I'm a Christian, abstinent, and not planning on changing either one of those things. However, my major is Health and Wellness so I've been learning a lot about human physiology lately, including sex. Puberty is a complicated and confusing time for people. Sexual desires are a result of our brain chemistry and hormones, right? Can we really fault a pre-teen boy (or girl) for giving in and masturbating once or twice? Isn't it just a natural human function to be sexually curious? Also, it's unhealthy to suppress your sexual urges and hate yourself, especially during a time as tumultuous as puberty.
I guess the sexual aspects of Christianity are the ones that confuse me most. I'm not a very sexual person at all; totally looking forward to waiting until marriage or dying a virgin. However, I just can't wrap my head around certain things - such as masturbation, sexual curiosity - as being wrong.
Thoughts?
I think Christianity owes most of its blatant anti-sexuality stance to cultural influences that prevailed in the late Roman empire (about the same time as the Church's rise from an obscure sect to the domineering world view):
(Proto-)Judaism, while VERY concerned about adultery (as a violation of a man's property rights), never betrayed the kind of anti-sex attitude that has come to dominate the Christian mainstream up to the present day.
If you're looking for the world views that contributed to that particular phenomenon, look no further than Stoicism and Gnosticism.
Stoicism embraced an ascetic approach to life, and tended to frown upon sex. Gnosticism, in turn, embraced an oriental dualism that conceived of the material world as evil (and diametrically opposed to the realm of "spirit".)
As a result, the ascendant Church tended to condemn sexuality in general: the Vulgate translation turned the apostles' wives into their "sisters"; aspiring priests were first asked not to marry (or, if they were already married, to basically abstain from any marital relations after taking their vows), and later on compelled to be celibate (with certain popes actually suggesting that the offspring of priests ought to be sold into slavery as an example). And notable church fathers (Augustinus etc.) wrote at great length about the evils of sexuality, suggesting that marital intercourse was tolerable at best - but only if it was intended for the purpose of begetting children, NOT for the sake of any pleasure taken in the act.
This legacy persists to this day in many ways - as does the assumption that sexuality in general tends to be anti-spiritual, mundane, or even downright degrading.
Now, that's not to say that sexuality cannot be degrading, mundane, or anti-spiritual. We needn't look far in order to find examples of this. But in many ways, this has become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, as people are blinded to the deeply spiritual and benevolent aspects of sexuality. (As evidenced by the fact that the most sexually repressed societies also happen to be the ones where the "sexual underground" is at its strongest and most bizarre: no country produces more inappropriate contentography than the Christian United States, for example - certainly not secular Europe with its vastly more liberal attitudes to sexuality. And no country is more bizarre than Japan, where even kissing in public is a HUGE taboo, yet people buy used schoolgirl panties as a fetish.)
In short: Christianity's obsession with virginity strikes me as quite unhealthy in many cases. And its summary condemnation of, for example, masturbation is pretty much untenable, even if you try to justify the taboo by means of strict monogamy. (After all, masturbation does not necessarily require sexual fantasies involving a specific person and/or somebody other than one's partner/spouse.)
Normally they form a monolithic block, but maybe not on this point? I could find out easily enough ... what's your source, for current teaching within the RCC in EU?
