I
spent my first twenty years in a world without sex except for a lot of unanswered
questions mulled over in my private day dreams and dark night fantasies. Sex was never
even alluded to by my mid-western Catholic parents. Nor by the nuns who taught me in
grade school and inspired me to go off to a seminary at age thirteen to become a priest. Sex
was never mentioned in my eight years of seminary studies, except for warnings about
"self-pollution" and unexplained "particular friendships." Sex — solo, straight or gay —
was inside a black box with the lid nailed shut.
My seminary world had simple rules: conform to the priestly abstinence mold,
memorize, don't ask questions, when the bell rings be where the schedule says you should
be doing what you are told to do. It was a sexless Prussian world of discipline,
mortification, repression of the senses, and endless struggles with sexual fantasies that left
no place to ask real life questions.
When I didn't fit the mold, I was told I could not go on to higher theology studies.
Fortunately I found my way to a Benedictine seminary where I encountered a
different brand of Catholicism and some fresh air. Sex was still not discussed, but two
monks did introduce me to biology and evolution while other monks gave me a more
balanced, humane theology, psychology and spirituality than I had absorbed in Detroit. The
monks also forced me to think and ask questions. After ordination, my bishop encouraged
me to ask unorthodox questions about sex, marriage and contraception.
The Catholicism I knew for twenty-two years ignored sex and only fed my
curiosity. The Catholicism the Benedictines encouraged me to explore was much closer to
the authentic sex-comfortable views of Jesus. So I was comfortable when my bishop
encouraged me to turn my biological interests into a doctorate in experimental embryology,
and begin writing articles and books on the moral acceptability of contraception, and the
changing values and patterns of marriage within Christianity.
I still suffer from the asexual air and distorted — yes, perverted — form of
Christianity/Catholicism I grew up with. But I've also found a richer, more authentic
spiritual view within that cultural tradition.
I don't think any of us ever fully expels whatever ethnic and religious air we breathe
as children. It may not have been the healthiest air, but it did allow us to live and grow. After
teaching sexuality for thirty-five years in a variety of college settings, I'm convinced we all
have to deal with the more or less antisexual demons we encounter in our youth. Each of us
has to find our own way to slay our dragons and fight our way out of our childhood black
box if we want a healthy sexual life.
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