Replies

The Church is pretty consistent on everything across the board. What is the purpose of sex? For pleasure only? Or to procreate? Which is the responsibility of a man and a woman, who create a family structure through marriage. Condoms and other birth control devices remove the procreation aspect from sex, which goes against the reason why God created it. It becomes only pleasure, which is also what same-sex partnerships are, as well as male-female sex outside of marriage.

It sounds as if ideal Catholic sex is short, infrequent, and utterly devoid of any pleasure -- and if you accidently feel some, it's a sin.

I guess my take wasn't quite clear. Catholics do not believe sex is only for pleasure. This is the main gripe of the whole deal, which brings about the opposition to contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.

This does not mean that they don't consider it pleasurable. They just know that it comes with the added responsibility of procreation. You cannot separate these two things. You simply cannot. It is a sin against God, who never intended for them to be separate.

It sounds as if ideal Catholic sex is short, infrequent, and utterly devoid of any pleasure -- and if you accidently feel some, it's a sin.

Nice. Devout Catholics have lots children. How do you think those kids got here? Practice makes perfect as they say. Nowhere does the Church teach that intercourse must not be pleasurable. You're picking that up from the conventional wisdom of our Catholic-hating culture.

And you do realize that wearing a condom actually can make the act less pleasurable, don't you? Personally, I'd rather not treat my wife like a prostitute.

Just the opposite. The Church teaches that marital intercourse makes a person, in fact, holier. The act is "meritorious" when it's a self-giving and not an act of just taking.

The pleasure of sex is certainly physical, but limiting the scope of pleasure to whatever nerve ends you can stimulate is like going to a four-star restaurant and limiting your meal to whatever shows up in the bread basket. The Church believes that the soul AND the body are good, and to limit the scope of the pursuit of pleasure JUST to the body is plainly foolish when there is much more in addition that gives man pleasure and fulfillment.

So to boil it down, the Church says, "have as much sex as you and your spouse want, but don't forget that the end purpose of sex is procreation. And disabling this purpose through contraception or selfish disposition is a sin."

The notion that the ideal Catholic sex is short, infrequent, and devoid of pleasure is an utter fallacy. In fact, there was a survey taken last year (I don't recall what outfit sponsored it - but it was NOT a Catholic group) which found that Catholic couples have the most self-described satisfying sex lives out of any other group, religiously-affiliated or otherwise. I'll have to Google it and see if I can find the report, but it pretty much echoed what the Church has been saying all along...