When I was a kid, explaining to children about human reproduction and how it works was called telling them about the Birds and the Bees. The idea was that from the examples of egg laying and pollination one could gently get to explaining sexual intercourse, insemination, fetal development, and childbirth.
I had no experience of it, though, since no one ever told me such a story. In fact, no one in my family ever told me anything about the sexual matters the story was meant to explain—and never asked me, either, if I knew about them.
Did my parents presume I learned about sex through some kind of osmosis? reading books? high school biology class? or, just what other kids told me?
I did learn about religious matters, though, by taking and reading pamphlets from the pamphlet rack in the vestibule of the parish church. And, sure enough, I learned something about sexual matters from the rack, but it was the traditional sexual morality of those days—all about the dangers of impure thoughts, impure feelings, impure desires, impure actions and, worst of all, mortal sins!
Mortal sin, of course, was the worst kind of sin. If you died with mortal sin on your soul, you were doomed to the fires of Hell for ever and ever.
I never felt that curiosity about sexual matters was a mortal sin, but when my physical development and sexual maturation reached the stage where I had strange feelings and bodily reactions I was confused.
Unsought and unprovoked erections and nocturnal emissions left me feeling embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty.
I knew I was guilty of breaking the sixth commandment about not committing adultery—because catechism classes and pamphlet reading warned me that it included all matters sexual.
My guilt meant going to confession, but my embarrassment held me back. How could I possible speak of such matters to anyone, especially a priest!
One Saturday I mustered up enough courage to overcome my fear and to confess these things, but even so it took me over an hour of prayer and hesitation in the church before I dared enter the confessional box.
Naturally, the priest was not taken aback and gently reassured me that, if anything I told was sinful, all was forgiven.
It’s hard to imagine a young teenager today with such naivete, but this was the 1940’s. Maybe I was naïve even for those days, and maybe I was naïve, also, to give so much credence to the warnings about the dangers and evil of sexual matters that the pamphlets instilled in me.
Puberty for me, was a time of terror!
By now I’ve long since learned the limitations and inadequacies of the sexual advice and moral judgements of those long-ago pamphlets.
But it was a challenging and complicated process, this integrating of better knowledge with feelings and attractions.
In college, the environment, socially, was almost anything goes; the subsequent seminary environment was the extreme opposite. My way of dealing with the sexual aspect of my life in those years was denial.
However, denial was no solution. Coming to terms with every aspect of one’s God-given nature is the only way to live.
We’re all designed and loved by the one and same creator. The real measure of our lives is our faithfulness to his plan and will.
P.S. I’ve never married, so I haven’t had to worry anymore about committing adultery!
21 April 2021