be alone. Humans have evolved to be male and female because evolution has shown that living in a community has higher chances of survival than living alone.

The organs that enable human beings to live as members of a community include the sexual organs, and what drives human beings to live in a community is the sexual urge.

Like all basic functions of the human body which are necessary for survival of the human race, pleasure is attached to sex. This pleasure that is linked to sex, as is linked to eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, excreting… is what drives a person to do these things necessary for human survival.

Each member of the community contributes in some way to the survival of the community. Some bring food to the table, some cook, some produce art, some build… but one thing that all can do is that all can reproduce. This ensures that each function in the community has direct successors to continue the work that is being done in the community. This is the natural order of human life.

What happens when a human being is not able to reproduce? This is usually because of some physical defect, such as sterility through age or disease. These are not part of the natural order of human life; they are defects that occur through the deterioration of the human body. It is not that defective human’s fault that he or she is unable to reproduce. This human therefore has to contribute to the community in some other way.

What happens when a human being is able to reproduce, but refuses to? Unless this human is sacrificing his or her own reproductive capabilities for a higher purpose, we can say that this human is being selfish, that is, choosing to rely on his or her own self, rather than preserving the unity of the community. It becomes even more apparent when such humans demand the same rights as the rest of the community, while not contributing to it in the same way.

Instead of building up the community as each member ought to, this person is destroying the community by refusing to contribute his or her fertility to the betterment of the community.

We can quite easily see how any act of sexual intercourse that is not open to life stems from self-centeredness. This root of self-centeredness by itself runs contrary to the whole meaning of community living.

We find great difficulty in saying that a person who is self-centered in one area in his life, can be community-centred in other areas, since self-centeredness is a character defect that is at the root of all we do.

A person who says he is community-centred, but has a sexual life that is not open to life, is either being dishonest, or he doesn’t know himself very well, since there is a clear discrepancy between what he says and what he is doing. 

If he is dishonest, it is because he is saying one thing with his mouth, and saying a completely different thing with his body. It is like an unhappy person putting on a brave front, or a smile, and saying that he is happy.

We often don’t realise that our sexual organs and our sexual urge have a particular purpose. They are oriented towards community building, and we know that the very basic community in society is the family.

Thus when a person has sexual intercourse that is not open to life, he is saying with his body: “I want to start a family with you. I want to welcome new life and to help our community to grow.” But he is saying something completely contradictory with his mouth.

This is why contraception, masturbation, oral and anal sex, pedophilia, bestiality and homosexuality are immoral - because they not only do not contribute to building the community, they are tearing it down.

Note: My opinion of homosexuality (or same-sex attraction) is that it is a psychological disorder which can be treated. However, if you are of the opinion that homosexuality is not a disorder, then it’s basically saying that sexually active homosexuals have a character defect which is self-centeredness.

A person who has sexual intercourse is also saying with his body: “I want to be there with you and with our children as they grow up.”

The last line is added, because as humans, we mature far slower in life than other animals. It is therefore beneficial for the human being, as a creature, to remain monogamous in marriage, as this aids the bringing up and maturing of children as adults.

A parent who does not take responsibility for raising the children he bears is also doing something that harms the community, since the child is unable to replicate that parent’s role in the community.

This is why our first reaction to single motherhood due to irresponsible fathers, divorce, polygamy, adultery, and rape is often disapproval, because deep down, we know this does not contribute to the building of community, but instead tears it down.

In conclusion, I would say that sex is not a private matter reserved for the bedroom. Sex is intrinsically linked to the formation of families, the basic unit of community life, the basic unit of society. Thus, for us to turn a blind eye to what couples are doing in the bedroom is to turn a blind and uncaring eye to the future of society.

At the very bottom of it, sex is not so much about what we do, but who we are. We have sex because as humans, we are made (or evolved) to live in community. Everything that has to do with sex concerns the whole community and our whole culture (anthropologically speaking).

Colossians 2:6-15

You must live your whole life according to the Christ you have received - Jesus the Lord; you must be rooted in him and built on him and held firm by the faith you have been taught, and full of thanksgiving.

Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ.

In his body lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own fulfilment, in the one who is head of every Sovereignty and Power.

In him you have been circumcised, with circumcision not performed by the human hand, but by the complete stripping of your body of flesh. This is circumcision according to Christ. You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and had not been circumcised; he has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins.

He has overridden the Law, and cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay; he has done away with it by nailing it to the cross; and so he got rid of the Sovereignties and the Powers, and paraded them in public, behind him in his triumphal procession.
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Luke 6:12-19

Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them “apostles”: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.

He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and from Jerusalem and from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured, and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all.
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Imagine you have a child, and throughout his developmental years, you never said ‘no’ to him. From somewhere you read or heard that if a child hears the word ‘no’ when he makes a request from you, he will grow up with a fear of rejection. So in order to prevent that, you say ‘yes’ to every request. After twenty years of having said ‘yes’, your child asks something of you which you cannot give. Can you say ‘no’? Chances are, you can’t. And your child, whom you’ve never said ‘no’ to, is not your child, but your master; you are his slave.

What does this have to do with today’s readings? In the first reading, St. Paul tells the Colossians: Make sure that no one traps you and deprives you of your freedom by some secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ.

What is the philosophy that today’s generation is taught? I think it would be Nike’s tagline “Just do it.” I wrote to an American about sexual freedom recently. Our generation is taught today that sexual freedom means being able to “just do it” without fear of constraints from previous generations or religious beliefs. Today’s generation tends to believe that if they can “just do it”, if they can say ‘yes’ to sex whenever, wherever and however they want to, only then are they sexually free.

However, a generation of people who won’t say ‘no’ to sex, quickly becomes a generation of people who can’t say ‘no’ to sex. A person who can’t say ‘no’ to sex is not sexually free. He or she is a slave to sex. This means that the philosophy that today’s generation is taught is a “secondhand, empty, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world” and it is one that traps them and deprives them of their sexual freedom.

If today’s generation (and I’m not referring just to the youth) is quickly becoming a generation of sex slaves, what then can be done for us? How can we find true freedom if the philosophy of the world only serves to make us slaves? In the gospel reading, we see Jesus and his apostles setting people free of their diseases, their demons, and all that chains them down. Today, we can find freedom from sexual slavery in the Church’s teaching of abstinence.

Abstinence is applicable not only to single persons, but persons who are married as well. The Church teaches abstinence is also healthy for married people. There are times when married people have to abstain from sex, such as when due to illness, pregnancy, travel or other reasons. What would a person who cannot say ‘no’ to sex do in cases when abstinence seems to be the only answer? If you think about it for a moment, you will understand why the media has been glorifying those answers.

Abstinence is the true test of whether one has sexual freedom or not, because abstinence shows that a person can say ‘no’ to sex, even at times when he can say ‘yes’. Freedom means having a choice and being able to make either choice. In Christ we find freedom, not just sexual freedom, but freedom in the best sense of the word.

Today is September 11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America. We also remember that one person that is more dangerous than all the terrorists put together is Alfred Kinsey, the grandfather of the sexual revolution which took place all over the world. The impact of his work on sexual morality has truly devastated the world, and America, much more than any terrorist will ever do.
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Prayer:
Dear Lord, help us to desire true sexual freedom in the way that you offer it to us. Grant us the courage to turn our backs on the secondhand philosophy of the world that we are surrounded with, and turn our eyes to the redemption that you offer us through your cross. Amen.

Give Thanks to the Lord for: Showing us what true sexual freedom is.

I remember a friend of mine once told me about discussions she had with her other lady friends. They were of the opinion that if their husband had an affair with another woman, they would immediately leave him. And these were the same women who saw nothing wrong with pre-marital sex.

Why is it alright for their husband-to-be to have pre-marital sex, but not for their husband to commit adultery? Aren’t they really the same thing?

Pre-marital sex is committing adultery in advance. It lets you know something about your boyfriend or girlfriend - he or she is willing to have intercourse with someone who isn’t married. What makes you think that is going to change after you’re married?

The only reason people are having a lot of pre-marital sex is because they have access to contraceptives. Pregnancy is a deterrent to having pre-marital sex.

But guess what? Pregnancy is also a deterrent to adultery. If it is okay to use contraceptives in pre-marital sex, it will be okay to use it in adultery as well… which makes the rates of both pre-marital sex and adultery soar.

It is hypocritical to say that adultery is wrong but pre-marital sex is okay, because both essentially do not respect the marital bond. In both cases, people who are not married to each other are having sex with each other.

If that marital bond is not honoured and respected before marriage, there’s no reason to expect it to be honoured and respected after marriage.

I read in last week’s papers that supermodel Gisele Bundchen slammed the Catholic Church for its stand on contraception, that it was outdated in a world where no one is a virgin when they marry, and that contraceptives can be very helpful in preventing the spread of STDs.

If I gather rightly, Ms Bundchen is advocating for more sexual promiscuity and for more people to have irresponsible sex, that is, sex without consequences.

The rising rate of number of abortions procured, and spread of STDs can only be attributed to larger numbers of people having irresponsible sex because they can, or because they believe that contraceptives make them invincible.

But no contraceptive is 100% effective, and when there are larger numbers of people taking part in irresponsible sex using contraceptives, the number of unwanted pregnancies is only going to rise. Contraceptives are causing the very thing they were supposed to be preventing - rising numbers of unwanted pregnancies, and rising rate of STD transmission. And a country that uses contraceptives to reduce the number of abortions procured is throwing gasoline to put out a fire; it’s only going to get worse.

The Church is not just against the use of contraceptives; it is against the rotten fruits of contraception as well.

Let’s face it, contraception isn’t about preventing the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. There’s already a 100% effective solution to that, one that the Catholic Church advocates, and the secular world rejects, simply because the secular world promotes the spread of that which they claim to be against. Otherwise why would the secular world promote contraception instead of abstinence?

The secular world is interested in promoting what they call sexual liberty, but which is, in fact, sexual enslavement.

No? Take a good look at Ms Bundchen’s stand on contraception and sex. She is saying, together with the rest of the secular world, that men and women today cannot say ‘no’ to their sexual urges, and must jump into bed with someone before they are married.

What do you call a person who can’t say ‘no’ to his desire for another drink? An alcoholic. What do you call a person who can’t say ‘no’ to another smoke? A smoking addict. What do you call a generation of young men and women who cannot say ‘no’ to their desire to have sex? Sex addicts. Sexual enslavement is what this so-called “sexual liberty” is in fact resulting in. And the consequences? You know it - rising numbers of unwanted pregnancies and STDs.

Let’s face it, contraceptives are never going to work in lowering the rates of unwanted pregnancies and spread of STDs. For even if one day contraception acquires a 0% failure rate, there is still going to be user failure.

So what happens then? Obviously abortion is used to take care of all the unwanted pregnancies that result from irresponsible sex. Now this is serious, because each abortion procured is the murder of a child.

A fetus is not a ‘thing’, it is a human child, a living human person. All scientific arguments are against the position of abortionists and in favour of the Catholic position. If someone wants to put this to the test, let him simply ask a non-Catholic doctor who has performed an abortion whether what he has extracted from the womb is no more than a thing, or whether it is a living being. And if it is a living being, of what species is it?

No; the abortionist position is not based on science or on reason. It is based on prejudices and interests, neither of which have anything humanitarian about them.

I’ve just finished reading a book called “Contraception and the family - The immorality of contraception and its effects on family life” by Fr. Roberto A. Latorre. Below is a summary of my reflections on contraception together with some excerpts from the book.

I’m not going to write much on the use of contraception outside marriage, because all forms of extramarital sex, be it adultery, fornication (prostitution), pre-marital sex, bestiality or sodomy are against marriage. I’m going to focus more on the use of contraception in marriage. We’ll discuss other topics in another post.

Naturalism vs Natural Law

There is a common misunderstanding that the Church considers contraception immoral and sinful because it is artificial. In other words, it involves some interference with our normal biological processes. Conversely, periodic continence, or Natural Family Planning (NFP) is not immoral because it does not interfere with those processes. If this were true, then the use of other artificial things like medicines, dentures, prosthetic limbs, etc would be immoral too.

The position of the Church is based on Natural Law, not on naturalism.

Naturalism maintains that something is immoral if it goes against the laws of nature, nature here being understood as biological nature. The seriousness of a sin depends on how much it disrupts the natural balance. This position is found in certain naturalistic sects of “new age” inspirations, but not in the Catholic Church.

Natural law doctrine, on the other hand, maintains that something is immoral if it goes against human nature, not just biological processes. Its conception of human nature is based on a “total vision of man” (see Humanae Vitae, no. 7) as a person “in unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all other specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end.” (See Veritatis Splendor, no. 50)

Human nature is ultimately based on the plan and ordination of the Creator. We can know this ordination, and therefore the contents of the natural law, by looking at what is according to right reason.

This means that the natural moral law is the unique way in which man carries out the plans and purposes of God for the creatures of the universe. Brute animals fulfil God’s purpose for them by blindly following their instinct. But man fulfils his end by using his freedom following the light of his reason.

The conjugal act is a gift of love

The conjugal act should not be considered merely as giving vent to an instinctive urge. Passions and emotions have their rightful place in marital relations, but in order to be truly human, the spiritual element should always prevail.

Like a friend tells me, “The human body only has enough blood for one head to function. Don’t let it be the head down there.” Even when making love to your wife, you should be in complete control of yourself, otherwise there is no freedom, and your gift of yourself is devoid of meaning. Your act of conjugal love changes from one of “I give myself to you in this act of love” to “I can’t help it. I can’t control myself. I need to have sex.”

It is easy to see why wives would feel used when their husbands treat them as a vent for their instinctive urges. This is one reason why some couples feel unfulfilled during sex - because they are being made use of as objects, instead of being treated as persons.

Contraception tends to minimize human control over the person’s sexual behaviour, because with contraception, you can do it anytime. That is one of the main reasons people use contraception - so as to be able to do it anytime they want to. Or feel that they have to.

Contraception makes the conjugal act less human because it implies lack of dominion and self-control, in favour of the sensual and erotic aspects of the conjugal act. On the other hand periodic continence, when morally justified, encourages self-mastery.

Who is more in control of himself? The person who can have sex anytime and any place he wants, and the person who can control himself and really make himself a total gift to the only person he loves? Equally applicable for women.

Both contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP) are ways to plan the family. But where contraception favours instinct, NFP favours the will.

Fruitfulness of the conjugal act

The fruit of marriage is children. The point of contraception is to avoid children while still engaging in sexual activity, even during the woman’s fertile period. The point of NFP is to avoid children, for the time being because of serious reasons, by abstaining from sex during the woman’s fertile period.

This is the main problem that people have with contraception and the use of NFP. Isn’t NFP just a “natural” way to contracept? NFP is not meritious because it’s “natural” and biological (see above “Naturalism vs Natural Law”). It is meritorious because it is geared towards human nature.

Does the conjugal act have to be fruitful? What about those couples who are childless? What about those who get married knowing full well that they are past the child-bearing age?

Just because these couples cannot have children doesn’t mean the conjugal act cannot be fruitful. We do not judge the fruitfulness of the conjugal act by its results. The act itself is fruitful regardless of the outcome.

The object of marriage is not just any kind of sexually-related activity. The object of marriage is geared towards a sexual act which by its very nature is procreative. Other unnatural sexual activities such as masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, etc, have no place in marriage because the are not open to life, not procreative, not fruitful.

Contraceptive sex by its very nature is not fruitful, not procreative. It doesn’t matter when you have contraceptive sex, it’s not procreative. It doesn’t matter whether you have sex when the woman is fertile or not, because the act is not procreative.

The conjugal act by its very nature is always fruitful, regardless of when you have it. When a couple abstains from sexual relations during the fertile periods, they are indeed avoiding a new life, but then, they are not engaging in an act that is ordained to life.

As you see, it is the act itself that we are talking about, which makes each contraceptive act closed to life, and each conjugal act open to life.

It must be noted, however, that a couple who practises periodic continence must be morally upright, sincerely seeking the will of God and collaborating with his plans. That is why they must have proportionately serious motives to abstain from sexual relations during the fertile periods.

Their main motive should not be just to avoid a new human being, as that would fall into a contraceptive mentality. They should be thinking of another legitimate good (health, family well-being, etc) which, after having weighed all the circumstances in the presence of God, overrides the great good it means to have another child at the moment.

In other words, the intention of using NFP to space out children must be there. The use of NFP should be accompanied by generosity and a positive view of children as the fruits and crowning glory of conjugal love. And for a Christian, he should not lose sight of the dimension of the cross of Christ and the need to have confidence and trust in God as our loving Father.

Effects of use of contraception

Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae had already predicted what would happen when countries accept and approve of the use of contraceptives - the general lowering of morality, the loss of respect for womanhood, the human rights abuses of government in this field (Humanae Vitae, no. 17).

We compare the other European countries with Poland where the Church has succeeded remarkably, thanks to then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s (later Pope John Paul II) influence.

Here, in terms of doctrine, there is a strong tradition of both orthodoxy and academic excellence. Pastoral programmes are vigorous and there is a very strong Christian life. One sign of this is the abundance of vocations. While other European countries and importing priests to fill the ranks, Poland is sending out its Polish priests to other countries.

It would not be wrong to say that the problem of vocation shortage in a country is linked to the use of contraceptives. While it is hard to tell directly whether a country’s people uses contraceptives or not, we can have a good idea of the usage by looking at the country’s abortion laws.

Abortion is the fail-safe for contraceptives. All contraceptives have a certain failure rate. As such, when people use contraceptives, there will be a certain percentage of women who will get pregnant anyway. Because of the contraceptive mentality, these children are unwanted. Hence the solution to these women’s “problem” is abortion.

No one can support the use of contraceptives without supporting the legalization of abortion. These two are directly linked to each other.

Pope John Paul II summed up in Familiaris Consortio, no. 32, why contraception is intrinsically evil:

“The innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.”

Big words, but take them slowly and you will see the beauty and truth in those words.

Effect of contraception on marriage

Pastoral experience has shown that contraceptive practice often leads to a weakening of the love and mutual respect of couples. Perhaps without realizing it, their outlook towards each other and their attitude towards their relationship begins to change. They see themselves as accomplices rather than as partners. There is uneasiness deep inside.

As the quality of their love deteriorates, discords are less easily resolved, the temptations to infidelity become harder to resist. It would not come as a surprise if a correlation can be established between marital breakdowns and contraceptive practice.

If you love them…

One of the ways of appealing to the masses in the use of contraceptives is the slogan, “If you love them, plan.” This was used in the Philippines. But this is a deceptive form of advertisement because the idea of “planning” here is that of diminishing. It would be more accurate, and less appealing, to say, “If you love them, have less of them.” However, the contradiction is immediately obvious. The contradiction arises from the fact that contraception is a lie.

The alternative Christian slogan to this is, “If you love them, let God plan.” In NFP, couples are following God’s plan, and God is the best planner there is. With contraception, couples are excluding God from their plans. We are not the arbiters of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator (Humanae Vitae, no. 13).

To use an analogy, ministers of the altar have to follow the prescribed rules and guidelines of the liturgy as laid out in the GIRM. If a priest chose to change the liturgy as he saw fit, he would no longer be the minister of the altar, but an arbiter. And we immediately know that what this priest is doing is wrong; he doesn’t have the power to decide how the liturgy should be. Likewise, couples do not have the power to decide when and where life should be created. We are called to cooperate with God to bring new life into the world.

We hear this a lot: Man cooperates with God’s plan to bring new life into the world. But how does Man cooperate with God? Unlike other creatures, man’s reproduction entails the exercise of freedom, a gift that only humans have. This is why our use of our sexual faculties is a deeply moral act.

- adapted from “Contraception and the family - The immorality of contraception and its effects on family life” by Fr. Roberto A. Latorre