What the Catholic Church Teaches about Sex

In comparison with a chaste soul, all the riches, all the titles and dignities of the earth are contemptible. ~ Saint Alphonsus Ligouri

William A. Marra, Ph.D.

The question of what the Catholic Church teaches about sex is, fortunately, easily answered. On December 29, 1975 the supreme authority of the Church, the Holy See, issued in Rome, a Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics. This covers many of the questions raised in contemporary society, which is perhaps too much preoccupied by this subject.

Question 1

What would you say are the keys to the Vatican’s Declaration on sexual ethics?

A. Two points underlie the teaching of the entire Declaration. These are the finality of the sex act and the role of marriage.

Question 2

Let’s start with the second, marriage. What importance does the Declaration give to marriage?

A. Simply this: for any genital act to be morally acceptable, it must be within the framework of marriage.

Question 3

And this means?

A. Premarital sex and extramarital sex are condemned as sinful.

Question 4

Even if the couple is in love and seriously intends to be married?

A. Yes.

Question 5

Why?

A. Let’s look at marriage for a moment. What is the real essence of marriage? The elaborate preparations, the expensive wardrobes, the rings, the flowers, the banquet? No, these are quite accidental, although they do serve the purpose of impressing upon all concerned the solemnity of the marriage ceremony. Is it then the presence of a priest, the nuptial Mass? Again, no. However important these are, they are still secondary. The primary reality in marriage is the solemn exchange of vows, the firm commitment between a man and a woman that each takes the other as a lawful spouse in a permanent union that lasts until the death of one of the partners. The Vatican’s Declaration quotes the very words of Jesus Christ, Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female and that He said: `This is why a man must leave father and mother, and cling to his wife, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’

Marriage, therefore, is much more than the intention to remain together. It is even much more than the lovers’ desire and hope to be joined in a permanent union. Marriage is the actual commitment, the exchange of the freely spoken vows which actually do bind the partners together in a real and unbreakable way. They are perfectly free to enter into the union, and, by this, to forge the bond; but once they have done so, they are then no longer free to sever the union or fracture the bond. All this means that marriage is not something trivial, like a trip to the Caribbean, which can be lightly decided upon and entered into. So serious are the obligations of marriage, so lasting its effects, so far-reaching its consequences, even in eternity, that it demands a most earnest deliberation on the part of each person before it is effected.

Now the point of the Declaration, echoing almost twenty centuries of Catholic teaching, is this: only this kind of commitment, the commitment which forges a genuine and irrevocable marriage bond, is enough to allow the partners the use of sex. Anything less is not enough. Anything less would mean that the partners are not fully committed, are not welded together in a bond entrusted to God, are not yet willing to place their respective fates in each other’s hands. Those who have not yet entered into this profound and public commitment do not yet have the moral right to possess each other in the act of sexual intercourse. And, I might add, neither do they have the right to reveal their nakedness to each other. These acts pertain to marriage alone.

Question 6

Isn’t this being legalistic – this insisting on a formality, the exchange of vows, the witness of a priest, and so forth? Why should it not suffice in the eyes of God and therefore of His Church, that the couple having sexual relations love each other and take each other seriously?

A. But the exchange of vows is precisely not a formality! As I said above, the externals of the ceremony – the banquet, the wardrobe, the flowers – these are formalities; they are indeed accidental and might in certain cases be dispensed with. But when a couple pledges life together (for Catholics this must be done in the presence of a priest) there is nothing legalistic or formalistic about this at all. The public exchange of vows constitutes the commitment, forges the bond. Before they exchange vows, each of the partners is free to depart from the other. Neither has any rights over the other’s body, for they are still two. The exchange of vows is precisely what makes them one.

Question 7

What if the couple exchanges vows in private – without benefit of clergy?

A. Strictly speaking, this could be a valid marriage from the point of view of pure reason. In fact, in very ancient times the Catholic Church recognized a marriage of Catholics as both valid and licit, provided only that the vows were seriously exchanged – even though exchanged in private. This fact shows that the Church has always seen wherein the essence of marriage lies.

Question 8

Why were the rules changed?

A. It is obvious how great are the possibilities of abuses here. Any partner could subsequently declare that no vows were exchanged, or at least, that no serious intention was present on one or another side. The present Church discipline, therefore, demands that baptized Catholics exchange vows before a priest as a witness. Only in this way can a Sacramental marriage take place. But the essence of marriage has not been altered and neither has the Church’s understanding of it changed. Today, as always, it is understood that the partners themselves are the official ministers of the Sacrament.

Question 9

So marriage is decisive when it comes to sexual ethics?

A. Correct. Sex is morally allowed only within marriage. And marriage means the irrevocable bond forged by the free exchange of vows between a man and a woman. No vows, no marriage. No marriage, no possibility for the pure and moral use of sex.

Question 10

What was your second point – about the finality of the sex act?

A. The Declaration treats, not simply of premarital or extramarital sex, which, as we have seen, are forbidden, but also of homosexual acts and of masturbation. Concerning these latter acts, the Declaration is at pains to show that human sexuality has a finality, a God-willed meaning and purpose. Any activity which departs from this objective finality must, therefore, be considered somehow disordered; such an activity does not fit into God’s plan for the meaning and purpose of sex. The Vatican Declaration even goes so far as to quote Scripture calling homosexual acts depraved.

Question 11

Isn’t that strong language? Where is the Church’s charity and concern for others? And is it not the case that certain persons are born with homosexual tendencies? Are we to consider them as having been created depraved?

A. The Declaration throughout speaks of homosexual relations as acts involving the intimate parts of persons of the same sex. It is these acts which are declared depraved; they have always been understood as abominations, as a matter of fact, absolutely forbidden by the law of God

The Declaration does notice that some people claim that they were born with homosexual tendencies. Now these tendencies – dispositions, for example, to be attracted only to persons of the same sex – are not yet sinful in themselves. Only when they issue in unnatural acts, in consent to lustful or disordered desires, does the question of sin arise. The disposition itself is an objective disorder. Just because one is tempted to certain actions – to do violence to someone with whom one is angry or annoyed – does not mean that one can, morally speaking, proceed to carry out those acts one is tempted to carry out. Similarly, one may not simply proceed to carry out acts in the sexual realm because one is tempted to do so. There is no moral use of the sexual faculty outside of marriage. This applies to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. Indeed Our Lord Himself teaches that merely to lust after someone in one’s heart is already to commit a forbidden sexual act.

With regard to homosexuality, the intrinsic disorder of the homosexual inclination must be recognized as contrary to the finality of wedded love. In the practical realm there can be no such thing as homosexual dating, homosexual cohabitation, or homosexual marriage. Homosexuals must strive for the same purity in thought, word, and deed as heterosexuals, with emphasis on thought! In a sense, it is a disservice to call someone a homosexual, indeed, a reductionism. It is more fitting to speak of a man or woman with a homosexual tendency, or as the Declaration says, a disordered inclination.

Question 12

Well, suppose a person has been born with homosexual tendencies: what is he or she supposed to do? Spurn all sexual relations, all hope of intimate contact with another person?*

A That is one of the hard questions which the Declaration attempts to answer. It notes that the finality of the sexual makeup of humans is such that the powers of sex are at the service of intimate union and procreation. In other words, God so made us male and female that our bodies clearly complement each other. The sexual act, the natural sexual act, permits a profound union and self-donation; and this very union, given the biological facts of sex, is clearly also related to the procreative powers of sex; it is not just a union. Thus, our different organs have been so formed that in the intimate embrace of the marital act, not only is union achieved but potentially procreative mechanisms are set in motion. This is the natural use of sex, God-willed because God-formed and God-ordained. All acts, whether homosexual or heterosexual, which are not open to the transmission of life, as Pope Paul VI expresses it in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, are precisely unnatural – are a perversion or misuse of our God-given sexual faculties.

Given then that a person – let us concede through no personal fault – is afflicted with homosexual feelings and strongly yearns to be married to one of the same sex, what follows? Can it be that unnatural sexual union is allowed because the alternative is loneliness for these persons? No. This would mean that something that perverts God’s order of creation, something therefore immoral in itself, is nevertheless morally allowed because it is intended to achieve a noble end, such as the release from loneliness. But this is an impossible conclusion. It is a case of trying to make the end justify the means. This kind of thinking is at the heart of so-called situation ethics – where literally anything is said to be morally permissible if only it somehow serves love.

*Since the writing of this article in 1977, several help organizations and some psychiatrists have succeeded in healing homosexuals.

Question 13

Then such a person as we have been considering . . .

A. . . . is obliged to stay single and celibate, if the possibility of a genuine marriage is precluded by his unfortunate tendency or yearning. Morally, he is only allowed to use his sexual faculty in the God-given way the faculty was created to be used.

Question 14

I suppose that the condemnation of masturbation follows the same logic?

A. It does. Here again the sexual power of humans must be considered in its finality. By no stretch of the imagination can masturbation be seen as fulfilling the God-willed purpose of human sex. It too is a disorder, an unnatural use of a sacred power.

But will the Church never listen to the findings of the behavioral scientists in these matters? After all, moral theology should give its answers only after all the facts are in. I thought that the Church, at least after Vatican Council II, was finally agreeable to accepting input from the findings of sociology and psychology. Is not this Declaration, then, a step backward?

Question 15

But will the Church never listen to the findings of the behavioral scientists in these matters? After all, moral theology should give its answers only after all the facts are in. I thought that the Church, at least after Vatican Council II, was finally agreeable to accepting input from the findings of sociology and psychology. Is not this Declaration, then, a step backward?

A. The behavioral sciences have their place and the Church does listen to them. Thus, if the question is how many persons are afflicted with homosexual tendencies, or how many persons habitually practice masturbation, then a scientifically controlled survey could answer these questions. But if the question is whether sodomy or masturbation is morally acceptable, then numbers which show that nearly everybody is doing it are quite beside the point. Everybody at some time or other has committed some sin but the fact that people commit a sin does not convert it into a non-sin. The Church always seeks to know whether acts are sinful; Her mission is to make a moral judgment, to determine what is and is not sin. Her children also need to know this, if only to be able to try more effectively to keep the Commandments. Surveys can only indicate the extent of any act or practice. Some results can be useful in the pastoral ministry of the Church. It can show just how far certain sinful practices have spread in today’s world, a world with a spiritual climate that often seems to be hostile to virtue of any sort, but especially to the virtue of purity.

Question 16

What you have just answered would apply perhaps to sociology, but not to psychology. This latter science does not simply count heads. It also seeks to understand the hidden causes of human behavior.

A. Excellent. And the Church expects to profit from such understanding. But here, too, the moral evaluation of a practice is quite different from psychology. The most such studies in psychology can do is to help confessors assess the subjective responsibility of those who perform what the Church has judged to be objectively sinful acts.

Question 17

Please explain further.

A. I mean that psychological studies may show how in certain cases a person’s responsibility maybe so diminished by character imbalance or habit that there is little or no actual guilt even though what has been done is in itself something objectively sinful. But psychology has nothing to say about the latter point, namely, just when something is objectively sinful.

Question 18

Then who or what does have something to say about these matters?

A. We Catholics believe that the Church is the divinely appointed teacher of the human race on matters of faith and morals. She is the competent interpreter of God’s Word as we find it, for example, in the Bible. To the teaching authority of the Church God has entrusted the task of clarifying and interpreting truths about both good behavior and sinful behavior which men know in general both from reason and from revelation.

Question 19

Isn’t what you just said obsolete? I mean, people today are aware of their personal dignity. They are no longer willing to have moral strictures imposed on them from above – from the Church or from any other authority. Does not the Church recognize the role of the individual conscience in deciding whether something is sinful or not?

A. The Church is the first to recognize and affirm the rights of the individual conscience. But conscience itself operates by recognizing a law superior to itself, a law which imposes certain moral obligations on all of us. I know in the first place that certain actions are objectively sinful and are prohibited by Divine Law. I did not create this Law. I discover it in my heart. It enables me to oppose a human law in the name of my conscience. The typical word of conscience here is, It is better to obey God than men. Conscience creates or frames no laws. Rather it obliges us to conform to that Divine Law which binds all the children of God to certain standards of conduct.

Question 20

Wouldn’t you say that the Declaration is just one more series of don’ts ?

A. And what is wrong with that? General human experience with sex would seem to show that there is scarcely any need for a series of do’s in this realm! The first part of the Declaration does insist that certain deeds are sinful and thus ought not to be done. But this, however negative it may seem, is already a great gift. For the modern world sorely needs clear teaching on this very important question of sexual ethics. Nevertheless, the Vatican Declaration goes on to sketch the positive values of chastity and modesty. In no sense, therefore, can it be put down as merely a cliche of negativism – a thou shalt not unrelated to any real human needs. Obviously, thou shalt not sometimes are needed, as God foresaw from the beginning.

Question 21

You mentioned chastity. What exactly is that?

A. The Declaration holds that chastity is a virtue which concerns the whole personality, as regards both interior and exterior behavior. It regulates our entire attitude towards the sexual sphere. If a person is chaste, it means that his or her sexual conduct is such that it can stand in the sight of God, the Creator of both our bodies and of our souls.

Chastity makes different demands according to different states of life. Some persons, men and women, take solemn vows of chastity in religious communities. These surrender, as it were, their sexual power to God. Here chastity means no use of the sexual faculty, no commerce at all with sex, no intimate bodily union with any other person. Consecrated chastity, and also the celibate life undertaken as a response to a call from God, have a high value in themselves. They also allow humans to have an undivided heart when they attempt to serve God in their life and work.

Question 22

Chastity really deals only with the religious or celibate life then?

A. Not at all. For married persons, chastity simply makes different demands. Sexual union obviously is in no way excluded between married partners; neither is intimate bodily exposure. These belong precisely to the inner garden of marriage. But chastity does exclude any acts within marriage, which do not conform to the finality of human sex. For bodily union to be pure and chaste in marriage, there must be no perverse or unnatural acts. Contraceptive intercourse is also excluded by the virtue of married chastity.

Question 23

Did the Vatican Declaration also deal with this question of artificial birth control?

A. No. It explicitly mentions that it does not intend to cover the whole range of sexual ethics, but only those parts which seem now in most urgent need of a restatement by the Church’s teaching authority. After all the question of contraception was rather thoroughly treated by Pope Paul’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. And this encyclical in turn was based on Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii – which may be translated On Chaste Wedlock.

Question 24

Getting back to the other demands of chastity . . .

A. Besides the consecrated virgins and celibates, besides married persons living together, there are also single persons of both sexes. Chastity simply demands from all these that they guard the intimacy of their bodies and refrain from any intimate acts with other persons – refrain even from any willful desires for such acts.

Question 25

That is a hard prescription, especially for our age. You mean that single persons (and this includes married persons who are separated from their lawful spouses) are to abstain completely from sexual intercourse?

A. Yes. As I said at the start of this interview, marriage is the key to the pure use of natural sex. Only the free permanent commitment to join together in a life together allows one to enter the inner garden of sex. Outside marriage, chastity means precisely that we do not attempt to enter this garden, or to tear away the veil of modesty which shields the inner sanctum of each of us.

Question 26

The Vatican Declaration speaks of modesty too?

A. It does. And I am tempted to add at long last! The Declaration details the struggles with self and with the world which every Christian must expect when he or she attempts to live up to the high calling of being a follower of Christ. It then adds, In accordance with these pressing exhortations, the faithful of the present time, and indeed today more than ever, must use the means which have always been recommended by the Church for living a chaste life. These means are: discipline of the senses and the mind, watchfulness and prudence in avoiding occasions of sin, the observance of modesty, moderation in recreation, wholesome pursuits, assiduous prayer and frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance and the Eucharist.

Question 27

Does not the Declaration seem too preoccupied with sin? I thought that contemporary theology now holds that it is very hard for a person to commit a real mortal sin. Why then all this stress on sin – as if a person could lose the favor of God with a single act – whether of impurity or something else? Should we not stress how much God loves us? Should we not see that the only real sin is the failure to love? To use a slang expression, we seem to have a hang-up on sin, especially those sins linked with sex. It seems unhealthy to think this way today!

A. The Declaration takes note of a theory called fundamental option. This theory indeed minimizes the chance that any single act, especially if it proceeds from human weakness (as many sins of impurity do), could ever be considered a mortal sin in the eyes of God; and thus could ever be considered something which might bar us from eternal salvation. The theory holds that only an explicit conscious rejection of God, or else a stubborn refusal to love our neighbor can ever be mortally sinful. In other words, according to the theory of fundamental option, mortal sin exists only in a basic choice that runs throughout our entire life, not in any single and perhaps even isolated act.

The Declaration after noting the main points of this theory, rejects it. Quoting the words of Christ, it declares that mortal sins are only too possible in each deliberate transgression, in serious matter, of each of the moral laws. Of course God wants us to love Him and our neighbor because of Him. But this love clearly included keeping each of His Commandments. Violence is done to language when it is suggested that we can basically love God all the while we break the very moral Commandments which reveal His holy will for us.

Question 28

Do you think that this Declaration will share the fate of certain other Vatican documents, i.e., become the object of loyal dissent and then be ignored as being irrelevant to the times?

A. Not if the Declaration means what it says. In three separate paragraphs, the Declaration calls attention to the solemn duty of bishops to instruct their flock on these important teachings and to see that sound doctrine . . . is taught in faculties of theology and seminaries. I earnestly hope that the Holy Father and the bishops of the world have no intention of allowing the misguided customs of the present day to force the Church to be silent when Christ bids Her to teach all men whatsoever I have commanded you.

(Originally Published by Catholics United for the Faith Newsletter, 1977.)

Dr. William A. Marra

Dr. William A. Marra was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 20, 1928 of Italian immigrant parents. He grew up in Jersey City, but attended the Jesuit-run Regis High School in New York City. He went to college at the University of Detroit School of Engineering also run by the Jesuits. After college he attended graduate school at Fordham University. After his release from the military, in 1952, he began a teaching career at Fordham University that spanned nearly four decades. At Fordham he met the man he would later call the greatest influence on my life – Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Prompted by concerns over the emerging practice of sex-education in both public and parochial schools, in 1968-69, he began a second career as a lecturer. He initially spoke to groups dedicated to fighting abuses in local schools. He also founded alternative private schools, the most notable being the Holy Innocents schools, a small chain of parent-managed primary schools. Dr. Marra served as vice-president of Catholics United for the Faith. He founded the Roman Forum Lecture Series which often featured his friend von Hildebrand as its speaker. In addition, Dr. Marra often lectured on such varied topics as evolution, liturgy, philosophy, and seminary education.

In later years Dr. Marra expanded his lectures to include various topics related to the condition of the Catholic Church with a special emphasis on home schooling and parental rights. He authored and co-authored numerous articles, as well as published a work in philosophy, Happiness and Christian Hope.

Dr. Marra appeared on Mother Angelica’s EWTN Network, and spoke to numerous groups of religious and clergy, including Mother Angelica’s own order. He was returning from a series of seminars given in Alabama when he became ill and died from a stroke on December 12, 1998.