By Karen A. McClintock
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For much of its history, Christianity has emphasized a strong separation
of body and spirit, leading some to consider the body "bad" and the spirit
"good," thereby reinforcing our modern-day lack of clarity about sexuality.
In the first century Paul advocated celibacy, if at all possible, as the
best way to give oneself fully to the service of Christ. This set the stage
for the shaming of those who couldn’t measure up to the ideal. In 386 CE
[AD] Pope Siricius attempted to forbid church elders to make love with their
wives. Scholar Reay Tannahill describes the early church fathers as linking
sex and sin. She writes: "It was Augustine who epitomized a general feeling
among the church fathers that the act of intercourse was fundamentally
disgusting. . . . Arnobiur called it filthy and degrading, Methodius
unseemly, Jerome, unclean, Tertullian shameful, Ambrose defilement.1
A closer look at these church fathers might reveal their own preoccupations
with sexuality as stemming from interpersonal or intrapersonal shame.
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Augustine, whose writing shaped Catholicism’s views on sexuality for
seven hundred years, was himself troubled by desires and temptations he
could not control. According to Evelyn and James Whitehead, "Augustine
remembered his youth as a season of obsession in which he hungered for
respect and esteem (6:6). He clung compulsively to his friends (4:6); he was
constantly swept away by the impulses of his sexual appetite. Augustine
lived in a common-law relationship with a woman who satisfied his sexual
needs but was not the respected woman his mother sought for his marriage.
His pain at leaving the woman he had been with was intense, and since his
arranged bride was too young to marry, he was forced to wait two years for
her. His passion was too great, and he took a mistress. With shame he admits
his sinfulness: "In the meantime my sins were multiplied. . . . I was not so
much a lover of marriage as a slave of lust, so I procured another woman,
but not, of course, a wife" (6:16). In the midst of this frustrated mixture
of sexual desire and longing for love, Augustine’s confusion was
overwhelming. Could this have been his reason for fleeing to the church and
embracing a celibate life" Theologian Margaret Miles surmises: "We must
accept Augustine’s evaluation of himself as addicted to sex, from which, he
tells us, no friendship was free." He himself described his life as
"tormented." 3
What degree of sexual shame drove him to the cloister? Psychology would
tell us that Augustine’s share, like that of many of the church patriarchs,
was projected onto the congregations with an inflated fervor. The need to
rid the world of sexual sin was preached by those who had a powerful
internal sense of sin and failure in the sight of God. Thousands of years of
European church history reflect the confused and tempted feelings of men
fighting their own sexual impulses.
A fear of the flesh and denial of sexual impulses have left us with a
disembodied theology and a great deal of shame and self-loathing. History
reveals the deep chasms that have characterized spirituality and sexuality
in Christianity. . . .
1
Ray Tannahill, Sex History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 141.
2
Evelyn E. Whitehead and James D. Whitehead, A Sense of Sexuality:
Christian Love and Intimacy (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 97.
3
Ibid., 136-39.
From Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing by Karen McClintock © 2001
Augsburg Fortress Press (