Stephen
Kershnar
Catholic Sexual Morality: Both Confused
and False
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
May
24, 2016
Catholic morality plays a large role
in American life. Almost a third of Congress is Catholic as were over a third
of Republican presidential candidates (Bush, Christie, Jindal, Pataki, Rubio,
and Santorum). The current Speaker of the House (Paul Ryan) is Catholic. So was
his predecessor (John Boehner) and the leader of the opposition (Nancy Pelosi).
Until Antonin Scalia’s death, two thirds of the Supreme Court were Catholic.
Pope Francis announced that Donald Trump is not a Christian because he wants to
build a wall and this announcement got major airtime. This matters to the
extent Catholic thought affects how people think about their lives. One area
where it might do so is Catholic thought on sexual morality.
The Catholic Church asserts that
sexual intercourse is morally wrong if it is disconnected its purposes:
unifying a married couple and procreation. More specifically, sex is
permissible only if involves a husband and wife engaged in complete mutual
self-giving and opening their relationship to new life. It further holds that
sex within marriage involves a chaste and deeply personal unity. So deep in
fact that it forms a union in one flesh. This joining occurs in part because
marriage is a sign of love between God and humanity.
The
Church has grave moral concern about sex when it occurs outside of marriage or
when the procreative function is frustrated (for example, via contraception).
Its list of grave sexual sins includes adultery, artificial contraception, premarital
sex, homosexual sex, masturbation, and pornography. It hammers homosexuality,
viewing it as an objective disorder and instructs gays to rely on prayer,
friends, and grace so that they may be chaste. On the Catholic view, lust is
also wrong, although it is unclear whether it is a type of adultery as Matthew
5:27-28 claims. Masturbation is wrong because it is type of lust. So terrible
is pornography that the Church calls for the governments to prevent its
production and distribution. Abortion is not merely a grave sin, but also is
punishable by excommunication.
This
sexual doctrine is false and destructive.
First,
it is not even clear what the doctrine is. The notion that sex must have a
procreative purpose could be understood as saying the couple must be open to
procreation (that is, think a certain way about sex) or that it could in fact
lead to procreation regardless of how the couple thinks about sex.
The
notion that a couple must think that their sex could lead to procreation in
order to be morally permissible is implausible. It suggests that one married
couple’s sex could be permissible because they hope to procreate whereas a
second married couple’s sex is not because they hope not to procreate. It is
hard to see why the way in which a couple thinks about sex makes their activity
right or wrong. Normally, we think that what makes an act wrong is that it does
something objectionable to another, for example, it violates her right, harms
her, or exploits her. These features are independent of what an actor wants or
intends to do.
Furthermore,
if an elderly married couple or a couple in which the wife has lost her uterus
due to surgery to fight ovarian cancer wants or hopes to procreate, then they
are irrational. It is an odd view that sex is wrong for such couples unless
they think about sex in an irrational way.
If
instead sex is permissible only if it can in fact lead to procreation, then sex
between infertile married couples (for example two 55-year-olds) is a grave
wrong. The same is true for a couple that has sex after the wife has had an
oophorectomy. Such a doctrine is not merely absurd, but cruel.
On
either interpretation, the treatment of gays is outrageous. As far as I can
tell, there is no reason, conceptually or empirically, to think that gay people
cannot have deeply satisfying relationships and that sex does not enhance these
relationships. There is a shortage of evidence, but an initial study of divorce
in gay marriage by Lee Badgett and Jody Herman of the Williams Institute found
that gay married couples had a divorce rate similar to that of different sex
couples. It should be noted that the data is early on and there might be a selection
bias. A group should have a good reason before it announces that gay people must
remain chaste and that physically expressing their love is a grave moral sin.
Furthermore,
the metaphysics of the Catholic doctrine make no sense. A couple, married or
not, do not become one thing (for example, one flesh). During sex, they still have
different bodies, minds, and souls (if people have souls). There is no
plausible way to understand the claim that they become one thing. Of course,
this might be mere metaphor, but it is hard to see why a mere metaphor should
be the basis for sexual morality. This is especially true if the metaphor is
nonsensical.
The
Catholic view is also at odds with the most basic understanding of human
nature. One study by psychology professor Terri Fischer, reported in Psychology Today, found that men think
about sex about once or twice an hour. This is unsurprising given that
evolution is driven by reproductive fitness and a reasonably strong interest in
sex likely increases reproductive fitness. There is good reason to believe that
this sex drive is genetic and probably beyond people’s immediate control. The
notion that lust is wrong is bizarre given that mere thoughts do not infringe
on anyone’s rights or harm, offend, or exploit them. It is also bizarre given
that wrong acts are usually, if not always, under people’s control.
Catholicism,
and to be fair much of Christianity and Judaism, has an obviously false view of
sexual morality. As a result, we should ignore the Catholic view on the matter
and hope our lawmakers do the same. The fact that 95% of Americans have had
premarital sex tells us that, thankfully, people are in fact ignoring it.
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