IS SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE WRONG?
Catholicism Forbids Sex without a Pregnancy being intended
http://www.geocities.com/truechurch/sexuality.html
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that there are seven sacraments. A sacrament is a symbolic rite that puts power from God into you that makes you pleasing to him and fit for being with him forever in Heaven. Marriage is thought to be one of these sacraments. So marriage is believed to make the love of husband and wife holy. The Roman Catholic, Preface of Marriage III says, "The love of man and woman is made holy in the sacrament of marriage, and becomes the mirror of your everlasting love". So marriage makes love holy. Sexual love outside marriage then is not holy. If we deny this, then we deny that the Church is right about the sacraments and that the Church has any monopoly on discerning the truth and indeed that the Church is worth believing in. We are affirming that we can get to Heaven without it.
The Bible says at 1 John 2:9-10 says that the man who hates his brother in Christ is in darkness and has his eyes blinded and doesn't see where he is going. This implies that there is no light in him at all only darkness and evil. Christians are not allowed to think of such a man as good in any way. 1 John 3:15 says that anybody who hates his brother is a murderer and eternal life dwells in no murderer's heart. This means that simply hating somebody makes you as bad as a murderer inside and that no murderer will have eternal life so its a very serious sin. This parallels Jesus' saying that whoever looks at a woman with desire commits adultery with her in his heart or thoughts as some translations put it (Matthew 5:28). Neither verse indicates that they are thinking of people who are planning to do anything. They are speaking of people who would murder and commit adultery if they got the chance and could get away with it. Jesus sees the desire to have sex with a woman as adultery even if you or she are not married because for him fornication and adultery are the same sin under different names. The sin he is against is sex outside marriage which can take the form of fornication or adultery. So he can say that an unmarried pair having sex is still adultery. He said that whoever divorces his wife forces her to commit adultery (Matthew 5:32). The man can't say that his wife makes her own decisions once she leaves. When he gives her a divorce he is trying to force her to commit adultery by giving her the freedom to wed again. He sins in making an adulteress of her. If he does that just by divorcing her, then how much more is it a sin to simply think of having sex or to have sexual fantasies? Obviously all this implies that sex outside marriage is a grave sin.
The Roman Catholic Church says that to have
sex outside marriage means you are telling the person you are having sex with,
“I am giving you my whole self now. This
means I am giving you myself for life.”
The Church says that sex is a language, it
tells the person you have sex with that you give yourself to them
entirely. They argue that sex is only
suitable for marriage, where a man takes a woman for life as his sexual
partner, for outside of marriage it is simply a lie. Sex in marriage then means that the husband
is telling his wife that he belongs to nobody but her for life and vice
versa.
This is simply utter rubbish.
We all know this for most of us have had
sex meaning, “I give you my body entirely now.”
It is your body you give in sex.
And you are not giving your body to the person you have sex with
forever. Even if you get married and vow
to stay together you will naturally intend to separate and stop having sex if
you don’t get along with your partner.
To give yourself is to give your heart not your body and even then
nobody says you belong to the person who you give your heart to forever. If you give your heart to another and you
have sex together it is giving the heart more than having sex that involves the
self-giving.
It is said that marriage involves vowing to
stay together not the husband giving himself entirely to his wife or vice
versa. But if that is so, you don’t need
marriage for that. The Church cannot accept this view so marriage for it must
mean total self-giving. Though the
Church can release you from lifelong vows the Church claims it cannot release
you from your marriage vows because the meaning of marriage is mutual lifelong
self-giving.
Marriage in theory and practice is trying
to treat the other person as your property.
And that is not acceptable no matter how well you treat them or how kind
you are to them. The demeaning attitude
is still there underneath all the kind deeds.
If the married persons give themselves to
their spouses for life, then they belong to the persons they give themselves
to. But nobody belongs to anybody. People are ends in themselves. They are not property. People belong only to themselves.
The Church says sex in marriage means life
long commitment and self-giving. Yet the
Church says that our love and goodness in this life are tainted by sin and
nobody is entirely good which was why Jesus said in the gospels that nobody was
good but God only. So entire self-giving
is an impossible ideal. Husbands and
wives debate things together – does that sound like entire self-giving?
Nobody ever gives their whole selves to
anybody. You might give your body and
your time in sex but that is all. Are
husbands who don’t feel much for their wives giving their whole selves? They are holding back and yet the Church
permits their sex. As long as separation
or divorce is allowed, then by having sex in marriage you are saying that you
are giving yourself only as long as the other person doesn’t do something that
entitles you to look for a separation or divorce! That is not giving your whole self. All faiths allow annulments. Are you giving your whole self to a woman who
is your wife if you would or even might try to get the marriage annulled if it
broke down? Many people looking for
annulments are surprised when they get them so don’t be complacent and say that
this question isn’t applicable to you!
If your wife disproves of your smoking are
you giving your whole self to her? Her
disapproval is preventing her from accepting you entirely. To give yourself to her is to tell her that
she is accepting you entirely. It’s a
lie. Also you die prematurely when you
smoke. Are you giving her your whole self when you are lessening your
life-span? You are taking years or
months when you could be together from her.
To say that sex is saying “I give myself to
you entirely and for as long as we are alive together” contradicts the marriage
vows in which something similar is said.
If sex says that then it follows that you are marrying when you have
sex. Sex then contradicts the marriage
vows because they can’t work, they can’t cause marriage – only sex can. If two unmarried people have sex they are
marrying each other. It is saying that
you are more married when you have sex with your bride than when you made your
vows to her.
If sex means you give your whole self then
why say that it means you give yourself to your partner for life? Why not eternity? Why should it just be for this life? If you really give your whole self then you
give yourself forever.
If sex is giving your whole self to another
person then how can it be right to look for a new partner or wife or husband if
that person dies? To say I give myself
to you until divorce if it happens is putting a condition on it as much as
saying I give myself to you until you die is.
It is not giving your whole self.
If you give your whole self to a person you will be like the person who
having lost their beloved wife or husband refuses to even think about a new
partner for they loved the old partner so much.
In Christianity, marriage ends only by death. What if in the future you die and are
revived? If you married and wanted to
marry, you could get killed in a hospital so that you can die and be brought
back to life again a free man or woman.
The Church couldn’t possibly deny that it succeeds in dissolving the
marriage or ending it leaving you free to marry again. Some day it may be possible. In that day, people will see how silly it is
to oppose divorce for this will amount to the same thing. The Church should allow divorce.
Even if this is not possible, it would be
the same if it could happen – people will be wishing it could be done and if
that is acceptable then these people are ending marriages in their hearts. It is just like when Jesus said that if you
lust for a woman you sin in your heart with her even if you never touch
her.
Sex isn’t the only way you give yourself to
another person. You give yourself to
your child when you get pregnant. That
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any more babies or that the child should stay
with you instead of getting married and going away or that you should refuse to
go to parties and look after your child
instead. When you tell your sweetheart
that you love her or him and nobody else and swear undying love are you not
giving yourself in a deeper way that sex could ever signify? The closeness of that moment could be closer
than sex. Don’t you see then the
absurdity of the Christian doctrine that sex means you are giving yourself not
just now but for life?
When you work you are giving your precious
time to your employer and yourself. You
could be dead next week and better off having a party instead of working and
yet you work. You put the job before the
thought that you could be dead and should be living it up in the meantime. Does this giving yourself mean you should
work to this person until death?
You could intend a great commitment to a
person through sex outside marriage and then when you get married you may feel
less committed. Marriage can change
relationships. To say that
unenthusiastic and unloving sex in marriage is good for it promises and
signifies lifelong commitment and that sex between two unmarried people who are
really into each other and are soul mates should but does not just because they
are not married and so is a lie, is just bigoted cruel insulting nonsense. It is really just saying that there is no
honest commitment without a simple ceremony.
Did you know that you are insincere when you take out a loan wearing
white shoes?
If sex outside marriage is lying to the
sexual partner that he or she is the one for life as the Church says then sex
within marriage when one of you believe in divorce is also lying. Why?
For the marriage could end in divorce and the sex is not saying, “I take
you for life no matter how bad things get”, but, “I take you for life but if
things get too bad we will get divorced”.
How far must a man and woman go before
their sex is saying, “I take you for life”?
Does oral sex say that? Anal sex? Heavy petting? Foreplay? Masturbation? Is
ejaculation necessary? Can you see how
saying sex says that confines people to a silly biological morality in which it
is physics that count more than feelings and intentions?
The Roman Catholic position on sex outside
marriage comes from the Bible which strictly forbids it. Some feel that the prohibition in the Bible
was just a rule made by God to test us.
The Roman Church feels that it is because sex outside marriage denies
the language of sex which speaks of committing to another completely and
forever. We can be sure that the Roman
Church is wrong but we can also be sure that to start teaching that God made
laws to test us or for a mysterious good purpose is fanaticism. It speaks of putting faith before
people. The Roman Church knows that its
reasons for condemning sex outside wedlock are wrong – it is a philosophically
trained faith. But it just ignores the
facts and is a dishonest religion.
The big advantage the Church sees in the
idea that sex says to the person that you give yourself to them forever is in
this total self-giving for it gives the Church an excuse to trick people into
accepting or at least not opposing its stance on contraception. The Church does in fact say that since sex is
self-giving using contraception is holding yourself
back and is not sacrificially giving yourself to the other person. Sex must be great fun when it is all about
sacrifice! Who in their right mind would
marry if it were? So sex then for a
Catholic says, “I give myself to you so much that we leave our union open to
life and hold nothing back.” Obviously
oral sex must be a sin for it is not open to life. Logically the man should simply get on the
woman and forget about foreplay and all the rest. Anything else is holding back. But what if they plan to have full sex? It makes no difference. The other acts do not involve the self-giving
in the way that full sex does. It would
be like putting the ring on every finger but the correct one at a wedding
before you put it on the correct finger. If the couple were having sex for the
total self-giving reason they wouldn’t need the other acts. There is actually more self-giving and
sacrifice in sex that takes place without much enjoyment than there is with sex
that does. The Church says that we only
show love by sacrifice.
Surely then a barren couple cannot give
themselves as well as a fertile couple can?
Surely their relationship is being said to be defective.
Does the Church forbid sex outside marriage
because of the danger of catching venereal disease?
It doesn’t forbid going to public hospitals
and clinics where diseases are frequently caught. It doesn’t forbid boxing with its dangers and
the danger of infection. It doesn’t command
that men and women getting married go and get checked up first. It forbids condoms which help step venereal
disease and holds that a rapist using a condom sins more than one that does
not. It holds that God’s law sometimes
requires suffering – for example, under religious persecution it is still not
right to abandon your Catholic faith so suffering venereal disease is not a
proof that sex outside marriage is wrong for the Church. The Church teaches an inhuman morality that
has no relevance to modern life.
Does the Church forbid sex outside marriage
because of the danger of pregnancy?
The Church holds that sex outside marriage
is still seriously sinful even between a barren couple or a couple that are not
just using the pill but condoms as well to be double sure that they are safe so
the fear of pregnancy is not a major reason for forbidding sex outside
marriage. The Church doesn’t forbid sex
in marriage when the wife has been warned by doctors that she will die if she
gets pregnant again. The Church holds
that all sex must be open to life and that remains true even when natural
family planning is practiced. An
unwanted pregnancy can cause as much destruction in marriage as outside of
it. And yet the Church forbids
contraception or abortion. There is no
danger of unmarried pregnancy from oral sex and the Church holds that it is a
far bigger sin than ordinary sex. The
Church holds that “oral sodomy” is an unnatural sin. It is putting the sex organs where they are
not designed by God to be put.
The Church abhors promiscuity. If a man married and was widowed every year by the end of his life he would have slept with as many women as promiscuous men have and the Church would approve. There is nothing bothering the Church only people having sex without its permission. The Church is not concerned about promiscuity causing disease. It welcomes ladykillers to the altar for marriage to innocent young virgins. It is law and not people it cares for. It is astonishing that some people are so naïve as to be happy with the “compassion” they get from the two-faced load of Christian crap.
It is possible for a man and woman to experience total intimacy in a kiss. They might have sex later and not feel as close. Assuming that it is possible for something to express everlasting commitment. It is not necessarily the language of sex that says, "I belong to you forever". It could be anything. A man can practice and experience greater intimacy with his wife by her hospital bed when he visits her than through sex. The Church by imagining a language for sex is demeaning the intimacy of say the hospital visit. Kissing intimately is a very sexual act and yet the Church allows actresses and actors to engage in it in films.
The sex outside marriage ban is just about religious rules not people. It is sheer nonsense and only hypocrisy can inspire people to support it. The Catholic Church pretends that its attitude towards sex stems from it regarding sex as very very holy. The Jehovah's Witnesses use the same excuse to ban blood transfusions and cause lots of sickness and death. They say that the Bible says the life of the flesh is in the blood and so to respect blood is to respect life. The Catholic Church says that the Catholic should be prepared to die in defence of the Church's teaching on sex. Comparing the two you can see that the attitudes are really just pretending to reverence something as sacred. If you hate people enjoying themselves what better way to do it than to say fun is so holy and sacred that it can only be engaged in in very strict circumstances?
Christians don't mind a man sleeping with his wife even if he intends to leave her. They do mind him sleeping with her when he is not married though he intends to spend the rest of his life with her and feels the sex shows her that. Its not about people but rules. The rules are vile hypocrisy and the Church has always been good at being hypocritical.
You always know when you are telling a lie. If sex outside marriage is saying to a person that you will be with them forever and you cannot mean that unless you are married then you cannot have sex outside marriage with a good conscience. You lied in the sex and you knew it was a lie. The Church sees lying as a sin. Lying through sex is seen as a very serious lie and a grave sin. You will never be able to say that you believed the sex was not wrong. Even if you could sincerely believe it was right you would still be a bad person. A murderer who thinks he or she is doing right is still doing wrong. He or she is still a bad person.
The Church says we must hate sin but love the sinner. The Church says it is a sin to recognise sin but to fail to be angry at it. And it is worse to even condone it or laugh at it. When people do wrong, what they fear is people having condemnatory feelings for them not the people saying they are doing wrong. People do not fear people who don't care what they do or even laugh at their sins. It is not being judged to be doing bad or wrong that people fear but others feeling condemnatory towards them for what they do. God doesn't have feelings and we are expected to put God first so it would be surprising if the God concept ever genuinely managed to stop anybody who wanted to do evil from doing it. Rather it would encourage it for it says we should be worried not about the condemnations of others but about the wrongness of the evil we do. It says worrying about the condemning feelings is a sin.
The Church likes to claim that if a couple live together before marriage, the marriage is more likely to fail. The argument is that as living together is wrong it will have bad consequences. In other words, the Church wants to think that cohabiting before marriage encourages the couple to break up after getting married. But think of it this way. Cohabiting as a kind of trial marriage should make the marriage stronger. If it doesn't, then it is not the cohabiting that is to blame but something else. Perhaps the couple got married because they were under some kind of pressure. Perhaps their living together reflects a suspicion about marriage that it doesn't work for most people. If a couple feel that way, even if they don't admit it, it could lead to problems if they get married. The Church has no right to accuse cohabitation of causing or helping to cause the marriage break-up - it is only a trick to get people to abide by its rule that sex must be confined to marriage. The nonsense it spouts plainly shows that it is lying when it says it loves the sinner and hates the sin. How could it be doing that when it falsely accuses cohabiters of endangering their future marriage by the mere fact they are cohabiting? It is like saying you hate a sin somebody has committed when the sin is in fact not a sin at all.
The Church says that looking at erotica is a sin even if there is no chance of you being titillated by it. It says that looking at it is giving the producers and participants a reason to sin. It is looking at sin when you should be repelled by sin and despise it. All that follows from the notion of sex outside marriage being wrong. Sexy erotic images have to portray the models as sexually available. They have to make you want to have sex with the models.
It is said that porn, even when it depicts loving healthy sex, is treating the person as a body and not a person. It is said that the goodness and virtue of the person does not matter. If that is true then it must be a sin to look after your beauty and for people to gaze upon it. People who see your beauty enjoy it because it is physical attractiveness and they admire that more than your goodness or virtues.
Ignore the Church. Ignore its Jesus. Have sex but have it responsibly.