5.  SEX A significant percentage of the church community disregards the Church’s rules of sexual morality. A group of celibate men is totally inflexible and unaccommodating with formulating rules of sexual behavior that they contend are binding for all. At the same time, many of these same men tolerate serial sexual abuse of children within their jurisdictions and work diligently to cover it up to preserve the reputation of their institution. There’s something radically wrong with this picture. It’s more than hypocrisy; it’s laughable; it makes you cry. Similar out-of-focus, distorted pictures exist for contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.    The church’s moral authority to teach on sexual ethics has been steadily declining.  The ongoing sex abuse scandal is the straw that is breaking the camel’s back.  As Paul Dinter (Note 5.1) says, “The church’s efforts to control the moral terms of the debate about the proper role of human sexuality have irrevocably collapsed.” Why, then, do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the log in your own eye? (Matthew 7.3). The Church’s Teaching.  You can find the church’s teaching on sexual ethics in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Note 5.2).  The bases of the teaching are two well-known scriptures, the Sixth Commandment (Catholic numbering) of the Old Testament and the sixth commandment amended by Jesus: •        You shall not commit adultery (Exodus 20.14 and Deuteronomy 5.18). •        You have heard that it was said, "Do not commit adultery." But now I tell you: anyone who looks at a woman and wants to possess her is guilty of committing adultery with her in his heart.  (Matthew 5.27-28). If we read on in the catechism, we find that the church teaches: •        Chastity means the “successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.” •        Sexuality becomes truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. •        Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery. •        Self mastery is a long and exacting work. •        Offenses against chastity include lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution, and rape [they are listed in this order]. •        Rape is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still and is the rape of children committed by parents. (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them [priests are not specifically called out]. •        Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to natural law. Lack of Proportionality.  One thing you’ll find missing when you read about offenses against chastity in the catechism: a gradation of evil. Although they are listed in a seemingly ascending order of evil, from lust to rape, there is no reference to a specific gradation of evil.   As Gary Wills (Note 5.3) tells us, in matters of the Sixth Commandment, there is “no parvity of matter”— “every sexual act but that between marital partners not practicing contraception is ‘grave.’” “Parvity” is a highly technical term. You probably won’t find it in your dictionary. Thus, some of the key issues in the moral and spiritual life of Catholics hinge on a word you can’t find in the dictionary. The absence of gradation of evil or “no parvity of matter” causes all kinds of irrational and truly silly positions, including: •        Masturbation is gravely disordered (against nature, unnatural).  Do generations of teenagers and others have to run to confession a few times a week or fry in hell?  Confessional lines are short, and communion lines are long. Could it be that the sense of the faithful is right and the Roman bureaucrats are wrong? •        Because masturbation is gravely disordered, a man can’t masturbate for artificially inseminating his wife. •        Love between a married couple cannot be conveyed through an unnatural act that involves masturbation. •        The danger of AIDS cannot be averted by using condoms. •        The condom is more evil than death by AIDS. Gary Wills goes on to explain that “no parvity of matter” means all sexual activity except one is mortally sinful:
		Is it any wonder, given such “doctrine” on sex, that priests themselves do not take it seriously? The papal teaching has trivialized itself. By clinging to the “no parvity of matter” view on unnatural acts, it has reduced the discussion to a level where there is no seriousness of matter. Condoms and masturbation are opposed as much as adultery or child abuse. Bernard Haring has lamented the fact that people have lost their concern about abortion because the church authorities made so much of contraception as another form of “baby killing.”
	A priest raping a child in the parish rectory is as grave, it seems, as a teenager masturbating in the family bathroom.   Significant Percentages Don’t Follow the Teaching.  There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  But let’ s throw out some statistics anyway.  Let’s look briefly at contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.   In Why I Am A Catholic (Note 5.4), Gary Wills states that in 1995 the National Survey of Family Growth found that:
		•        95% of Catholic women who had sex had used contraceptives at some point •        75% of Catholic women still fertile and sexually active were using contraceptives •        Less than 3% of sexually active Catholic women used the “rhythm” of birth control, the only method authorized by the church hierarchy.
	The number of Catholics having abortions is the same as the number of non-Catholics.  Speaking about abortion among the people in his native Poland, the current pope said, “This people worships me with its lips, but not in the depths of its heart.” [italics added] Even the pope understands that idolatry is a problem. The church says homosexual orientation is not sinful, but it says homosexual activity is sinful and objectively disordered. Because of privacy and secrecy, the percentage of American priests with homosexual orientation and the percentage that engage in homosexual activities are not known. We do know it is a problem. Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said: "It is an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men." As we saw in the previous section on celibacy, as many as 50% of the priests and seminarians in America have a homosexual orientation. Richard Sipe (Note 5.5) says 80% of priests masturbate. Is it any wonder that priests don’t talk about sex from the pulpit? Philosophical Basis for the Teaching. The church’s teachings on sexual ethics are based on more than scripture.  They are heavily based on the theology of St. Augustine and the philosophy of Aristotle adopted by the medieval scholastics, especially the prince of scholasticism, St. Thomas Aquinas.   According to Hans Kung (Note 5.6), the legacy of Augustine’s theology of sin and grace is a
		…fatal vilification of sexuality, the sexual libido. Sexual pleasure for its own sake (and not for the procreation of children) was sinful and to be suppressed—to the present day this remains the baneful teaching of the Roman pope.
	Thomas Aquinas’s contribution was so-called natural law. In reality, it’s anything but natural. As Dinter (Note 5.7) points out, the church’s teachings on sexual ethics are based on a flawed metaphysics and a flawed system of analysis that focuses on the parts, not the whole. There’s that distorting lens again. The part in question is of course the male penis.  Its built-in purpose, says natural law, is to enter the vagina and make babies. Any other function for this part is unnatural, inherently disordered, mortally sinful. Because of this faulty analysis, because of its focus on one body part rather than on the whole person, official Catholic teaching on sex is locked into an absurd argument that precludes seeing sex as a major integrating power in the healthy development and maintenance of the entire person and his or her whole personality. Conclusion.  The institutional church applies flawed philosophical principles, clings to a “they’re all mortal sins” view of sexual transgression, and ignores the lived experience of the faithful.
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