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.

First, what is a sin? This is a big topic, but I’ll just write what I think the people asking this question want to know. There are two kinds of sin: mortal sin and venial sin.

There are three conditions that must be fulfilled before a person is considered to have committed a mortal sin:

1. Freedom of choice - a person must have been able to make the choice before an act is considered a sin. Coercion to make that choice lessens the seriousness of the sin.

2. Gravity of sin - the act must be a grave matter.

3. Fullness of knowledge - the act was committed with the sinner’s full knowledge of the gravity of the sin, and his or her deliberate consent.

Venial sin is sin whose object is a grave matter but committed without full knowledge of the gravity or without full consent. In other words, there is actually no sin that is not considered grave, but that’s beside the point here.

The point in this question is: do you have any choice at all about what you are dreaming? If your answer is “yes”, then you should be able to never have any nightmares at all. I mean, who would purposely want to have nightmares? Therefore, your answer would probably be “no”. If there is then no consent in your choice of dreams, then that means that having wet dreams is not a sin.

In fact, having wet dreams is nature’s way of “releasing sexual tension” in your body, of getting rid of excess sperm that is made by your body. For those battling the temptation of masturbation, wet dreams can even be seen as a sign of encouragement, because you only have wet dreams if you do not masturbate for a period of time.

Answer: No.

It started with a comment on another blog that denies seems to deny pornography’s link to rape. I chanced across it while searching the Wordpress tag “pornography”. After writing a whole long comment and faced with the possibility of it being deleted on that blog (like how I delete some inappropriate comments on this blog) through no fault or blame on the owner of that blog, I decided to post the comment, albeit edited, on my own blog. Some sub-headings were included to make reading easier.

What is pornography, and why is it wrong?

As defined in Wikipedia, pornography is “the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal”. In other words, pornography is the use of the human body to sexually arouse the viewer. This is wrong because the human body is not supposed to be used in any way, because when we use a person, we are reducing his dignity from that of a person to that of an object (to be used).

Why is pornography, sodomy, and adultery the “business of the law”?

Pornography, sodomy, and adultery all affect the society, hence it is the business of the law indeed.

Pornography, as mentioned above, is the use of the human body as a commodity. Specifically the pornography industry uses the human body in an obscene manner to exploit people - the actors and actresses, and those who purchase the material, all in the name of money. The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink. (Source: Pornography Statistics 2007)

As for sodomy, studies have indicated that the body’s natural immune system is broken down by repeated exposure to semen during anal intercourse. Also, the tearing and rupturing which can take place during such intercourse exposes the individual to infection by manifold serious and fatal diseases. Of these, AIDS is the most well-known and the most dangerous. (Source: Larry, Burtoft, Ph.D, Setting the Record Straight: What Research Really Says About the Social Consequences of Homosexuality, Focus n the Family 1994)

Adultery is a crime against marriage and is illegal in some jurisdictions. If the business of marriage falls under that of the law, then how can adultery not concern the law, since adultery is a breach of the marital contract? I don’t have a source for this, hence this is using common sense.

Did Alfred Kinsey manipulate his results in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male?

Yes, Kinsey did indeed skew his results. Dr Judith Reisman’s research shows us how:

Kinsey engaged in what is known as “category manipulation”. In one example, he classified 1,400 criminals and sex offenders as “normal” on the grounds that such miscreants were essentially the same as other men - except that these had gotten caught. The “human males” category could then include incarcerated pedophiles, pederasts, homosexual males, boy prostitutes and miscellaneous sexual predator.

One of the co-authors of Kinsey’s work, Clyde Martin, was charged with all the statistical analysis of data for the project of “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” despite not having any background in statistics. And even he admitted that “criminal and abnormal men permeated the sample to such a degree that the only way to clean it up would amount to rewriting the entire book”.

Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist of global acclaim in the 1940s, was a friend of Kinsey. He had already proven that volunteers in a sex study were usually “unconventional” men and women with high rates of unhealthy and disapproved sexual activity. Relying upon these volunteers - even those not counted among prison populations - would produce results that showed a “falsely high percentage of non-virginity, masturbation, promiscuity and homosexuality in the population.

Which is what happened - according to Kinsey’s skewed data, 95 percent of the American male population regularly indulged in deviant sexual activities such as extra-marital affairs, homosexuality, pedophilia, etc. Maslow offered to help Kinsey clean up the “volunteer error” in his work, but once Kinsey realised how this would compromise the outcome of the data and steer it away from the results he wanted, he abruptly terminated his friendship with Maslow.

It is an established fact (stats coming) that child molesters regularly use pornography to seduce their prey, to lower the inhibitions of their young victims and to serve as a kind of “instruction manual”. In a study of 36 serial sex murderers interviewed by the FBI, 81 percent admitted using pornography. Of those studied, 87 percent of girl child molesters and 77 percent of boy child molesters admitted to regular use of pornography.

Decriminalizing pornography came about when the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the revolutionary Model Penal Code with its recommendation of drastically reducing the penalties for its 52 major sex crimes according to Kinsey’s data.

Prior to that time, the definition of obscenity according to case law was “anything offensive to chastity or modesty, expressing or presenting to the mind or view something that… decency forbids to be exposed… tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts…”

The new Model Penal Code declared a thing obscene if “considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient interest… And if it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description…” According to Kinsey, sexual activities such as sodomy, incest, pedophilia, and bestiality are within customary limits, so one is left to wonder what exactly the Model Penal Code restricts.

- the source of these past nine paragraphs is “The Kinsey Corruption: An Expose on the Most Influential ‘Scientist’ Of Our Time” by Susan Brinkman, based on the book “Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences” by Dr Judith Reisman

What does the use of pornography lead to?

Using common sense, consider this: If a person regularly used pornography, he would be so “sexually charged” up (heh heh) that he would need to release it somewhere. First, it would be masturbation, but because these feelings of pleasure lead to addiction, and addiction is a progressive disease, more is required than before to obtain the same sexual high previously experienced. The person would therefore seek out more thrilling ventures to meet his need for sexual pleasure.

If the person was married, sex with his wife would no longer meet his need for sexual pleasure, because the fantasy is always more pleasurable than the reality. He would seek out other sources to obtain that sexual high, such as in extra-marital affairs, prostitutes, etc.

But don’t take my word for it; that’s just my common sense speaking. Ask a professional psychologist who specializes in addiction. Or, you can take the word of Sexaholics Anonymous, as they write:

“Some common characteristics of male and female sexaholics include isolation, depression, guilt, and a deep sense of emptiness. Our common behaviors include fantasizing about sexual and other self-centered desires, harmful co-dependent relationships, compulsive masturbation, use of pornography, including the Internet, promiscuous sexual relationships, adulterous affairs, and compulsive pursuit of exhibitionism or sexually abusive relationships, regardless of legal consequences.”

Or you can take the word of professionals who have researched this. Both Sexual Addiction Recovery Resources and Sex Addiction Help explain the Sexual Addiction Cycle which begins with Fantasy, which leads to Ritual, which leads to Acting Out, which leads to Shame, which leads again to Fantasy, and the cycle repeats.

I write passionately about this because my life (like Dr Judith Reisman’s) has been affected by the lies that resulted from Kinsey’s “research” which has affected the society where we live in, because our society tells us it is “normal” for every man to view pornography and “it doesn’t cause any harm”. Not true on both accounts. Both come from Kinsey and his skewed findings.

For single men, addiction to porn has many negative effects, but for the married man, it is even worse. For every married man addicted to porn are a corresponding wife and children. How many hundreds of millions of lives are affected directly or indirectly by pornography? We don’t know, but we are slowly starting to feel its effects. Sexual Recovery Institute has more to say about partners and children of porn addicts.

What can we do about pornography? It affects everyone, yes, even you. Because even if you are not directly affected by it, someone you know and are close to is, although you probably don’t know it. That’s how pervasive this problem of pornography is. But because you are affected, you can do something about it.

The first thing that you can do is to find out more. I have a directory of links to good websites that you can go to in order to have a fuller understanding of what we are facing here. After that, spread the word to all the people you know. If each one of you is aware of the danger of porn, the world is that much richer and better equipped to deal with the problem of pornography.

Boys are introduced to pornography and masturbation at a very early age. For some, they are introduced to it even before their bodies develop what is needed to enjoy such activities. Some of the men I have known have been viewing pornography and masturbating to it since puberty and have never had a wet dream before.

Here are some of the reasons why people who continue to use pornography to masturbate give to justify their uses, and the corresponding response I would give:

1. It feels good.
- Can’t deny that, but it doesn’t feel good every time. Sometimes it’s just not satisfactory. At other times, you feel damned guilty afterwards. Still at other times, you left a big mess in the room and you have to clean up and make sure you don’t get caught. Then there’s that nagging guilt and suspicion of other people using the computer and chancing across your porn files.

Life’s more than about feeling good. It’s more than about such fleeting feelings are. Abstaining from instant gratification, not just masturbation, helps create a better, more permanent form of happiness by introducing you to real love, instead of lust.

2. It doesn’t harm anyone.
- Actually it does. It harms you, because you are taking that love you have that is meant for others and directing it towards yourself. Basically, you are having a sexually intimate relationship with yourself which can only lead to the detriment of the loving relationships you have with others.

3. It doesn’t harm anyone else.
- Why is it wrong and against the law, both legal and moral, to commit suicide? It doesn’t harm anyone else too. It is because the ones who love him are harmed when they realize that their loved one had problems and that they could not be trusted to share his secret. There is a great sense of betrayal of trust in the persons.

4. No one loves me. It doesn’t harm anyone else.
- The one who commits suicide harms society as a whole because it deprives the society of one person’s gifts. Similarly, masturbation deprives society of the love you could be giving to other members of the society and giving it to yourself instead. Thus, not only is the rest of society harmed by this selfish action, the rest of society doesn’t benefit from it either.

5. It’s my body, and I can do what I want with it.
- Really? Then make your hair move on its own. It’s your body, isn’t it? Why can’t you move it? Or how about never falling sick. It’s your body, isn’t it? Why can’t you always remain healthy? Simply because your body doesn’t belong to you. It’s been loaned to you to take care of.

Your human body is not yours, contrary to what you might think. You need to return it when you’re done with it. It’s like borrowing someone’s mobile phone to make a call. You don’t use the phone to knock in a nail when you borrow it, do you? No, you treat it carefully because it’s not yours. You use it only for what it’s supposed to be used for. Masturbation is not what the genitals are supposed to be used for.

6. I need to masturbate in order release this sexual tension in me. It’s the natural thing to do.
- What happens if you don’t release it? Will it collect until you pop? Actually yes. When you sleep at night, your body will release the sperm periodically in a totally natural way. That’s the truly natural thing to do - to allow nature to take its course.

7. But it’s so inconvenient to get up in the middle of the night to wash up after wet dreams.
- The natural thing to do isn’t always the most convenient thing to do. You do have to make a trip to the toilet to pee, don’t you? And no one complains about that inconvenience, except maybe the elderly. But really, this excuse of inconvenience is really all there is to it - an inconvenience… because you and I know that it’s not the real reason why a guy jerks off once a week or more. We do it for pleasure. This excuse of inconvenience is just an excuse to make us feel justified while jerking off.

There are, of course, more reasons, but those are not reasons that I have ever used to justify myself. Maybe I will write another post on that in future.