sexuality 4: Moral and psychological problems connected with sexuality

Problems and deviations in sexuality

Before dealing with the problems which can come out of sexuality we must put a clear foundation to our concept.


1- Sexuality comes from God (he is the source and so we should respect the way he made things).
It has a purpose. (Goal. We cannot use things for our own purpose)
2- The language of sexuality is LOVE. (Instrument. If we speak a different language then we create misunderstandings).
3- Furthermore we should keep in mind what in the person is:
- Gender. (Male or female, as provided by nature and written in the genes).
- Orientation. (This is the feeling we prove for other people, whom we are attracted to).
- Desire or choices. (The actions we take in our sexual behavior).

 The deviations can be divided in groups according to where the problem lies compared to the 6 points above. Of course we have to remember that not all deviations are actual sins. A sin is a purposely made choice of something that is wrong, while many deviations may not be wanted or even desired.


1- A first group regards the gender or the orientation. Here we find Tran-sexuality, Transvestitism and homosexuality.

Trans-sexuality. Is when a person undergoes a surgical operation in order to change sex. Physically speaking the person remains of the sex he belongs to (the chromosomes cannot be changed). What changes are the external organs (remove the poenis, build some breast, change the pitch of the voice). Usually this is done because the person is unhappy with his gender. In most cases it regards men who want to be women, and most of them eventually end up to work as prostitutes.
There is the case of those people who are Hermaphrodites, which means have both sexual organs of man and woman. Usually those people are inscribed among the men but genetically can be women.
A special group among the trans-sexual are the Eunuchs, or castrates. They are common is some parts of India and usually do the change for religious purposes. If the castration is done in early age (before puberty), it is difficult to recognize them for what they are.

Transvestitism. This means that a person dresses and acts like people of the opposite sex, but without any surgical change. This is mainly present among men who want to work as prostitutes.

Homosexuality. Unlike the two previous cases, homosexuality is not fruit of a choice but something which we develop without being aware of it. An homosexual person is aware of his gender, but instead of being attracted by people of the opposite sex, he/she is attracted by people of the same sex (a man who loves men or a woman who loves women). A common name for homosexual men is Gay, for ladies is Lesbian.

The reason why homosexuality develops is not known. Usually it does not come out clearly until the person is in the late teenage or even early adulthood.

There are different levels of homosexuality:
1- Sexual curiosity. The person wants to experience everything. He is not really an homosexual, but he is into sexual experiences and enjoys them all. Sometimes we can call them Bisexual.
2- Average homosexuality. This represents the great majority of the cases. Here the person really feels attracted by people of the same sex, and not by the other. The reasons for this could be many. Strict childhood education in which all sexual things were considered bad; Parents too strict or dominating; frequent double message about sexual behavior; Environment in which to be men and women is considered inferior or bad; not acceptance of its own gender; etc. All these cases can be helped and brought back to normal or to an acceptable level, but the person has to give full cooperation to the counselor.
3- Radical Homosexuality. This cases are rare and found only among men. This cannot be cured.

Today’s society tries to say that homosexuality is normal since is from nature. So they think that we should do nothing about that and should give the homosexual people the same rights of the others like homosexual marriages, right of adoptions etc. This position does not take in account the plan of God ; it does not consider that the different sexes have the purpose to complete each other, to procreate and to give a complete differentiated education to the children.

Statistics prove that among homosexuals the percentage of those who change several partners is much higher than among the others. So we have to say that homosexuality is a deviation.

Is homosexuality a sin?
If by homosexuality we mean the feelings of attraction, then in itself is not a sin, is only a sickness. It becomes a sin when a person wants to pursue the feelings and enters in sexual relationship or in active sexual life.

If homosexuality is a sickness, then it can be cured. So theoretically speaking a gay can become a priest, as long as he cures himself and he does not follow his feelings. But, as we said, an homosexual is emotionally weak in matter of sexuality, so he will be always under the pressure of temptations. Furthermore, since all his companions are boys and do not know about his situation, they will act more naturally and so become more tempting. For this reason, Pope John Paul II, in a recent document, invited the superiors of the seminaries not to allow in priesthood or perpetual vows gay people, but rather to help them to find a solution or a different way of living.


2- A Second group of deviations includes Pornography, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Masturbation. The problems with these deviations is that the behaviour of the person is only oriented to self gratification and exclude any other relationship.

Pornography. It is when a person enjoys looking at material (pictures, movies etc.) which are expressly erotic (naked people, sexual activities). The person makes use of this material in order to have pleasure for himself. This activity is wrong because the person does not take in consideration any of the aspects of sexuality. Here we have no relationship, no love, no caring for others,, but the person closes on himself only for pleasure. Pornography is maybe the biggest illegal business today (together with drug dealing), and generates millions of dollars every minute. A research says that as many as 50% of the internet connections used daily in India have pornographic material in it.

Pornography is a very addictive activity, comparable to drug abuse, drinking, gambling etc. One of the reasons for being addictive is because is forbidden, secret, it gives pleasure but at the same time makes the person feel sad, empty, guilty, unable to do anything. In order to forget or repress such bad emotions, the person looks for more exciting experiences, so more pornography.

Voyeurism. It means trying to see erotic situations (scenes), not in books or television or internet, but real ones. The person peeps through windows, keyholes etc. while others are taking bath, making love etc.
Here, like in pornography, all the aspects of sexuality are forgotten, there is no relationship, no love for the other person, who is seen only as an object of my pleasure and fantasy. It is quite common among teenagers to peep through the key holes of bathrooms while their sisters or mother take bath, or try to see through open cloths of ladies. Among teenagers is curiosity and at the beginning is normal, it becomes a problem when it carries on for long time.

Exhibitionism. We have it when a person shows his intimate parts (sexual) to somebody else in order to attract his or her attention. The person tries to tempt others in order to seduce them. People who do this are usually mentally unstable and can become dangerous when they enter in real relationships.

A special kind of exhibitionism is the stripping, where men or women take off their clothes in special places, to get money from the customers. There are special clubs of stripping girls, where members pay to see the shows. For the strippers is not matter of mental sickness but a work for money similar to prostitution.

Masturbation. It is when a person produces pleasure for himself handling his own genitals. Masturbation is a normal process in the early teenage, and usually it helps the boy to discover the capacities of his body. This activity should not last too long (maybe only a few months). The problem is when it continues for years. Usually if the experience of masturbation is extended, it denotes problems connected with:
- High guilt feelings
- Low self esteem
- Boredom
- Lack of ideals
- Fear of sexual feelings
- Lack of happyness with own sexuality
- Selfish and self centered attitude.

In order to remove masturbation we have to remove its causes, whichever they are.

Why is masturbation bad? Masturbation is wrong because the person becomes close on himself, avoids relationships, looks for pleasure instead of real love, he becomes unable to make sacrifices.
Masturbation is one of the causes of lack of maturity in people and is strongly connected with low self esteem.
Masturbation is also the usual consequence of the wrong activities which we have seen in all the deviations above.
Some people who are not able to stop masturbation start hoping that it would stop by itself. Some other try to convince themselves that masturbation is dangerous for health. Both ideas are wrong.

What can then help to solve masturbation?
- Avoid places and times where temptations are stronger.
- Keep busy
- Enjoy your activities
- Have many friends and enjoy talking, playing, working with them.
- Have some healthy female friendships
- Do not be afraid to tell the confessor and the spiritual director about this problem.


3- A third group of disorders is connected with a wrong kind of relationship or a wrong way of doing it. This group includes Pedophilia, Premarital sex, Adultery, Sadism, Masochism, Rape, Prostitution.

Pedophilia: We call pedophilia any sexual activity which an adult performs on a child. This is a very big crime because the child is not able to understand the full meaning and consequences of what is going on. Furthermore the child is weak, and the adult takes advantage of his weakness for his own pleasure. It is considered a crime even if the child may have given a consent to it.

Statistics prove that whoever commits pedophilia once, is prone to commit it again and again. Usually the child who is abused grows with low self esteem, fear of adults, strong guilt feelings, and incapacity of stable relationships.

Most of the time the person who has been abused in early childhood does not remember what happened in its childhood because the pain and even the episode have been repressed in the subconscious; nevertheless the negative effects are there.

Pedophilia does not regard only sexual intercourse, but any explicit sexual activity like asking the child to touch sexual parts. Most of the times the child falls victim because those who abuse him are adults whom he knows well and whom he trusts like his father, elder brother, neighbor, friends etc. Even in strict and conservative societies like the Arab world and India, the number of abuses on minors is very high. Unfortunately most of the cases will never be discovered because the child will not talk about it out of fear, and also because he will tend to blame himself for what happened.

In the recent times many cases came out of abuses committed by priests, religious and sisters. They were abuses committed in the past thirty years on children in hostels, seminaries and parishes. Those people, now adults are asking compensations of very high price.
The Pope has issued a document asking that all those priests and religious who committed abuses, be removed (suspended) forever from pastoral cares.
Similar to pedophilia are the sexual abuses committed on mentally incapacitated people.

Premarital sex. We call premarital sex the sexual relationship between boyfriend and girlfriend who want to get married, but are not married yet.
Usually those people say that they want to test if their relationship works well, in order to make a proper choice. Someone else say that they would surely get married but they cannot yet do so due only to financial or logistic problems. All these ideas are wrong because they consider marriage only from the sexual point of view. What is missing is the stability, the capacity of sacrifice, waiting for the other, respecting the needs of the other. Today’s society influences strongly the mentality of young people through movies, publicity, etc. The need for sex becomes stronger, and those who want to follow the traditional values are called old fashion, backward people.
Statistics say that in the west 30% of the girls below 18 and 70% of the girls below 21 had at least one sexual relationship.
As consequence of this there is a great increase in the number of teenagers’ pregnancies and abortions. These have very bad consequences on the life of the girl. Usually the girl is the one who pays the high price. Many of the couples who have sexual relationship before getting married, will eventually break up.

Adultery. We call adultery the sexual relationship of a married person with somebody who is not his wife or her husband. Adultery usually ruins families because it ruins love. The person forgets the commitment taken up at the moment of the wedding, and considers marriage only from the sexual point of view. In the western society as many as 30% of the families are characterized by divorce or living in without marriage.

Sadism. It means enjoying the pain inflicted on others. It is a mental sickness. Here the person get excited sexually only when he sees the other suffering in the relationship. The pain may be caused by scourging, beating etc. The other person becomes the victim, an object to be abused.

Masochism. It is similar to the previous but in the opposite direction. Here the person needs to inflict pain on himself in order to feel the pleasure, so he asks his partner to beat him etc. This people too are mentally sick, very dangerous and have a very low self esteem followed by very high guilt.

Rape. This is a relationship in which one of the two partners does not want it but is forced into it. The person who commits rape is mentally unstable and uses sex to show power and also to fulfill his desires. The other person is used only as object. So here we do not have at all relationship, and one is a victim of abuse. Usually the girls who get raped feels ashamed of it and full of fear so they do not come out to report the case to the police.
Somebody says that even in a family, when a lady is forced by the husband to have sex against her will, it can be considered rape.

Prostitution. It means to have a sexual relationship with an unknown person paid for the service. Very often girls are abducted from their places and brought to other countries where they are forced to become prostitutes for the sake of getting back their freedom.

Prostitution is called the oldest profession of the world and is known to be present in different forms, since the beginning of humanity. In the past there were religions in which prostitution became a way of worshipping the goddess of love.
Statistic say that prostitution has become one of the biggest illegal business after pornography and drug dealing. Most of the times the girl does not want to do the job, but has no other choices.
Sexual diseases and HIV are spreading fast through prostitution.
In prostitution there is no real relationship, there is no love, there is only the exploitation of the other person for pleasure.



There is still another group of problems. They are not directly regarding sexuality, but are connected with it. This group includes Abortion and contraception.
Abortion. Very often it happens that a girl becomes pregnant, and has neither the will nor the capacity to continue the pregnancy and to give birth to the child. This happens especially in cases of rape, premarital sex etc.

The Church is very clear in the matter. From the very first moment in which the fecundation happens (the sperm enters the ovolus), we are in the presence of a person, though the embryo does not have yet the singular parts of a human body. So every kind of abortion is to be considered a murder. Many governments say that abortion is permitted up to the third month of pregnancy, time in which all the important organs are already formed. Some other countries say that if it is proved that the baby will be born handicapped, or the life of the mother is at risk, then abortion is permitted even after the three months.
The Church strongly rejects all these theories. Abortion is never to be accepted.

Contraception. It means to put a physical obstacle during the sexual relationship so that the lady does not become pregnant. There are different kinds of contraception:

 - Natural methods: These are not to be considered part of contraception and are not a deviation. We put them here for knowledge and for a more complete treaty of the problem. They are the only methods accepted by the Church. From science we know that a woman is fertile only 2 or 3 days per month. The natural methods tend to discover when those days are and invite people not to have sex during those days.

- There is a second group of those methods which block the period of the woman. There are pills, that prevent the eggs from maturing and so, as long as the woman is faithful in taking such pills she will not have the periods and never be fertile. A problem with these pills is that whenever the lady stops taking them she may experience multiple maturations and risk multi-twins pregnancies. In many places, after a lady had 2 or 3 children, doctors make an operation called sterilization. They cut the tubes of the woman and stitch them. The eggs will have no more access to the uterus and so cannot be fertilized anymore. This is an irreversible operation so the lady will never anymore be able to bear children. This method is not accepted by the Church because it changes the natural flow of the woman’s life.

- The third group includes those methods which do not change the rhythm of the woman, but which prevent the fetus from placing himself in the uterus, so the fetus is discharged. Considering that the fetus is already a person, these methods have to be considered abortions. Among these methods we have the IUD which is a small device put in the uterus, we have also the day after pill.

- In the last group we have the condoms. They are kind of rubber gloves placed on the penis of the man during the sexual relationship so when the ejaculation happens the sperms remain entrapped in it and does not really enter the vagina
Condoms are used also to prevent sexual transmitted diseases such as HIV and Syphilis. The use of condoms is forbidden by the Church because it puts an obstacle to the normal flow of nature.