Holy Sex! E-Book

Gregory K. Popcak

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 552

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

Common wisdom portrays sex and church to be at odds, yet studies show that Catholics have better sex, and more often. This witty, frank, and refreshingly orthodox book draws from the beautiful truths of Catholic teaching to show people of all faiths about rich and satisfying sexuality. Hailed by Christians across the spectrum from Christopher West and Janet E. Smith to John L. Allen, Jr., Holy Sex! includes dozens of questionnaires, quizzes, and valuable lessons from real-life stories.

Leseprobe

Praise for Holy Sex! …

“Some books are worth reading because they make an important point, others for the sheer delight of the writing. Greg Popcak’s Holy Sex! is both. Wherever one stands on the fine points of Catholic teaching about sex, Popcak reveals its deeply sensual core, debunking popular stereotypes of Catholicism as somehow anti-erotic. Think of this book as Thomas Aquinas meets Dr. Ruth, and enjoy!”

—JOHN L. ALLEN JR., Senior Correspondent forthe National Catholic Reporter and author ofMega-Trends in Catholicism: Ten Forces Turningthe Catholic Church Upside Down (Doubleday).

“Dynamic, faithful, funny, and informative, Holy Sex! demonstrates how the Truth will set you free. Popcak offers a path to authentic ‘sexual liberation’— not the bondage to libido that passes for freedom in our culture, but the freedom to love. Combining practical wisdom with the wisdom of the ages, Popcak leads men and women to the love they long for. Holy Sex! deserves a big Amen!”

—CHRISTOPHER WEST, Fellow, Theology of the Body Institute;Author, The Love That Satisfies: Reflections on Eros and Agape

“Though this may shock much of the churchgoing world, ‘purity’ and ‘prude’ are not synonymous terms. This witty, well-researched book provides some much needed insight concerning God’s design for married sexuality. As an Evangelical reader I was particularly interested in Popcak’s intelligent, thought-provoking challenge to the carte-blanche acceptance of birth control by the church at large. Couples—be they Catholic, Evangelical, or otherwise — would do well to consider Popcak’s challenge to rethink the sexual status quo.”

—ED GUNGOR, Lead Pastor of the People’s Church in Tulsa,Author of There’s More to the Secret and The Vow

“In this invigorating, informative, eye-opening book, Dr. Greg Popcak reveals the pristine beauty of God’s original plan for sex. For those who think that shallow eroticism or joyless, mechanical intercourse are the only two options for one’s sex life, Dr. Popcak invites you to think again. With upbeat prose and practical examples, Dr. Popcak takes up Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body and lays out a whole new way of thinking about sex — God’s way.”

—FATHER THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, L.C., Dean of Theology atRegina Apostolorum University (Rome), Vatican Analyst forCBS News, and author of Spiritual Progress: Becoming the ChristianYou Want to Be and Greater Than You Think:A Theologian Answers the Atheists about God

“It is no surprise to see Dr. Popcak treat marital sex as a truly joyful thing in Holy Sex! As he so clearly points out, God designed man and woman to communicate his love in their spiritual and physical union. If married couples could actually experience their lovemaking as an expression of God’s creative, joyous and renewing love, wow!”

—MOST REV. R. DANIEL CONLON, Bishop of Steubenville, Ohio

“I can safely guarantee that all who read this book will find something new and helpful, will laugh a lot, and may even be shocked at what Dr. Popcak reveals to be compatible with Catholic teaching. Clearly, Dr. Popcak is a chaste, faithful, learned Catholic man with mountains of experience working with couples. I have been waiting a long time for someone like him to write a book like this. I am confident that spouses who follow his advice will become holier and better partners. Those who are holier are certainly better lovers and thanks to Holy Sex! we now know the many ways this is true. Great book!”

—JANET E. SMITH, Father Michael J. McGivney Chairof Life Ethics, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit

“Looking at contemporary popular culture, one finds that sex is overrated and undervalued. Greg Popcak’s fine book helps to set things straight on both counts. He explains with intelligence and humor what some have learned only through painful experience, and many have still not learned, namely, that the joy of sex is not to be found in ‘liberation’ from moral principles, but in its unique power to unite a man and woman as faithful partners in the love-building and life-giving union that marriage is.”

—ROBERT P. GEORGE, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudenceand Director of the James Madison Programin American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

“Holy Sex! is the book that all Catholic young adults have been waiting for. Popcak uses both scientific references and Catholic tradition to put forth a sexual theology that is both relevant and faithful to tradition.”

—MIKE HAYES, author of Googling God andManaging Editor of BustedHalo.com

“Greg Popcak is a wise and funny guy. He combines the ancient wisdom of the Faith with the best that contemporary science and compassionate human understanding have to offer in warm, generous, and practical insights that have already been invaluable to thousands. This book will only add to that rich legacy.”

—MARK P. SHEA, Senior Content Editor, CatholicExchange.com

“Few people can successfully mix humor with a thought-provoking look at the depth of the Catholic faith on love and marriage. But Greg Popcak has managed to do just that in his exceptional book Holy Sex! This should be on the bookshelf of every engaged and married couple — after they’ve read it of course!”

—ANDY ALDERSON, Executive Director ofthe Couple to Couple League

“In the last four decades, too many Americans have been led astray by self-styled experts promising sexual liberation and happiness, only to end up with broken hearts and broken bodies. By combining theological insight and psychological wisdom, Dr. Gregory Popcak offers a different path to men and women looking for a way to find happiness and virtue in their sexual lives. Holy Sex! is a powerful guide for navigating the joys and sorrows of sex.”

—W. BRADFORD WILCOX, Director of the Marriage Matters Project and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia

A CATHOLIC GUIDE TOTOE-CURLING, MIND-BLOWING,INFALLIBLE LOVING

GREGORY K. POPCAK, PH.D.

A Crossroad BookThe Crossroad Publishing CompanyNew York

The Crossroad Publishing Companywww.CrossroadPublishing.com

© 2008 by Gregory K. Popcak, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The text of this book is set in 11/16 Goudy Old Style.The display faces are Zapfino and Sackers Light Classic Roman.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Popcak, Gregory K.

Holy sex! : a Catholic guide to toe-curling, mind-blowing, fallible loving / Gregory K. Popcak.

p. cm.ISBN-13: 978-0-8245-2471-5 (alk. paper)ISBN-10: 0-8245-2471-3 (alk. paper)ePUB ISBN: 9780824521615 MOBI ISBN: 9780824521622

1. Sex – Religious aspects – Catholic Church. 2. Catholic Church – Doctrines. I. Title.

BX1795.S48P66 2008241’.66–dc22

2007051315

5 6 7 8 9 10   15 14

CONTENTS

PART ONECHRISTIANITY’S BEST-KEPT SECRET

An Introduction to Holy Sex ♦ Surprising Insights from Tradition ♦ What’s in This Book? ♦ Holy Sex: Can You Handle It?

  1.  Sex, Lies, and the Real Thing

Two False Ideas Attributed to the Church ♦ The Mediterranean Approach ♦ Getting Yer Irish Up ♦ Real Sex Exposed

  2.  Fool’s Gold: Holy Sex or Eroticism

Holy Sex! Don’t Settle for Substitutes! ♦ When Love Goes Bad

  3.  What Are Infallible Lovers Made Of?

How to Become an Infallible Lover: A Recipe ♦ What about Chastity? ♦ Baker’s Quiz ♦ The Eight Steps to Infallible Loving ♦ A Conclusion

  4.  Climbing Higher: The Sexuality Continuum

The Five Stages of Sexual Advancement (From Aunt McGillicuddy’s Antique Urn School to Holy Sex) ♦ Lovemaking as an Experience of God ♦ Lovemaking as a Path to Personal Growth ♦ In a Nutshell

PART TWOTHE FIVE GREAT POWERS OF HOLY SEX

Test Your Holy Sex Quotient (HSQ)

  5.  Sex Makes Us Holy

What Does Holy Mean? ♦ Sensual and Spiritual

  6.  Sex Is Sacramental

A Marriage Made for Heaven ♦ Taking Sex for Granted

  7.  Sex Is a Sign of God’s Love

Naughty, Naughty ♦ Toppling the Barriers of Intimacy ♦ Hi Ho, Hi Ho — Working at Your Relationship

  8.  Sex Unites

The Chemistry of Sex ♦ Love Unwrapped ♦ A Union of Spirits ♦ Healthy and Defensive Attachment

  9.  Sex Creates

Is Every Sperm Sacred? ♦ Being Open to the Fullness of Life ♦ Bet You Didn’t Know

PART THREETHE SCHOOL OF LOVE

10.  Questions about Natural Family Planning (NFP)

11.  The Infallible Lover’s Guide to Pleasure

The Four Pleasure Principles ♦ Putting It All Together: A Case Study ♦ Problem-Solving with the Four Pleasure Principles

12.  The Anatomy of Infallible Loving: Setting the Stage

Social Intercourse ♦ Foreplay

13.  The Anatomy of Infallible Loving: The Good Stuff

Transitioning to Intercourse ♦ The Mind-Blowing Spirituality of Intercourse ♦ Learning from the Woman’s Body ♦ Reviewing Your Sexual Repertoire: Positions and More ♦ Afterglow

PART FOUROVERCOMING COMMON PROBLEMS

14.  Is There Sex after Kids?

15.  When NFP Is Too Hard

16.  You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling

17.  Common Sexual Problems for Women

18.  Common Sexual Problems for Men

19.  Overcoming Infertility

20.  Infidelity

21.  Masturbation and Pornography

22.  When to Seek Help (and from Whom)

23.  Holy Sex Is Your Inheritance

Quizzes

Baker’s Quiz

Test Your Holy Sex Quotient (HSQ)

Maximizing the Senses of Taste and Smell in Foreplay

Maximizing the Visual Sense in Foreplay

Maximizing the Auditory Sense in Foreplay

Maximizing the Sense of Touch in Foreplay

How Engaged Are You?

Exercises

Develop a Marital Mission Statement

Make Sure Marriage and Family Is Your Priority

The Lovelist

Learning to Harmonize

Sexual Addiction: Do You Have a Problem?

PART ONE

Christianity’s Best–Kept Secret

A fruitful kiss, this, and wonderful for its astounding kindness, which does not press mouth to mouth but unites God with humanity.

— St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs

AN INTRODUCTION TO HOLY SEX

You are about to discover Christianity’s best kept secret: the mystical power of sexual love and the surprising, practical insights this tradition reveals to enable you and your beloved to “rise in ecstasy toward the Divine.”*

In Holy Sex! you will discover what it takes to celebrate a toe-curling, eye-popping, mind-blowing, deeply spiritual, and profoundly sacramental sexuality — a sexual relationship that is both fully sensual and fully equipped to move beyond sensuality so that it can become an authentically transformative, spiritual encounter. Heaven will be wedded to earth as you and your spouse walk the path toward becoming Infallible Lovers, the kind of lovers who can infuse their marital lives with a passion that reaches biblical proportions. Literally.

If these sound like big promises, they are meant to be. By the end of this book, you and your beloved will know how to create a passion that will make the angels smile and the neighbors sick with jealousy.

SURPRISING INSIGHTS FROM TRADITION

Most people believe the lie that Christians, and Catholic Christians in particular, have a dim, ignorant, and pleasure-killing view of sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only can faithful Christian couples experience a sexual life that could make even the most jaded pagan jealous. Even more remarkably, Christian lovers are virtually commanded by God and their faith to do so. If this comes as a surprise to you, you’re not alone. Most couples have bought into the lies that keep them from their passionate inheritance. Most people think that only secular sexperts or ancient, moldering pagan mystics have anything to teach the world about sex. Most people have never encountered the truth, the beauty, the goodness, and the vitality that is the mystical Christian spirituality of sex or the practical wisdom it imparts to those couples willing to seek it. Now you can know the truth, and the truth will set your love free.

In my capacity as a talk radio psychotherapist and author of several books on marriage and family life, I’m regularly invited to give workshops on sex and marriage. I have shared many of the principles revealed in this book with audiences across the country. Here are some examples of the feedback I’ve gotten from my encounters with couples.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me this before? You really opened my eyes. Thank you for showing us what marital love could be and giving us the tools to make it happen.” —Erin, Buffalo, New York

“I’ve been around, and I thought I knew everything about sex. I came away from your talk stunned. I hadn’t begun to scratch the surface before today. I’m ashamed to admit that my wife had to drag me to your talk. I’m so glad she did. This is the best thing that ever happened to our marriage.”

—Jim, Dallas, Texas

“Before I heard you, I thought good Christians were supposed to be ashamed of their sexuality. Thank you for showing me the truth. I can’t wait to put your suggestions into practice. My husband isn’t going to know what hit him!”

— Renee, Ann Arbor, Michigan

“This was wonderful. Faithful and practical! We’re going to remember this as the weekend that changed our marriage. I’ve been married thirty years, but you opened up a whole new world for us.”

— Matt, Chicago, Illinois

What are these people — and thousands of others like them — responding to? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Holy Sex. Perhaps you are someone who believes that Christians know nothing worth knowing about sex — except how not to have fun while you “do it.” Or perhaps you’re someone (Christian or not) who believes that sex is “good,” but, at best, a “nice thing to do at the end of the day if you have the time and energy.” Either way, you’re in for the shock of your life. This book not only explodes those myths and many others. It helps you mine the depths of a tradition that reveals the intimate core of sexuality and enables you to encounter lovemaking as God created it to be experienced — as a fully passionate, totally sensual, completely spiritual, remarkably transformational, revelatory, incarnational relationship. Consider this book your invitation to become the lover God wants you to be.

WHAT’S IN THIS BOOK?

Part One of Holy Sex! blows apart the lies you’ve been told about Christianity and sex and introduces you to the freeing truths of Infallible Loving. You’ll come to view sex as a microcosm of your entire relationship. You’ll discover what it takes to experience the kind of passion that challenges you and your mate to become better lovers and better people.

Part Two gives you the tools to tap into the Five Powers of Holy Sex. You’ll discover how to expand your capacity to celebrate the sacred, redemptive, heavenly, uniting, and creative nature of sacred loving. You’ll learn to experience sex as a transformative encounter with incarnational love that unites God himself with you and your beloved.

Part Three gives you everything you need to apply the principles of Holy Sex! to your marriage. You’ll encounter many tips and techniques you and your spouse can use to become Infallible Lovers, capable of creating an authentic sexual relationship rooted in deep intimacy, soulful sensuality, and a vision that propels you toward perfection in love.

Finally, Part Four offers the practical guidance you need to overcome common sexual problems and obstacles that threaten your ability to experience everything your marriage was meant to be.

HOLY SEX: CAN YOU HANDLE IT?

In my work as the founder and executive director of the Pastoral Solutions Institute, I both conduct and supervise literally thousands of hours of pastoral tele-counseling every year with a predominantly Catholic population. People from around the world contact the Institute looking for faith-filled answers to life’s difficult questions. In my direct work with clients, I’ve had the opportunity to help countless people work through painful marriages and difficult sexual problems in frank and faithful discussions. I’ve also coached innumerable couples in solid relationships who wanted to take things to the next level. I have had the privilege of guiding these couples to a place of greater peace, joy, intimacy, and passion. In the course of our sessions, they have discovered what you are about to learn: wherever you have been, whatever you have experienced, and regardless of where you are, God has an abundant banquet of love in store for you.

Some couples sneer at the idea that Holy Sex can be a path to authentic marital happiness. Instead of nurturing the Tree of Love and waiting to eat, at the peak of ripeness, the abundant fruit their effort produces, some people would rather spare themselves the effort, ignore the tree, and simply eat whatever fruit happens to fall to the ground, settling for what is cheap, easy, and often rotten.

God offers the joys of Holy Sex to everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks Holy Sex is for them. But if you’re willing to open your mind to the reality that there is more for you and your beloved, and if you’re willing to commit to the labor that real love requires, then I am confident that you’ll discover that Holy Sex is for you.

Can you handle the truth? Turn the page and find out.

*Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est.

1

SEX, LIES, AND THE REAL THING

God who created man out of love also calls him to love — the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes.

— Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 1604;emphasis added

Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find its shelves are positively pregnant with books about sex. Thanks to texts on tantric sex, karmic sex, kosher sex, sex for one, sex for several, and sexy sex for sex’s sake, our culture has advanced to the point where you can do it on a plane, you can do it on a train, you can do it here, or there. Yes, my friends, you can do it anywhere — with confidence, impunity, and even, if you are so inclined, with malice aforethought.

But in the midst of the sea of information about sex, the unanswered question is “Can you do it…asa Christian?” To which the cynic responds, “Of course not!” And this goes double if you happen to be a Catholic Christian, in which case, the cynic would answer, “Not only can you not do it, you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking about it.”

The cynics are wrong.

Uber-preacher Bishop Fulton Sheen once observed that “millions of people hate the Church for what they think she teaches. But there aren’t ten people who hate the Church for what she really teaches.” This is never truer than when the topic of Catholic sexuality is raised. By now you’ve all seen the widely distributed press release from the office for the National Association of Conventional Wisdom on All Things Catholic (NACWATC). For those of you who aren’t in the loop, here’s a copy of that famous document:

TWO FALSE IDEAS ATTRIBUTED TO THE CHURCH

Memos aside, I suspect the majority of people would be truly surprised to discover that most of what they think of as official Catholic teaching about sex has actually been officially denounced as a heresy by the Catholic Church at one point or another. This is especially true of the two predominant categories into which most people believe Catholic sexuality breaks down: The Keep God Out of My Bedroom School and Aunt McGillicuddy’s Antique Urn School.

THE MEDITERRANEAN APPROACH

The Keep God Out of My Bedroom School of Sexuality has a very impressive alumni mailing list. Think of it as the more Mediterranean, Must Leave Morning Mass Early So I Can Have Breakfast with My Mistress school of thought. People who hold this view of sex tend to believe that “as long as I am a basically good person, occupy my mind with spiritual thoughts, let Father dip into my wallet whenever he asks, and don’t miss Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, I can do whatever I want with my body, because, after all, God doesn’t really care about what happens with those dangly bits as long as I shake them only at consenting adults behind closed doors.”

Although many Catholics past and present do hold to this way of thinking about sex, there is nothing Catholic about it. In fact, it isn’t remotely Christian — even in the broadest sense of the word. This school of thought has much more to do with a kind of low church gnosticism than it does with anything Christian.

Think of gnosticism as the RonCo knock-off of Christianity. It is to Christianity what GLH2000 — “spray-on hair-in-a-can” — is to real hair: a diverse group of religious movements that grew up alongside Christianity. Although looking like the name-brand product, they are cheap and shiny, making up in marketing what they lack in substance. This, of course, is exactly why people can’t get enough of them even to this day. One of the common themes uniting the various gnostic movements is the idea that the body is largely irrelevant and even undesirable. According to the gnostics, man is primarily a spiritual being, inconveniently weighed down by a slab of meat (commonly referred to as “a body”) that it is our great misfortune to lug about.

The less popular, high church gnostics dealt with this dim view of the body by punishing it with extreme fasting, strict abstinence, and harsh sexual continence. And sometimes castration and suicide.

These people weren’t invited to a lot of parties.

By contrast, the people who threw the best parties, what I call the “low church gnostics,” were a lot like our modern-day Keep God Out of My Bedroom Schoolers. They believed that since God only really cares about our spirits, we could do almost anything we wanted with our body, especially if it involved other people’s bodies. After all, since our bodies are bad anyway, why not let them do the bad things they were made to do? Although there aren’t a lot of high church gnostics around these days, the low church kind are in abundance. In the contemporary world, low church gnostics are the helpful folks who argue that the Catholic Church—and really, all Christendom — would be much better off if it would just stop obsessing about sex and be what God intended it to be: a glorified social service agency that stinks of incense and good intentions.

Despite its staying power, gnosticism in all its forms has been denounced as either outright paganism or a heresy since the second century A.D. by such prominent Christian writers as Melito of Sardis (died 190 A.D.), Irenaeus of Lyons (130–202 A.D.), and Tertullian (160–222 A.D.). In fact, in an intriguing discussion between Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and John Paul II biographer George Weigel in 2007, low church gnosticism was fingered as Christianity’s public enemy number one in the new millennium, for its ability both to seem Christian and to exhibit Christian piety all while undermining everything Christianity stands for as far as the body and relationship goes.

These prominent historical and contemporary Christians attacked gnosticism because, above all, Christianity is all about the body. The Christian knows that God doesn’t love us just for our minds. He wants all of us. In fact, God loves us so much that he sent his Son to become one of us — body and all! For the Christian, the scandal of the Incarnation is not that it reveals our bodies to be bad, but that it shows how incredibly good our bodies are and were always meant to be (see Gen. 1:31). As the Eastern Fathers of the Church put it, the incarnation divinized Human Nature (see CCC no. 460).

Therefore, gnosticism, especially the low church variety, fails in the light of Christianity because, for all its corporeal pessimism, it treats the body too lightly. To put it in colloquial terms, there’s a reason nightclubs and singles bars are often called “meat markets” — even by the people who frequent them. Rather than thinking of the body as a creation of God deserving respect, latter-day gnostics treat their bodies as bags of meat, obsolete appendages — spiritual tonsils if you will — that have no bearing at all on their dignity as a human person or their eternal life. Therefore, the body can be treated with incredible irreverence and disregard — because, after all, it’s worthless.

And yet, as the old saying goes, “God don’t make junk.” Catholic Christians know that matter (physical creation) matters to God. God took time out of the busiest schedule in the universe to make the body and pronounce it good (Genesis 1). Then, after the fall and by means of Christ’s incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection, God went through a great deal of trouble to redeem us and our bodies. Salvation history is chock full of evidence that God is virtually obsessed with our bodiliness. In fact, both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds (if you don’t profess ’em, you ain’t Christian) emphasize the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body, meaning not only that our spirits will be raised to glory, but also that at the end of the world we will be reunited with our glorified bodies (just like Christ after the resurrection), spending our eternity as embodied beings (just like Christ now).

Considering how much time and attention God has given to the creation and redemption of our bodies, there should be no question that God cares a great deal about what we do with our bodies and how we treat others’ bodies as well. The body is of quintessential importance because, as John Paul the Great said in his groundbreaking reflections on the theology of the body, “The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible — the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God and thus to be a sign of it.”

Catholicism asserts that God cares about the body because his fingerprints are all over it. By prayerfully contemplating exactly how fearfully and wonderfully our physical bodies are made (Ps. 139:14), we can learn an immense amount about the nature of God himself, about God’s plan for us and God’s plan for harmonious and joyful human relationships. Understanding these things is essential to our happiness because if God is our maker and we are made in his image (Gen. 1:27), then our happiness depends upon our functioning according to our design. If you use a toaster in a manner that is inconsistent with its design, say, to pound nails, you don’t end up with a happy toaster. In the same way, if we remain ignorant of the plan for a happy life and relationships that God encoded into the very fabric of our physical being, then we’ll be doomed to function in a manner that leads to sickness, alienation, and misery rather than health, intimacy, and abundant joy.

Though God does care a great deal about our bodies and what we do with them, that does not mean that he doesn’t want us to have fun with our bodies, or even enjoy the fullness of sexual pleasure. That’s where the second heresy comes into play.

GETTING YER IRISH UP

Standing in contrast to the more Mediterranean, Keep God Out of My Bedroom School, Aunt McGillicuddy’s Antique Urn School of Sexuality holds a more Anglo-Irish view. It grudgingly admits that sex is beautiful — in a grotesque, overdone, gothic sort of way — but above all, sex is holy and therefore, a little like Aunt McGillicuddy’s antique urn, must be approached delicately, cautiously, and (ideally) infrequently. That is, “We oonly tooch it if we have to dust it, and then, only once a month er soo.”

As far as the Church is concerned, the problem with this school of thought is twofold: it completely misconstrues the concept of holiness, and it overemphasizes the danger of sin hiding out behind every good thing. In the first instance, Aunt McGillicuddy-ites take Old Testament holiness and put a Jansenistic spin on it. Let me explain. In the Old Testament, holiness was something entirely “other” and “out there.” God was Elohim, “God of the Mountain.” He was so holy that you couldn’t even say or write out his name. The holiest part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, was so sacred that only the high priest could enter it, and then only once a year. In fact, this journey to the inner sanctum sanctorum was thought to be so dangerous that before the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, his fellow priests would tie a rope around his waist so that if God decided to zap him while he was making his annual visit, his priestly colleagues could haul what was left of his toasted carcass out for something resembling a decent burial.

But in the New Testament, the Christian sense of holiness is radically different. In the person of Jesus Christ, true God became true Man. The “out there” became “right here.” The utterly transcendent “I AM” became the immanent Emmanuel, “God with us.” According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), “the Word became flesh to be our model of holiness.” Or, as St. Thomas Aquinas expresses it, “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (CCC no. 460).

For the Catholic Christian, sex is holy, but not in the “touch it and die” sense of holiness. It is holy in the sense that it is the most complete and intimate way one divinized human person can give himself or herself to another divinized human person. Sex is holy because you are holy. God came to make it so. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation…. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people!” (1 Pet. 2:9–10). In the words of Pope John Paul the Great, sex is a “selfgift.” It is the sharing of all the holiness you are with all the holiness of another.

But if this was the only problem, then the McGillicuddy-ite’s sense of holiness would simply be Judaic, not heretical. Where the Aunt McGilli-cuddy School really goes wrong is that it lumps a Jansenistic sense of sin on top of its Old Testament sense of holiness. In the early 1600s Cornelius Otto Jansen, a Scripture scholar and later Catholic bishop, asserted that human persons were so corrupted by original sin that we could not actually choose anything that was good. This teaching of the radical corruption of the human person essentially denied the saving power of baptism, which Catholics believe washes away original sin. Bishop Jansen wrote a controversial three-volume treatise on the theology of St. Augustine, which essentially distorted Augustine’s teachings in the service of Jansen’s radically morally corrupt view of the person (which, incidentally, is most likely the source of Augustine’s oppressive sexual rep in today’s conventional wisdom). Eventually, after a bitter dispute with the Holy See, Jansen’s teachings became a heresy so un-Catholic it had to be denounced twice: it was formally condemned by Pope Urban VIII in 1643 and again by Pope Innocent X in 1653. In his famous work Enthusiasm, Msgr. Ronald Knox summarizes the Catholic problem with Jansenism by saying, “Jansenism never learned to smile. Its adherents forget, after all, to believe in grace, so hag-ridden are they by their sense of the need for it.”

In other words, rightly recognizing that the potential for abuse exists when a person encounters any good thing, Jansenists assumed that people are utterly powerless to resist the temptation to abuse good things and therefore, all good things (and for the purposes of our discussion, especially sex) should be viewed with deep suspicion and avoided if possible.

Unfortunately, then, as now, people didn’t just hop-to because the pope said so. Though the Church did what it could to institutionally rout out the scourge of Jansenism, the heresy had taken hold among the people and the clergy of France. In the 1600s Ireland was sending the vast majority of its seminarians to France for training. So Jansenism spread with a vengeance to Ireland and, following the mass emigration of Irish Catholics during the potato famine, it came to America, where it became easily accepted as the Official Catholic teaching on sex by our nation of apostate Puritans. (As a side note, many contemporary American Keep God Out of My Bedroom Schoolers are simply in reaction-formation to their Aunt McGillicuddy upbringing.)

Largely because of the lingering Jansenist impulses of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Catholic America, Catholics and non-Catholics alike came to believe that “Catholics fear sex.” But nothing could be further from the truth. Catholicism is the faith of celebration. It is the faith that invented holidays (literally, “Holy Days”). It is the faith about which the poet Hilaire Belloc famously wrote, “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine / There is laughter, and music, and good red wine!” Catholicism is the faith that recognizes the holiness of all creation because of the miracle of Christ’s incarnation. It is the faith of St. Francis of Assisi, who, when asked by his disciples whether to fast or feast when Christmas (the Feast of the Incarnation) fell on a Friday (traditionally a fast day) reportedly said, “It is my wish that on a day such as this even the walls should be smeared with meat so they may feast!” Only Catholic Christianity could hate a heresy because it “couldn’t smile.” And so while the world believes that Catholics hate and fear sex, the truth is even more scandalous. The truth is that the Catholic Church celebrates and esteems sex more than any other faith. By exploring what authentic Catholic tradition holds about human sexuality, any husband and wife can experience sex as God intended it to be experienced — an eye-popping, toe-curling, life-giving, profoundly sacred, and deeply spiritual union of one divinized human person with another.

REAL SEX EXPOSED

Just how much does Catholic tradition esteem sex? So much so that it incorporates sexual imagery into one of the core mysteries of the faith — the blessing of the baptismal font on the holiest night of the year, the Easter Vigil.

As a freshman in college, I was considering the priesthood, and I spent a year in the local diocesan seminary. My class was responsible for planning the Easter Vigil Mass that year, and we were going through the preparations with the seminary spiritual director. At the point where we were discussing the rites involved in the blessing of the baptismal font, our director, always on the lookout for a teachable moment, smiled and said, “Oh, that erotic rite.”

Eleven pairs of eighteen-year-old eyebrows shot up.

He went on to explain that during the blessing of the font, the Easter candle was a phallic symbol plunged into the waters of the font to symbolize Christ impregnating the womb of the Church, from which new children of God would be born in the coming year. His words stunned me. Until that time, I’d believed what I had passively been taught by secular culture, that Catholicism, despite all its beauty, was essentially an erotophobic faith. And yet the Church had chosen to employ a powerful, symbolic, sexual act as the cornerstone of the chief sacrament of initiation, baptism. Since that time, I’ve discovered that various ancient rites of the Church have made even more graphic connections between human sexual love and the blessing of the font. For instance, in one rite, in addition to plunging the Easter candle into the font, the celebrant would also tip the candle so that melted wax would drip into the font, symbolically spilling the seed and completing the act that so beautifully signifies the fruitful marital union between Christ, the bridegroom, and the Church, his bride.

This will be shocking only to those who were raised to believe that Catholics fear and loathe sex. But despite what either Sr. Mary Attila or your sainted Ma and Da might have told you, of all the peoples who might hate their sexuality, authentic Catholics ain’t among them.

2

FOOL’S GOLD: HOLY SEX OR EROTICISM

The person is thus capable of a higher kind of love than [eroticism], which only sees objects as a means to satisfy one’s appetites; the person is capable rather of friendship and self-giving, with the capacity to recognize and love persons for themselves. Like the love of God, this is a love capable of generosity. One desires the good of the other because he or she is recognized as worthy of being loved. This is a love which generates communion between persons, because each considers the good of the other as his or her own good. This is a self-giving made to one who loves us, a self-giving whose inherent goodness is discovered and activated in the communion of persons and where one learns the value of loving and of being loved.

— Pontifical Council for the FamilyThe Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality

Most people confuse Holy Sex (which is really the only kind of sex worth having) with eroticism (which isn’t really sex at all). During the American gold rush of the mid-1800s, amateur prospectors rushed to the West to make their fortunes. If they were lucky enough to survive the arduous journey, these countless victims bitten by the gold bug would spend hours and hours staking their claim, then digging, panning, and mining for that precious yellow metal.

Problem was, much of what the prospectors dug up and took to the assayer’s office turned out to be pyrite, “fool’s gold.” Pyrite, an iron mineral, has a bronze-golden color and sparkles like the real McCoy, but it is virtually worthless.

The connection to sexuality is clear. Even in our allegedly sexually enlightened times, most people’s sexual education, to the degree it happens at all, tends to focus simply on biology and mechanics. When it comes to romance and passion, people learn that from Hollywood, romance novels, daytime TV, their schoolmates, and porn. But these sources know nothing about Holy Sex. They only know about eroticism.

The only thing gold and iron pyrite have in common is that they are both shiny. The only thing that eroticism and Holy Sex have in common is that both are pleasurable — even extremely so. But that’s where the similarities end.

HOLY SEX! DON’T SETTLE FOR SUBSTITUTES!

While the Bible lists eroticism as a sin (see Mark 7:21–22), Holy Sex is celebrated in the Song of Songs and in Ephesians as the sign of the union between Christ and the Church. To see how we’re talking about two entirely different realities, let’s do a side-by-side comparison between Holy Sex and eroticism:

Holy Sex

Eroticism

Very pleasurable

Very pleasurable

Driven by intimacy and arousal

Driven solely by arousal

Overcomes shame

Causes shame

Works for the good of the other

Uses the other

Welcomes children

Fears children

Shares the whole self

Withholds the self

More Joyful and vital with time

More Stagnant and boring with time (like a drug)

Gives life and health

Brings disease and death

Throughout this book, these differences will be highlighted in many ways, and of course some of these points overlap. For now, let’s review some of these contrasting points to help orient ourselves to the profound differences between what people mistake for sex and the real article.

Very Pleasurable vs. Very Pleasurable

Both eroticism and Holy Sex are highly pleasurable, but even in this similarity, the beauty and pleasure of Holy Sex outstrips mere eroticism. This statement is either surprising or absurd to many people who either mistake eroticism for Holy Sex or, having had their sexual identities formed by eroticism, now live in negative reaction to it.

Think of eroticism as Las Vegas. Lots of neon, lots of flesh, lots of flash, and lots of noise. It can seem glamourous, dazzling, fascinating, and intoxicating. On the surface, there’s a lot of fun to be had. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the glamour of evil” at one point or another. That’s what we’re talking about here. There’s actually nothing wrong with glamour in itself, of course. But evil can use glamour as a shield to hide the slum in which it lives. Scratch the sexy surface, and the decay flows freely. Beneath the Vegas façade of flash, fun, and $4.99 prime rib is an empire with deep roots in criminality, the buying and selling of women, a tradition of taking advantage of the desperate poor and elderly, and an ethic of excess and degradation. In the same way, eroticism lures people in with promises of fun and fulfillment and dumps them out the back door dazed, depressed, and considerably worse off than when they started.

Worse, many people, having indulged too much in the “fun” of our Vegas-of-Eroticism, get burned or burned-out by the whole experience. They decide that it isn’t just the evil that’s evil, but also the glamour that evil often hides behind. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness.” These people become entirely suspicious of sensuality. Rather than be tempted by the glamour of evil ever again, they remove glamour from their lives altogether. They renounce the bright lights and big city and hide out in an abandoned building where it’s dark and quiet. Life becomes all work and no play. This is the puritanical sex of the Jansenists we discussed earlier: an empty, stripped-down, functional airplane hangar meant to be the corrective to the Vegas casino — but just as impoverished in its own way.

Most people believe that, when it comes to sex, there are only two choices: Vegas or the deserted building. Given that choice, only an idiot — or someone who has been deeply wounded — would choose to live in the airplane hangar. Human beings were created as sensual beings. That’s why God gave us senses — to experience the world in all its glory as an invitation to know and love the Creator. If the only two choices held out to people are the light and sound phantasmagoria of the Vegas Strip or the bore-me-to-death functionality of the latest episode of Style Me Puritan, even considering the risks, most people will take their chances on the Strip. This is the problem faced by the Church. When it challenges eroticism, people mistakenly think that the only alternative is a stripped-down building. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The Church holds up Holy Sex as a third option — a positive alternative to the wretched, deadly excess of eroticism on one extreme and the puritanical pox on pleasure on the other. Compared to eroticism’s Vegas, Holy Sex is every great cathedral and stained-glass window, every choir and orchestra, in one dynamic, God-given way of loving. Holy Sex is not glum sex, boring sex, polite sex, or joy-free sex. Neither is it exploitive sex, degrading sex, or loveless sex. Holy Sex is a passionate, sensual encounter between two lovers committed to a relationship that is faithful and forever — a relationship that has the power to raise up the couple in ecstasy toward the Divine, leading them beyond themselves and empowering them to touch the love of God himself.

Driven by Intimacy and Arousal vs. Driven Solely by Arousal

Think of arousal as the solid rocket boosters on the NASA space shuttle. They burn hot and fast but burn out quickly and are jettisoned once the shuttle has risen high into the atmosphere, after which the main fuel engine, intimacy, kicks in to take the astronauts to their destination.

Arousal is an important factor in the early stages of sexual intimacy for both Holy Sex and eroticism, but eroticism has nothing else to drive sex except arousal. Unfortunately, arousal, because it is a physiological state, is a very unreliable foundation for a long-term sexual relationship. If a couple relies only on arousal to stimulate their sexual relationship — as couples who practice eroticism do — then the sexual relationship will either stagnate over time as the pressures of life squeeze out the sense of chemistry that once existed between the couple, or the couple requires more and more “help” from outside sources such as porn in order to artificially create or inflate the arousal they are no longer capable of generating on a reliable basis.

By contrast, Holy Sex relies both on arousal and intimacy. Infallible Lovers are not opposed to taking advantage of the passionate spark that comes from chemistry and spontaneous arousal. They just don’t leave their sexual relationship to the fates. Because of this, they work hard to maintain closeness all day long. Even on the days when they feel sick or stressed or tired, they still long for the comfort they find in the arms of their best friend, and even when they don’t feel the immediate spark of arousal, the closeness generated by the warm feelings of friendship that increase as they lie in each other’s arms often creates a longing to be even closer. This in turn kindles the fires of their sexual passion for one another. Where eroticism is all about drama, props, fireworks, and carnivals complete with dancing bears, Holy Sex is all about making each other always want just a little more until the glowing embers of passion burst into a surprising and sensual blaze.

Overcomes Shame vs. Causes Shame

Everyone wants to be loved totally and freely, but everyone is afraid that such a love will never find him or her. Most people are more used to being used — in ways large and small — than they are being loved.

In Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla argued that shame, in the healthiest sense of the word, is a virtue that protects us from being used. Just as fear causes us to run from physical harm, and guilt causes us to run from moral harm, shame — in the healthiest sense of the word — is a feeling given to us by God that protects us from offenses against our dignity as human persons. Shame is the feeling that lets us know when other people are trying to use us as things rather than love us as people. In this sense, shame is actually a positive, protective emotion.

And yet, when we have been used by others to one extent or another, our sense of shame can become hyperactive — sort of like what happens if someone bumps into your old football or dancing injury. The exacerbated sense of shame that comes from being treated like an object can alienate us from others and even keep us from God. In the book of Genesis, shame was experienced only after the Fall, when Adam and Eve first realized they were naked, “and they were ashamed.” Adam and Eve, of course, were naked before the Fall as well, but it wasn’t a problem. Before the regrettable apple incident, Adam and Eve didn’t see their nakedness as a liability. They experienced it as freedom, as a sign of their dignity as persons and the safety they experienced in the union they enjoyed with God and each other. It was only after the Fall that Adam and Eve came to realize that they had another option besides loving and respecting each other. Now, they discovered, they could use each other as well. Original sin ruptured the protection Adam and Eve enjoyed as a result of their original union with God and each other. For the first time, humans felt that their nakedness, rather than being a witness to the joy and holy vulnerability they experienced in the presence of God and each other, was a sign that they were alone, alienated, exposed, and capable of using and being used by one another. With this realization came a sense of shame, which was intended as an early warning system designed to protect each person from using or being used.

People today still experience this shame when others seek to use them in one way or another. But Holy Sex — lovemaking that occurs in the free union of a married man and woman — allows a couple to safely overcome the overactive sense of shame that causes people to hold back when they ought to give themselves more freely to each other and to God. When a husband and wife in a truly committed, loving, generous, and respectful relationship make love with one another, they are given the grace, over time, to overcome their temptation to use one another or fear being used by one another. As a result, they can begin to get a tiny taste of the unity our first parents enjoyed with God and each other before the Fall. Man can never return to Eden. That paradise is lost to us until the next life. But through the grace of matrimony, man and woman can set up house in a neighborhood near Eden, and they can breathe in the fragrance of that garden wafting through their windows, giving them joy in the present and hinting at great things to come.

By contrast, eroticism, because it is all about using people as if they were toys, increases our sense of shame. Remember, shame is the feeling that warns us we’re being treated as things rather than being loved as people. When you allow yourself to use others, or permit yourself to be used by others, shame grows. At first, that shame causes us to be distrustful of others. “I thought he loved me. I’m never going to let anyone hurt me like that again.” (For more information, see chapter 8, especially the discussion of “defensive attachment,” pp. 134ff.) Even when others approach you in love, you’ll tend to wonder what they really want from you. You’ll be more likely to put up barriers to their love and make others prove themselves to you before you will give your heart again — if ever.

If you continue to allow yourself to be used by eroticism, you’ll become alienated, not just from others, but also from yourself. You’ll become so convinced that your only worth is derived from being the object of others’ desire that you stop noticing or minding you’re being used. You’ll come to make a circus act out of your sexuality, publicly claiming “liberation” while privately struggling with self-hatred and the eating disorders, cutting, drinking, drugs, and other excesses people use to numb their psychic and spiritual pain.

Works for the Good of the Other vs. Uses the Other

As you can see in our discussion of shame, eroticism is primarily concerned with what it can get out of the other person without having to give too much in return.

You can see this most dramatically with regard to casual sex, where people get to know each other as little as they need to in order to get each other’s goodies, but it applies in more subtle forms to marriage as well. Wives, in particular, complain to me all the time about otherwise loving men who pout and become angry if their wives ask to take the night off from love-making. And husbands complain to me about wives who never want to be intimate until their wives are trying to “soften them up” to get something else out of them. Both are examples of how we treat sex as a right and our lover as a vending machine designed for our gratification rather than a person deserving of love and respect.

In either case, when this happens, sex ceases to really be about love and becomes a means to an end — the lover, merely a tool that you use to help you achieve your goal. After a while, this dynamic leads to the shame we discussed above and causes sexual intimacy in marriage to die.

Holy Sex, by comparison, always seeks the good of the other person. Infallible Lovers recognize that even though sex is perhaps the most intimate way for a couple to celebrate their love for one another, it isn’t the only way. While the lover schooled in eroticism always feels compelled to use sex as “the best and only way I can really show anyone I care or allow myself to feel cared for,” the Infallible Lover is totally free to choose the best way to be loving to the beloved in this moment. Sometimes that will mean doing something other than having sex — things like watching the baby, or cleaning up the house, or just talking, praying, or cuddling. And when the couple practicing Holy Sex decides to celebrate the fullness of their friendship by making love, they make sure they don’t treat each other in a way that turns the other person into a thing.

Infallible Lovers never restrain their passion for one another, but they are always mindful that love is the point of lovemaking, not creating some sexual drama. It can require some negotiation to work out the boundaries of what is appropriate and what is not (we’ll discuss this in a later chapter). But those who have been misled to believe that the Church is “down on sex” will be surprised to learn that aside from a very few specific requirements, very little is actually forbidden to lovers celebrating Holy Sex. Playfulness and passion, erotic language, virtually every sexual position, or the use of attractive clothing and lingerie or other means of heightening the sensuality of lovemaking can be perfectly acceptable parts of Infallible Loving. That said, creating new experiences is never the primary point of Holy Sex. Celebrating the couple’s love for one another is. Infallible Lovers always make sure to discuss how to keep their sexual relationship fresh and exciting while still respecting the fact that sex is primarily about loving each other, not about creating an ever-expanding repertoire of feats of sexual derring-do.

Welcomes Children vs. Fears Children

Because eroticism is “all about me” and how much I can get out of you without having to give too much in return (e.g., commitment, fidelity, or real love), it is terrified of children. Because eroticism itself is childish, it sees children as competition for limited resources that the adult child would put to “better” use indulging himself or herself. Furthermore, like bacteria exposed to the sunlight, eroticism tends to die in the presence of real love. What happens when a child comes along? If your sex lives are rooted in eroticism, you tend to see your sexual relationship take a nose-dive. This is because eroticism tells you that sex is entirely about recreation. As soon as something more meaningful than mere recreation comes along — like loving and nurturing children — sex become just one more formerly fun thing you don’t have the time or energy for.

Holy Sex, by contrast, because it always considers what’s good for the other person first and is rooted in a real love, welcomes children. Infallible Lovers bow to the mystery through which authentic love becomes another living, breathing person. Further, when children arrive on the scene, Infallible Lovers, who have been practicing generous love all along, are able to also find the generosity required to keep their love and passion alive. Because their relationship — especially their sexual relationship — is fueled by generosity, Infallible Lovers recognize that anything that challenges them to be more generous actually makes them better lovers, so even though they are aware of the work involved in parenting, they recognize childrearing as a labor of love that leads to even greater loving.

We’ll examine this in greater depth in chapter 9 on the Fifth Power of Holy Sex: the power to create.

Shares the Whole Self vs. Withholds the Self

Eroticism only gives as much of myself as I must give to get what I want. Outside of marriage, sexual partners will often withhold their hearts from one another, choosing only to give or take whatever pleasure their bodies can generate. This is sad, because it is so impoverished. As we’ve observed, there is nothing wrong with pleasure. Eroticism is not a sin because it is pleasurable. It is sinful because it involves giving less than the lovers deserve to receive from one another. When a couple has Holy Sex, they are speaking a language that transcends words and says, “Everything I am, I now give to you.” But eroticism causes our bodies to make certain promises that our minds, hearts, and spirits don’t intend to keep. The problem is that healthy human beings really don’t know how to check their hearts, minds, and spirits at the door. Of course, we can engage in eroticism so much that it causes our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls to become dis-integrated, in which case, we don’t even know how wounded we are. Suffice it to say that if you’re the type of person who knows how to check your heart, mind, or spirit at the door, then you’ll have a lot of work to do before you can become an Infallible Lover, because despite your best intentions, over time, anyone you love will be left wondering if your lovemaking is less about love and more about scratching a sexual itch.

Even in marriage, couples can hold back from each other. For instance, I’m often shocked by couples who think that praying together is “too intimate.” What do they think sex is? Unless they learn to share their souls, such a couple will never be able to experience Holy Sex, because Holy Sex is a kind of prayer. If you don’t challenge yourselves to share your souls outside the bedroom, you won’t be able to share your souls in the bedroom, and your lovemaking will suffer because less than all of you will be showing up for the experience.

Another way couples withhold from each other is through contraception. We’ll discuss this more in chapter 9 on the Fifth Power of Holy Sex, as well as in chapter 10 on Natural Family Planning, but for now, it is important to know that any time a husband and wife contracept, they are saying to each other, “I just want the parts of you that make me feel good; I don’t want the parts of you that make me commit to you for life and enable us to celebrate a love so powerful it could become its own life.” That doesn’t mean that a couple must intend to have a baby every time they have sex. But it means that Infallible Lovers are mindful that pregnancy is not a sexually transmitted disease to be avoided at all costs. Rather, Infallible Lovers know that life is the logical fruit of a faithful and lifelong sexual relationship. The couple, to be truly Infallible Lovers to one another, must be mature enough to not fear the life-giving power of their love. After all, as Scripture tells us, “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Holy Sex is a celebration of our striving for that perfect love between man and woman made possible by God’s grace. “Be not afraid!” Infallible Lovers don’t hold back from one another — they can’t