On sodomy

The Church’s reticence on sexual matters

It’s often said that the Catholic Church (by which is meant her clergy) is “obsessed with sex”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, the Church is positively squeamish about sex.  It is the world that is obsessively screaming at her to accept homosexual sodomy, to which the Church must keep replying “no” before quickly changing the subject, and the world thinks we must have some sort of obsession not to have given in already.

As an example of the Church’s reticence, consider her dealing with the more common practice of heterosexual sodomy.  Because there is no faction campaigning for its official acceptance, the higher offices of the Church are not forced to speak on the subject, and they show no inclination to initiate.  “Oral sex is okay as long as you ‘plant the seed’” is a claim often heard on Catholic blogs and marriage preparation classes, because pastorally–“on the ground level”–it is a subject that is impossible to avoid.  Yet I have found no clear Magisterial statement confirming or contradicting this claim. Readers are encouraged to correct me with missed sources, but the fact that I found so little in the obvious places is itself telling.  It seems to be an inference from more general principles of Catholic sexual ethics.

Sodomy as a form of contraception

It is a very plausible one.  Below are the Church’s key authoritative statements on the topic of contraception.

The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.

This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

— Humanae Vitae

…any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.

— Casti Connubii

One could posit that the directive “all licit sex acts are per se procreative and may not be altered to render them otherwise” as an absolute and comprehensive expression of the natural law’s restriction on the manner in which sexual gratification may be pursued.  There are of course other ways a given sex act may be immoral–for instance if it is adulterous–but the claim is that this condition is necessary and sufficient to render the physical type of act licit.  Let us call this assumption “Pauline completeness” (after Paul VI).

It has definite attractions.  It manifestly derives from one of the purest of religious intuitions–that the creative act is an occasion of divine presence and not ours to manipulate for our own ends.  One can furthermore regard the Church’s proscriptions against artificial contraception, homosexuality, and masturbation as direct applications of the more general, but completely clear, principle.  I have had to stretch “marriage/conjugal act” to “sex act”, since otherwise some of these (which are not commonly referred to as “marriage” acts) might not be covered.  The allowance of oral sex in foreplay follows straightforwardly from the completeness assumption.  It is certainly attractive to have such a clear-cut rule that couples can apply themselves to any other situations that may not have occurred to our wise but celibate spiritual leaders.

A rather surprising consequence of Pauline completeness is that the Church could be said to have nothing per se against homosexuality, only with the act of sodomy.  Swap the sex of one partner in a homosexual act, and the morality doesn’t change.  Of course, this would be little comfort to homosexuals, since all their sex acts are necessarily sodomitical.

Consider two alternative assertions.

Laxist alternative:  Oral sex is fine, and the husband can ejaculate wherever.

Rigorist alternative:  Oral sex is wrong even in foreplay.

Is either alternative viable?

Can we find a loophole for sodomy?

The laxist alternative would seem harder to argue.  One would have to claim that sodomitical acts are not marriage/conjugal act at all, but some other type of act.  The marriage act, on this reading, refers exclusively to vaginal sex, and in sodomy no such act has been frustrated.  Other sex acts (as this term is commonly used) would then have to be condemned for separate reasons.  On this reading, it really is the homosexuality, not the sodomy, that offends against natural law.

I suspect that sodomy has been independently and directly condemned by the Church, but I have not found a good reference.  “Why isn’t this spelled out more clearly in the Catechism?” lay men and women might reasonably wonder, especially if they have been taught to think of the Church as being especially eager to police their bedrooms.  Because the Church doesn’t like to talk about sex.  So you can either reason things out yourself or just take the word of the priest at your Pre-Cana workshop.

Could sexual morality be more restrictive than we have been led to believe?

Arguments for the rigorist alternative are gathered here.  It would claim that the Pauline restriction is necessary but not sufficient.  Let us consider a few of the arguments against oral foreplay.  One argument is that an evil act (oral sodomy) cannot be made good by a consequent good act (“planting the seed”).  Recall that Pope Paul himself had to be clear that each marital act must be open to procreation, not just a marriage in its totality.  This is true, but natural law reasoning does require that human acts can be broken up into intelligible quanta.  Most people would regard an uninterrupted session from foreplay to intercourse to be a single sex act, and I think the burden of proof is on those who think otherwise.  One might also claim that various forms of foreplay are unnatural or undignified.  I have a prejudice against this view, but not for a very good reason, just my preference for intellectual tidiness.  It would be a shame to sacrifice Pauline completeness, which gives a clear criterion for naturalness/dignity, without an equally clear replacement.

Sex and imagination

Nevertheless, I understand why pious souls are often uneasy with a minimalist view of sexual morality.

We all know that the pleasure of sex as experienced by humans is only partially in the physical sensations.  After all, the sensations themselves don’t vary that much regardless of sex position, attractiveness of partner, or any of the other things we know affect the experience.  Sex is always experienced in some imaginative context, but there are two very different families of such contexts.

One imaginative context might be called “immersion in sexual archetype”, the playing out of masculine and feminine essences, as when we say that the man “takes” the woman, and the woman “surrenders”.  This theme can be potent indeed and is usually benign in that it gives little incentive to unnatural acts, although it can encourage adulterous ones (new “conquests”).   It is congruent with natural law in that the man and woman are put in touch with and embrace the meaning given in their bodies.

There is an equally potent but contrary imaginative context, which finds excitement in sex in the contradiction of sexual normativity.  This is the thrill of transgression, the fascination with novelty and perversion precisely as such.  There is even a sort of intimacy engendered by the couple’s transgressions, the intimacy of co-conspirators.  Most people experience this other sort of sexual fascination to some degree.  It can even be indulged to a limited extent.  However, the pursuit of transgression will eventually push beyond this.  Nor is this a misfortune unique to Catholics.  Wherever one draws the moral line, eventually the pursuit of novelty will press against it.  Meaning that unless we plan to surrender ourselves to limitless degeneracy, we must reconcile ourselves to some degree of sexual frustration.  We will each die with unfulfilled sexual fantasies.  This would be so even if the Church could relax this or that rule.

Those with a strong sense of reverence for the procreative act will tend to accuse “just be sure to plant the seed” minimalism of inculcating a completely wrong attitude.  Indeed, those who emphasize all that is not directly forbidden by this rule do come off sounding quite vulgar–one reason why the Church does not like to talk about sex.  However, because the pursuit of novelty finds no rest, couples will soon enough run up against even minimalist rules, and the immutable nature of the conjugal act will reassert itself upon them.

Conclusion

I conclude that the consensus position found on Catholic blogs and marriage workshops deserves its status as the presumed Catholic teaching.  It seems the most plausible reading of the current expression of Catholic doctrine.  However, we must be careful not to confuse doctrine with our interpretation of it.