Sexuality in Catholic and Orthodox Churches
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Catholic Church affirms the sanctity of all human life, from conception to natural death. The Church believes that each person is made in the "image and likeness of God," and that human life should not be weighed against other values such as economy, convenience, personal preferences, or social engineering. Therefore, the Church opposes activities that they believe destroy or devalue divinely created life, including euthanasia, eugenics and abortion.
The Church teaches that Manichaeism, the belief that the spirit is good while the flesh is evil, is a heresy. Therefore, the Church does not teach that sex is sinful or an impairment to a grace-filled life. "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." then the human body and sex must likewise be good. The Catechism teaches that "the flesh is the hinge of salvation."
However the Church does teach that sexual intercourse outside of marriage is contrary to its purpose. The "conjugal act" aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul" (Catechism) since the marriage bond is to be a sign of the love between God and humanity (Catechism).
Pope John Paul II's first major teaching was on the Theology of the Body. Over the course of five years he elucidated a vision of sex that was not only positive and affirming but was about redemption, not condemnation. He taught that by understanding God's plan for physical love we could understand "the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life." "The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and 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.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church indicates that sexual relationships in marriage as a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity and lists fornication as one of the "Offenses Against Chastity" and calls it "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action" because "use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose."
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