Evangelical Sex VS. Catholic Sex

The differences run deeper than you'd think.

(Note: this post is definitely meant for adults. I don't get crass or graphic, but it's a mature and sensitive subject). 

I've been browsing my local library's ebook app and they have a surprisingly large amount of books on sex in marriage written by Evangelical Christian authors. I borrowed one out of curiosity, and was shocked by what I read. I read one or two more, and then decided to re-read some of the Catholic sexuality books on my shelf and compare the two understandings of what sex is.

In a nutshell, I found that we (Catholics and Evangelicals) agree on several things, but deeply disagree on others. Though we're often in the trenches side by side when it comes to cultural moral questions, what we don't agree on gets at the heart of what each believes sexuality is, and is for. 

Let's imagine for a moment that two well catechized Evangelical and Catholic people decide to get married. Both faith traditions agree that marriage is between a man and a woman, that it should be monogamous, and that sex is something for married people only. Most of our prerequisites for who can have sex and how unmarried people are to act are the same, so there's no conflict.

However, once the couple is married they find that each's understanding of what sex ought to look like are very different. Both traditions agree that pornography and abortion are evil, but Evangelicals believe that mutual (and in certain cases, solo) masturbation and artificial birth control within marriage are morally beneficial behavior. Catholics forbid both with the strongest language possible (under pain of mortal sin, which means it's more on the level of killing someone than on the level of laughing at your boss's unfunny joke).

What are the core differences between the two understandings that lead to this?

The popular Evangelical view on sex within marriage seems to be that it is primarily for the pleasure of the couple (“God Himself invented sex for our delight. It was his gift to us, designed for pleasure” (Intended for Pleasure)), that it essential for the health of the relationship to have as much of it as you reasonably can, and that sexual fulfillment and strong sexual drives should be regarded as an important need to be met. Sexual contact seems to be a gift from God primarily to help the couple bond and for their enjoyment. So long as the couple is both on board with a certain action and no one is forced to do something against their will, a wide variety of genital sexual expression is allowable and should be celebrated. 

I found it interesting that there was a lot of talk and emphasis on the woman being open to and encouraging of her husband's sexual advances. While husbands are urged to be understanding and told that they have a responsibility to make sex pleasurable for their wives, wives are told that sexually fulfilling their husbands is a key to unlocking greater love and care from them “if you fulfill him sexually, he'll go to Walgreens at 10:00 at night to buy anything you want him to buy. He'll be the one who says, “Honey, I'll get up and you stay in bed” when the baby cries at three in the morning” (Sheet Music). They're told to see their husband's sex drive as an essential need that ought to be met even when full intercourse is impossible, “it’s called a hand job and it's very permissible in marriage…just a little something to keep your guy happy and satisfied" (Sheet Music).

The assumption seems to be that much of married tension on sex stems from timidity, stinginess, or sexual dysfunction on the part of the wife, while the man is assumed to have a strong sex drive from the onset. Though the husband ought to be kind and loving to his wife, be sensitive to her needs, and to help with the housework, the wife needs to be sure she's taking whatever steps she needs to to be sexually generous, “I believe this is the best advice on finding sexual fulfillment-- the decision to serve our husbands.” (The Wholehearted Wife)

Something that struck me when I read these books is that there was almost no mentioning of babies and sex being linked beyond some suggestions for birth control, an admonition that fear of pregnancy can be a deterrent to sex, and a couple suggestions for sexual positions to use during pregnancy or to achieve pregnancy. This is very different from Catholic writing on sex. 

Coming from a Catholic perspective, there is some in common in the advice given. It's well understood that the emotional health of a marriage will be reflected in the bedroom (particularly for the woman), that sex bonds two people together, and that the pleasure of both parties during sex is important, "it is necessary to insist that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing sexual excitement in the man alone, but that climax must be reached…with both partners fully involved ". (Love and Responsibility)

In both traditions, sexual expression is seen as an expression of love and care for the other that involves giving them pleasure. Similar to the Evangelical understanding, married Catholics are encouraged to address whatever misconceptions that they may have about sex being “dirty” or “wrong”, and to embrace their sexuality as something God created good, “When a couple has a healthy, Catholic vision of God as a joyful, gentle, passionate, respectful lover, the couple can discover a freedom that allows them to experience a sensual, free…playful, joyful sexual relationship without fear of using each other…” (Holy Sex).

That said, much of the rest of it came as a pretty strong culture shock.

Catholics believe that the reproductive, or life generating, aspect of human sexual expression is so integral and important to it that every sexual act involving genitalia has to be open to the possibility of a baby. This does NOT mean that every sexual act must try for or result in a baby; it's even permissible to perform the sexual act at a certain time in a woman's cycle to avoid fertility. But there can be no artificial means of rendering the act sterile (no barrier, chemical, or withdrawal methods), and no masturbatory activity to orgasm for the man (and none for the woman unless it's followed or proceeded by an orgasm from the man while his genitalia is inserted into hers in the same lovemaking session). 

The reasons for this are more complex than you might think. 

For all that the Evangelical books talk about pleasure and intimacy, they seem to indicate that sexual pleasure is good simply because God created it. While this is certainly true, Catholics go a step further. Not only is sex good, it's a sign of the ecstasy of Heaven. It's a sign and symbol of how God gives Himself to us and how we are to give ourselves to Him, “That Sex is intended to be a physical sign of God's own passion for each lover is another sense in which sex is sacramental" (Holy Sex, see also Ephesians 5:32). In sex, we're supposed to love one another like God loves us.

Sex is supposed to be freely entered into, a total gift of self, faithful to the other person in thought and deed, and fruitful, or open to life (Jason Evert). This reflects God's freely entered into, total (as evidenced by the cross), ever faithful, fruitful (for where God is, there is life) love for us. 

There's no halfway mark for sex with Catholics, every gift of self has to be complete.  This is also why we have celibate vocations (priests, nuns, etc).  Either your love to God is a free, total, faithful and fruitful complete gift of self via a sacrifice of sexual intimacy for the sake of the kingdom (see Matthew 19:12), or else it's given to God by practicing a complete gift of sexual intimacy with your spouse. 

Sexuality is meant to be given as a gift to someone else. Another person gets all of you or none of you; there's no denying someone else a part of you or rejecting a part of them, . A person's fertility is an integral part of them, and so seeking to suppress or get rid of it is disrespectful both to the image of what God means sex to be, and to the person. Refusing to accept their fertility is seen as refusing to accept the fullness of who they are, “When a couple is closed to life…the couple accepts only the parts of each other that make them feel good and rejects all the parts of each other that promise the commitment and responsibility of real love.” (Holy Sex).

Sex is also seem as sacred because it is the means that God uses to co-create new human beings with the couple. The ability to bring forth human life through our actions is the closest we come to participating in God's act of creation. That's a joyful thing, but also a very serious one that can't be treated lightly.

Because of this, when a Catholic couple is facing seasons where intercourse is not possible (which happen regularly when you chart cycles and time intercourse to avoid pregnancy, especially post partum when those cycles are long and hard to interpret), they don't have genital contact. No contraception, no hand jobs, no oral sex, no masturbating. To do so would be less than the total gift of self that the sacredness of sex and the worth of both the man and woman demands. The sex drive of both is something that they're periodically called to deny for the sake of their family, rather than an essential need that has to be met in whatever way possible. 

This isn't to say that Catholic sex isn't ever playful, adventurous, or goofy. Couples are free to (and encouraged to, at least in the books I read) experiment, flirt, and fully enjoy the gift of sensuality in sex. It's not a serious occasion where we process into the bedroom carrying candles, chanting Latin and burning incense or anything like that (though I suppose you could if you wanted to). Even much of the behavior that Evangelical couples pursue to completion we can engage in the course of foreplay. 

 We're just not allowed to end with anything less than the full thing once our genitalia get involved. This is seen as essential to fully respecting both the sacred and sacramental nature of sex and the full dignity of both the couples.

Both Catholic and Evangelical writers stress that mutual love and respect are essential for healthy marriages and sex lives, and both assert that sexual intimacy is something to be celebrated and enjoyed. The differences between how we understand sex are not slight, but perhaps there's enough of a shared vision of how husbands and wives ought to treat one another to get the conversation started.

As an outsider to the Evangelical world, I'm well aware that I may have missed some important context. If you happen to be Evangelical and have any sources or books that would better explain the proper practice of Christian sexuality, please suggest them in the comments below.

Bibliography:

-Evangelical Sex

Sheet Music by Dr. Kevin Leman

The Wholehearted Wife by Erin Smalley

Intended for Pleasure by Dr. Ed Wheat

-Catholic Sex

Holy Sex! By Dr. Greg Popcak

Love and Responsibility by Karol Woytija

Good News about Sex and Marriage by Christopher West

And a YouTube video by Jason Evert-

https://youtu.be/EIeXKURpXaY

Edit: 12/3/24
A practical resource on sexuality from a Catholic perspective that I just found and am very impressed by is Vines in Full Bloom. Less theology (though still informed by it!) and more practical “how to”.

Edit: 12/6/24

I’m on a role with this editing thing, evidently…
An Evangelical source several people in the comment section have been pointing me towards are the works of Sheila Wray Gregoire. Apparently she’s written several things fairly critical of how sexuality is often taught in Evangelical circles and offers an alternate take on it. I see some stuff on her site that makes my Catholic self wince a little, but she most definitely has a healthier take on sexual dynamics in marriage than the other Evangelical sources I cited in this piece.

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