Help! Help! I'm being (sexually) repressed!

I found this editorial at www.robertscheer.com (see link below). Mr. Scheer makes a claim that is very common among my teenaged moral theology students: "How dare the Church tell me how to live my life when it itself guilty of so much evil."

Click below to read the full post:

Mr. Scheer begins . . .

A Hypocritical Church's Sex Lessons

May 24, 2005 – One of the most sexually repressed institutions in human history has been caught with its pants down yet again but still insists on wagging its disapproving finger at the rest of us.

First of all, to call the Church sexually repressed is unfair. Listen to this quote from Pope John Paul II, written before he became pope in his Love and Responsibility: "There exists a rhythm dictated by nature itself which both spouses must discover so that climax may be reached both by the man and by the woman, and as far as possible occur in both simultaneously (272)." Does that sound sexually repressed? I encourage you to check out some of the Church's writings on sexuality, especially Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. [See Chris West's Theology of the Body web site for more information]

Mr. Scheer continues to address a new bunch of "revelations" regarding priestly sex scandals. He then says,

Despite the horrific drumbeat of child molestation revelations, however,
sensible Catholics hoping for a more transparent and less sexually repressed
church shouldn't hold their breath. The new pope is not only a longtime leader
of vicious church attacks on "evil" gays, he also has shamefully blamed the
molestation scandal on the media.

Mr. Scheer presents a few quotes from Pope Benedict XVI / Cardinal Ratzinger upholding the Church's moral teachings on sexuality. He then makes his point:

The leader of the world's largest religious denomination apparently doesn't understand the essential truth of the molestation scandal: It was the church's breathtakingly systematic cover-up over many decades that so horrified followers and outsiders alike.

When it comes to matters of poverty, immigration and peace, the Catholic Church is a major source of enlightenment. It is a serious loss to have the church's work in those areas undermined by its Dark Ages attitude on sex. And, as is so often the case with the most severely judgmental and repressed, this stance is rife with moral hypocrisy.

How else to explain an institution that refuses to accept responsibility for the lives it has violated through sexual abuse, even as it incessantly condemns same-sex couples for wanting to form stable families? If you are gay and want to get married you are "deviant and a threat to society," according to the Vatican, and if you adopt a child – the irony is dark here – it is tantamount to abuse.

The problem with Mr. Scheer's assumption that the sex scandals were caused by the Church's "repressive" sexual morality has one problem: at the time most of the offending priests found guilty of sexual misconduct were in the seminary, during the 60s and 70s, the Church's repressive sexual morality was by-and-large not being taught. In fact, this was a time when many seminaries embraced the kind of morality that Mr. Scheer advocates. Homosexuality was not seen as an impediment to the priesthood, and indeed was even embraced as a healthy lifestyle. Throughout their formation, these seminarians were told that their homosexual tendencies should be embraced. So, they followed the teachings brought to them by post-modernism and humanistic psychology, and they embraced their sexual desires and acted on them.

In contrast, the present-day Church is filled with priests, religious, married couples, and single people who love and live the Church's moral teachings. They see great beauty in the Church's vision of sexuality. They see great freedom in the Church's call to chastity. They see great meaning in the Church's call to celibacy for those who serve the Church outside of the sacrament of marriage. I would be willing to bet a small fortune that this generation will not see their young people grow up to be molesters. Sure, some will fall to sin - but not on the grand scale that we saw in the previous generation.

The Church's teachings on homosexuality are not repressive, oppressive, or intolerant. The Church preaches love and understanding toward men and women who suffer under the burden of same sex attraction. The Church calls such people to chastity, the same as she calls all of us to chastity. It also preserves the meaning of marriage, both for the good of human society, and for the good of the Covenant.

It's time to return to reasoned dialogue. If people are going to criticize the Catholic Church and her moral teachings, then in the name of intellectual honesty they should first learn exactly what the Church teaches. I agree with Mr. Scheer that some bishops failed when they refused to take responsibility for priests they knew were abusive. I agree that the cover-up was most likely done due to some old-fashioned notions of Church politics. However, to blame it on the Church's moral teachings is not logical once one learns what the Church actually does teach.

In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas