Church's past teachings on sex?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mschrank
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

mschrank

Guest
I have read Deus Caritas Est and I have looked into the Theology of the Body, and I am 100% convinced that the Church’s teachings on Chastity and its true meaning are not in the least prudish and if you follow them you will have a much more intense, meaningful and beautiful time with your husband/wife than if you rejected it and tried to make up your own sexual theology.

However, why does the Church have such a bad reputation as being opposed to a healthy sexuality and seeing sex as dirty or sinful?

I know the Church has always been against premarital and all other forms of unchaste sex, and always will be.

But what about in the past- did the Church really treat sex between married couples as dirty and did it teach people that it was only a necessary evil? It seems like society believes that ‘once upon a time’ married couples made love like they were wooden and didn’t get a bit of pleasure out of it, that female pleasure was seen as satanic, that they could only do it a couple times a year, etc.

Is there any truth to this or is it just a malicious mythology of liberal culture?
 
The Church not so much as maybe some overzealous churchmen. One priest has told me once that it might have just been frustration in some cases and I think he was right. If you look where people end up if they try to follow the rules without things like the documents you mention showing the bright side of things, you know where they end up - which is precisely as you said in the beginning of your post. So my conclusion is that you’ve pretty much answered your question yourself.
 
I think the church was prudish in the past, in the sense that sex was considered almost a necessary evil. JP II was the one who clearly established that sex within marriage has a valid unitive purpose in addition to procreation. If you talk to older Catholics, sex was presented as legitimate only if used for procreation, the implication being that if not being done for procreation it was dirty and sinful.

I think that currently the church is perceived as prudish because there are so many limits on sexual activity – no masturbation, no ejaculation except within the vagina, etc. Taken at face value and compared with the anything goes culture, it’s really not surprising that it’s viewed this way.
 
Actually, sex only for procreation seems to be a heresy in the light of that teaching.
 
I have read Deus Caritas Est and I have looked into the Theology of the Body, and I am 100% convinced that the Church’s teachings on Chastity and its true meaning are not in the least prudish and if you follow them you will have a much more intense, meaningful and beautiful time with your husband/wife than if you rejected it and tried to make up your own sexual theology.

However, why does the Church have such a bad reputation as being opposed to a healthy sexuality and seeing sex as dirty or sinful?

I know the Church has always been against premarital and all other forms of unchaste sex, and always will be.

But what about in the past- did the Church really treat sex between married couples as dirty and did it teach people that it was only a necessary evil? It seems like society believes that ‘once upon a time’ married couples made love like they were wooden and didn’t get a bit of pleasure out of it, that female pleasure was seen as satanic, that they could only do it a couple times a year, etc.

Is there any truth to this or is it just a malicious mythology of liberal culture?

(ps. I know this is a repost, but it seems like a decent question and it was getting no attention in the family board so I reposted it here)
 
I’ve often had the exact same questions!
I agree 100% with your post…
 
mschrank said:
But what about in the past- did the Church really treat sex between married couples as dirty and did it teach people that it was only a necessary evil?
Click to expand...
Sex is considered sacred between married couples, even in the most ancient times of the Church, because it was a participation in God’s creative power, a participation in fulfilling God’s will to “be fruitful and multiply.” However, in every century of Christianity (and before), lust is often mistaken for authentically sacred marital sex. While sex is a sacred act between husband and wife, lust is and has always been considered a sin, even if the lust is between husband and wife. Lust seeks pleasure in itself, apart from the true purpose of the conjugal act. Sex, if it is to be authentically sacred in the eyes of God, can never be willfully separated from real and loving union of the spouses, and procreative purpose of the conjugal act.

The early Church taught…

**St. Clement of Alexandria - **“To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature” ((The Instructor of Children 2:10:95:3 [A.D. 191])
Code: 
**St. Jerome -**"But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an     example.. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse     except for the procreation of children?" (Against Jovinian 1:19 [A.D. 393]).

 **St. Epiphanius of Salamis** -"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the     conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they     eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D.     375]).
 
I think the genesis of this misperception about Catholic teaching on marital sex occurred very early in the Church.

St. Augustine describes that the heretics who opposed the Church’s teaching on original sin, claimed that the Church was against marital sex. He stated:
[Heretics who] maintain that infants born in the flesh have no need of that medicine of Christ whereby sins are healed, are constantly affirming, in their excessive hatred of us, that we condemn marriage and that divine procedure by which God creates human beings by means of men and women. [St. Augustine, *On Marriage and Concupiscence
Click to expand...
, Book I]
 
Indeed, whenever I hear someone speak of the Catholic Church and sex, it is in a very negative light. I think that there is a lot of misinformation out there about how the Church, for some reason, “demonized” sex. Never is there any evidence provided.
 
It seems that when someone represents the Church’s teaching on sex in a derogatory or misleading way, they should provide factual evidence for those statements.

If someone tells you that the Church thinks sex is evil, ask them which official Church document promotes that ideology.
 
Overall, I think the Church’s theology of marriage (as opposed to the theology of the Sacrament of Matrimony) hasn’t been well articulated, and has been in some respects incomplete, until John Paul II developed TOB.

That said, I think the issue isn’t so much what “The Church” taught, as much as what “the churches” (i.e., local parishes, schools, and clergy) taught, based on their own training and backgrounds. I have read that a deep strain of Manichaen-like thinking affected a number of seminaries supplying priests to the U.S. in the early 1900’s, an era when many parishes and schools were being founded.

This is a generalization, but in my own New England experience (where you could find a Catholic church on every urban street corner, back in the day) parishes founded and serving those of Latin / Mediterranean heritage tended to have a more “comfortable” and supportive relationship to marital intimacy. Parishes serving, founded and staffed by those from “colder climes” (Irish, German, French Canadian come to mind - and 2 of these are my own background) seemed to foster thinking, and approach marital issues, in at best an uncomfortable way, and at worst narrow, prudish, and dour. The joke was that large families were encouraged, but they didn’t like to think about how large families came about.

In my own experience in parochial school in the 50’s, I was explicitly taught that Adam and Eve’s sin was sexual, and that while God created sex, Satan created carnal pleasure, as a result of the Fall. God’s design was to have humans reproduce dispassionately and prayerfully, and not with the kind of physical pleasure that leads them into sin.

So I think much of the misunderstanding, poor theology, and general “bad rap” that the Church gets in this area came out of generations of misinformed, poorly-trained, personally awkward, otherwise well-meaning people who in many cases weren’t comfortable with their own physicality, and projected that discomfort onto those they taught. Certainly we learned during the scandals of 2002 of how poorly seminary training addressed sexual issues. Not a fault of “The Church” in terms of its formal teachings, but perhaps an accurate reflection of the era.
 
Interesting post Thurible.

I suppose a big part of cracking this nut is separating the culture and discourse from official Church teaching.

One possible question is, did a discourse of ‘passionate sex’ even exist in say, Germany (one of your dour examples) during the pre-Modern era that was accepted by the population at large? After all, before we tackle a concept we have to have a vocabulary to be built for it and a way of discussing it.

It could of been that the Church wasn’t able to express a truth (i.e., theology of the body) until people started asking the question and the culture developed a way of speaking about and relating to that question (i.e., “sexual liberation”, “free love” etc).
 
Hey I think I found a book that might be most valuable to the topic at hand.

It’s titled Brave New Family Men & Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage, and Family.

It is by G.K. Chesterton! An author from before Vatican II.

And if I know Chesterton, he certainly will NOT paint a dour picture of married sex. He will be tasteful, funny, poignant, and truthful. Most of all, he will most likely be in line with the Catholic teachings of the times (assuming the book was done after his conversion).
 
chevalier said:
Actually, sex only for procreation seems to be a heresy in the light of that teaching.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, although i don’t think it actually extends into the field of “heresy”, maybe just an “incomplete truth”…
 
mschrank said:
However, why does the Church have such a bad reputation as being opposed to a healthy sexuality and seeing sex as dirty or sinful?

…]

Is there any truth to this or is it just a malicious mythology of liberal culture?
Click to expand...
I think like many things, the truth lies somewhere between those who thought the Church was prudish and those who think the Church should allow anything so long as the couple are ‘in love’.

Personally, I think the idea of sex being ‘dirty’ is most popular with the type of people that derive more pleasure from the thrill of doing something bad than from whatever pleasure an act has within itself.
 
Spirithound said:
Perhaps, although i don’t think it actually extends into the field of “heresy”, maybe just an “incomplete truth”…
Click to expand...
Yes, if the rest is omitted. However, if the rest is denied, that is, no unifying purpose but solely and exclusively procreation, then I think it’s objectification in practice and heresy in theory. Not like I’m a fan of the heretic label.
 
Culture and chances of child survival have something to do with the culture of sex in the past. Most of this was practical advise then became the “norm” of teaching in the local towns. This is no longer something that needs to be taken into consideration in most cases.

In the warmer climates it did not matter when a child was born. Food and shelter were available all year in sufficient quantities. So marital sex was not discouraged in relation to birthing time.

In the colder climates the birth of a child was better for all involved in the spring or early summer. The food was available then and shelter was warmer. Disease and malnutrition was not as much a worry. So marital sex was discouraged at certain times of the year.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top