Opinion: Time for a rethink by the Catholic Church on the sins of sex

By Meg Perkins
Courier-Mail
June 03, 2015

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-time-for-a-rethink-by-the-catholic-church-on-the-sins-of-sex/story-fnihsr9v-1227380082587

A requiem Mass at Brisbane’s Cathedral of St Stephen. About 88 per cent of Catholics have effectively turned their backs on the faith in not attending Sunday Mass. Photo by Sarah Keayes

Victims of sexual abuse (L-R) David Ridsdale, Stephen Woods and Andrew Collins arrive at the Royal Commission Into Child Abuse in Ballarat. Photo by Norm Oorloff

KAREN Brooks recently asked why the Catholic community has been silent in the face of ongoing revelations of sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

It seems the alleged cover-ups by bishops and archbishops, as detailed in the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, have left many Catholics shocked.

Only 12 per cent of Catholics now attend Mass on Sundays, and, as we were taught that missing Mass is a mortal sin, this means that 88 per cent of Catholics have turned their backs on the faith.

The problem with sex, sin and crime in the Catholic Church is much greater than most people realise.

Orthodox teaching holds that all sex is sinful unless a man and a woman are married and intending to create a child.

Using contraception to prevent new life being formed is a sin. Having sex for pleasure is a sin.

I don’t know any Catholics who believe this today, but 30 years ago I heard from married Catholic friends that they did not go to Holy Communion on Sundays if they had had sex the night before.

For single people, all sex with anyone, even yourself, is sinful. Masturbation is sinful, sexual fantasies are sinful and using pornography is sinful.

The fact is that all Catholics are forbidden to take part in any kind of sexual activity, except when making babies with the first person they married. Divorced and remarried people are forbidden to have sex with their legal spouses.

I am not aware that any of these old-fashioned rules have been changed. American bishops even now are trying to stop health insurance companies paying for contraception. Certainly, premarital, extramarital, and same-sex affairs are still regarded as sinful by the church, but in today’s world it seems that many “lay” Catholics are not particularly concerned about the teachings of the church. They follow their own consciences with regard to sexual matters, and they may be better for it.

For the priests, forbidden to marry in 1139AD, any expression of sexuality is absolutely forbidden. We have to assume that many priests confess to the sins of masturbation, sexual touching of others, and sexual intercourse, at regular intervals and that their mentors, older and more experienced priests, assure them that God has forgiven them and that they can start work again tomorrow with a clear conscience. This is what the forgiveness of sins means in the Catholic Church, and to most Christians. In addition, the church promises secrecy or confidentiality, with the priests carefully observing the seal of the confessional.

Everybody knows abusing children is not only a sin but a crime – but the church had to deal with the fact that homosexual behaviour was still a crime in parts of Australia until 1997. We cannot imagine any Catholic bishop reporting to police two priests who had had a love affair.

It is entirely possible that the Catholic Church may have been “covering up” and protecting same-sex lovers for centuries. It may have been following exactly the same disciplinary procedures whether it was dealing with affairs with men or women, or child sexual abuse.

In 1962 Pope John XXIII issued a letter instructing the bishops on how to respond to the “crime of solicitation”, a priest “tempting” another person (man, woman or child) “toward impure and obscene matters”. The bishops were instructed to conduct inquiries “in a most secretive way”, and were to be “restrained by a perpetual silence … under the penalty of excommunication”. This meant that if anyone involved in the discipline of a sexually offending priest talked about the matter he would be excluded from the church.

So Catholic priests and bishops feared for their immortal souls if they disobeyed the rules of secrecy and silence. For religious people, religious laws will always trump secular laws, and in 2010 it was necessary for the Vatican to specifically instruct the Catholic bishops to report sexual offenders to the police.

Unfortunately, this turnaround does not address the larger issue of the place of sexuality in the church and the urgent need for Catholic priests to be allowed to marry and to learn to enjoy their sexuality without inappropriate guilt.