Why this obsolete  stance of no sex before marriage?

 

 

She was a certified Social Worker,married and divorced,plain looking and from a dominantly Catholic country. She sat uneasily and almost  plaintively verbalized the  tired old question:

     " What is wrong with sex outside of marriage?"

 

She was struggling to be  so  au courant--and hopefully  avante garde!  Yet, her struggle  was complicated  by her delight and involvement in the RCIA   process  in which she was  an instructor/teacher.  In her work with those  seeking entrance  into the holy Catholic  Church, she met  a candidate for Baptism  whom she described as " cute" and  with whom  she  had become  " romantically involved."  This is a contemporary euphemism to describe their sexual  involvement. The candidate had also been married and divorced, was  an alcoholic  and deeply in debt.

 

In her modern style of being " with "the candidate she had become so deeply attached to him that she had fantasies of marriage. But even in her semi-trancelike state, this  was problematical.  So true to the ideals    of the  " with it " Catholic, she was challenging the official teaching of the Church  on sexual morality.

 

The venerable  and  oft maligned  Sig Freud  wisely taught  that  " things are rarely  ONLY  what they seem...."  My client will speak  passionately about love and intimacy and  personal needs. She will   point  how passe  and useless  is the stance of the Church  on  sex and the mysteries thereof. She will constantly allege honesty,truth and reality  for her position. But under such posturing  is an  unattractive lonely, psychically crippled  female  desperately  and pathetically hoping  SOME ONE  will love her.  One cannot help but have sympathy, if not pity, for her.

 

I want to suggest to her that although her search for love and intimacy is thoroughly legitimate and her reaching out to others is very human,  her  mode of  SOLUTION  is --- from  the viewpoint of centuries of  painful experience------stupid !

 

Her attempts to medicate her pain are so understandable but so ill placed.  Without the context of committed married love---through pain and joy, riches and poverty, sickness and health, youth  and  age,  anger and peace,boredom and ecstasy-----the sex medication alone is not only  useless. It is damaging!

 

Society has found that it is through  FAMILY  that one's loneliness is assuaged  and one's  hunger for love is finally met.Family provides the safety  that is needed for the healthy rearing

and education of a child. To separate sex  ( with all its  excitements  and  pleasures ) from the  routinistic humdrum,worry and insecurity of human love  is the OLDEST MISTAKE  OF MANKIND.   It just doesn't work  Yet,because it  is  SO difficult to conquer inordinate desire ( or lust )  with reason and decency, God provides the way--- with His own command.

 

This command is articulated  through His own Church, the Catholic  Church. Indeed, a colleague of  mine, a Jewish  psychiatrist  with whom I taught a course   called  " Human  Sexuality" for  16 years  made  this telling and spontaneous  remark  in a class  hour.

" Only the Catholic  Church  has the power and strength to help people contain sexual impulses  outside of marriage."

 

Street  smarts  isn't enough. To tell my client that  her " cutie" can dump her unceremoniously

anytime  he tires of her  means nothing  in the period of her infatuation! The guts or viscera do not hear what the  intellect is shouting.  Is this a delusion for her?  There are NO legal ties.

One stud  told me ( in the presence of his unwed bedpartner  of one year)  " I owe her

NOTHING."   Heartbreak. Pain.   Emotional damage. They are all there.

 

When some  such damaged, dumped woman said to me   " If I had only  known  this,I never

would  have slept with him".    My question to her  is:  Who is obsolete  now?  Who is passe  now?  Who has the closed mind?  And eyes and ears?     IF YOU  HAD ONLY KNOWN?

Lady you don't have to be the proverbial rocket scientist to see it.  Sex outside marriage

USUALLY  doesn't work.

 

Lady, your old grandmother who didn't finish  grammar school was  smarter than you  have been !     But wait !   One bit of advice!   God is also smarter than you are. However, He loves you with an implacable  love. You  can safely risk everything with Him !

 

Take the risk. Be celibate unless you  marry.  And believe it or  not, there IS life after celibacy!

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