Expert: J.M.J. West - 4/23/2008

Question
Deus Caritas Est. I am R/C from Bombay, India. Iam intersted in catholic teachings about marriage and sex. Could you please kindly reply to my queries:
1:What is the importance of changing pattern of marriage and the family for marriage guidance?

2:Explain the term: "Christian marriage is a secular reality and a sacred mystery"What is the catholic teaching on this?

3:If a boy and a girl really love each other, they can express  their love by sexual intercourse.What is Church view on this. Explain please.
God bless thee. James N

Answer
I'm sorry James, but I do not fully understand your first question.  Could you please re-state that.

As for the second bit, "Christian marriage is a secular reality and a sacred mystery" seems to mean simply that marriage as an institution is more than simply a human convention.  It exists in secular and pagan cultures because was ordained from the beginning, written on our very beings to help us understand God, in whose image we are created.  "God made man in his image.  In his own image he created him, male and female he created them" is what Genesis 1 says, and then follows this in Genesis 2 with the notion that as male and female "the two become one flesh".  

As for the third part:  Sexual intercourse is a deep, physical poetry of our very bodies and selves given to us by God to help us understand Him and his life as Love Itself.  Sex unites a husband and his wife as Christ is united to the Church (cf. Ephesians 5, 1 Corinthians 7).  Sex makes the two an image of the Trinity, whose love is always total, faithful, free and fruitful; as such so too should sex always meet these four criteria (to simplify it to two criteria, we can say that sex should be both UNITIVE [ie. it brings the spouses together in love that is a complete giving of selves to each other] and PROCREATIVE [it is open to life, as the love of the Father and Son is so real that the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity proceeds from this Love]).

If two unmarried persons engage in sexual intercourse, they distort the very language of God written in our bodies, which darkens their ability to understand better the truth of who He is, who we are, and our relationship to Him and each other.  It distorts the truth, and Christ promised that "the truth shall set you free."  Pre-marital sex, then, is an abuse of the gift of sexuality because it can never be UNITIVE and PROCREATIVE in the fullest sense of the words (ie. meeting the four criteria above).

Sex is not bad, and the Catholic Church isn't a prude about sex; far from it!  Rather sex is so holy that it is the very matter/form of the sacrament of marriage - the act of sexual intercourse is a CONDUIT OF GRACE to the married couple!

Does that help?

Pax Christi (Peace of Christ),

-J.M.J. West

P.S. Feel free to ask more questions, and re-phrase the initial question above.