The sexophobic Church? An ancient prejudice that has arisen because in Catholic teaching sex is not libertine but, being a gift from God, it must be kept and not sold off.
- Sexuality must be preserved and lived within marriage.
- Sexuality should not be separated from love.
- The sexuality of which the Church and God speak is only between man and woman.
Here is an excerpt from the Pope's words:
«Sexuality, sex, is a gift from God. No taboo. It is a gift from God, a gift the Lord gives us. It has two purposes: to love each other and to generate life. Jesus says: for this reason the man, and also the woman, will leave his father and his mother and they will unite and will be ... one single person? ..., one identity? it is the greatness of sexuality. And we must talk about sexuality like this. And sexuality must be lived like this, in this dimension: of the love between man and woman for life. It is true that our weaknesses, our spiritual failures, lead us to use sexuality outside of this very beautiful path, of the love between man and woman. But they fell, like all sins. The lie, the anger, the gluttony ... They are sins: capital sins. But this is not the sexuality of love: it is "cosified" sexuality, detached from love and used for fun. an industry of sexuality detached from love, have you seen it? Yup! A lot of money is made from the pornography industry, for example. It is a degeneration from the level where God has placed it. Guard your sexual dimension, your sexual identity.
Keep it well. And prepare it for love, to insert it into that love that will accompany you throughout your life. In St. Peter's Square there were once two elderly people celebrating their sixtieth anniversary of marriage. They were bright! And I asked: "Did you fight a lot?" - "Well, sometimes ..." - "And is this worth the wedding?" - And these two, who were looking at me, looked at each other and then they went back to look at me, and their eyes were wet, and they said to me: "We are in love". After 60 years! And then I wanted to tell you: once an elderly man - very old, with his elderly wife - told me: “We love each other very, very much and sometimes we hug each other. We cannot make love at our age, but we hug, we kiss ... This is true sexuality. Never detach her from such a beautiful place of love. This is how we must speak of sexuality.
Nothing new, Benedict XVI also recalled that “sexuality is a gift from the Creator, but also a task that concerns the development of one's human being. When it is not integrated into the person, sexuality becomes banal and destructive at the same time ».
