Do catholics always feel guilty about sex?

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BostonMyrtleBea said:
No way… HECK NO! It’s a great gift and anyone who feels guilty having sex with their hubby/wife in a good relationship probably needs to readjust their thinking or get some help.

I can’t say your questions is stupid, though! My newphew just told me that my MOTHER told him that she always though sex was a sin - even AFTER marriage! It makes sense, though, because she’s always felt it was a dirty thing and we’ve always wondered how she could possibly have six children. I think she was just doing what she was “supposed” to as a married Catholic. I hate to say it, but that’s a sick way to look at it.

Premarital sex - guilt (among other things).
Marital sex - guilt free!
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I don’t think the isue of sexual guilt within marriage can be dismissed that easily. I think that for Catholics “of a certain age,” guilt about marital intimacy was/is fairly common, the story about your Mother being a case in point. As an old Boomer, I can tell you that in my New England parochial upbringing, it was made very clear that: (1) Adam and Eve’s sin was a sexual one; (2) the Devil lurked under every marriage bed, waiting to carry the couple off if they gave in to “unbridled passions;” and (3) while Genesis recorded that God commanded Man to be fruitful and multiply, it wasn’t entirely clear that this included enjoyment of the process - one view being that sexual pleasure was more of the devil than of God.

Again, in no way am I saying this was official church teaching - more like the product of the 1950’s and, shall we say, over-enthusiastic religious teachers. Today’s attitudes, guided by Theology of the Body, are much more healthy – but I think that there are a number of older people still under the sway of the kind of mindset I recall.
 
Mattapoisett64 said:
I don’t think the isue of sexual guilt within marriage can be dismissed that easily. I think that for Catholics “of a certain age,” guilt about marital intimacy was/is fairly common, the story about your Mother being a case in point. As an old Boomer, I can tell you that in my New England parochial upbringing, it was made very clear that: (1) Adam and Eve’s sin was a sexual one; (2) the Devil lurked under every marriage bed, waiting to carry the couple off if they gave in to “unbridled passions;” and (3) while Genesis recorded that God commanded Man to be fruitful and multiply, it wasn’t entirely clear that this included enjoyment of the process - one view being that sexual pleasure was more of the devil than of God.

Again, in no way am I saying this was official church teaching - more like the product of the 1950’s and, shall we say, over-enthusiastic religious teachers. Today’s attitudes, guided by Theology of the Body, are much more healthy – but I think that there are a number of older people still under the sway of the kind of mindset I recall.
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Ah! Good points, then. My mother is a baby boomer and was taught the Catholic faith in NE (though she converted to Catholicism from Episcopalian).

Guess I’m glad they don’t teach that any more. I went to a Catholic school and college and it was always talked about as “natural” etc…

I never heard of the devil under the bed thing :hmmm:
 
“An astonishing number of the threads in Moral Theology seem to be on variations of that topic – is it sinful to start things with a little fellatio or cunnilingus? What about manual stimulation? Is premature ejaculation abhorrent in the eyes of God? Are sex toys (erm, ‘marital aids’) alright by Rome? If the husband comes before the wife, is it wickedness to ‘keep going’ by other means so she can climax as well? Can I licitly have sex with my husband after I caught him wanking in the shower? Am I committing a mortal sin of lust if I think of my spouse as sexy? Every one of those has been an honest question in that forum at least once (most of them several times), and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I kid you not, I have seen at least one thread asking if it’s sinful for a man to try a variant on Kegels to achieve multiple orgasms! What’s next, some poor scrupulous soul wanting to know if using the Kama Sutra to spice things up a bit in the marriage bed is tantamount to idolatry? Knowing how a lot of people here feel about plain ol’ yoga, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised to see that.”

Fr Bernard Haring seemed to adopt this type of approach in his pre-Vatican II books on moral theology, not just with sex, but in other matters as well.

I think his later approach (and also the work of Curran) was a lot better, as it was more focused on love, proper relationships with others, personal freedom and responsibility, and acting in accordance with conscience.

While I am no longer Catholic, I think it is more helpful to see sex in terms of responsibility to self and to the other, acting in accordance with good conscience, and also the responsible use of freedom in a joyful and sharing context where love exists. I think obsessing about mortal sin during sex (the notion of possible damnation being on the mind) would render it a pretty miserable exercise, even if one were doing the act without violating any of the moral norms or laws of the church. Who would want to do anything that even remotely brought about the risk of damnation?
 
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