Why sex matters

     Sex without consequences.  Freedom to explore and express ourselves sexually with whom we want, when we want.  Saving sex for marriage is puritanical and repressive.  Radical feminism, the sexual revolution, contraception, my body...my choice.   What do all of these have to do with each other?  Can our choice to have sex when we want, with whom we want really have any negative consequences?  Let alone affect an entire culture?
    There is a growing movement, proponents of casual sex.  These individuals believe sex does not need to exist inside a committed marital relationship.  It doesn't even need to exist past a one night stand.   As long as there are two consenting adults, who are not abusive, and agree on what to do and what not to do, what difference does it make what goes on in the bedroom?!?  They hold that the conventional view of sex must be challenged because it is unhealthy, unnatural, even damaging.  Some proponents hold that when we hold conventional moral views about sex "we close off opportunities to explore and express the originality of our individual desires....Over the course of one evening I have shared extraordinary tenderness, generosity and affection. Knowing that it would end shortly did not lessen my commitment to these values. Instead, it intensified them."  Stanley Siegel LCSW states in his article titled 'In Favor of Casual Sex'.  Seriously?!?  Not buying it, sorry.
     I do very much disagree that sex helps to make a relationship deeper and more meaningful outside of the context for which it's meant.  Yeah, I know what you're saying.  That people you know, or maybe you, have had deep, close, meaningful relationships that included sex, and they just didn't happen to work out.  You're fine with it, no damage done.  I mean you know people who've had sex and then even gotten married so what's the big deal?  Why does sex matter?  It is erroneous to think that sex doesn't matter. Call me sexually repressed if you will.  Infidelity, divorce, fatherless homes, contraception, and abortion, are all results of sex devoid of true desire for that which is right and good for the other.  I won't bore you with statistics, you can look those up on your own, but they are daunting to say the least.  
     Casual sex ultimately only is able to fulfill one's own desires and pleasure under the impression of loving one's partner.  I know I sound harsh.  I know people who have sex, most of the time, really do care about one another.  They feel in love and love feels right and feels like it should be expressed in an intimate way.  Don't get me wrong, sex feels good, it's supposed to.  That is part of God's design.  It is supposed to cause an intense feeling of closeness, physical pleasure, and feelings of love.  This is because it seals what is already supposed to be there,  a mutually life giving, self-sacrificing love, between a man and a woman who have committed for better or worse, in sickness and health, to death do they part.  There is more to life than just what feels good and "right".  Shocker, yes I know.  I'm disappointed by that too.  Simply living life based on feelings instead of bending our wills heavenward and we're left feeling empty.  St. Augustine said of our hearts,”You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  When we search for reason, love, and belonging in the fallen natures of our fellow men, we're sure to be disappointed.  The reason for this is that feelings are fickle.  They come and go, they usually only want for self.  We often let our hearts lead our decisions instead of our wills.  That is one of the lies of casual sex.  If it feels good and right, it must be good and right.  What I think is right for me is right for me.  What you think is right for you is right for you.  Subjective truth, subjective reality.  Quit getting all preachy on me, already.  Truth, despite our understanding, or willingness to believe it, is still truth.  Love without sacrifice is as meaningless as sacrifice without love.  
      When you are in a relationship, you want the deep bond and commitment that is sealed with sex.  Sex is that spectacular, holy, opening and giving of yourself totally, and unselfishly to the other person. You don't have a choice in the matter, that's what sex expresses whether you mean it to or not. You say by the very act of sex, you are mine and I am yours, and we are Gods'.  Even if sex connects a couple for one night, this is what they are expressing whether they realize it or not.  Even if it only lasts 6 months, this is what sex is expressing, whether a couple realizes it or not.  It is not just two bodies that entangle themselves, it is two souls, two psyches.  Then, as so often happens, when men and women have multiple sexual partners, that relationship ends, and a part of a person ends with it. Eventually those feelings of love and infatuation fade.  Then on to the next relationship, and sex, and more bonding with the other that leads no where. Casual sex is never just casual. 
     A person doesn't notice at first, but eventually the lack of true, committed love eats at a person and makes them bitter.  No, they don't walk around screaming bitterness and hurt.  They may not often realize what is wrong.  They might ask many questions of the men and women they've dated.  Why doesn't it ever work out?  Wondering why the sex had to be so good and they had to be such jerks, or nags, or...or....or.....They bring this baggage into their next relationship, and the baggage increases.  Eventually they may marry, but what a load of baggage they have on their back, with pieces of their heart missing to boot.  Jaded in love, just when they should be experiencing it as God truly intended it to be with their new husband or wife.  Yearning for the kind of love that God implicitly designed to be between them, but that they sadly don't truly experience because they have unwittingly closed off their heart many relationships ago. We're told sexual experience counts.  I mean, we can't be saddled to a person who we are sexually incompatible with, right?  I have to argue that mind blowing, incredible, loving, nurturing, mutually life giving sex has nothing to do with "experience".  That kind of sex comes from self sacrifice for your spouse.  Yes!  Sacrifice, not fulfilling one's own fantasies and desires leads to mind blowing sex.  Wrap your head around that one.  Pope Francis recently stated, “Perseverance in love, in good times and in difficult times, when there are problems: problems with the children, economic problems, problems here, problems there – but love perseveres, presses on, always trying to work things out, to save the family. Persevering: they get up every morning, the man and the woman, and carry the family forward.”  No, I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination.  
    You might say, yeah, this is all well and good, but....  There is always a but.....  The reality is, sex is never free, not even in marriage.  It's not supposed to be.
      How does this all play out in real life?  Charles J. Chaput who wrote in 1998, “Contraception has released males – to a historically unprecedented degree – from responsibility for their sexual aggression.”   As Mary Eberstadt notes in her book Adam and Eve After the Pill, for men, " the sexual revolution seems more like a slow-acting virus whose damage does not become apparent till much later in life. As Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite, among other researchers, have emphasized, divorced men have higher rates of depression, alcoholism, and other forms of “risk taking.”  For women, “the fallout from the revolution appears more immediate and acute. It is women who have abortions and get depressed about them, women who are usually left to raise children alone when a man leaves for someone else, women who typically take the biggest financial hit in divorce, and women who fill the pages of such magazines as Cosmopolitan and Mirabella and chatty websites like Salon with sexual doublespeak.”  The use of contraceptives and the ideologies which spurred the sexual revolution have only complicated things more frighteningly.  Sex without the possibility of it's natural consequence. The fruit of the oneness of individuals, a baby. Look at all the broken men and women who've chosen abortion over giving life to the natural consequence of sex, because sex outside of a committed marital relationship has consequences. Just ask all those single mothers, many who've had a man promise love and partnership, only to be abandoned because sex has consequences. Sex can bind together into one flesh a married couple. Sex can bind together an unmarried couple too, but when that relationship ends, where does it leave a person? Condoms, the pill, IUD's, even the pull out method, all say to your sexual partner, you can't have my whole being, my soul, my heart, I want only pleasure from this act of sex. I will take pleasure and give nothing substantial in return.  
    I am well aware that sex even in the context of marriage has consequences.  We're all fallen people.  We all sin.  So even in marriage, we sin, sin which hurts our beloved, hurts and damages our children.  This is why a married couple must pray and stay close to Christ.  Offering up their marriage as an expression of Christ's love for us.  Just because of the possibility of disappointment and hurt within marriage through infidelity, divorce, you name it, does not negate its good and value.  All of life can feel like a battle sometimes.  However, some battles are important to fight.  Let's face it, none of us, not one of us likes to be told what we're doing might not be the bed of roses we want to think it is.  Life is often spectacular suffering intermingled with spectacular beauty and love.  God's will, is the will of a loving Father.  He wants only good things for us.  Beauty, love, truth and hope.  Which, is why we have free will.  Love is something that must be freely given.  It cannot be demanded or taken.  God let's us know what is good, and right, and true.  It's up to us whether or not we follow his will for our lives. 
"11And which of you, if he ask his father bread, will he give him a stone? or a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?12Or if he shall ask an egg, will he reach him a scorpion? 13If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?" Matthew 7:11-13  Abandoning our will to God's will is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, but we must ask for the grace.  Saint Thomas Aquinas said,"The Eucharist is the sacrament of love; it signifies love, it produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life." Well I argue that Marriage is the sacrament of love; it signifies love, and the fruit of it's love is openness to life, and children.  Sex, is the consummation of the whole spiritual life of married love.
    On a personal note, sex matters to me because of the four precious gifts God has placed in my care.  I want them to know their hearts and souls matter.  That there is a life after this one, and we were not made for the mediocrity of this world.  That they deserve love that is Godly, that is given freely, that is intense and beautiful, and that it can be found without having to compromise themselves.  When we're asked to compromise our hearts and souls, we lose who we really are bit by bit.  Until, there is nothing left of ourselves that we recognize.  The father of lies whispers many things, many doubts, many half truths into our ears.  To disturb our peace, to rip away our trust in God.  "The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us. On the other hand, if our soul is agitated and troubled, the grace of God is able to act only with much greater difficulty." Father Jacques Philippe so beautifully states.  Sex matters my friends, and for more reasons than you can possibly imagine.  Much love to you on this journey.  Navigating these waters is not for the faint of heart.  It takes courage, prayer, and the sacraments.
     Want some "light" reading recommendations?
The Vindication of Humanae Vitae 

The Weight of Smut 
Adam and Eve after the Pill by Mary Eberstadt
Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla
Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul IV
Why Humane Vitae was Right by Janet Smith