Do Catholics have a repressed attitude of sex?

  • Thread starter Thread starter YinYangMom
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
Ghosty:
Right, but my point is that the Sacrament doesn’t “take” until the sex act. You can have the marriage vows in front of a priest and audience, drive away in a “Just Married” vehicle, get to your vacation location and never have sex: in this case you have not had the Sacrament of Marriage. It’s not a matter of before or after the Sacrament, it’s a matter of during and part of the Sacrament. Sex after the first time is like blessing yourself with Holy Water as you enter the Church in commemoration of the Sacrament of Baptism 🙂
Click to expand...
Of course, but what I was saying is that my discussion is not addressing that point. I am addressing post-Sacrament.
 
40.png
cynic:
Quote:
Originally Posted by YinYangMom
**

When a single person decides to marry, they are inviting another person to join them in expressing their love for God. They are acknowledging that God sent this person to them so that together, as one, they can share in God’s love for humanity by offering themselves to Him in order to bring new life into the world. They empty themselves completely to God each time they embrace so that God may act through their union.

.

**

I just read this from a post of yours. You are welcome to your impersonal views with regards to marriage and love. One person (of the same faith) is pretty much as good as the next then, since love is an expression directly made to God, not another. Personal attachments are to be avoided. Intimacy only with our creator. The other person a means to this. Would you say this to your husand or wife?
“I love you only because I ought to, with no affection for you individually”
Click to expand...
Rather it should be “I love you because you reflect the image of the Divine.” This I think is what Yin is saying.
 
Are catholics sexually repressed? Sure, depending on how you define it.

All human beings are sexually repressed to some extent due to the consequences of original sin screwing up our ability to truly see sex for what it is.

Those who say it is only for making babies (and there have been some over the years) are just as wrong as those who see it as something they can merely use to get to ecstasy.

It’s inseparably about BOTH making babies AND giving one another pleasure. Even over 50. Even during infertile times. Because it is the same act. This isn’t to say that it is a CONSCIOUS thought every time. “Come here honey, it’s time for us to praise God by pleasing one another in this GLORIOUS way!” Of course it isn’t so intellectualized in the moment!

But underneath the passion, the love of the holy couple for one another really IS expressing the same creative love that God expressed when He created us. Even when they are infertile. Underneath the lust of fornication is merely the desire to use the other person for one’s own pleasure and release.
 
Thanks, guys, for defending my posts so well. 👍

I didn’t think I was off the mark, but you’re doing a great job filling in the gaps of my reasoning.
 
Of course, but what I was saying is that my discussion is not addressing that point. I am addressing post-Sacrament.
Click to expand...
Gotcha 👍

Sorry for my nit-picking, I didn’t mean to derail you in any way. I just like to emphasize the centrality of sexual union in Catholic Marriage. 😛
 
40.png
mosher:
Rather it should be “I love you because you reflect the image of the Divine.” This I think is what Yin is saying.
Click to expand...
Doesn’t everyone reflect the image of the Divine, being made in the image and likeness of God, and all that?

Doesn’t bode well for exclusivity.
 
At first my agnostic husband thought his newly converted Catholic wife was nuts. Repressed was hardly the word he used in describing our, er, reformed bedroom practices. But, after 2 years of my becoming a devout Catholic, our sex life is better than ever. He has also changed his views on abortion and is now pro-life, but is still, alas, agnostic.

The Cukierski Family Apostolate ( which can be found on line) has an excellent booklet about Catholic sex which I found very helpful in my formation. There’s lots of stuff in it that I would never have asked a priest in a million years.
 
I am guessing the OP’s question had to do more with “sheer enjoyment” than “baby making” to be blunt.
Merriam Webster defines being repressed as : 1 **: **subjected to or marked by repression; 2 : characterized by restraint . In that respect, I would say some not all catholics are repressed when it comes to sex. We are too worried if it falls under the "good catholic " heading.
~ Kathy ~
 
Penny Plain:
Doesn’t everyone reflect the image of the Divine, being made in the image and likeness of God, and all that?

Doesn’t bode well for exclusivity.
Click to expand...
Yes everyone is made Imago Dei but ones spouse reflects that in a particular way in each one to the others subjectivity.
 
Peace be with you.

I agree 100% with yin and I understand cyinc’s point as well.

While we are not repressed or are to reduce sex to an animal instinct, we are to join ourselves

to one another to ( as said before) complete the other.

Sex is a climax of being intimate with each other ( and may there be many). We have peaks and vallies in everything we do. While we are called to be intimate with God and all of His creation we are not able respond or be intimate in the same way with each. Is it depressive not to be sexually intimate with my children or my neighbor? Yet we are called to be intimate with them as well through God?

This does not mean that my wife and I called to go to church and have sex during Mass, but we are intimate and our children as well as everyone there join us in union with God.

At times we are called to pray together and times we are asked to go off by ourselves and pray more personally and intimately. This exactly what we are to do with our spouse. Both ways are intimate in their own way and both are with God in mind.Yes god does enter the mind even more to those who practice NFP because we learn to trust God in that department that much more.

Without God there is no trinity in the marriage and no need to be married. We would be able to go out and live out our lives as animals and reduce sex to instinct rather than a union. I did not fully understand or agree completely with all that until I myself decided to allow God to provide for us. The open we become to His for us the more intimate we become. 15 children 11still hear with us and we are more intimate with each other. Just let in the mix even if you call out His name.
 
Buffalo
My wife says we never have sex and she smacks me all the time for that too.You are right it’s a hard habbit for me to break. please forgive me.
 
My wife would probably laugh if I offered a “marital embrace,” but I suspect she’d know what I meant.
 
What is repressed is the full aspect of what sex is by the rest of the world. For Catholics not only is it a good roll in the sheets but it is also something sacred and holy and virtuous when done in proper context. What more does one want … something that good that have help you get to heaven (where do I sign up).
 
The Church does not have a repressed attitude. In fact, it celebrates the holiness of the act within the confines of Matrimony. Unfortunately, many members of the Church have a repressed attitude that I would define as modern Puritanism (if you aren’t having sex to procreate, you are sinning. And if you are trying to procreate, don’t enjoy yourself). Read some of the posts about sexual issues and you will see it throughout.

While these repressed attitudes are ok if they are right for certain couples, it is dangerous when these attitudes are presented as Church teaching or somehow more “holy” than those couples who enjoy fully the fruits of marital congugal love. It creates the perception that the Church is against sex. If the repercussions of this misperception were confined to this issue, the consequences would be miniscule. Unfortunately, when over-laid with the Church’s teaching on contraception, abortion, premarital sex, and homosexual sex, it becomes easy for some to dismiss these legitimate teachings with blanket statements “The RCC is against sex” and the teaching gets lost.

However, if the Church’s teaching as expressed in JPII’s Theology of the Body were as well known and as well-disussed as the abortion issue, I believe that we could truly address people’s hearts on these important issues of salvation and morality becuase they would know that the Church celebrates sex when done its proper and Holy context.
 
I don’t think Catholics are REpressed about sex.

I think they OBsessed about it.

Take a stroll through this website if you don’t beleive me. 🙂
 
40.png
Scanner:
I don’t think Catholics are REpressed about sex.

I think they OBsessed about it.

Take a stroll through this website if you don’t beleive me. 🙂
Click to expand...
God started it! Blame Him! 😉
 
40.png
mosher:
What is repressed is the full aspect of what sex is by the rest of the world. For Catholics not only is it a good roll in the sheets but it is also something sacred and holy and virtuous when done in proper context
Click to expand...
An optimistic and non depressing descrition at last. The cut and pasted post was badly written, it should say that certain catholics, as opposed to your church, have this “all feelings are bad” view of it.
 
40.png
cynic:
An optimistic and non depressing descrition at last. The cut and pasted post was badly written, it should say that certain catholics, as opposed to your church, have this “all feelings are bad” view of it.
Click to expand...
It is my belief that this stems from two areas:
  1. Catholic interaction with Calvanists
  2. The heresy of Jansenism
Some problems are hard to fix in the minds of the people.
 
40.png
sirknightron:
Buffalo
My wife says we never have sex and she smacks me all the time for that too.You are right it’s a hard habbit for me to break. please forgive me.
Click to expand...
I think if we never had sex, I’d be more tempted to smack my wife about a bit. Yes, that wife-beating habit can be hard to break. 😛

I think until one “tastes” of a great sacramental marriage, then premarital sexual adventures reveal that men tend to thing of “sex” and “love” as two different things. They know they want one of them, but they can’t even fathom the other. OTOH, premaritally sexually active women seem to be of the impression that one can “instill” or “buy” or even “verify” love in a man with sex. They might buy some allegiance, but it is not of a lasting nature, because at some point the guy figures out she’s not the only source of What He Wants Tonight.

Alan
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top