I'm so happy to see someone write this!! The Catholic understanding of sex is so beautiful and has led me to a deeper level of surrender. If sex is just for pleasure, and the procreative aspect can be left out, then why aren't same-sex acts also permissible?
I think there’s a position between the Catholic version and the most (among a spectrum) liberal Evangelical position: sex is for pleasure/intimacy and the possibility procreation, but need not be entered into for the possibility of procreation, i.e., birth control or other non-intercourse climactic activities are moral.
I don’t think procreation is the reason why same-sex activity is wrong. Same-sex activity is wrong because God set up humanity as male and female – that is the order and there is no other – and marriage is, among other things, a metaphor for Christ and his church. There’s no sameness between Christ and his church as there is no sameness between male and female.
Also, the intimacy of male–female sexual pleasure, I think, mirrors the intimacy of the Trinity and the intimacy of Christ in us and we in Christ. See John 17. Note that in those intimacies you have persons of different position, not same positions. And there’s no procreation in those intimacies. A man was made for a woman and a woman for a man.
On celibacy, it’s my opinion that it should be optional for ministers of the Gospel and not required. It’s personal and it’s the very rare calling from God, but unnecessary to ministry. (And it certainly foments all manner of aberration – for the vast majority of people cannot seem to avoid sexual contact. It would seem God intended us to have sexual gratification but, as they say, the fire needs to be in the fireplace.)
We agree marriage is meant to be a reflection of Christ and His church. That said, the relationship between Christ and His church isn't a sterile one. The last thing Christ said to us before ascending was (paraphrased), “go and make more Christians, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” That relationship was never meant to be a static thing- it's literally meant to make more believers.
You said about the relationships in the Trinity:“There's no procreation in those intimacies”
The Nicene Creed: “The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and Son, He is adored and glorified.”
In at least Catholic theology, the Trinitarian relationship is fruitful. The Trinity is not sexual, but insofar as sexuality is a reflection of the life of the Trinity it is ABSOLUTELY fruitful- the Holy Spirit flows from the love between the Father and Son. And for sexuality to be fruitful, it has to allow for the creation of new life.
And on celibacy…there are whole convents of nuns and religious sisters, who are not ministers, who live a celibate lifestyle and do it joyfully. One of my closest friends is a religious sister; so far as I can tell, she loves her vocation.
I think you make some good points. I didn’t mean to imply that Christ and his church was a sterile relationship or the Trinity was a set of sterile relationships. But these relationships do not produce new persons between the participants. Yes, when we are born again we are new persons but then we’re in the church. And the metaphor is going to break down somewhere.
I was trying to make the point that the possibility of procreation was not a requirement for sex, and I thought comparing the metaphor to the intimacy of the divine relationships we’re good, non-procreative examples of intimacy.
You cite the rhythm method as a legitimate birth control method. And, of course, that’s a practice of avoiding procreation during sex. Meaning, the sex is for pleasure and intimacy but not procreation during that timing. What’s the difference between that and using chemical or physical devices to prevent procreation? I don’t think there is any and attempts to differentiate. the two are going to sound like lawyers advocating positions for clients. In other words, both methods volitionally avoid procreation while having sex.
Regarding celibacy, my only point was it should be no requirement for ministry (or any other calling). It should be optional and only for those truly called to not marry (which experience tells me is rare). If the nuns you cited are truly called, then more power to them in the spirit. But – and it’s a big but, the institutionalization of celibacy is fraught with all manner of trouble. I also believe that many people who pursue celibacy have unresolved issues driving them to the celibate decision, including the fear of closeness and the intimate giving of their bodies. To me, that’s why institutional provision creates havens for trouble. What did the reverend mother say to Maria? “Our abbey is not to be treated as an escape.”
Great article I had no idea sex between Evangelical and Catholics are different. According to the Bible in 1 Corinthians 7:4 says' The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Same-sex acts totally ignore why God made sex; while sex is for pleasure, it's also for children. They ignore the existence of children. And they ignore, or never figured out, that sex and children can lead to unity and character and closeness.
Its not that sex is *just* for pleasure. As a (non-married) non-Catholic myself, maybe my bias is getting in the way, but I doubt this.
First off, even if we assumed sex was just for pleasure, it doesn't mean God didn't place any boundaries or didn't command that some pleasures were allowed and permitted while others were forbidden and unnatural. The very fact that God made them man and woman "And what He has put together, no man may take apart," and established marriage to be this, is itself an endorsement of certain pleasures and the banning of others. That's to say, the evangelicals and the like never forgot this, and so will never accept their bit of reasoning on sex being turned against them in support of gay sex.
Secondly, its not that the connection between sex and children was ignored. A sterile marriage is still considered a kind of tragedy or curse. Its that children were de-emphasized. In part because of the practical matter of addressing an audience of married couples (possible newly weds), and in part because of a less considered matter of "why think a lot about something that happens without thinking?"
Its like eating food or grapes, if you want to be specific. God made all these things, both for our needs and our enjoyment, for which we are thankful. He invented eating, so, we take some delight in eating stuff and consider it nice. But, for all the pleasure eating may bring, everyone must still think the guy who eats dirt or paper, or gulps down seasoning by the handful, was deviant or a lunatic. At the same time, though, even when the correct aim of our natural, God-given, urges is being satisfied and we're eating actual food as we should, no deep thought is involved.
I imagine its next to impossible to worship or philosophize on the beauty of pro-creation when you're carnally fondling each other and working towards and past a climax.
Actually, when you're using NFP rather than contraception, you are ABSOLUTELY thinking about co-creation leading up to having sex in almost every instance, because you have to decide whether how fertile you are factors in. And when you are fertile, and know you're fertile, and go into sex with that mindset that you may very well be making a baby tonight...it elevates things. I'll leave it at that.
Current Protestant here but I’m exploring Catholicism and it seems everyone I’m reading lately is Catholic. There definitely is a presupposition within evangelical spaces that men are sexual and women aren’t. There is always an assumption that men have the higher sex drive. So much “if we just coax the woman the right way she’ll put out” kind of attitude. It’s quite disgusting. And yes, there is def an assumption that you’ll use some form of birth control. We currently have 4 girls and I’m often asked if we’re done. Personally, I think it’s pretty bizarre to ask a married person why they have sex. But apparently, amongst 20 or so couples in my bible church small group all but 2 men (my husband and another man who recently had his 6th kid) have had vasectomies.
The thing I found most disturbing in my research was the implication that you need to meet all your husband's sexual needs to the point of non reciprocal sexual action on demand (the whole quote about the hand job being the most obvious example) if you want any chance of having YOUR (non sexual ) needs met. Wives are often so much more genuinely needy and vulnerable than their husbands in a marriage (the first few weeks after childbirth spring to mind) that this honestly seems just straight up exploitive.
The quote from Saint Paul is “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church” not “husbands, love your wives when they readily put out.” It seemed very tit for tat and transactional.
Sheila Gregoire has been addressing this deeply unhealthy teaching in Evangelical marriage literature with her books (The Great Sex Rescue), website (baremarriage.com) and podcast. As a former evangelical and current Catholic I find her writing helpful in unpacking some of the unhealthy teachings I absorbed when I was younger, but you’re right that the evangelical understanding is fundamentally different from the Catholic teaching even when the unhealthy aspects are removed.
I was going to say this myself, because many of us were given horrible information - or lack of - about sex, especially about sex within marriage. Girls were told to be good and preserve their virginity at all cost, and then expected to be, in essence, seasoned prostitutes when we got married. I married in 1975, and received as a bridal shower gift the latest and greatest book on how to be submissive and to fulfill every sexual whim of our husbands. Sex was always about the husband. Sheila Gregoire has been carefully and methodically through research to change what women were told from the Protestant and nondenominational pulpit.
I married as a Protestant while as a closet Catholic. It was after my divorce and then re-entering the dating scene, I began to study sex. I found Gregoire in 2015, along with some other excellent sex and marriage ministry folks. It was then that I began teaching myself about sex in the Catholic marriage. I appreciate the research you have done and in sharing the resources you explored. I’m surprised you didn’t include at least an introductory Theology of the Body. Thank for what you have done in opening up the topic for discussion.
One hopes that your readers will think about how Catholicism elevates sex within marriage to something worthy of the Sacrament of Marriage.Because Catholic sexual intercourse must be open to life, the purpose of what is beautiful and sacred within the marriage bed fulfills the Lord’s commandment “to be fruitful and multiply”. God did not command husbands and wives to feel good and thwart the purpose of married sex to be procreative.
And there is considerable evidence to show that using birth control medicines and devices can be harmful mostly to women, who bear the burden of preventing pregnancy. Followed correctly, the Catholic methods of Natural Family Planning pose no health risks to women or men.
Statistically speaking, women orgasm at dramatically lower rates than men, so I am not sure where your “1 in 1000 men” statistic is coming from. Women don’t withhold sex when they enjoy it, when it is the culmination and fulfillment of complete self-gift on the part of both spouses. If women are uninterested in sex with their husbands, I think the obvious first step is to ask why, not shame them into putting out.
Saint Paul specifically says that both man and woman are required, not to withhold sex from one another except for a time by mutual consent. That means that the man is equally obligated to ensure that his wife enjoys the marital embrace as the wife is to ensure that the husband enjoys the marital embrace. That means that if the man is consistently climaxing and the woman consistently isn’t, he is withholding from her something that he is obligated to provide as her husband essentially he’s using her body to masturbate rather than fulfilling his marital obligations.
It sounds to me like you’re saying that the woman’s obligation is sex while the man’s obligation is money. Usually, we call that prostitution not marriage.
Not until we've done the proper thing as people debating ought to do and defined our terms, no. I'm not going to agree to your definition of obedience sight unseen.
Our Lady obeyed, yes, but she asked clarifying questions first. Most notably, "how can this be, since I have not known man?". She was engaged to be married -- a safe assumption would be that the child foretold would be Joseph's. The fact that she's specifically asking this implies, "I'm a virgin and was planning on staying that way. Is that no longer the case?"
In other words, yes, she obeyed, but after clarifying that doing so wouldn't be putting her vocation as she understood it to be in jeopardy. And Gabriel didn't strike her dumb for asking that, even though he struck Zachariah dumb for asking a question.
What happened between Mary and the Holy Spirit was a collaboration. Mary gave her PERMISSION and entered into it WITH God, not as a slave, but as a partner.
So yes, I'll obey in that I will partner with my spouse towards God's will. Not obey HIS (my husband's will) independent of my own discernment.
So instead of addressing my interpretation of Scripture, you're resorting to personal attacks. Got it.
My husband trusts me to run the house. I trust him to provide for our family. We make big life decisions together. He wants my opinion, and we wrestle through things together.
We've been happily married for more than ten years. It's working just fine for us, thanks.
I'm done talking to you. As I posted on another thread, please go somewhere else now. If you continue to be a condescending jerk in the comments, I will block you.
I'm just trying to figure out why someone professing to be Catholic is arguing with me about whether a woman ought to be willing to give her man a hand job if she's unable to have sex with him.
Don't know if you actually read the article I wrote (or my original comment in this thread), but that's the reference I was making. Masturbation and sexual completion outside the marital act has been a mortal sin since well before Vatican II, so I think it's fair to say, that yes, there are SOME limits on the woman's obligation to be sexually available to her husband, and the Church prior to the 1960s upheld that. A woman should not commit sin with her husband to keep him from committing sin on his own later.
Now past that...not a conversation I'm willing to have with you, since you've already stated I'm not worth listening to or fairly engaging because I'm a member of "the fairer sex". If the gender I am makes me unworthy of actual discussion and debate, than let's save both of ourselves some time.
This is fascinating! I have attended evangelical churches for over a decade, though I have never read a book on evangelical sex (or Catholic sex! Or actually any sex books at all.) And I’ve only read one evangelical marriage book. It was the worst book ever- Dr Emerson Eggerichs Love and Respect. He does include a short section on sex (under men’s needs, of course) and shares an anecdote about how women naturally do not enjoy sex, but we had ought to put up with it because our husbands need it and of course it is over so quickly.
I’ve also sat through women’s ministry events during which we were counseled by the pastor’s wife that sex for men is like talking for women- they need sex, we need to gab. I feel strongly that this is baloney. I can think of lots of reasons why a woman might not enjoy sex (maybe she is one of the one in four women who has been sexually abused or assaulted in this country. Maybe she has issues that can be addressed by a competent gynecologist. Maybe her husband is just lousy in bed and they can work on that…)
Another fascinating thing is that the above was all experienced in white evangelical church. We recently started attending Black evangelical church and it is completely different regarding women and sex. There is definitely still an expectation that we are in control of our family’s size, but it’s expected that women enjoy sex. I’m really grateful for this. I did not grow up in white evangelical churches, but I can see how there is this culture of shame around sex for women.
I had no idea church was going to be so complicated when I became a Christian.
The Catholic perspective on sex is so interesting! I have literally never heard that. I do know evangelicals who have lots and lots of babies but I would say that birth control has been tacitly or explicitly encouraged the entire time I’ve been in church. I grew up in a mainline denomination and it was definitely strongly encouraged there and over 3 kid families got plenty of side eye. When I got pregnant after 11 years of unexplained infertility, my mom’s first response was to ask me what I was going to do birth control after the baby was born.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience!! This is actually super interesting.
I definitely get the impression that reading a whole bunch of books on this stuff isn't normal for most people, lol. It's actually super helpful and enlightening to hear just what a normal, lived experience is with this stuff. The differences between white and black church culture is super interesting too...I wonder how I could research that?
That Love and Respect book sounds so bad that it almost sounds like a parody. That's insane. (And un-biblical...did the guy ever read Song of Songs?!)
Sheila Gregoire addressed Love and Respect specifically as one of the most problematic marriage books in the Evangelical world. She has a summary of the issues with that and other books on her website.
I grew up Evangelical and converted to Catholicism in my twenties (right around the time I got married, ha!) -- the biggest difference regarding sex was the "gift of self" paradigm (Catholic) vs. "reward that married people get" paradigm (Evangelical). "If you can just wait, everything is going to be fine. But if you don't wait, you'll ruin the reward. It won't be as good." That said, I do remember an Evangelical youth pastor telling us that sex was just part--and a small part at that-- of the experience of married love. I remember being baffled - "Then why do we talk about it so much?" This does align with the later understanding that I gained from some (very, very surface level) understanding of ToB, which doesn't get to things like sex (and other ways the gift is lived out) until it's well established that our bodies are gifts, given to the world.
Thank you so much for writing this -- this must have taken so much time, and it's so well done. I'm glad you did it, and I love that you ended with the fact that we have enough commonalities for conversation.
A wonderful weave of Catholic intimacy/sacrament. Something I noted missing (since my wife and I are well past birthing years) is the "rules" remain the same for the older married. And, who knows (Sarah and Elizabeth come to mind) what lengths God goes to for couples to remain open to miraculous conceptions.
Also, your difficult path of kindness to what you posit as Evangelical thinking is not just for Evangelicals. Many Catholics have the same understanding. Maturity in faith is a never-ending process, so behaving with sacred attention remains important even when we know these things either early or late in a marriage.
Appreciate this! While I don’t agree with every aspect of Catholic teachings on sex, I find that even as a Protestant I agree with far more of it than I do with mainline evangelical teaching expressed in the quotes you shared. It’s so much richer and more biblical. But I do know lots of everyday evangelicals who live out an understanding of sexuality closer to a Catholic (and I think more biblical) view. For better or for worse, the freedom most of our denominations ascribe to (or the silence on the matter) means that there is a wide variety in the convictions and practices of evangelicals.
I'd be curious what parts of it you don't agree with, and how you don't see them as Biblical. Evangelical Christianity is something I'm very much outside of, but I'd really like to understand. Not least of which because more and more it seems like Catholics and Evangelicals agree on what living a Christian life should look like even while our styles of worship remain really different.
To your question - The Bible isn’t clear enough about “family planning” for me to be as dogmatic about it as the Catholic Church is. I guess avoiding sex around ovulation seems just as artificial to me as using a barrier or pulling out or any other sexual act that doesn’t end with a man ejaculating in a vagina. Allowing those things + NFP or not allowing family planning at all seem to both be positions that are more coherent. I realize you guys have a whole philosophy that supports your position and I see it as compelling enough to be a really beautiful ideal, but not compelling enough to define anything outside of NFP as mortal sin or to account for all the complex situations a person or a couple might find themselves in and the different ways Scripture comes to bear on their situation.
A couple real life examples I’m specifically thinking of:
1) A woman with long, irregular cycles - often this means very few “safe” days with weeks or months of abstinence. How do we also obey 1 Corinthians 7?
2) The husband and wife are not in agreement. Perhaps one is an unbeliever, perhaps this topic just wasn’t on the radar when they got engaged, or perhaps one or both of them has just changed over the years. How does a wife submit to her husband and/or how do they both obey 1 Corinthians 7?
3) A wife has severe pain with penetrative sex. She’s dying to have a baby so only has penetrative sex during fertile times. Her heart’s in the right place but because she’s trying to address the physical and psychological aspects of her sexual pain she sometimes has sex without the pressure for it to end in penetration. Getting to the point where sex doesn’t hurt anymore will allow her life and marriage to be far more fruitful than if it hurts forever.
I guess over all I’m just a lot more concerned with a couple’s reasons for avoiding having babies than I am the details of how they avoid (although I’m totally against anything that allows fertilization but prevents implantation). You can be a strict NFP user and totally resent it and be just as selfish in your reasons for avoiding pregnancy as a couple who uses any other method of avoiding pregnancy.
I’m definitely open to learning more about the Catholic view and would very much welcome book/article/podcast recommendations on the topic (already put the ones you listed at the end on my book list).
Also, just something I wanted to clarify - while Catholics and Protestants should certainly agree on the majority of moral issues, our differences go much deeper than worship styles. I think even the way I handle the family planning question demonstrates this. Scripture is my final and ultimate authority so I will always prioritize the very clear teachings in the Bible (don’t deprive each other of sex; wives, submit to your husbands, children are a blessing, etc.) over the not as clear ones. The bigger issue though, is how we’re reconciled to God. My righteousness does nothing for my standing before him. Only Christ’s death for my sins and his righteousness covering me can make me acceptable to God. Even my faith is a gift from him. My good works and obedience should flow from love for him and a truly repentant heart, but my security as His child and my hope of Heaven has nothing to do with my obedience. He will complete what He has begun in me, He will chasten me when I sin, and He will never lose me. My hope lies entirely in the sacrifice of Christ and the grace of God and my obedience is merely a thankful and imperfect response to His overwhelming kindness in saving me.
Ok, that makes sense. I see where you're coming from.
For the situations you mentioned...all I have to say is that you're right that if Catholic understanding of sex is wrong that the limits we have are a huge burden that's unfair to place on people. If we're right though, and birth control is a moral evil rather than a moral neutral, than none of those situations justify sin (anymore than, say, euthanasia or abortion are justified by the myrad of horrible situations people try to escape by using them). In those situations, being faithful to Christ looks like picking up our cross and following Him.
So...I encourage you to check out those books I suggested and see whether or not our position is true. Sometimes living a Christian life means taking a path marked with a lot of suffering.
You seem to be under the impression that Catholics believe we earn our salvation. We don't believe that. We believe that Salvation is an unearned gift of God, same as you do. We are saved by accepting it, and faith is also a gift from God.
That isn't to say that there aren't serious differences between a Christianity that ascribes to Sola Scriptura and one that doesn't. But it seems like you don't really understand what we actually teach.
We believe the letter of James when he says that, "Faith without works is dead." We also have a different understanding of grace than you do: it doesn't "cover" us, it transforms us. We accept the unearned gift of salvation by doing our (very imperfect) best to live as Christ has commanded. He knows we can never live up to it, but as we try, He gives us the grace, the interior changes and strength, to get closer and closer to it. To get closer and closer to what He's created us to be. Like any relationship, that means saying sorry when we mess up (repenting...repeatedly) and it means showing by our actions that, yes, this person is important to me. It's like a marriage: if you're doing it right, you get closer as time goes on (even if you start out in a less than ideal place). If you neglect and abuse the other person, you get further apart.
I believe the Bible supports that interpretation. Paul talks about working out his salvation in "fear and trembling". Christ tells us if we don't take care of the poor that when we get to Heaven He'll say, "I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink....depart from me." Christ even gives His apostles the ability to forgive sins, "Whatever you forgive is forgiven them, whatever you retain is retained." Why would He give the Apostles that sort of authority if, "once saved, always saved"? What would be the need? And why does St. Paul say his suffering , "makes up for what is lacking in the cross of Christ"? If it's not at all something we participate in, why would his suffering matter one way or the other?
Hopefully that helps explain things. Yes, there's very big differences between us... I find that makes the similarities more striking. And gives me a lot of hope.
Totally agree that suffering for obedience is always right and worthwhile. This stuff is definitely worth wrestling with.
I’ve not read any books on Catholic theology; I only have what’s expressed in the words and actions of Catholics or former Catholics I know. I’ll have to pick their brains!
I would agree that grace transforms us, but it’s Christ’s righteousness that covers us and makes us acceptable to God. And that we will get closer and closer to Christ in our sanctification. While I don’t believe you can lose your salvation, I do think if your life isn’t showing fruit of salvation, you should certainly examine your heart to be sure you are in Christ. And that evangelical churches are full of people who aren’t truly regenerate, but are clinging to “once saved, always saved” in a way that cheapens grace and isn’t biblical and ultimately gives them a very dangerous false sense of security. I take “faith without works is dead very seriously”.
Could you share the reference for where Paul says his suffering “makes up for what is lacking in the cross of Christ"?
Thanks for your explanations and taking the time to respond!
If you ever want to hear what Catholics teach straight from them, you can always Google "Catechism of the Catholic Church" and then whatever subject you're curious about too.
Rebekah you gave a really thoughtful response, I’m sorry to be so brief. Just chiming in for a quick analogy that may or may not help shed light on the difference between NFP and a barrier method (re: your comment that avoiding sex around ovulation seems just as artificial as barrier / pulling out). I think comparing it to eating a delicious piece of chocolate cake is the best I can do that makes sense to me.
If I want to *not* add 400 extra calories to my intake today, maybe I’m trying to lose weight or something, avoiding eating a piece of chocolate cake is a totally natural thing to do. If I eat the chocolate cake but then throw it up later … or chew on it to get the delicious taste and spit it out before the consequence of having to digest it.. those are fairly unnatural ways to eat and enjoy food most would agree. You either choose to eat the cake, and you get the consequence (the calories and the lovely pleasure of the delish chocolate cake) or you choose to not eat the cake and get those consequences (sadly no cake enjoyment, but also no added calories).
But we don’t really get to have it both ways.. changing or manipulating the natural way our body works to have cake enjoyment but no calories.
I wish I had time tonight to address some other points you made - I’m sure others smarter than I can handle it!! The *very best* explanations on Catholic teaching and especially about sexuality, I have found, are by Fr. Mike Schmitz, either on his Catechism In a Year podcast or you can search the subject matter and his name in YouTube and find some great talks of his.
I’m a former Progressive Protestant and Wheaton College grad (so at least a former cultural Evangelical) who has now turned Byzantine Catholic. I had been progressive because of what I perceived to be a lack of consistency in much of Evangelical (though as discussed in other comments, Evangelicalism is too broad to make a one size fits all generalization) marital theology. If sex can be divorced from its procreative aspect and there are not necessarily roles in the Church for people not called to heterosexual marriage, then what’s to stop two gay people from marrying? I also met a number of young women at Wheaton who had been raised with misogynistic forms of marital theology though I will be clear this is not representative of all Evangelicalism, nor was I ever taught any of it directly while at Wheaton, where the wife was practically denied any agency in marriage. In some cases, meeting the husband’s needs included looking a certain way, for some wives were literally exhorted to “not let themselves go,” for their husbands would not be able to help themselves and cheat if their wives got fat and lost their looks. Once again, this is not representative of all Evangelicalism. I remember one of my roommates reading a book on marriage for a class that the professor teaching the class definitely disagreed with but was still representative of a wide enough swathe of American Evangelicalism. According to the author, the wife pretty much had to do everything the husband told her and could never say “no” to intercourse. At the time, we thought it was really feminist and the one bright spot for the author to have a whole section dedicated to artificial contraception, but since listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, I’ve thought otherwise. Of course the author supported artificial contraception. If he was teaching a theology where the wife had to meet the husband’s sexual needs at any time, then artificial contraception allowed him to use his wife as an object without consequences. From a more secular perspective, the more I learn about hormonal birth control and NFP, the more misogynistic I find hormonal birth control to be. I’m fully aware it’s often prescribed to alleviate symptoms of PCOS and endometriosis etc, though it doesn’t actually treat those issues, but for its general usage, it treats female fertility like a disease. It’s essentially a medication to stop the female body from functioning healthily and doing the one thing the male body can’t do. (By this standard, vasectomies would be considered misandristic as well.)
I'm having to hold myself back from a long rant on the pill and the state of OBGYN care in the United States in general...
Yes to all of this. The more I look into it, the more I see Protestant acceptance of birth control culturally paving the way for the sexual revolution and everything else that followed from it, including the gender identity stuff we have now. And that being preceded by a surprisingly viralent rejection of celibacy (i just had a very long conversation with a guy who identifys as old school, rejects birth control Protestant who had VERY strong opinions against anyone having a celibate vocation).
"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)."
Had a good laugh here. As a Catholic with many Non-Denom friends, I've had many conversations about this topic. Usually they're slightly horrified. I love that the Church addresses every aspect, even the most intimate of our lives.
The older I get, the more I realize how "weird" being a practicing Catholic is, lol. The biggest culture shock for me has actually been realizing that there's no mandatory Church attendance on Sundays for most Evangelicals. Even the ones who go on most Sundays see it as optional.
While we're over here like, "willfully missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin!"
There's a new-testament verse, "don't forsake your own assembling together, as is the habit of some." But that's the only verse most of us evangelicals quote about church. It's good, but not a necessity.
The French court also had public spectators at meals and during the queen's childbirth, and Marie had to appear in front of the French court naked to symbolically forsake her native Austria to marry into the French royal family.
Thanks for writing this. It is a succinct and insightful contrast/comparison.
I’m Catholic and I find I can’t read the sex part of most Protestant marriage books for the reasons you mentioned. The separation of sex and babies plus the focus on pleasure being the main point is truly so different and has big implications for differing views of marriage as a whole. My non-theological impression is that for Catholics, openness to life is a default in marriage unless there are serious reasons to avoid (licitly - and that’s difficult to keep up if your reasons aren’t so serious) vs. for Protestants (and our culture at large) the default is to use birth control unless or until you want a baby.
I think the implications also spill over into other matters. If sex really is primarily about pleasure, it’s easy to see God as unfair for giving only heterosexual people that privilege. Whereas for Catholics, chastity is necessary for every state in life. It involves sex for married couples - and sometimes periods of abstinence - as well as accepting any babies that result.
When people ask about Catholic teaching on gay marriage (or IVF or whatever adjacent issue), it feels like nothing short of the entirety of the Theology of the Body will do to explain!
Yep. Everyone has to bear the cross in their bodies and embrace that cross out of love. And that ALWAYS involves saying no to your desires at some point or another.
Now if we could just get our leadership to live that out a bit better...😬
Yes. I am Baptist, but for as long as I’ve been old enough to think through this matter, I have been much more aligned with the Catholics over Protestants. I believe the Catholic view is far more biblical. This, of course, has earned me many odd looks and blank stares. Oh, well. Took me a looooooooong time to find a like-minded man to marry, but we eventually did find each other.
An excellent Protestant book to investigate for a (protestant) critique of popular evangelical teachings on sex and intimacy is The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Canadian author. She and her husband have also written The Good Girl's Guide To Great Sex and the Good Guy's Guide To Great Sex if you're interested in actual advice for newly married couples. She also has a blog at www.baremarriage.com which has an extensive archive of posts about evangelical marriage teachings and advice for marriage in and out of the bedroom. I highly recommend her writing and would say (as a Protestant) that pretty much everything she writes is healthy and Christ-centered from a Protestant perspective.
Thank you! I appreciate the suggestions. I've actually poked around on her blog a bit and was very relieved to find a more healthy view of sex and relationships.
I'm Protestant overall but love the Catholic view here! All sorts of evil was facilitated with the availability of the Pill. Thanks for the reading references-- will definitely check them out.
Thank you so much for this article. As a Catholic trying to navigate marriage, this is very helpful.
I am curious, though, about whether mutual masturbation is really forbidden in the Catholic church. My husband and I tried to find the answer to that in the Catechism, but the Catechism does not clearly forbid it. Considering the Catholic church's focus on life creation, forbidding makes sense. But I wonder if you believe that the secondary sources are worth taking as the church's official stance.
Once again, I appreciate this article a lot. Thank you!
The official Church teaching is that every sexual act involving geneltalia has to end in a way that's open to life. If you haven't already read it, Humane Vitae (the Church's letter explaining why birth control is immoral) goes into detail on why that is. Mutual masterbation to completion (ie, male orgasm) is wrong for basically the same reasons that birth control and "pulling out" are wrong.
That said, it's acceptable to do so as foreplay, just not to completion.
I don't think "secondary sources" are worth taking as official Church stance, no. Some of them are, to be blunt, written by crazy people. I don't see Humane Vitae as a secondary source, because it's directly from the Pope acting in his official capacity.
The reason I used secondary sources in this article is because I was trying to compare/contrast popular writing (ie, not academic ) on Christian sexuality from Evangelical and Catholic popular psychologists and talking heads. Those are the books that are most accessible and that I think show the "on the ground" attitude to this stuff.
I genuinely and generally respect most of the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality. I believe John Paul II’s teaching on the human person and an integrated sexuality is very good. I guess for Reformed and Protestant folk the problem (as so often) is more the strict legalism of the teaching.
Now I don’t mean to be wry or crude, but taking the teaching to the letter of the law, may I pose a hypothetical question in good faith?
Now let’s say there is a lovingly married Catholic couple and they have put the kids to bed and are enjoying the full gift of themselves with each other, shall we say. They are fully onboard with the teaching of the Catechism. They intend to complete this sex act, as with every other with vaginal penetration and ejaculation. Now as a matter of foreplay the wife begins stimulating the member of her beloved husband with her hands… however the wife looks oh so beautiful to the man in that moment, and it’s been weeks since they have enjoyed each other’s gift due to the busy demands of family and work, and he’s feeling extremely good in that moment, and as can happen with men from time to time, he finds that he is coming to climax there and then in that moment, much earlier than he expected, to some degree against his volition. It all happened so fast and he had not the foresight to tell his wife to stop and she was not ready to have penetrative sex. So the man ejaculates outside the womb as a result of his wife’s manual stimulation with her hands.
In that instance, has that married couple committed a mortal sin for which they will need to go to Confession for reconciliation?
I mean this legitimately, I do not jest.
Again for me personally it is not the ideal of the Roman Catholic view that is problematic, in fact it is spot on, it is rather the hair-splitting dogmatic legalism that to my mind seems quite absurd to a Reformed or Protestant mindset.
No. That couple would not have committed mortal sin.
For mortal sin to exist, three things have to be there;
1.) It must be grave matter. So, killing someone, sexual sin, unjustly ruining someone's reputation so they can't get a job, etc. You don't commit a mortal sin when you, say, swipe a cookie from your husband's secret stash, even if the other two conditions are present.
2.) You have to know it's grave matter, that it's wrong. If a couple genuinely doesn't know contraception is wrong, they're not committing a mortal sin by using it.
3.) You have to intend the action. If someone accidentally kills a coworker in a workplace accident, they will not have committed the sin of murder. If our hypothetical man in this couple intended to complete intercourse inside his wife and what happened wasn't intentional, then no, no sin was committed.
Someone I know summed it up like this: It's bad, you know it, and you purposefully do it. All three have to be present for it to be mortal sin.
This essay popped up in my notes and proved to be a very interesting read, Emily. I'm glad to have clicked through! I was not raised in the Catholic church (and have no desire to become Catholic), but was surprised to find that teachings around sexuality within my own upbringing would have strongly paralleled Catholic theology. Much of what you outline here as being Protestant views on sex would have been unpacked as carnal and poisonous. But my heritage also runs back into the Anabaptist community, which I imagine would have maintained much of the structure of theology as viewed through a Catholic lens even after splitting away from the Catholic church.
I want to specify that I'm only claiming to portray mainstream Evangelical views on sex, not Protestant as a whole (which would probably take multiple books, not just an article).
This makes me want to look into Anabaptist theology though. Thank you for chiming in. ❤️
A friend recommended Sheet Music to me when I got married, so I've just been reading through it ... but now I want to check out the Catholic recommendations. Which would you think I should start with?
Raised Protestant, I can attest to the differences you outline here. Mostly sex seems to be portrayed as this thing that is a woman's duty for her husband, and sometimes her pleasure, too. There's not always a lot of discussion about it. It's a grey matter. Anything is ok. For some couples watching porn while having sex is fine as long as it's agreed upon between them. Contraception is fine. Birth pills depend on the sect. One is super fundamental if they say sex is for the purpose of procreation. After I married Andy, one of my evangelical friends said, "But doesn't that mean you will have to have a lot of kids now that you married a Catholic?" I was taken aback by her question because 1) she is the oldest of 11 and 2) she has four or five children of her own, and doesn't believe in birth control at all. But I guess the Catholic position was still too much for her, somehow. I explained how I thought natural family planning was permissible.
I really, really enjoyed reading this, and am thankful to have been able to do so early into our marriage!
Sheet Music is…not good. The author really leans into the “wives need to please their husbands sexually if they expect their husbands to take care of them” and he recommends doing so by methods that aren’t allowed by Catholic sexual ethics.
Holy Sex! by Greg Popcak is a good one. There’s lots of explanation of the “why” before he gets into the “how” of sex. My husband and I read it together on our honeymoon and found it really helpful. If you’re looking for books just on the sexual aspect of a relationship, that’s the one I’d recommend.
As for general marriage books, my favorite one is actually Protestant— Boundaries in Marriage by Drs. Cloud and Townsend. They don’t really get into the sexual sphere as much, but they give good advice for communication between couples. That’s another one my husband and I read early on that we ultimately found was consistently helpful.
I'm so happy to see someone write this!! The Catholic understanding of sex is so beautiful and has led me to a deeper level of surrender. If sex is just for pleasure, and the procreative aspect can be left out, then why aren't same-sex acts also permissible?
Exactly.
I think there’s a position between the Catholic version and the most (among a spectrum) liberal Evangelical position: sex is for pleasure/intimacy and the possibility procreation, but need not be entered into for the possibility of procreation, i.e., birth control or other non-intercourse climactic activities are moral.
I don’t think procreation is the reason why same-sex activity is wrong. Same-sex activity is wrong because God set up humanity as male and female – that is the order and there is no other – and marriage is, among other things, a metaphor for Christ and his church. There’s no sameness between Christ and his church as there is no sameness between male and female.
Also, the intimacy of male–female sexual pleasure, I think, mirrors the intimacy of the Trinity and the intimacy of Christ in us and we in Christ. See John 17. Note that in those intimacies you have persons of different position, not same positions. And there’s no procreation in those intimacies. A man was made for a woman and a woman for a man.
On celibacy, it’s my opinion that it should be optional for ministers of the Gospel and not required. It’s personal and it’s the very rare calling from God, but unnecessary to ministry. (And it certainly foments all manner of aberration – for the vast majority of people cannot seem to avoid sexual contact. It would seem God intended us to have sexual gratification but, as they say, the fire needs to be in the fireplace.)
We agree marriage is meant to be a reflection of Christ and His church. That said, the relationship between Christ and His church isn't a sterile one. The last thing Christ said to us before ascending was (paraphrased), “go and make more Christians, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” That relationship was never meant to be a static thing- it's literally meant to make more believers.
You said about the relationships in the Trinity:“There's no procreation in those intimacies”
The Nicene Creed: “The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and Son, He is adored and glorified.”
In at least Catholic theology, the Trinitarian relationship is fruitful. The Trinity is not sexual, but insofar as sexuality is a reflection of the life of the Trinity it is ABSOLUTELY fruitful- the Holy Spirit flows from the love between the Father and Son. And for sexuality to be fruitful, it has to allow for the creation of new life.
And on celibacy…there are whole convents of nuns and religious sisters, who are not ministers, who live a celibate lifestyle and do it joyfully. One of my closest friends is a religious sister; so far as I can tell, she loves her vocation.
I think you make some good points. I didn’t mean to imply that Christ and his church was a sterile relationship or the Trinity was a set of sterile relationships. But these relationships do not produce new persons between the participants. Yes, when we are born again we are new persons but then we’re in the church. And the metaphor is going to break down somewhere.
I was trying to make the point that the possibility of procreation was not a requirement for sex, and I thought comparing the metaphor to the intimacy of the divine relationships we’re good, non-procreative examples of intimacy.
You cite the rhythm method as a legitimate birth control method. And, of course, that’s a practice of avoiding procreation during sex. Meaning, the sex is for pleasure and intimacy but not procreation during that timing. What’s the difference between that and using chemical or physical devices to prevent procreation? I don’t think there is any and attempts to differentiate. the two are going to sound like lawyers advocating positions for clients. In other words, both methods volitionally avoid procreation while having sex.
Regarding celibacy, my only point was it should be no requirement for ministry (or any other calling). It should be optional and only for those truly called to not marry (which experience tells me is rare). If the nuns you cited are truly called, then more power to them in the spirit. But – and it’s a big but, the institutionalization of celibacy is fraught with all manner of trouble. I also believe that many people who pursue celibacy have unresolved issues driving them to the celibate decision, including the fear of closeness and the intimate giving of their bodies. To me, that’s why institutional provision creates havens for trouble. What did the reverend mother say to Maria? “Our abbey is not to be treated as an escape.”
Great article I had no idea sex between Evangelical and Catholics are different. According to the Bible in 1 Corinthians 7:4 says' The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Same-sex acts totally ignore why God made sex; while sex is for pleasure, it's also for children. They ignore the existence of children. And they ignore, or never figured out, that sex and children can lead to unity and character and closeness.
Its not that sex is *just* for pleasure. As a (non-married) non-Catholic myself, maybe my bias is getting in the way, but I doubt this.
First off, even if we assumed sex was just for pleasure, it doesn't mean God didn't place any boundaries or didn't command that some pleasures were allowed and permitted while others were forbidden and unnatural. The very fact that God made them man and woman "And what He has put together, no man may take apart," and established marriage to be this, is itself an endorsement of certain pleasures and the banning of others. That's to say, the evangelicals and the like never forgot this, and so will never accept their bit of reasoning on sex being turned against them in support of gay sex.
Secondly, its not that the connection between sex and children was ignored. A sterile marriage is still considered a kind of tragedy or curse. Its that children were de-emphasized. In part because of the practical matter of addressing an audience of married couples (possible newly weds), and in part because of a less considered matter of "why think a lot about something that happens without thinking?"
Its like eating food or grapes, if you want to be specific. God made all these things, both for our needs and our enjoyment, for which we are thankful. He invented eating, so, we take some delight in eating stuff and consider it nice. But, for all the pleasure eating may bring, everyone must still think the guy who eats dirt or paper, or gulps down seasoning by the handful, was deviant or a lunatic. At the same time, though, even when the correct aim of our natural, God-given, urges is being satisfied and we're eating actual food as we should, no deep thought is involved.
I imagine its next to impossible to worship or philosophize on the beauty of pro-creation when you're carnally fondling each other and working towards and past a climax.
Actually, when you're using NFP rather than contraception, you are ABSOLUTELY thinking about co-creation leading up to having sex in almost every instance, because you have to decide whether how fertile you are factors in. And when you are fertile, and know you're fertile, and go into sex with that mindset that you may very well be making a baby tonight...it elevates things. I'll leave it at that.
This comment wins the internet for the day. Well done!
Current Protestant here but I’m exploring Catholicism and it seems everyone I’m reading lately is Catholic. There definitely is a presupposition within evangelical spaces that men are sexual and women aren’t. There is always an assumption that men have the higher sex drive. So much “if we just coax the woman the right way she’ll put out” kind of attitude. It’s quite disgusting. And yes, there is def an assumption that you’ll use some form of birth control. We currently have 4 girls and I’m often asked if we’re done. Personally, I think it’s pretty bizarre to ask a married person why they have sex. But apparently, amongst 20 or so couples in my bible church small group all but 2 men (my husband and another man who recently had his 6th kid) have had vasectomies.
The thing I found most disturbing in my research was the implication that you need to meet all your husband's sexual needs to the point of non reciprocal sexual action on demand (the whole quote about the hand job being the most obvious example) if you want any chance of having YOUR (non sexual ) needs met. Wives are often so much more genuinely needy and vulnerable than their husbands in a marriage (the first few weeks after childbirth spring to mind) that this honestly seems just straight up exploitive.
The quote from Saint Paul is “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church” not “husbands, love your wives when they readily put out.” It seemed very tit for tat and transactional.
Sheila Gregoire has been addressing this deeply unhealthy teaching in Evangelical marriage literature with her books (The Great Sex Rescue), website (baremarriage.com) and podcast. As a former evangelical and current Catholic I find her writing helpful in unpacking some of the unhealthy teachings I absorbed when I was younger, but you’re right that the evangelical understanding is fundamentally different from the Catholic teaching even when the unhealthy aspects are removed.
I was going to say this myself, because many of us were given horrible information - or lack of - about sex, especially about sex within marriage. Girls were told to be good and preserve their virginity at all cost, and then expected to be, in essence, seasoned prostitutes when we got married. I married in 1975, and received as a bridal shower gift the latest and greatest book on how to be submissive and to fulfill every sexual whim of our husbands. Sex was always about the husband. Sheila Gregoire has been carefully and methodically through research to change what women were told from the Protestant and nondenominational pulpit.
I married as a Protestant while as a closet Catholic. It was after my divorce and then re-entering the dating scene, I began to study sex. I found Gregoire in 2015, along with some other excellent sex and marriage ministry folks. It was then that I began teaching myself about sex in the Catholic marriage. I appreciate the research you have done and in sharing the resources you explored. I’m surprised you didn’t include at least an introductory Theology of the Body. Thank for what you have done in opening up the topic for discussion.
One hopes that your readers will think about how Catholicism elevates sex within marriage to something worthy of the Sacrament of Marriage.Because Catholic sexual intercourse must be open to life, the purpose of what is beautiful and sacred within the marriage bed fulfills the Lord’s commandment “to be fruitful and multiply”. God did not command husbands and wives to feel good and thwart the purpose of married sex to be procreative.
And there is considerable evidence to show that using birth control medicines and devices can be harmful mostly to women, who bear the burden of preventing pregnancy. Followed correctly, the Catholic methods of Natural Family Planning pose no health risks to women or men.
Let’s keep talking!
I'm going to side with St. John Paul II and Mulieris Dignitatem on this one.
Hey, anything to be in the same camp as the Blessed Virgin. ❤️
Statistically speaking, women orgasm at dramatically lower rates than men, so I am not sure where your “1 in 1000 men” statistic is coming from. Women don’t withhold sex when they enjoy it, when it is the culmination and fulfillment of complete self-gift on the part of both spouses. If women are uninterested in sex with their husbands, I think the obvious first step is to ask why, not shame them into putting out.
To be clear, you're saying your sexual pleasure/satisfaction is on the same level morally as your wife and children not starving.
Is that a fair summary?
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a household to run and children to take care of, so I won’t be responding any further
Saint Paul specifically says that both man and woman are required, not to withhold sex from one another except for a time by mutual consent. That means that the man is equally obligated to ensure that his wife enjoys the marital embrace as the wife is to ensure that the husband enjoys the marital embrace. That means that if the man is consistently climaxing and the woman consistently isn’t, he is withholding from her something that he is obligated to provide as her husband essentially he’s using her body to masturbate rather than fulfilling his marital obligations.
It sounds to me like you’re saying that the woman’s obligation is sex while the man’s obligation is money. Usually, we call that prostitution not marriage.
For the record, I have never heard of the “presupposition” you declare in second sentence—or the follow-on correlation about “attitude.”
I believe it is not helpful to create vastly overbroad categories like “evangelical.”
“Believer” fits the bill nicely.
So because you're a man talking about Church teaching, I have to accept whatever you say?
((Looks over at all the female doctors of the Church and Mary, model of all Christians))
I don't think that's actually correct.
Not until we've done the proper thing as people debating ought to do and defined our terms, no. I'm not going to agree to your definition of obedience sight unseen.
Our Lady obeyed, yes, but she asked clarifying questions first. Most notably, "how can this be, since I have not known man?". She was engaged to be married -- a safe assumption would be that the child foretold would be Joseph's. The fact that she's specifically asking this implies, "I'm a virgin and was planning on staying that way. Is that no longer the case?"
In other words, yes, she obeyed, but after clarifying that doing so wouldn't be putting her vocation as she understood it to be in jeopardy. And Gabriel didn't strike her dumb for asking that, even though he struck Zachariah dumb for asking a question.
What happened between Mary and the Holy Spirit was a collaboration. Mary gave her PERMISSION and entered into it WITH God, not as a slave, but as a partner.
So yes, I'll obey in that I will partner with my spouse towards God's will. Not obey HIS (my husband's will) independent of my own discernment.
And in that, yes, absolutely I will emulate Mary.
So instead of addressing my interpretation of Scripture, you're resorting to personal attacks. Got it.
My husband trusts me to run the house. I trust him to provide for our family. We make big life decisions together. He wants my opinion, and we wrestle through things together.
We've been happily married for more than ten years. It's working just fine for us, thanks.
I'm done talking to you. As I posted on another thread, please go somewhere else now. If you continue to be a condescending jerk in the comments, I will block you.
Or a sign that I've been fulfilling my duties as wife and mother and haven't been hanging on your every word because I'm folding laundry...
I'm just trying to figure out why someone professing to be Catholic is arguing with me about whether a woman ought to be willing to give her man a hand job if she's unable to have sex with him.
Don't know if you actually read the article I wrote (or my original comment in this thread), but that's the reference I was making. Masturbation and sexual completion outside the marital act has been a mortal sin since well before Vatican II, so I think it's fair to say, that yes, there are SOME limits on the woman's obligation to be sexually available to her husband, and the Church prior to the 1960s upheld that. A woman should not commit sin with her husband to keep him from committing sin on his own later.
Now past that...not a conversation I'm willing to have with you, since you've already stated I'm not worth listening to or fairly engaging because I'm a member of "the fairer sex". If the gender I am makes me unworthy of actual discussion and debate, than let's save both of ourselves some time.
This is fascinating! I have attended evangelical churches for over a decade, though I have never read a book on evangelical sex (or Catholic sex! Or actually any sex books at all.) And I’ve only read one evangelical marriage book. It was the worst book ever- Dr Emerson Eggerichs Love and Respect. He does include a short section on sex (under men’s needs, of course) and shares an anecdote about how women naturally do not enjoy sex, but we had ought to put up with it because our husbands need it and of course it is over so quickly.
I’ve also sat through women’s ministry events during which we were counseled by the pastor’s wife that sex for men is like talking for women- they need sex, we need to gab. I feel strongly that this is baloney. I can think of lots of reasons why a woman might not enjoy sex (maybe she is one of the one in four women who has been sexually abused or assaulted in this country. Maybe she has issues that can be addressed by a competent gynecologist. Maybe her husband is just lousy in bed and they can work on that…)
Another fascinating thing is that the above was all experienced in white evangelical church. We recently started attending Black evangelical church and it is completely different regarding women and sex. There is definitely still an expectation that we are in control of our family’s size, but it’s expected that women enjoy sex. I’m really grateful for this. I did not grow up in white evangelical churches, but I can see how there is this culture of shame around sex for women.
I had no idea church was going to be so complicated when I became a Christian.
The Catholic perspective on sex is so interesting! I have literally never heard that. I do know evangelicals who have lots and lots of babies but I would say that birth control has been tacitly or explicitly encouraged the entire time I’ve been in church. I grew up in a mainline denomination and it was definitely strongly encouraged there and over 3 kid families got plenty of side eye. When I got pregnant after 11 years of unexplained infertility, my mom’s first response was to ask me what I was going to do birth control after the baby was born.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience!! This is actually super interesting.
I definitely get the impression that reading a whole bunch of books on this stuff isn't normal for most people, lol. It's actually super helpful and enlightening to hear just what a normal, lived experience is with this stuff. The differences between white and black church culture is super interesting too...I wonder how I could research that?
That Love and Respect book sounds so bad that it almost sounds like a parody. That's insane. (And un-biblical...did the guy ever read Song of Songs?!)
Sheila Gregoire addressed Love and Respect specifically as one of the most problematic marriage books in the Evangelical world. She has a summary of the issues with that and other books on her website.
I grew up Evangelical and converted to Catholicism in my twenties (right around the time I got married, ha!) -- the biggest difference regarding sex was the "gift of self" paradigm (Catholic) vs. "reward that married people get" paradigm (Evangelical). "If you can just wait, everything is going to be fine. But if you don't wait, you'll ruin the reward. It won't be as good." That said, I do remember an Evangelical youth pastor telling us that sex was just part--and a small part at that-- of the experience of married love. I remember being baffled - "Then why do we talk about it so much?" This does align with the later understanding that I gained from some (very, very surface level) understanding of ToB, which doesn't get to things like sex (and other ways the gift is lived out) until it's well established that our bodies are gifts, given to the world.
Thank you so much for writing this -- this must have taken so much time, and it's so well done. I'm glad you did it, and I love that you ended with the fact that we have enough commonalities for conversation.
A wonderful weave of Catholic intimacy/sacrament. Something I noted missing (since my wife and I are well past birthing years) is the "rules" remain the same for the older married. And, who knows (Sarah and Elizabeth come to mind) what lengths God goes to for couples to remain open to miraculous conceptions.
Also, your difficult path of kindness to what you posit as Evangelical thinking is not just for Evangelicals. Many Catholics have the same understanding. Maturity in faith is a never-ending process, so behaving with sacred attention remains important even when we know these things either early or late in a marriage.
Thank you!
Appreciate this! While I don’t agree with every aspect of Catholic teachings on sex, I find that even as a Protestant I agree with far more of it than I do with mainline evangelical teaching expressed in the quotes you shared. It’s so much richer and more biblical. But I do know lots of everyday evangelicals who live out an understanding of sexuality closer to a Catholic (and I think more biblical) view. For better or for worse, the freedom most of our denominations ascribe to (or the silence on the matter) means that there is a wide variety in the convictions and practices of evangelicals.
I'd be curious what parts of it you don't agree with, and how you don't see them as Biblical. Evangelical Christianity is something I'm very much outside of, but I'd really like to understand. Not least of which because more and more it seems like Catholics and Evangelicals agree on what living a Christian life should look like even while our styles of worship remain really different.
To your question - The Bible isn’t clear enough about “family planning” for me to be as dogmatic about it as the Catholic Church is. I guess avoiding sex around ovulation seems just as artificial to me as using a barrier or pulling out or any other sexual act that doesn’t end with a man ejaculating in a vagina. Allowing those things + NFP or not allowing family planning at all seem to both be positions that are more coherent. I realize you guys have a whole philosophy that supports your position and I see it as compelling enough to be a really beautiful ideal, but not compelling enough to define anything outside of NFP as mortal sin or to account for all the complex situations a person or a couple might find themselves in and the different ways Scripture comes to bear on their situation.
A couple real life examples I’m specifically thinking of:
1) A woman with long, irregular cycles - often this means very few “safe” days with weeks or months of abstinence. How do we also obey 1 Corinthians 7?
2) The husband and wife are not in agreement. Perhaps one is an unbeliever, perhaps this topic just wasn’t on the radar when they got engaged, or perhaps one or both of them has just changed over the years. How does a wife submit to her husband and/or how do they both obey 1 Corinthians 7?
3) A wife has severe pain with penetrative sex. She’s dying to have a baby so only has penetrative sex during fertile times. Her heart’s in the right place but because she’s trying to address the physical and psychological aspects of her sexual pain she sometimes has sex without the pressure for it to end in penetration. Getting to the point where sex doesn’t hurt anymore will allow her life and marriage to be far more fruitful than if it hurts forever.
I guess over all I’m just a lot more concerned with a couple’s reasons for avoiding having babies than I am the details of how they avoid (although I’m totally against anything that allows fertilization but prevents implantation). You can be a strict NFP user and totally resent it and be just as selfish in your reasons for avoiding pregnancy as a couple who uses any other method of avoiding pregnancy.
I’m definitely open to learning more about the Catholic view and would very much welcome book/article/podcast recommendations on the topic (already put the ones you listed at the end on my book list).
Also, just something I wanted to clarify - while Catholics and Protestants should certainly agree on the majority of moral issues, our differences go much deeper than worship styles. I think even the way I handle the family planning question demonstrates this. Scripture is my final and ultimate authority so I will always prioritize the very clear teachings in the Bible (don’t deprive each other of sex; wives, submit to your husbands, children are a blessing, etc.) over the not as clear ones. The bigger issue though, is how we’re reconciled to God. My righteousness does nothing for my standing before him. Only Christ’s death for my sins and his righteousness covering me can make me acceptable to God. Even my faith is a gift from him. My good works and obedience should flow from love for him and a truly repentant heart, but my security as His child and my hope of Heaven has nothing to do with my obedience. He will complete what He has begun in me, He will chasten me when I sin, and He will never lose me. My hope lies entirely in the sacrifice of Christ and the grace of God and my obedience is merely a thankful and imperfect response to His overwhelming kindness in saving me.
Ok, that makes sense. I see where you're coming from.
For the situations you mentioned...all I have to say is that you're right that if Catholic understanding of sex is wrong that the limits we have are a huge burden that's unfair to place on people. If we're right though, and birth control is a moral evil rather than a moral neutral, than none of those situations justify sin (anymore than, say, euthanasia or abortion are justified by the myrad of horrible situations people try to escape by using them). In those situations, being faithful to Christ looks like picking up our cross and following Him.
So...I encourage you to check out those books I suggested and see whether or not our position is true. Sometimes living a Christian life means taking a path marked with a lot of suffering.
You seem to be under the impression that Catholics believe we earn our salvation. We don't believe that. We believe that Salvation is an unearned gift of God, same as you do. We are saved by accepting it, and faith is also a gift from God.
That isn't to say that there aren't serious differences between a Christianity that ascribes to Sola Scriptura and one that doesn't. But it seems like you don't really understand what we actually teach.
We believe the letter of James when he says that, "Faith without works is dead." We also have a different understanding of grace than you do: it doesn't "cover" us, it transforms us. We accept the unearned gift of salvation by doing our (very imperfect) best to live as Christ has commanded. He knows we can never live up to it, but as we try, He gives us the grace, the interior changes and strength, to get closer and closer to it. To get closer and closer to what He's created us to be. Like any relationship, that means saying sorry when we mess up (repenting...repeatedly) and it means showing by our actions that, yes, this person is important to me. It's like a marriage: if you're doing it right, you get closer as time goes on (even if you start out in a less than ideal place). If you neglect and abuse the other person, you get further apart.
I believe the Bible supports that interpretation. Paul talks about working out his salvation in "fear and trembling". Christ tells us if we don't take care of the poor that when we get to Heaven He'll say, "I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink....depart from me." Christ even gives His apostles the ability to forgive sins, "Whatever you forgive is forgiven them, whatever you retain is retained." Why would He give the Apostles that sort of authority if, "once saved, always saved"? What would be the need? And why does St. Paul say his suffering , "makes up for what is lacking in the cross of Christ"? If it's not at all something we participate in, why would his suffering matter one way or the other?
Hopefully that helps explain things. Yes, there's very big differences between us... I find that makes the similarities more striking. And gives me a lot of hope.
Totally agree that suffering for obedience is always right and worthwhile. This stuff is definitely worth wrestling with.
I’ve not read any books on Catholic theology; I only have what’s expressed in the words and actions of Catholics or former Catholics I know. I’ll have to pick their brains!
I would agree that grace transforms us, but it’s Christ’s righteousness that covers us and makes us acceptable to God. And that we will get closer and closer to Christ in our sanctification. While I don’t believe you can lose your salvation, I do think if your life isn’t showing fruit of salvation, you should certainly examine your heart to be sure you are in Christ. And that evangelical churches are full of people who aren’t truly regenerate, but are clinging to “once saved, always saved” in a way that cheapens grace and isn’t biblical and ultimately gives them a very dangerous false sense of security. I take “faith without works is dead very seriously”.
Could you share the reference for where Paul says his suffering “makes up for what is lacking in the cross of Christ"?
Thanks for your explanations and taking the time to respond!
Colossians 1:24
I was going off of memory and paraphrased a bit.
If you ever want to hear what Catholics teach straight from them, you can always Google "Catechism of the Catholic Church" and then whatever subject you're curious about too.
Rebekah you gave a really thoughtful response, I’m sorry to be so brief. Just chiming in for a quick analogy that may or may not help shed light on the difference between NFP and a barrier method (re: your comment that avoiding sex around ovulation seems just as artificial as barrier / pulling out). I think comparing it to eating a delicious piece of chocolate cake is the best I can do that makes sense to me.
If I want to *not* add 400 extra calories to my intake today, maybe I’m trying to lose weight or something, avoiding eating a piece of chocolate cake is a totally natural thing to do. If I eat the chocolate cake but then throw it up later … or chew on it to get the delicious taste and spit it out before the consequence of having to digest it.. those are fairly unnatural ways to eat and enjoy food most would agree. You either choose to eat the cake, and you get the consequence (the calories and the lovely pleasure of the delish chocolate cake) or you choose to not eat the cake and get those consequences (sadly no cake enjoyment, but also no added calories).
But we don’t really get to have it both ways.. changing or manipulating the natural way our body works to have cake enjoyment but no calories.
I wish I had time tonight to address some other points you made - I’m sure others smarter than I can handle it!! The *very best* explanations on Catholic teaching and especially about sexuality, I have found, are by Fr. Mike Schmitz, either on his Catechism In a Year podcast or you can search the subject matter and his name in YouTube and find some great talks of his.
Thanks for the resource recommendation Kristin!
I’m a former Progressive Protestant and Wheaton College grad (so at least a former cultural Evangelical) who has now turned Byzantine Catholic. I had been progressive because of what I perceived to be a lack of consistency in much of Evangelical (though as discussed in other comments, Evangelicalism is too broad to make a one size fits all generalization) marital theology. If sex can be divorced from its procreative aspect and there are not necessarily roles in the Church for people not called to heterosexual marriage, then what’s to stop two gay people from marrying? I also met a number of young women at Wheaton who had been raised with misogynistic forms of marital theology though I will be clear this is not representative of all Evangelicalism, nor was I ever taught any of it directly while at Wheaton, where the wife was practically denied any agency in marriage. In some cases, meeting the husband’s needs included looking a certain way, for some wives were literally exhorted to “not let themselves go,” for their husbands would not be able to help themselves and cheat if their wives got fat and lost their looks. Once again, this is not representative of all Evangelicalism. I remember one of my roommates reading a book on marriage for a class that the professor teaching the class definitely disagreed with but was still representative of a wide enough swathe of American Evangelicalism. According to the author, the wife pretty much had to do everything the husband told her and could never say “no” to intercourse. At the time, we thought it was really feminist and the one bright spot for the author to have a whole section dedicated to artificial contraception, but since listening to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, I’ve thought otherwise. Of course the author supported artificial contraception. If he was teaching a theology where the wife had to meet the husband’s sexual needs at any time, then artificial contraception allowed him to use his wife as an object without consequences. From a more secular perspective, the more I learn about hormonal birth control and NFP, the more misogynistic I find hormonal birth control to be. I’m fully aware it’s often prescribed to alleviate symptoms of PCOS and endometriosis etc, though it doesn’t actually treat those issues, but for its general usage, it treats female fertility like a disease. It’s essentially a medication to stop the female body from functioning healthily and doing the one thing the male body can’t do. (By this standard, vasectomies would be considered misandristic as well.)
I'm having to hold myself back from a long rant on the pill and the state of OBGYN care in the United States in general...
Yes to all of this. The more I look into it, the more I see Protestant acceptance of birth control culturally paving the way for the sexual revolution and everything else that followed from it, including the gender identity stuff we have now. And that being preceded by a surprisingly viralent rejection of celibacy (i just had a very long conversation with a guy who identifys as old school, rejects birth control Protestant who had VERY strong opinions against anyone having a celibate vocation).
"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)."
Had a good laugh here. As a Catholic with many Non-Denom friends, I've had many conversations about this topic. Usually they're slightly horrified. I love that the Church addresses every aspect, even the most intimate of our lives.
The older I get, the more I realize how "weird" being a practicing Catholic is, lol. The biggest culture shock for me has actually been realizing that there's no mandatory Church attendance on Sundays for most Evangelicals. Even the ones who go on most Sundays see it as optional.
While we're over here like, "willfully missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin!"
Amen. The divide in life gets more apparent by the day for me, lol. You’re not alone!! Catholic freaks for Jesus together, haha!
There's a new-testament verse, "don't forsake your own assembling together, as is the habit of some." But that's the only verse most of us evangelicals quote about church. It's good, but not a necessity.
Actually, they did this in past times. Read the description of the wedding night of Louis the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette.
The French court also had public spectators at meals and during the queen's childbirth, and Marie had to appear in front of the French court naked to symbolically forsake her native Austria to marry into the French royal family.
So...yes? But only if you happened to be royalty.
Thanks for writing this. It is a succinct and insightful contrast/comparison.
I’m Catholic and I find I can’t read the sex part of most Protestant marriage books for the reasons you mentioned. The separation of sex and babies plus the focus on pleasure being the main point is truly so different and has big implications for differing views of marriage as a whole. My non-theological impression is that for Catholics, openness to life is a default in marriage unless there are serious reasons to avoid (licitly - and that’s difficult to keep up if your reasons aren’t so serious) vs. for Protestants (and our culture at large) the default is to use birth control unless or until you want a baby.
I think the implications also spill over into other matters. If sex really is primarily about pleasure, it’s easy to see God as unfair for giving only heterosexual people that privilege. Whereas for Catholics, chastity is necessary for every state in life. It involves sex for married couples - and sometimes periods of abstinence - as well as accepting any babies that result.
When people ask about Catholic teaching on gay marriage (or IVF or whatever adjacent issue), it feels like nothing short of the entirety of the Theology of the Body will do to explain!
Yep. Everyone has to bear the cross in their bodies and embrace that cross out of love. And that ALWAYS involves saying no to your desires at some point or another.
Now if we could just get our leadership to live that out a bit better...😬
Yes. I am Baptist, but for as long as I’ve been old enough to think through this matter, I have been much more aligned with the Catholics over Protestants. I believe the Catholic view is far more biblical. This, of course, has earned me many odd looks and blank stares. Oh, well. Took me a looooooooong time to find a like-minded man to marry, but we eventually did find each other.
An excellent Protestant book to investigate for a (protestant) critique of popular evangelical teachings on sex and intimacy is The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Canadian author. She and her husband have also written The Good Girl's Guide To Great Sex and the Good Guy's Guide To Great Sex if you're interested in actual advice for newly married couples. She also has a blog at www.baremarriage.com which has an extensive archive of posts about evangelical marriage teachings and advice for marriage in and out of the bedroom. I highly recommend her writing and would say (as a Protestant) that pretty much everything she writes is healthy and Christ-centered from a Protestant perspective.
Thank you! I appreciate the suggestions. I've actually poked around on her blog a bit and was very relieved to find a more healthy view of sex and relationships.
I echo this! Was actually scrolling through the comments to see if anyone had recommended The Great Sex Rescue. A definite MUST read!
I'm Protestant overall but love the Catholic view here! All sorts of evil was facilitated with the availability of the Pill. Thanks for the reading references-- will definitely check them out.
Thank you so much for this article. As a Catholic trying to navigate marriage, this is very helpful.
I am curious, though, about whether mutual masturbation is really forbidden in the Catholic church. My husband and I tried to find the answer to that in the Catechism, but the Catechism does not clearly forbid it. Considering the Catholic church's focus on life creation, forbidding makes sense. But I wonder if you believe that the secondary sources are worth taking as the church's official stance.
Once again, I appreciate this article a lot. Thank you!
The official Church teaching is that every sexual act involving geneltalia has to end in a way that's open to life. If you haven't already read it, Humane Vitae (the Church's letter explaining why birth control is immoral) goes into detail on why that is. Mutual masterbation to completion (ie, male orgasm) is wrong for basically the same reasons that birth control and "pulling out" are wrong.
That said, it's acceptable to do so as foreplay, just not to completion.
I don't think "secondary sources" are worth taking as official Church stance, no. Some of them are, to be blunt, written by crazy people. I don't see Humane Vitae as a secondary source, because it's directly from the Pope acting in his official capacity.
The reason I used secondary sources in this article is because I was trying to compare/contrast popular writing (ie, not academic ) on Christian sexuality from Evangelical and Catholic popular psychologists and talking heads. Those are the books that are most accessible and that I think show the "on the ground" attitude to this stuff.
Hope that helps.
It helps a lot. Thank you! I haven't read the humane vitae, but now I really want to read it.
I genuinely and generally respect most of the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality. I believe John Paul II’s teaching on the human person and an integrated sexuality is very good. I guess for Reformed and Protestant folk the problem (as so often) is more the strict legalism of the teaching.
Now I don’t mean to be wry or crude, but taking the teaching to the letter of the law, may I pose a hypothetical question in good faith?
Now let’s say there is a lovingly married Catholic couple and they have put the kids to bed and are enjoying the full gift of themselves with each other, shall we say. They are fully onboard with the teaching of the Catechism. They intend to complete this sex act, as with every other with vaginal penetration and ejaculation. Now as a matter of foreplay the wife begins stimulating the member of her beloved husband with her hands… however the wife looks oh so beautiful to the man in that moment, and it’s been weeks since they have enjoyed each other’s gift due to the busy demands of family and work, and he’s feeling extremely good in that moment, and as can happen with men from time to time, he finds that he is coming to climax there and then in that moment, much earlier than he expected, to some degree against his volition. It all happened so fast and he had not the foresight to tell his wife to stop and she was not ready to have penetrative sex. So the man ejaculates outside the womb as a result of his wife’s manual stimulation with her hands.
In that instance, has that married couple committed a mortal sin for which they will need to go to Confession for reconciliation?
I mean this legitimately, I do not jest.
Again for me personally it is not the ideal of the Roman Catholic view that is problematic, in fact it is spot on, it is rather the hair-splitting dogmatic legalism that to my mind seems quite absurd to a Reformed or Protestant mindset.
No. That couple would not have committed mortal sin.
For mortal sin to exist, three things have to be there;
1.) It must be grave matter. So, killing someone, sexual sin, unjustly ruining someone's reputation so they can't get a job, etc. You don't commit a mortal sin when you, say, swipe a cookie from your husband's secret stash, even if the other two conditions are present.
2.) You have to know it's grave matter, that it's wrong. If a couple genuinely doesn't know contraception is wrong, they're not committing a mortal sin by using it.
3.) You have to intend the action. If someone accidentally kills a coworker in a workplace accident, they will not have committed the sin of murder. If our hypothetical man in this couple intended to complete intercourse inside his wife and what happened wasn't intentional, then no, no sin was committed.
Someone I know summed it up like this: It's bad, you know it, and you purposefully do it. All three have to be present for it to be mortal sin.
Thank you for your considered reply.
Humanae Vitae needs to be preached every week for the fifty years it wasn't.
This essay popped up in my notes and proved to be a very interesting read, Emily. I'm glad to have clicked through! I was not raised in the Catholic church (and have no desire to become Catholic), but was surprised to find that teachings around sexuality within my own upbringing would have strongly paralleled Catholic theology. Much of what you outline here as being Protestant views on sex would have been unpacked as carnal and poisonous. But my heritage also runs back into the Anabaptist community, which I imagine would have maintained much of the structure of theology as viewed through a Catholic lens even after splitting away from the Catholic church.
That's legitimately fascinating.
I want to specify that I'm only claiming to portray mainstream Evangelical views on sex, not Protestant as a whole (which would probably take multiple books, not just an article).
This makes me want to look into Anabaptist theology though. Thank you for chiming in. ❤️
A friend recommended Sheet Music to me when I got married, so I've just been reading through it ... but now I want to check out the Catholic recommendations. Which would you think I should start with?
Raised Protestant, I can attest to the differences you outline here. Mostly sex seems to be portrayed as this thing that is a woman's duty for her husband, and sometimes her pleasure, too. There's not always a lot of discussion about it. It's a grey matter. Anything is ok. For some couples watching porn while having sex is fine as long as it's agreed upon between them. Contraception is fine. Birth pills depend on the sect. One is super fundamental if they say sex is for the purpose of procreation. After I married Andy, one of my evangelical friends said, "But doesn't that mean you will have to have a lot of kids now that you married a Catholic?" I was taken aback by her question because 1) she is the oldest of 11 and 2) she has four or five children of her own, and doesn't believe in birth control at all. But I guess the Catholic position was still too much for her, somehow. I explained how I thought natural family planning was permissible.
I really, really enjoyed reading this, and am thankful to have been able to do so early into our marriage!
Sheet Music is…not good. The author really leans into the “wives need to please their husbands sexually if they expect their husbands to take care of them” and he recommends doing so by methods that aren’t allowed by Catholic sexual ethics.
Holy Sex! by Greg Popcak is a good one. There’s lots of explanation of the “why” before he gets into the “how” of sex. My husband and I read it together on our honeymoon and found it really helpful. If you’re looking for books just on the sexual aspect of a relationship, that’s the one I’d recommend.
As for general marriage books, my favorite one is actually Protestant— Boundaries in Marriage by Drs. Cloud and Townsend. They don’t really get into the sexual sphere as much, but they give good advice for communication between couples. That’s another one my husband and I read early on that we ultimately found was consistently helpful.
I hope that helps!!
thank you!! this is really helpful!