Religion and Sexuality

This message was delivered for the first time to the Honors Society of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines for their anniversary seminar November 14, 2006. It is noted that the objective of the PUP Honors Society is “to mould and promote human values and virtues among its members.”

Religion and Sexuality is a fascinating subject. But it is one that is full of dangers as well as rewards.

When I was in the seminary studying to be a priest, our psychology professor told us that most of the people who are in mental hospitals are there because of religion or sexuality.

That scared me. I knew I was a very sexual person which I knew was taboo in the seminary. I knew I was in the seminary because of religion. So surely I was a candidate for the mental hospital.

What I did not know was that it is 100% normal for human beings to be sexual. They did not teach us that part. Sexuality is part of our nature. We are sexual beings.

First we are wholistic beings. We are a whole person if we fully exercise our four basic human components — our intellectual component, our physical component, our spiritual component, and our emotional component. And all four of these have to be in balance and harmony.

Now where is the sexual part? Where does that come in, if it is not one of the four components? You see, Sexuality is not a separate part of us. Our human sexuality pervades, goes into and lives in, and is given meaning by its interrelation with each of our four basic human components.

Our sexuality is within our intellectual, physical, spiritual, and emotional components in very distinct ways. Our intellectual power gives us the ability to think and know what we are doing and why. Our spiritual power gives us the ability to know the meaning and purpose of our life.

For two cats making a lot of noise together, it’s simple. Their sex is not complicated by “meaning,” spirituality, or religion. They just do it. And they don’t even speak to each other the next day. That’s a simple look at animal sexuality.

For human sexuality to be fully human, it must be directed by our intellectual component and given meaning by our spiritual component, as it has its full delightful human expression in our physical and emotional components.

Remember we said all four of these components must be in balance and harmony. And that’s where the mental hospital, the mental imbalance, the craziness comes in. We get things out of balance.

People would not normally be mentally ill at all if they were sexual. It is normal. They would not be mentally ill at all if they were spiritual. It is normal. But if they cannot put sexuality and spirituality into harmony and balance, that’s where the sickness starts.

A quick example. Look at a rapist. The rapist does not think about the rightness or wrongness or goodness or badness or harm or consequences of his sex act. His thinking is only controlled by his physical lust and emotional passion for sexual pleasure. It’s sick in many ways.

Now when we look at Sexuality and Religion, we have to find a way to put them in harmony and balance with each other, so that the whole human person is present in the sexuality and in the spirituality, and they are present at the same time. We call it the integration of spirituality and sexuality.

The churches in general have a done a terrible job of putting these very integral elements of our human nature into harmony. They have left out human psychology.

So, why are so many in mental hospitals or having mental problems, craziness or depression because of religion or sexuality? It is precisely because this balance and harmony has not been achieved. Why has it not been achieved?

A big cause is that the churches who teach us religion do not know how to teach us sexuality. They have a very incomplete and out of balance approach.

Why do I say this? I say this because as a priest I know as well as all the rest of us know what the churches in general teach about sexuality. And, unfortunately, the tension, the mental problems have come because people in general find a great contradiction between reality and what the churches teach about sexuality.

Human psychology teaches us that sexuality is a very important part of reality. At the same time, spirituality is a very important part of reality. But all too often the teachings of the churches leave out human psychology and human reality in their teachings about sexuality.

I will give a quick example, but I want it understood that I am not against any church or any religion. I am an advocate of sex-positive theology which helps eliminate the abuses, the harm, and the craziness caused by sex negative theology. For example, the Roman Catholic Church teaches: no condoms, no birth control, no “artificial” prevention of babies. Human psychology and common sense tell a father and mother with six children that they cannot afford more children because they can’t even properly feed and school the six they have. Human nature also tells them they are sexual. Common sense tells them that the simple solution is to use condoms or some method of birth control. The church tells they are bad, immoral, sinful if they do this.

And surely that is crazy making for people who are not spiritually and psychologically and intellectually strong enough to make the leap from church teachings to human psychology and common sense. So the crazy making for so many people is that they want to follow the teachings of their church because they were always taught that is the right thing to do. But in the very core of their being they know they are sexual and they have to find a way of dealing with their sexuality that makes sense, not just because the pope or Father Garcia says so, but because they know it is right in the very depths of their being.

Now I do not claim a person can figure out all the complicated teachings of theology, the trinity, salvation, etc. by their own inner feelings, or even by all the forces of their human powers. That’s a good time to listen to a church and decide, “What do I want to believe? Do I want to believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?” It’s a matter of faith; I can choose to believe, or not to believe. That’s what faith is. There is no tension between human nature and human spirituality in such theological faith. It’s a matter of choosing to believe or not to believe.

But when it comes to human sexuality, our human nature speaks so loudly that there is a tremendous tension between what our very nature tells us and what the churches tell us.

When we are full human beings, what we like to call “living with wholistic wholeness,” we have all our human elements and powers in harmony and balance. If the church tells us one thing and human psychology and human nature tells us the opposite, we have three choices.

1. Do what the church says and never question it, and be happy.

2. Reject the sexual teachings of the church which do make sense, and even reject the church along with it.

3. Realize that we are spiritual and sexual and put them in harmony and balance ourselves, since the churches have not taught us how to do that satisfactorily.

The third option means looking at human sexuality as a thinking, fully functioning adult.

For a good Christian, or a good Moslem, or a good Baha’I, or a good person in any religion, that does not necessarily mean throwing out the baby with the bath water.

It means being a fully functioning adult human being and dealing with human sexuality in accordance with human nature and human psychology.

Other theological issues are not involved. For a Christian who chooses, the Trinity can stay. Holy Communion can stay, if one chooses, but rules rules rules against sex, rules that do not make sense in human psychology and human nature, cannot stay.

So we call that forming an adult conscience. Conscience is a very important part of every fully functioning human person.

It’s not just “an examination of conscience” in order to go to confession and confess our sins. It’s far more and better than that.

Conscience is a judgment or decision an adult human being makes each time he or she decides whether a thing is ok, or not ok, right or wrong, good or bad.

The father and mother of six who form their conscience in an adult way about birth control form their conscience by listening to their church, then listening to their common sense situation, their human sexual nature, and their desire to be good persons. Then they decide. Do we lead miserable lives of no sex? Do we lead lives of lacking food, tuition, or proper care of our children? Do we do what the church says? Do we do what common sense tells us? Do we listen to what our human nature tells us? Can we hear the Spirit of God speaking to our hearts? Then they form their adult conscience by deciding to use birth control and take proper care of their children, knowing in their hearts that, if they don’t use birth control they are committing a sin against human nature, and the sin of harming the children they have brought into this world.

An adult human person forms their conscience every time they are about to act.

If I pick up something in a store that my family needs and take it without paying for it, will it be good for my family and therefore not sinful? They I would have to convince myself that stealing is ok if I need it. And that’s not the way I would go. I would want to make an adult decision with honor and personal integrity. That is forming one’s adult conscience.

When it comes to human sexuality, our input has been quite biased from the religion side. We have more training in religion than we have in psychology. The powerful pull of our human nature screams very loudly, but we have never been taught how to form an adult conscience that deals with God’s reality, which, sad to say, is not always God’s reality as depicted by the church.

Taking a quick look at history, we see that St. Augustine was the first powerful spokesperson of the church’s position on sexuality. And unfortunately the majority followed him. Believe me, my friends the majority is not always right in such situations. His position was basically that sex is bad unless the following conditions are met: the two people are heterosexual, they are married, they can have sex once a year, under the blankets, with their clothes on, to make a baby. Get in there fast and get out of there fast, make the baby, and don’t enjoy it!

Well, the church has loosened up. Pope John Paul II even said when those two heterosexual married persons are having sex, God is present, and it is a beautiful thing. Bravo! Bravo! Before we finish today, we will say Amen to that, but we will say it’s not just good and beautiful for those two heterosexual people trying to make a baby. We will say that ALL SEX IS GOOD IF IT IS NOT HARMFUL OR FORCEFUL.

The church position unfortunately can be summarized in putting some hateful words in God’s (unwilling) mouth. (Imagine God peering over a cloud spying on the sexual beings God has created.) “No masturbation, no condoms, no sex outside of heterosexual marriage to make a baby, and no sex ever in any way, in your whole life, if I make you homosexual.”

So that brings us to the situation of the LGBT person who is called by his or her nature to be a sexual person, who has strong spiritual feelings, and may be a person with strong religious attachments.

How does one put being a homosexual sexual person and being a spiritual or religious person into balance and harmony?

The very same process of forming one’s conscience comes into the situation for a truly adult person. If that person is truly trying to keep their life in wholistic balance, they don’t throw out sexuality in favor of spirituality. They don’t throw out spirituality and keep only sexuality. In other words they make an adult judgment about what is right and how they can have both in a healthy and good way.

Human psychology tells us, that indeed some human persons have a natural human attraction to persons of the same sex. In Rizal’s time psychiatrists acknowledged this fact of life by saying, “Yes, this is so, let us call these persons homosexuals.” In the very core of their being very many persons with a same-sex attraction know they are born that way. Science has not given a definitive answer on how, but much scientific research leads some scientists to believe that it is indeed true that persons with a same-sex attraction are born that way. But the indisputable fact is that there are many human beings who are in this world with a sexual attraction to persons of the same gender.

The church says it is disordered, but, they say, of course treat the people with such a disordered attraction as kindly as possible. However, do not neglect to tell them they can never have sex in any way in their whole life.

Now they therefore try to put these words in God’s mouth. By doing so, they make God into a monster who says, “Ha ha, I put you in this world with a same sex attraction. All your brothers and sisters and friends who are attracted to the opposite sex can have responsible sex, but you can never ever have sex in any way because I have made you with a disordered attraction.”

And that’s what they want us to believe. (Or worse they want us to feel guilty and say it’s all a fantasy and we are not really naturally that way, but that we just choose to be sinful.)

The truth is we do not choose to be heterosexual or homosexual. We can, of course, choose our behavior, but not our natural inclination or orientation. What we can choose to do, ultimately is either to grovel in the condemnation we get from the sex-negative theology of the church, or we can choose to make an adult decision, to form an adult conscience — and for many of us that means to choose a responsible expression of our God-given sexuality, without guilt feelings. For many of us that means we do not need to stop being what ever religion we choose to be, or being the spiritual person we naturally are, but we choose to make an adult judgment about our sexuality.

In our Gay Men’s Support Group (GMSG) which meets weekly for the last ten years hundreds of gay men have come to know themselves, their sexuality, and even their spirituality (although we do not teach “religion” in the group.)

Many same-sex couples come to me to have a same-sex wedding. I ask them, what will they say if someone says that it is sinful. I used to hear such answers as, “I don’t care what they say. Or even I don’t care if it is sinful.” That’s not good thinking. When one says, I don’t care if it is a sin, it is hearing their conscience that say it is sinful and then go ahead and do the sin. Not good. A good person does not willfully and callously do what they think is bad. On the other hand, nowadays more and more people are replying with much more adult responses.

Nowadays more and more people are saying, “I don’t see how love can be a sin.” And I tell them that that is very good thinking. I say that because I believe that GOD IS LOVE AND THOSE WHO LIVE IN LOVE LIVE IN GOD AND GOD LIVES IN THEM.

Therefore I tell them beyond a shadow of doubt that God is smiling on their love and loves them unconditionally and wants them to remain in God’s embrace as they embrace one another in love.

So that’s the bottom line for the reconciliation of sex and love, religion and sexuality. You give it the ultimate reality test. Reality allows you to accept the loving embrace of God and worship God with the ultimate assurance that God is love.

Then you are on the way to forming an adult conscience that brings religion and sexuality into balance and harmony. You are happy and God is happy. And God is happy for you.


Image “angry god” is from derek m ballard on flickriver http://www.flickriver.com/photos/derek-m-ballard/29515715/ accessed on March 19, 2015 at 4:17PM