READER’S QUESTION
“Pat, an honest question to learn from the past. What should the church have done to prepare for the sexual revolution which has left a huge percentage of children born into instability and the killing of babies now used as contraception? At the time with their understanding what should they have done”?
PAT’S ANSWER
I’m not too sure if many people or organisations foresaw the coming of the sexual revolution. And if the RC church foresaw it they would have been condemning it as sinful.
I think the topic is best addressed from the point of view of the RC church’s views and teachings on human sexuality and how it reacted to the sexual revolution.
The Roman Catholic church has always had a flat earth approach to human sexuality – regarding it as bad and sinful and only necessary for human procreation.
It talked about the sexual imagination as being sinful and impure thoughts.
It talked about masturbation as “self pollution” and being a serious enough sin to bring you for hell for doing it once.
It talked about sex before marriage as being a mortal sin and that’s why its priests policed dance halls and rural ditches with the blackthorn stick.
It talked about homosexuality as being unnatural, against the natural law, gravely sinful and indeed a mental illness or disorder.
It regarded women giving birth as being “dirty” and as such a woman had to be “churched” after a birth to be cleansed before she could return to Mass and communion.
It regarded contraception as a mortal sin.
It regarded being sterilized or having “the snip” as being gravely sinful.
It sent pregnant girls and young women to be “imprisoned” in prisons policed by wicked and sexually frustrated nuns.
It ran homes for boys policed by priests and Christian brothers who beat them within an inch of their lives and then raped them.
Archbishop John Charles McQuaid reprimanded newspaper editors for printing adds selling women’s underwear where the outline of the women’s genitalia – the “mons veneris” was visible or semi visible.
Etc, etc, etc.
You might then go on to say that the sexual revolution was necessary because of views and teachings of the RC church and other bodies and societies like it.
There is little or no hope of these RC teachings changing anytime soon – and that does not really matter as they are becoming more and more irrelevant in our lives.
People have copped on to the RC crowd and they are more and more regarded as corrupt beyond redemption. Jesus himself could not redeem them because they do not see the need for their redemption. In fact they see themselves as having the keys of redemption. Its like Satan thinking he is god!
So let us concentrate on ourselves and our own morality in the context of our personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
This leads us to see that:
- The body is God’s creation as is our soul.
- The body is good – not dirty.
- Sex is good as it was God who created it.
- Sex is for pleasure – and even “recreation” as well as for the passing on of life.
- Homosexuality is a perfectly normal sexual orientation.
- Sex is always good when it is used to convey love and is only wrong when it is the use and abuse of another person.
- Masturbation is perfectly normal. It relieves stress and frustration and in fact the more ejaculations a man has the less chances he has of developing cancer of the prostate.
- Contraception is a medical and societal matter and is a matter between the two people using it.
- Sterilization and having the snip is a matter for individuals, couples and their doctors.
- I do not think that abortion is ever a “good”. In certain cases it can be the lesser of two evils.
Many of us who grew up brainwashed into having a negative attitude to our sexuality by popes, bishops, priests, brothers and nuns are in NEED of our own sexual revolution.
We need to integrate our sexuality and our spirituality.
We also need a sense of humour – even about our sexuality. On one occasion Woody Allen was asked if masturbation was a sin. He answered: “Only if its not done properly”.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 