As regular readers of this blog know, I am not exactly the spiritual guy to go to for correct advice on the Catholic perspective on sex.
I don’t actually have any issue with the Catholic position on sex, I believe it is indeed the best way for a married couple to relate to each other.
Thanks to Adam for this video, which he posted at his blog a little while back, and which I present here below:
It is definitely one of the better discussions I have seen on the topic, even though it is clear both are Novus Orco believers, so, I do take everything they say with a pinch of salt. It may be of interest to readers here that I give the video high marks, because my position on sex in Catholicism has at times been seen as wrong, or perhaps leading people to sin, or something along those lines, so, if you had a rather debauched sex life, as I did for most of my life, it might interest you to see the interview, since I found it very well done for the most part.
Given my first 40 plus years of sexual experiences prior to becoming a Catholic I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t going to be an easy transition. And there are some aspects of the theology behind it that I find difficult to reconcile with logic from a spiritual perspective. Nor is sex the only area I have this with, just because I am Catholic does not mean I don’t think about these things. For example, my perspective on Confession is that at a practical level it makes you into a better person, so it is a definitely good thing overall, and there is no reason not to do it or not to have it, but the idea that God would not be aware of my sin, or conversely, send to Hell despite my genuine repentance and atonement to the best of my ability if I did not manage to go to confession before I drop dead, is, to me, at the very least extremely unlikely, and honestly, I think erroneous. Nevertheless, if everyone said “oh that’s not how it works” pretty soon you’d get… well… Protestantism; because humans without rules are for the most part, no better than cattle or sheep without a Shepard to keep them in line.
Similarly, I have no problem with the Church’s teaching on sex, which in a nutshell (forgive the somewhat “scandalous” pun) is as follows:
- No contraception, ever, of any kind, except for NFP (Natural Family Planning) which in the related video starts around 1 hour 30 minutes or so and is well explained.
- No homosexuality.
- No refusal of sex from either spouse other than for serious reason, like illness, the potential duty to NOT have any more children, for whatever reason, and so on. The concept here is not that you are the other person’s sex slave, but rather that marriage itself is the gifting of yourself to the other person bodily and your body is literally now their property and vice versa. That, along with the reason of producing children, is literally a fundamental aspect of marriage. This of course is seen as evil, rape-adjacent, sexual slavery from all the degenerate feminists, but it is spelt out very clear in Corinthians 7: “3 The husband should meet his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should do the same for her husband. 4 The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Don’t refuse to meet each other’s needs unless you both agree for a short period of time to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come back together again so that Satan might not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” The level at which a man or woman understands this passage, in my experience, is pretty much indicative of their level of spiritual understanding of sex and intimacy in marriage.
Modernised women have now been “taught” for almost 100 years, that using their bodies to withhold sex from their husbands is “obviously” their “right” and the reality of it is that it has been “weaponised” to essentially cow men into a kind of sex-starved submission.
Even in my pre-Catholic days, I found that there was broadly speaking (and I will generalise a lot here) two types of women:
Those who instinctually understood that using sex as a bargaining tool in a relationship (other than perhaps as a joke in some role-play) was a despicable way to act, and never indulged in it.
Then there were the others, who, as my brother once crudely put it, thought their pussy had the key to an actual spaceship in it (he knew I cared nothing for gold if I could just get access to a small hyperspace capable starship!) and limiting access to it in order to get what they wanted (regardless if it was some specific (and usually unnatural) behaviour from me, or more crudely, material things) was how they operated. This second type of woman tried that tactic with me precisely once. Because the minute they tried it, the relationship was instantly and permanently over. Their shock at this reaction, which was delivered calmly and with absolute finality, was always somewhat amusing. And I can’t recall an instance where they did not then (sometimes immediately) try to reverse the situation, but there was never any coming back from it. A woman that behaved that way was in a space mentally that I wanted nothing to do with, and I strongly advise all men to take a similar approach in this regard. It’s nothing to do with “needing” sex so desperately, or being “angry” at the lack of it, and so on. It is to do with the very foundational issue of how she sees sex, intimacy and indeed marriage as a whole and in context.
Frankly, I find an actual prostitute that says it will cost X amount for a set time to be with her sexually, to be less offensive to the entire concept of intimacy than a woman that uses sex as a tool to “control” or manipulate a man. And similarly, I find any man that submits to such behaviour to be unworthy of being called a man.
There was also another type of woman, and these were those that unfortunately had been sexually abused, and given the numbers, it is inevitable that I came across everything from incest to gang-rape. One positive aspect of it was that as far as I know, every woman I was with that had that happen, felt comfortable enough with me to share it, and a second positive aspect is that, again, in I think almost all cases, the resulting physicality between us, helped them resolve many issues.
There was also, a notable example or two of women that had been sexually abused (rather extremely, really) who, while not at all shy or withholding sexually, at least with me, did have certain difficulties, and occasional really strange behaviours, and I am not referring to various kinks, which can be understandable, but I mean sudden bouts of sadness, depression and so on. These were more difficult aspect to improve rapidly, but in any case, open and honest communication always improved things for them, and did so even in their subsequent relationships, which they did let me know about in most cases.
Now, setting aside the cases where sexual abuse was present, and given our secularised approach to sex in today’s day and age, it is interesting to note that the women that were most balanced sexually, instinctively never treated sex as a bargaining chip.
It is a quite fascinating topic really, and one that older women (grandma aged ones) with successful families that are happy and well-balanced will (if you have their confidence) unashamedly tell you that their husbands were never turned away from their bodies. Conversely, a lot of supposedly “Catholic” women, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, will be prudish and miserly with their bodies even from their husbands.
The women have been taught this is their God-given right as a “strong independent woman”, their “dignity” as a human being and not being a sex object and so on. Totally inverting the reality of the issue.
It is precisely because sex has become transactional and objectified in the extreme, that most people have absolutely no idea of what an actually properly intimate sexual act can feel like, or even is, that they assume and “teach” that as with any disposable property, you have to “work” to get it. An analogy might be making your four year old “work” before he can get access to eating food for his dinner. It is an absurd inversion of the concept of a sexual relationship, as much as making your little child work for his food would be an inversion of a parent’s duty.
So even mentioning this aspect of essentially unrestricted access to your spouse’s body, gets you labelled as some kind of sexual slave-trader, probable human trafficker, or whatever.
The reality is, of course, as usual, quite different. Although in the modern day, the pleasure of truly gifting your body to another has, for the most part, in many women, been reduced to a pleasure in being especially submissive during the sex act, the reality is that a true and natural submission to your spouse (husband or wife as they may be) is of incomparably finer and deeper beauty than a mere sex act, however “accomplished” that might be.
It is a difficult concept to transmit to another human being that has not experienced both the degraded version (which almost everyone today that is asexually active knows only too well) and the correct one, but the difference is obvious and unforgettable once experienced.
The unfortunate (and intentional) barriers to understanding these things have been hammered into all of us with such persistence and over all of our lives, that regaining a properly ordered sexuality is going to be quite the task, and will require conscious effort. But I assure you it is worth it.
I hope the video helps clarify many things for a lot of people.
