Does sex defile you?

Mark 7:1-23

            What defiles you my friend?  What is it that turns you away from God, hampers your journey to wholeness and disrespects others so as to risk your own soul?  I have visions of the crazy Deacon from my church that always yelled out "it's a mortal sin". I recall another person who caught a young lad looking at a Playboy magazine and exclaimed that it was mortal sin! Mortal means a truly grave sin. It obviously has to be something very serious. It has to be something that completely and irrevocably turns your back on God. It has to be something that risks your soul for your actions and takes away the rights and dignity of another. Most important of all, you MUST know it is wrong, calculate and do it anyway.

               The Catholic church is in the news again, the Pope said "who am I to judge?". Sounds great. He has not changed the rules though, so absent any formal change in the Catechism and official doctrine, there is a whole lot of things that are a mortal sin about being gay.

               I would pick up on the fact that the Pope was referring to being both gay and being non-celibate. That would be a mortal sin if you believe what the church teaches. I hope those that agree, realize the same standard of celibacy and chastity apply equally to straight people as well. So all those couples cohabiting or engaging in one night stands are risking their souls by engaging in acts of mortal sin. Thank goodness it's not just us gays. We'll have lots of company. Why doesn't the church stress that?

             As I alluded to yesterday in writing a bit about St. Thomas, the pre-occupation with sex and the Catholic church has really gotten out of hand.  There is such guilt caused by a truly beautiful gift given to us by our creator. I would not be one to argue for promiscuity among gays or straights but lets return from the guilt trip.  Sex is a beautiful and wholesome gift. It is meant to be shared and it is one of the few ways in which we can share such intimate details of our life, our being with another. Argue you all you want against indiscriminate sex (for everyone), I might climb aboard that band wagon. But I find the vilification of sex abhorrent. Saying sex is saved for marriage is patently wrong on so many levels and goes against our own history - in the church and in the secular world. 

             So where does this leave us? Are we defiled by our engaging the beautiful gift of sex and love against man made rules?  Perhaps we defile ourselves more by our actions of selfishness, hate, arrogance, self righteousness, harboring child abusers and putting others at risk in the name of saving the church.

                Look closely at the two great commandments, re-read the Ten commandments and judge for yourself what abrogates your relationship with God more.  Indiscriminate sex could do it perhaps but I think we are far more at risk by some of our other behaviours. Sex is a gift to be enjoyed.

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
   teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’

 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’