Sex and the Catholic Campus

We're faith-filled Catholics on Sunday, sexually uninhibited college students the night before. Can church teaching be relevant?

BY: Julia Tier

Reprinted with permission from BustedHalo.com.

After a long weekend of bars, booze, and boys, I make it a point to attend Sunday night Mass. As I repent for any sins I may have committed in spite of my good Catholic upbringing, I can't help but notice the person in front of me is the same guy I saw cheating on his girlfriend the night before. And someone a few rows up looks exactly like the girl I saw pole dancing on the bar last week. In fact, the more I look around, the pews are filled with college co-eds living the same double life my friends and I have down to a science; faith-filled young Catholics in spirit, and sexually uninhibited college students by practice. At times, walking into mass on Sunday night does feel hypocritical. It is hard to reflect on the hedonistic weekend that has just passed in a place I associate with piety and chastity. Instead, I often choose not to think about it at all.

There is a trend among people my age to separate their faith from Church teachings on issues of sexuality. I believe one of the main reasons for this disconnect is that the Church does not provide any guidance regarding sexuality for unmarried young adults other than "Don't do it!" Although remaining chaste until marriage is no doubt a beautiful and romantic experience for those who choose it, not everyone follows this path. In my experience, premarital sex on college campuses is not the exception, but the rule.

So how does a predominantly Catholic student body at a Jesuit school justify disobeying this tenet of the Church? The answer seems to be that they don't. I don't believe young people are simply ignoring this teaching so they can do what they want and go to confession later. Instead, I think they feel that the Church's teaching on sexual issues is bordering on irrelevance, not only because of the institution's hypocritical handling of the recent scandals but also because young people see the Church as treating all acts as equally damning. For those Catholics who are having premarital sex, there is no distinction between making love in a committed relationship and having sex with the entire rugby team; they are both mortal sins. This ignores the heart of the Church's teaching on sex, which, among other things, calls on us to integrate our "thoughts, feelings and actions in a way that values, esteems and respects the dignity of oneself and others."

Continued on page 2: »