Inspecting Christian/ Catholic Guilt And It’s Origins In The Young Adult, American Woman

INTRODUCTION:

An overwhelming amount of young adult American women suffer from Christian and Catholic guilt as they are coming out of adolescence and exploring their sexualities outside the confines of what they have been taught within their religious traditions and/ or communities. Much of this guilt stems from the inherent sex-negative Christian and Catholic culture that many of these women were raised in, despite the emerging sex-positive American culture that we live in today.

 “… the Church condemns premarital sex and extra-marital sex, masturbation, homosexual activity, the use of condoms and artificial birth control, sterilization, abortion, and in vitro fertilization. Catholic tradition considers these activities objectively or intrinsically evil…”

James C. Cavendish

The guilt associated with these sexual thoughts and actions oftentimes cause an immense amount of shame within these individuals, affecting their self-esteem and self-love. Within this project, three individuals of varying faith are interviewed as they share their experiences with Christian and Catholic guilt. Attempting to reach fellow individuals who may empathize with these three women and share similar experiences, this project investigates not only the understanding and rationale behind Christian and Catholic guilt, but also its origins and whether or not they are a construct of Scripture or the community and culture that surrounds these religious traditions. The raising of this issue aims to demonstrate the significance of being raised or exposed to a conservative, sex-negative religion, as well as showcasing the urgent need for change and more sexual liberation within the Christian and Catholic religion.

THE INTERVIEWEES:

(All interviewees have chosen to stay anonymous and have consented to the blurred photos of them being presented) 

~ Interview answers are organized in the following color code ~

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

_{1. What religion do you identify with and how long have you been practicing?}

I am Christian (grew up Presbyterian). I grew up in the church, but personally committed since I was 12. 

That’s a tricky question because I’m not really sure if I identify with a religion right now but I would say 2 -3 years ago I was Roman Catholic and I was baptized when I was a baby. I got my first communion and I went to Catholic school my whole life and I got my confirmation.

I identify culturally as a Hindu but not religiously. I have celebrated Hindu festivals for my entire life, so 18 years. Though I am not Catholic, I have a great familiarity with many Christian/Catholic traditions as I attended a Catholic high school.

_{2. How strong would you describe your faith?}

I would describe my faith as very strong

So if we’re talking about the Roman Catholic faith… like there’s two different parts: my faith and my faith in the eyes of the Catholic church.

I’ll give you both. So freshman and sophomore year of high school I was the strongest in my Roman Catholic faith, like I would go to lunch masses where I wouldn’t eat lunch that day because I had to go to mass and I would do that every few weeks… I also went to the pro-life march in Washington D.C. my sophomore year. But then, junior year my eyes were opened and I fell out of my Roman Catholic faith – I would not call myself Catholic and would not go to mass. Right now, I feel like I’m pretty strong in my faith because I pray and I believe in God which a lot of people don’t.

I would say my faith is very weak. I don’t really believe in God and I am not strict about following certain rules of Hinduism such as dietary restrictions. I have pondered God a lot, but I still do not know where I stand on it.

_{3. Describe any sexual activity you have experienced. How have your beliefs influenced the boundaries of your sexual activity?}

The farthest I’ve gone is being fingered by my boyfriend and doing the reciprocal.

My beliefs as a Christian have influenced the boundaries of my sexual activity in that I’ve committed to postponing sex until marriage.

Up until recently, I didn’t really figure out whether that boundary extended to sexual activity beyond intercourse, but my boyfriend and I have recommitted to kissing being the farthest we’ll go from now on.

My whole high school I had been taught obviously not to lose my virginity and there was no sex ed

I had never received sex ed… I had no idea how to put on a condom or really anything about sex until like a year ago when I watched the Rochester orientation videos and they taught me how to put on a condom.

None of my friends had lost their virginity because all of them were waiting and I felt really weird in my friend group to be like “I don’t want to wait until marriage” and I felt really left out on that aspect. Recently, however, I have lost my virginity and in junior year of high school I gave a guy a blowjob for the first time. 

I lost my virginity at 15 with someone I barely knew.

Because there had been no purity narrative instilled in me through my Hindu childhood, I did not think it was wrong to have sex with someone I was not married to/in love with. However, upon sharing this experience with my friends, who had been raised Catholic and did have that narrative, I felt shamed and it became instilled in me that having sex/being promiscuous was wrong.

I only had sex another time prior to college and was completely celibate for a year and a half. I felt that I should not be having sex because I did not want to be regarded as “slutty” for having sex outside of a relationship. When I came to college and was separated from my Catholic friend group and classmates, I felt more comfortable having sex outside of a relationship, yet I still felt very guilty having more than one partner and being gluttonous in having sex.

^{4. How did you first come to know that sex was a sinful or wrong?} 

I learned it in high school. I don’t necessarily remember a specific source, though I did grow up in the church. I think it was from talking to other Christian friends about it. That being said, I don’t believe that sex in itself is sinful or wrong. It’s only when it’s outside the covenant of marriage that it becomes that way.

In the Catholic school system in Charleston, South Carolina I just did not like out priest/ chaplain – he would give homilies on things I just didn’t agree with like one homily was about how if you voted democratic, you were going against the Catholic church – like you had to vote Republican because it was the moral thing to do. He compared abortion to the Holocaust and slavery because he said that just like the Jews in the Holocaust and slaves, we aren’t giving the fetuses a voice, which I didn’t think was right because in slavery, we are torturing them and they feel pain which does not apply to unborn babies. There was also one where he criticized a statue being torn down of some religious person and I looked up what the statue was about and it was this guy who had abused Native Americans… the priest was like “there’s a war on Catholicism and the world does not like Catholics” but I’m like “maybe it’s because we are homophobic.” I lot of other things were like our theology classes where we tore down women a lot and there was this super religious guy in my class who wants to become a priest and he would just say the most awful things about women and essentially how the patriarchy is the thing that we need and that women are supposed to receive and men are supposed to give and that’s out roles in life and that if we do anything else, that’s bad… I was like if this is what I’m supposed to believe in (and he told me that I wasn’t Catholic because I thought that gays should be able to get married and that women should decide when she wants to terminate her baby) then I don’t want to be Catholic.

I thought that if this man was the future of Catholicism, then I don’t want any part of that. 

I knew that sex was shameful after my freshman year of high school. When I had my first sexual experience and I shared it with my friends and they reacted negatively, I realized that sex is not something to celebrate, especially when it was with someone that was not important to me.

^{5. Do you experience Christian/ Catholic guilt and to what extent would you say this guilt affects your livelihood?} 

I did experience guilt when I went beyond kissing with my boyfriend, and it did significantly affect my livelihood. 

I guess it has been really weird… I don’t necessarily feel super guilty but I feel uneducated and sometimes it does feel wrong. I feel Catholic guilt in the same sense that I feel guilty for being pro-choice

I feel guilty for losing my virginity in the sense that I’ve been taught that this is wrong and even though in my heart I’m like “no that’s not right, sex is okay” because of what I’ve been taught my heart is also like “I could be going to hell.”

But I’m not like a bad person so I’ll take the risk and if I do go to hell… I don’t know… at least I’m staying strong in my beliefs. In the back of my mind I’ve always wondered what’s true.

I do experience Catholic guilt as it pertains to reflecting upon sex. I would not say this guilt interferes with my livelihood, but

 it definitely has a negative impact on my self-esteem.

 I often feel poorly about myself and it can temporarily interfere with my mood.

^{6. Where do you believe this guilt stems from - what do you believe is the root of your guilt? Scripture? Your community? Your family or friends?} 

My guilt stems from the fact that, as a Christian, my relationship with God is my number 1 priority and the thing I cherish the most in the world. It thus makes a lot of sense to me that I would then experience guilt because I was worried that by sinning against God, I would be creating distance in my relationship with Him.

Definitely from my high school just being very much like “Catholicism is the only way and if you don’t believe in it you’re not going to be saved.” 

I believe this guilt stems from the Church. I remember reading in one of my religion textbooks what the definition of a family is and when someone should have sex.

When reading an authoritative text such as a textbook, something that my teachers entrust, and learning that I was supposed to save sex for marriage, this made me feel extremely guilty about sex.

The lack of sex-ed in my Catholic school showed me that I was not supposed to learn about sex and be educated about it. It also stemmed from the community.

^{7. Do you believe that your guilt is justified? Should you be feeling guilty or is it something that happens irrationally?}

I believe that my guilt was justified. After that first experience, I delved into Scripture to seek out the truth, and it confirmed for me that I was indeed sinning against God by going beyond kissing (passages mostly relating to sexual immorality).

I’m also very glad that I felt guilty because it led me to that realization.

That being said, I don’t feel so guilty anymore because I know that God has forgiven me and given me grace. I also feel relieved that my boyfriend and I have repented of recommitting to that boundary.

I hope that my guilt isn’t justified

I hope that my guilt is from my Catholic teachers and not from my conscience… but I’m unsure. 

I think my guilt is normal but I do not think I should have been feeling so guilty.

When I lost my virginity at such a young age in a not so ideal situation, I think I should have felt violated and not guilty.

I had done nothing wrong yet my friends and their ideals made me feel like I had done something wrong. I think the guilt is irrational. One of the reasons why I learned sex before marriage was wrong was because sex is supposed to be for procreation and when you have sex before marriage, you are creating a child out of wedlock or you are interfering with God’s will. However, realizing that having sex before marriage won’t stop you from having children in marriage defeats that irrational guilt.

^{8. There are many other injustices within the Bible - lying of any sort, stealing, disrespecting your parents, getting tattoos - do you feel as guilty when committing these actions? What would you attribute this discrepancy between having premarital sex and lying to?} 

I do feel guilty when committing the actions of lying to parents and stealing (even in terms of general morality without religious attachment). In terms of tattoos and such, I think I don’t feel guilty because to my knowledge God’s reasoning in telling us not to do those things were for our protection. Nowadays, it’s safe to get tattoos without negativity attached. However, in terms of premarital sex, I believe God’s reasoning back then still applies now. I think there also lies a discrepancy in the different degrees/levels of sin.

We had this thing where we couldn’t eat meat on Fridays during lent and if I did then yeah, I felt pretty guilty. Not as guilty as having sex because I feel like God/ I hope that God would not really care about what I eat… I don’t know. I feel like he might care more about me having sex. Eating the meat would be like your mom telling you to take out the trash and you didn’t – you feel like you’re disobeying someone. We actually had a homily about tattoos and yoga, but people  took premarital sex more seriously. 

I think the discrepancy between sins such as lying and having premarital sex lies in the idea of female purity.

If I were to lie or commit another equal sin (even though all sins are technically equal), I can move on. My stomach is not completely ruined and I will be able to move on and stop saying white lies. However, it feels as if virginity is a one and done. When you lose it, you’ve lost it forever and there is no coming back from that point.

^{9. The Bible that we read today has been translated and interpreted by the heterosexual male. The context for when the Bible was written is also radically different from that of today - sex was more taboo, the world was believed to be ending soon. Do you believe these factors change things in terms of whether or not sex is truly a sin?} 

I don’t believe these factors change things in terms of whether or not sex is truly a sin. I say this because though I understand the Bible has been translated, pastors who go to seminary learn the original text. And in the majority of my conversations with pastors, the fact that premarital sex is a sin stays consistent. In terms of the world believed to be ending soon, as Christians we are taught that the second coming of Jesus could come at any point. In that sense, I still believe that the world could end soon, so that hasn’t changed for me.

Deep in my heart it’s so ingrained in me the we aren’t supposed to have sex before marriage that I do think I’m committing a sin when I do which is weird to think about but I guess I believe I’m a fallen Catholic and that’s just what I am.

You can tell me these things about the wrongful interpretations but I don’t know if I’ll believe it. 

I think the idea that sex was more taboo definitely impacted why it was a sin. It was written by males who most likely did not want women to be gluttonous.

They wanted women for themselves it seems like, and thus wrote sex as a sin into the Bible, making the pleasure of sex gluttonous.

^{10. If you could eradicate or resolve yourself from this sexual guilt, would you? If not, why? If yes, what is stopping you from taking the steps towards doing so?}

I would resolve from the guilt in terms of repenting and reconciling with God. Like I said before, I am glad for my guilt because it led me to a realization and to correct a misunderstanding I had before. I feel that my faith is now stronger for it.  It did take me a while to come to this point.

What was hindering me before was my own selfishness in thinking that I know better than God and also just in wanting to indulge myself.

Yeah – if I could take back all of the lessons and teachings that we’re like “sex is sacred between man and woman in a married relationship and condoms are evil,” I would because now I’ve just accepted that I’m sinning and I will never be able to accept that sex before marriage is okay. Sure, it would be nice to re-work my brain but I’m not working towards that right now because a little part of me still believes that what I was taught was the right way.  

If I could eradicate the feelings of guilt, I don’t think I would fully. I think there is some value in being careful about who you have sex with, however, I wish I could feel less guilty about having sex while not in a committed relationship or married.

I think I assume that eventually in the near future, I will end up in a relationship where sex won’t feel so guilty, so therefore I won’t take any steps to stop the guilt.

^{11. This guilt not only changes but ruins many lives - women getting accidentally pregnant, being terrified of sex, potentially being lead to suicidal thoughts, etc - how does this make you feel? Do you believe the culture should change? If yes, how?} 

I think misunderstandings should be corrected, because to my knowledge the Bible is actually very sex-positive. I think more grace should be extended to those who experience that guilt (regardless of where it stems from or what religious background).

Obviously that’s all terrible. They teach you about how there are always going to be “bad apples” and how the world isn’t perfect which is a dumb excuse. I don’t think you can change the Catholic faith because it’s built on these beliefs.

In the Catholic education system, though, they should start teaching about safe sex.

Even if they don’t want to change there beliefs on it, just accepting that most people are going to have sex before marriage would be good. 

It makes me feel sad when someone who grapples with guilt gets pregnant or takes their lives. These are outcomes which these women did not anticipate and thus when they are faced with them, it is a tough situation. I think as a society, we need to remove the judgment about having sex outside of marriage and outside of relationships. I think now we have normalized sex, especially if you are an adult and are in a situation to raise a child.

 However, normalizing intimacy amongst young adults is important. I have grappled between normal urges and society telling me it is wrong to be a woman and to be sexual, and normalizing those feelings is important.

DISCUSSION:

Upon reflecting on all three interviews, the outstanding impact regarding the community and culture that surround the Catholic and Christian tradition on establishing the sex-negative ideology instilled within young adult females becomes clear. It seems that both interviewee #1 and #2 are aware of how their Catholic high school experiences have shaped their perspectives on sex and sexuality, reinforcing the proclamation that sex outside of marriage and procreative means is inherently sinful. While interviewee #1, on the other hand, has chosen to save herself for marriage and attributes this commitment to her connection with God rather than the pressure to conform, the positive and consistent nature of her religious upbringing must be taken into account – her religious community and culture, albeit conservative, has been nonjudgmental and positively constructive. Her commitment to God and decision to save herself for marriage is therefore a product of her own virtue and love for God rather than that of her community’s expectation and discernment. As a public high school alumni, she also has received sexual education and was not subject to the other sexual, racial, and sexist teachings from the Catholic high school priests and education system that Interviewee #2 and #3 were exposed to.

It is this Catholic high school community that has lead Interviewee #2 to rethink her faith and Interviewee #3 to feel shameful for her first sexual experience, reaffirming that it is the one’s community that instills sex negative culture. These sex negative ideals are so deeply engrained within these two individuals that the possibility of guilt-free, harmonious sex seems so foreign to them. As underscored within the interviews, more grace and endearment must be extended to those dealing with guilt, particularly in more extreme and potentially fatal cases. The Catholic high school education system must also incorporate sexual education within their curriculum and normalize the importance of intimacy during relationships and sex rather than blatantly declaring that all premarital, non procreative sex is evil, especially considering how these students are 14 -18 years old – an exceptionally bodily and emotionally transformative period of life.  

REFERENCES:

Cavendish, James C. “The Vatican and the Laity: Diverging Paths in Catholic Understanding of Sexuality” in David W. Machacek and Melissa M. Wilcox, ed., Sexuality and the World’s Religions, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2003.