Why this obsolete stance of no sex before marriage

She was a certified Social Worker,married and divorced,plain looking and from a dominantly Catholic country. She sat uneasily and almost plaintively verbalized the tired old question:

She was struggling to be so au courant--and hopefully avante garde! Yet, her struggle was complicated by her delight and involvement in the RCIA process in which she was an instructor/teacher. In her work with those seeking entrance into the holy Catholic Church, she met a candidate for Baptism whom she described as " cute" and with whom she had become " romantically involved." This is a contemporary euphemism to describe their sexual involvement. The candidate had also been married and divorced, was an alcoholic and deeply in debt.

In her modern style of being " with "the candidate she had become so deeply attached to him that she had fantasies of marriage. But even in her semi-trancelike state, this was problematical. So true to the ideals of the " with it " Catholic, she was challenging the official teaching of the Church on sexual morality.

The venerable and oft maligned Sig Freud wisely taught that " things are rarely ONLY what they seem...." My client will speak passionately about love and intimacy and personal needs. She will point how passe and useless is the stance of the Church on sex and the mysteries thereof. She will constantly allege honesty,truth and reality for her position. But under such posturing is an unattractive lonely, psychically crippled female desperately and pathetically hoping SOME ONE will love her. One cannot help but have sympathy, if not pity, for her.

I want to suggest to her that although her search for love and intimacy is thoroughly legitimate and her reaching out to others is very human, her mode of SOLUTION is --- from the viewpoint of centuries of painful experience------stupid !

Her attempts to medicate her pain are so understandable but so ill placed. Without the context of committed married love---through pain and joy, riches and poverty, sickness and health, youth and age, anger and peace,boredom and ecstasy-----the sex medication alone is not only useless. It is damaging!

Society has found that it is through FAMILY that one's loneliness is assuaged and one's hunger for love is finally met.Family provides the safety that is needed for the healthy rearing

and education of a child. To separate sex ( with all its excitements and pleasures ) from the routinistic humdrum,worry and insecurity of human love is the OLDEST MISTAKE OF MANKIND. It just doesn't work Yet,because it is SO difficult to conquer inordinate desire ( or lust ) with reason and decency, God provides the way--- with His own command.

This command is articulated through His own Church, the Catholic Church. Indeed, a colleague of mine, a Jewish psychiatrist with whom I taught a course called " Human Sexuality" for 16 years made this telling and spontaneous remark in a class hour.

" Only the Catholic Church has the power and strength to help people contain sexual impulses outside of marriage."

anytime he tires of her means nothing in the period of her infatuation! The guts or viscera do not hear what the intellect is shouting. Is this a delusion for her? There are NO legal ties.

would have slept with him". My question to her is: Who is obsolete now? Who is passe now? Who has the closed mind? And eyes and ears? IF YOU HAD ONLY KNOWN?

Lady, your old grandmother who didn't finish grammar school was smarter than you have been ! But wait ! One bit of advice! God is also smarter than you are. However, He loves you with an implacable love. You can safely risk everything with Him !