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[  http://CatholicArrogance.Org/Churchvsex.html  ]

• when he was invited to a wedding, far from throwing cold water on it, he turned water into wine, in order to "let the good times roll".  { John 2:1-12 }
• when holier than thou people wondered how Jesus could let a prostitute touch him { Luke 7:36-50 }, he made a point of ^{lifting her up} and _{putting her critics down.}
• when Jesus spent so much time chatting with a Samaritan woman, and his disciples raised their eyebrows.{ John 4:4 . . .  42 }
• when the holier than thou church people dragged a woman "caught in the very act of adultery" before him and asked him to join them in stoning her to death as the bible said that they should do, He turned the tables around and humiliated the churchmen, instead of that poor woman.  { John 8: 2--11 }  (By the way, have you ever wondered if, when that woman was caught in the act of committing adultery she was alone at the time?!?   What happened to the male adulterer?)
• when Jesus told the chief priests and the elders of the people who challenged his teaching in the temple, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you."  { Matt. 21:23-32 }
• Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus or any of the twelve apostles were celibate. The Catholic Church interprets this silence on the matter as proof that they all were (except for Peter, whose "mother in law" Jesus healed). But is this just its aversion for marriage showing again? In Jewish society it was very unusual for people not to marry. Every Jew hoped to be the father or mother of the promised Messiah. For Jesus and his twelve apostles to have all been celibates would have been a truly puzzling phenomenon, which would have required an explanation and justification. The fact that there was no mention of their marital status may prove that it wasn't noteworthy, because most, if not all of them were married, just like everybody else.

"Christians" who have a dim view of sexuality, women and marriage owe that view to Paul of Tarsus, rather than to Jesus of Nazareth, for ...
      "Paul had mounted a vigorous defense of celibacy or remaining unmarried. Although he does not require it of his followers, he asserts that he lives the single non-sexual life and he strongly recommends it as the most practical as well as the most spiritually devoted lifestyle. He writes, in this regard, 'I wish that all were as I myself am,' (1 Corinthians 7:7-8). . . one can conclude that if Paul had known Jesus to have been single or unmarried, living a celibate life, he would have mentioned it prominently. In fact it would have been one of his main points. It would have been irresistible. He mounts every possible defense of celibacy, but in the end is only able to appeal to his own example. Imagine how much more rigorously he could have argued had he been able to say, "follow me here, as I follow Christ." In this particular case I think his silence is "deafening." As with Cephas (Peter), the other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, he knows that having a wife as a companion is the norm and pattern in the group. Paul must have known that Jesus was married,"

Sex through the centuries

        "He (Pope John Paul II) teaches that sex is a beautiful gift of God.  But he can't admit that most of his predecessors taught that it's always ugly and disgusting.  Leo I  (440-461) said,  'All marital intercourse is a sin,' and Innocent III (1198-1216), 'The consummation of marriage never takes place without the flames of lust.' Two 17^th century popes said all foreplay, even sensuous kissing between married couples, is a grave sin.
        The entire tradition was: Sex outside marriage is dirty.  Within marriage it is also dirty.  The only question is the degree of dirt.  Marriage, said St Ambrose, is a crime against God in that it changed the state of virginity that God gave every creature at birth.  During intercourse, couples should keep their minds on Jesus and the stork.  All sex is pornographic, destined to deprave and corrupt.  It cannot be spiritualised.  Sex, said Augustine, the converted fornicator, must not be sexy.  Nuns mustn't eat beans, Jerome decided, because they titillate the genitals.  Today, we would send these holy popes and theologians to a sex-therapist.
        John Paul praises the sanctity of marriage but can't admit that for centuries his predecessors thought it so lewd that it was never blessed by the church.  At best, couples gave their legal consent outside the church, and never with the blessing of the clergy.  As Chaucer's Wife of Bath, first married at twelve, put it,  'Five husbands have I had at the church door.'  How could clerics bless a thing so sinful they couldn't indulge in it?  Marriage was too sordid to be a sacrament until the 16^th century.
        Like Paul VI, John Paul tries to choreograph what couples do in bed by promoting sex during 'the safe period'.  This is a bizarre idea in that human females, unlike animals, seldom know when they're infertile even after using thermometers, calendars and higher mathematics.  A case of sexual hide-and-seek.  Couples had better be as accurate as a Mafia hit-man.
        The method might have suited clever cloistered nuns, not busy mothers, many of whom can't read or write and perhaps have no electric light.  If safety belts in cars were as safe as the safe period they would be outlawed.  What the Pope can never bring himself to concede was that nearly all pontiffs condemned the safe period or what we might call 'sex for fun'.  Their view was clear: sex has only one purpose, procreation.  To have sex and not intend a child, worse, to have sex and intend not to have a child is to commit adultery with one's wife.
        John Paul teaches that a human being exists from the first moment of conception, hence every abortion, even of a three day embryo, is murder.  Not essentially different from what Jack the Ripper did or Timothy McVeigh.  Very well, but why did he not admit that nearly all his predecessors said the opposite.
        He teaches that every embryo and fetus is an innocent human being.  Why doesn't he say that most of his predecessors said explicitly that every unbaptised infant, far from being innocent, is stained with original sin, a kind of venereal disease?  Each babe, as part of the massa damnata, is under the devil's dominion so that if it dies unbaptized, they are so disgusting to God they cannot look at him, nor can he at them, for all eternity.  Not that tradition ever explained how Adam could hand on original sin when sin is in the soul and the soul comes not from parents but directly from God.
        John Paul teaches that only celibacy is in tune with the sacrament of holy orders, conveniently forgetting that Jesus chose married men as his apostles.  Also, if Peter were to return to earth today, not being one of the Pope's castrati, John Paul would have declared him unfit to serve as a curate in a city slum."
        [ an article by Peter de Rosa, the author of a history of the popes called Vicars of Christ: the Dark Side of the Papacy ]
        See much more on the wierd views about sex and about women which was part of the "holy tradition" the Roman Catholic passed on to its "people of faith" over the centuries at

People are wondering today what Roman Catholic bishops were thinking of, shuffling pedophile priests from one parish (or hunting ground) to another, for God knows how long.  Roman Catholics seem to be very upset over this situation.  Is that because they can imagine that their own children might have been its victims?  But what makes the lost innocence of a few hundred American children more tragic than the 10 million Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Gays, Liberals, Handicaps and other "undesirables" who lost everything, including their lives, at the hands of the millions of German Roman Catholics?  Rather than being told that it was their duty to run from the NAZI crimes, German Catholics were actually told by their bishops that it was their religious obligation to be loyal and obedient servants of Hitler!  See much more, together with plenty of supporting evidence for all of the above, in the form of books and other sites to read, at

The REASON for all of the Church's Hangups :

        Most people think of the requirement of clerical celibacy as just one of the many of the Catholic Church's sexual hangups.  But I have come to believe that clerical celibacy is the key to understanding all the other sexual hangups of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. 

        For about a thousand years now, all of the Catholic Church's decision-makers have been celibate (usually old) men. If all of those in positions of authority have to go without the pleasures of the flesh, they may not be able to deny the laity who are subject to them those pleasures, but they can do the next best thing and make those pleasures as costly, and painful, and infrequently enjoyed as possible.  Sex, they insist, can only be "enjoyed" when there is the possibility, if not certainty, of the dire consequences, another "mouth to feed", etc., etc., etc. for 18 years or so. Therefore, no birth-control before, and no abortion after "enjoying sex".  No masturbation.  No escape from unhappy marriages.  Perpetual celibacy for divorcees.  And no sex for infertile couples of the same gender.  Let homosexuals either a) practice celibacy like the clergy (!); b) marry some unsuspecting heterosexual; c) live a promiscuous life-style and go to hell; or d) kill themselves and go to hell.  But God forbid that they should settle down with a permanent partner of their own choosing in marriage and enjoy sex without suffering the consequences of procreation!

One of Roman Catholicism'a favorite bible verses seems to be I Corinthians: 7:7-9 where Paul of Tarsus wrote, "I wish that all were (celibates) as I myself am.  But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.  To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am.  But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better (i.e. a lesser evil) to marry than to be aflame with passion."

H.L. Mencken could just as well have been speaking of Roman Catholic clerics when he spoke of fundamentalists having "a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun."

Celibacy and the Catholic Priesthood :

"The discipline of celibacy now in place actually led to unchastity.  Proof of this comes in the writing of one of the great reforming saints, Bernard of Clairvaux.  In the year 1135 he was responding to the Albigensian claim that marriage is sordid.  Bernard said: `Take from the Church an honourable marriage and an immaculate marriage bed, and do you not fill it with concubinage, incest, homosexuality and every kind of uncleanness?' "   ( from "Vicars of Christ", p. 409)

Although not nearly as well known, St. Ulrich, a bishop, had argued from scripture and common sense four centuries earlier than St. Bernard that the only way to purify the church from the worst excesses of celibacy was to permit priests to marry.

According to the February 1999 issue of U.S. Catholic Magazine, eighty percent of its readers who responded to a survey agreed that mandatory celibacy or Catholic priests should be abolished.

According to John Horan, also writing in the same issue of the U.S. Catholic Magazine, "For the first twelve centuries of church practice, thirty-nine popes were married in addition to many priests and bishops. Three popes (Anastasius I, St. Hormidas, and Sergius III) produced pope sons of their own, two of whom went on to be declared saints (St. Innocent I and St. Silverius)."  Mr. Horan also indicates in his article that it was Pope Gregory VI in the eleventh century who required pledges of celibacy prior to ordination and that this pope was accredited with stating as a reason "the Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape the clutches of their wives."
[ as quoted in The Catholic Challenge: A Question of Conscience, pp 167-168]
        If you can believe the Bible "the LORD God" felt the same way as he said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." [ Genesis 2:18 ]

Still more worthwhile sources and information :