FOOD FOR THOUGHT	SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE?
	Fr Francis Marsden
	For 25.8.87

     	Today’s teenagers have a much harder task in growing to maturity than their parents’ generation. While they try to understand themselves, and gain confidence to form friendships, vast commercial interests want to inflame their sexual instincts in order to make cash.

Advertising, fashion and clothes, discs and music, videos and magazines, not to mention contraceptive makers and sex shops, all use sexual imagery to tempt and sell. They exploit the vulnerability of the young, indeed the weaknesses of human nature in general, for their own profit. They oppress the weak and the poor, leading others into sin.

The Catholic Church still teaches without compromise what she has consistently taught for 1950 years. Sex may morally take place within marriage, but not at all outside of marriage. She stresses the beauty of family life, the goodness of sexuality, the great dignity of fatherhood or motherhood, the privilege of giving life, the sanctity of marriage as a divine vocation. All her laws about sex are aimed to protect this dedicated and faithful married love. They are bastions or bulwarks erected to protect family life.

Lifelong love and fidelity. True and generous humanity. Nobility of character, dignity, honour, respect and self-sacrifice. Tenderness, joy and peace. A stable and loving background for the children. These are the values Church teaching aims to promote and protect.

Once sex is torn from this context of married love, it risks becoming selfish and perverted, in the measure that it is life-giving and beautiful in its marital setting. Corruptio optimi pessima. The corruption of the best becomes the worst of all. One of God’s greatest good gifts can be abused into the most evil of perversions.

Take the case of a couple who say: “We’ve been seeing each other for a few months. We might one day get married. We love each other. Why shouldn’t we be free to make love? We use contraceptives to avoid children.”

It helps if we understand sex as a body language. In sexual union man and woman say to each other: “I love you with my whole being, totally, without reserve. I will protect you and love you for ever. If I have children in this world, I want them to be your children too. We will share our lives, together totally.” Conscious or unconscious, that is the body language statement of the sexual act. The two become one flesh, and a transcendent spiritual bond lasting for ever is set up between them God’s eyes.

The only framework which expresses and protects this relationship satisfactorily is lifelong marriage. Outside such a permanent union, sex becomes a lie. For now the one says implicitly to the other, “I love you when it’s pleasurable, when we enjoy each other’s company, when the going’s good.” Perhaps, “I love the pleasure and warmth you give me, rather than you as a unique, irreplaceable and priceless person, so I’m keeping open my option on finding someone better . . . I’m not necessarily prepared to stand by you in the hard times, when you are angry or depressed or hard to live with, or old and crotchety. I will enjoy good times with you, but I am not prepared to carry the crosses of this life with you.”

Here we find a fundamental unwillingness to commit oneself permanently. Moreover, it can be very cruel. Two unmarrieds sleep together. One sincerely loves, the other wants pleasure without permanent commitment. As they say, ‘The girl wants love, the boy wants sex’. Usually it is the girl who ends up betrayed and rejected. The boy has had his fun, and laughs about it with his mates. The girl is called a slut or a slag. Often she is left with the baby, or tragically, the abortion and its grave after-effects. So-called ‘love’ turns out to be selfish lust and lack of respect.

Nevertheless, what if a couple were to say, “We know where we both stand. We know our relationship is not necessarily permanent, but we enjoy it so far as it goes. It is recreational sex with no definitive obligation.”

This attitude assumes one thing, that you can make sex mean just what you want it to mean, rather than what it really is essentially. It is like taking a £50 note and calling it a £5 note. “We’ve agreed it is only a fiver.” However, objectively it is £50, and the bank will debit your account accordingly. This devaluation of sex will cost the couple much more than they consciously realize: self-respect, divine Grace, nobility and integrity of character.

You cannot treat sex as a plaything without seriously damaging yourself and others. It is playing with fire. It will arouse deep longings and emotional turmoils, which are not easily quieted.

Every act of fornication (sex before marriage) offends against the good of matrimony: fidelity and procreation. The person who has habitually fornicated before marriage will probably find it much harder to remain faithful within marriage, than someone who has grown in chastity — that harmonious and right ordering of the affections. The person who has practised discipline and self-restraint will be more capable of loving their spouse with fidelity and a pure heart.

When there is full knowledge and full consent, fornication is a mortal or deadly sin. Each partner condemns his own soul and that of the one he ‘loves’. How can depriving someone of eternal salvation be called “making love”? It is to play Judas. Those who have fornicated must repent and confess their sin to a priest before they can receive Holy Communion again. Otherwise they would be eating and drinking damnation to themselves. St. Paul warns, us that unrepentant fornicators, will not enter the Kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9 and Gal. 5:19).

Marriage is a public act, not a private affair. The family is the basic cell of society and of the Church. The wider community has a stake in every marriage. Society needs to know where responsibility for the family and property rests. Before the public exchange of vows, sexual intercourse is totally wrong. A bride or groom can still be jilted at the altar rails. The Catholic Church teaches the divine law, to save us from selfishness and exploitation, or tragic betrayal.

It is self-deception to think one can follow Christ whilst disregarding those to whom He has given a share in proclaiming and teaching His Gospel. The Church teaches God’s. will on these matters, and God’s will is to protect our human dignity and the true meaning of love, while offering forgiveness and mercy to the fallen.