SIN OF SEXUAL TEMPTATION

The Church famously forbids courting of sexual desire as a sin.  The sin of immodesty is doing something that arouses desire in others.  We surely see that if this is unnatural and goes too far it will guarantee inspiring people to indeed stir up desire.  It will be harder to control.  Religion has often used traps to lure people into evil and alleged evil while feigning innocence.

Jesus famously said that a man who looks at a woman with desire has become an adulterer inside and has broken the commandment of God, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Immediately after condemning lustful looks, Jesus said, “If your right eye serves as a trap to ensnare you or is an occasion for you to stumble and sin, pluck it out” (Matthew 5:29). In other words, a man should be ready to suffer like he plucked his eye out in order to avoid sexual temptation. And a man with the roving eye should be happy to lose his eye in an accident – assuming Jesus didn’t want a man to pluck his eye out. No wonder some of the saints ran a mile if there was a woman about. (I wonder what the male saints who fancied men did?) They battered and starved their bodies to root out sexual desire. The more a person tries to repress sexual feelings the more they emerge and the more powerful they grow. Forbidden fruits are definitely the sweetest. Jesus would think nobody does enough to stop sexual temptation so their temptations then would be their own fault.
 
Ezekiel 23 is incredibly pornographic and Jesus accepted it as scripture which shows that Jesus had double-standards like the rest of us.
 
When to stir weak and harmless sexual desire is sinful it implies that sexual desire is not bad because it is harmful but just because it is sexual desire. Weak sexual desire that you don’t have enough desire to carry out hardly degrades the object of attraction and is something you do for yourself. Since men need to get aroused to have erections and produce children and women do not the implication is that women should not seek or enjoy sexual pleasure. In fact, women believing and being allowed to believe they should like sex is a recent thing. Before, the Church could not stomach women liking sex and discouraged enjoyment even in marriage. The woman was expected to lie back and think of having another baby for God and the pope.
 
The Church says that involuntary desires and temptations towards sexual sin are not sins. But it also says these desires are still bad which is why they are sins if deliberately entertained. So it follows that if you would rather be dead by a decree of God (who has the right to take your life) than alive to experience these temptations, only then can you escape the experience unscathed by sin. In other words, "I am a tempted being and I'd consent to destruction if it were God's will. God has the right to destroy me if my temptations make me potentially dangerous." The desires and temptations are not sins if you have that attitude. But you would refuse to consent if God wanted to take your life to rescue you from these temptations, then you consent to be alive for the temptations. You are choosing to be tempted which makes you a sinner. You are then no different from a person who entertains the temptations except you are sneakier which is worse. So unless you love God perfectly which no person can manage, if temptation does not cause you to sin one way it will another.
 
The Church says masturbation is sinful and is objectively seriously wrong and very evil. However, the less control you have over it the less sin you commit. Speaking from experience, though the Church claims that wet dreams are not sinful and are good and normal and healthy, this is not the message you get from the ban on masturbation. If pleasure and ejaculation should always be open to creating new life as the Church says then it is certainly not good and therefore not normal – though common – and not healthy. You don’t say having involuntary orgasms in public is healthy and normal – even if it were happening to most men. So you should feel bad about wet dreams. You should feel dirty. God could have made us so that wet dreams occur a lot less than they do but he didn’t. If God is good then though the person swears it is involuntary his sinful nature and self-will have had something to do with it so wet dreams are always sinful. To deny this is to say that God is a sinner for he causes the wet dreams – when it is not the person it is him. I do wish the Church would admit it hurts young men who had wet dreams and do something about this. If a gay man was turned on by a workmate involuntarily the Church would still require him to leave his job for his job is giving him bad thoughts. He might not be in control of the thoughts but he is free to prevent the opportunity for the thoughts to present themselves. The ban on sexual desire has many cruel implications.
 
The Church says that masturbation is objectively bad. Just as you would feel terrible if your hands took a life of their own and somebody gets strangled to death, so you should feel bad if you are subject to involuntary masturbation. You should abominate the pleasure. The teaching that masturbation is only a sin if there is any consent given to it is not much of a comfort.
 
Finally
 
The Catholic Church should face stern opposition from psychologists who should not allow it to hurt people and lie to them over sex fantasy which is a wholesome and natural thing.

WORKS CONSULTED

A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society, Westminster, 1985
A Teenager’s Answer to “Shall I Go to the Prom?” Sherry Burgess, Guardian of Truth Publications, Kentucky
A Work of the Flesh: Sexualism, Weldon E Warnock, Guardian of Truth Publications, Kentucky
Believing in God, PJ McGrath, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1995
Biblical Dictionary and Concordance of the New American Bible, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington DC, 1971
Contraception and Chastity, Elizabeth Anscombe, Catholic Truth Society, London
Contraception, John T Noonan, Jr., A Mentor-Omega Book, New American Library, New York, 1965
Courtship and the Dangers of Petting, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1943
Divorce, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1946
God Is Not Great, The Case Against Religion, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke Heinmann, Penguin, London, 1991
Moral Questions, Bishops Conference, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1971
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Pornography – A Psychiatrist’s Verdict, Melvin Anchell MD, Liguori Publications, Missouri
Preparing for a Mixed Marriage, Irish Episcopal Conference, Veritas, Dublin, 1984
Rediscovering Gay History, John Boswell, Gay Christian Movement, UK, 1982
Rome has Spoken, A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad Publishing, New York, 1998
Scattered Vows, Exodus From the Priesthood, David Rice, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1990
Sex & Marriage A Catholic Perspective, John M Hamrogue C SS R, Liguori, Illinois, 1987
Shall We Dance? Dick Blackford, Guardian of Truth Publications, Kentucky
Son of Joseph, The Parentage of Jesus, Geoffrey Parrinder, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1992
The Emancipation of a Freethinker, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1947
“The Lord Hateth Putting Away!” and Reflections on Marriage and Divorce The Committee of the Christadelphian, Birmingham, 1985
The Pope and Contraception, Brenda Maddox, Counterblasts 18, Chatto & Windus, London 1991
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1993

The WWW
 
How to Fight the Religious Right, Brian Elroy McKinley
http://elroy.net/ehr/fighttheright.html
 
BIBLE VERSION USED

The Amplified Bible



SEARCH EXCATHOLIC.NET

No Copyright