Dear Sons and Daughters in Christ,
As we continue to review important truths of our Catholic faith, I am writing to you today to address the fifth truth in my Pastoral Letter of August 22, 2023: “Sexual activity outside marriage is always gravely sinful and cannot be condoned, blessed, or deemed permissible by any authority inside the Church.”
Human sexuality is woven into the being of each man and each woman. Created in the image of
God, all people are called to chastity and to live out God’s plan for their lives. “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person, it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it.” (CCC 2338). God’s plan for our sexual nature is this – that we abstain from sex before marriage, and that we are faithful to our partner within marriage, or if single, that we are celibate (not engaging in sexual relations).
Christian marriage is a sacrament. The husband and wife are called to a mutually exclusive union open to the gift of new life. “God blessed them and God said to them: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’” (Genesis 1:28). Human sexuality is to be lived within the bonds of marriage even if the couple is not able to bear children. Pope St. John Paul II stated regarding these couples, “You are no less loved by God; your love for each other is complete and fruitful when it is open to others, to the needs of the apostolate, to the needs of the poor, to the needs of orphans, to the needs of the world.” (St Pope John Paul II, Homily, 1982).
This basic truth of morality, that human sexuality is ordered towards a lifelong, mutually exclusive union open to the gift of new life, must be recovered for the sake of humanity. The so-called sexual revolution that blossomed in the 1960’s has overtaken human society in devastating ways. Many have accused the Catholic clergy of focusing too much on sexual morality, but if we look at our present landscape, it seems evident that we, the shepherds, have failed to focus enough on this gravely important issue. Instead of having an understanding of the importance of living a chaste life, humanity seems to be caught up in an “anything goes” mentality regarding sexual activity. Furthermore, rather than the focus being on God’s creative plan for life through a man and woman in a committed and sacramental marriage open to children, the focus seems often to be only about sexual pleasure even if it departs completely from God’s plan and even if it erodes the dignity of the human person.
This distorted understanding of our sexual nature, one in which human relationships are understood on a transactional level with a so-called hook-up culture, easy divorce, easy availability of contraception and abortion, and deviant sexual practices seeks to reduce relationships to what one person can take from another, denigrating the dignity and sanctity of the human person, and leaving its participants feeling empty and unfulfilled. Sexual sins are discussed and glorified, even on social media, as casually as though one were discussing the weather.
One of the necessary elements of recovering a healthy understanding of human sexuality is to regain an understanding of the fact that our sexual nature is a beautiful gift from God. The fact that God has created us male and female and established a complementarity between the sexes is truly one of God’s most profound blessings. Pope St John Paul II beautifully explained this in his teachings called The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan. These teachings are a reflection on this profound gift, and on the fact that human beings, who are made in the image of God, are made for self-giving love, not self-getting love. St. John Paul II explained that man and woman exist not only “side by side” or “together,” but also exist mutually “one for the other.” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 7).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “’The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws … God himself is the author of marriage.’ The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. ‘The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.’” (CCC 1603).
We must also reclaim the concept of covenant which is so prevalent throughout both the Old and New Testament. Simply put, a covenant is an exchange of persons – “I am yours, and you are mine” – and is an important part of the creation of a family unit. In marriage, the man and the woman give of themselves entirely to the other, being open to the begetting of new life. Pleasure is a component of sexual relations, but it is not the only component; sexual relations as designed and intended by God also entail openness to new life and a lifelong, unbreakable bond between a man and a woman. If a couple, regardless of who they are, enter into a sexual relationship without intending that relationship to be faithful, exclusive and open to new life (all of which is what the sacrament of Marriage is intended to foster), then they are engaging in only an imitation of true love, which is gravely sinful, and which ultimately causes separation from the happiness, joy and fulfillment that God truly desires for His children.
When the so-called sexual revolution began in the 1960’s, with a movement towards sexual expression no longer being confined to marriage, many greeted it as a doorway into unfettered freedom, but what this freedom in actuality looked like was STD epidemics, tens of millions of abortions, rampant pornography, increase in rape and child abuse, and devastating effects on the family and marriage. And yet, still we hear the cry – that the thing human beings really need is more freedom.
It is estimated that over 40% of all couples in the U.S. now live together as opposed to being married. We are sure that we have “made progress” because we are now so “free.” However, many fail to see that if society dies, individual freedoms will die right along with it. The destruction of marriage and the family leads to the killing of the society, and even more profoundly, to the loss of souls who are involved in this destruction.
I would also like us to turn our attention to the most tragic fruit of the sexual revolution – abortion – the gravely serious sin of murdering our children. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus (a living child) from the uterus, resulting in the child’s death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.” (CCC 2270). And yet many demand the “freedom” of being allowed to abort their child.
The approximate number of abortions that have occurred worldwide this year are 33,393,344. This is based on the latest estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to WHO, every year in the world there are around 73 million induced abortions. This corresponds to approximately 200,000 abortions per day. In the USA, there are between 1,500 to 2,500 abortions per day. Guttmacher Institute reports 930,160 abortions were performed in 2020 in the U.S.
After the Pill came into being in the mid-1960’s, the birth-control manufacturers and Planned Parenthood and other groups involved in “family planning” claimed that there would be a great decrease in abortions. Instead, the connection between higher contraceptive use and an increase in the number of abortions has now been firmly established. Dr. Christopher Tietze wrote: “A high correlation between abortion experience and contraceptive experience can be expected in populations to which both contraception and abortion are available … Women who have practiced contraception are more likely to have had abortions than those who have not practiced contraception, and women who have had abortions are more likely to have been contraceptors than women without a history of abortion.” (Dr. Christopher Tietze: “Abortion and Contraception.” Abortion: Readings and Research. Butterworth & Company, Toronto, Canada 1981, pages 54 to 60.
St. Teresa of Calcutta stated, “Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows easily … And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.”
In conclusion, it is a fact that we as a society have become all too familiar with a long list of sexual sins including fornication, adultery, contraception, sodomy, masturbation, pornography and bestiality. The call to sexual morality for many can feel overwhelming. However, the saints who embraced chaste lives show us that it is possible to live chastely, and they illustrate the beauty of the life God offers us if we will embrace His Call.
The profound beauty of God’s plan for us stands in stark contrast with the devastation (and dire spiritual poverty) that we see in society from the forsaking of His truth. We must open our hearts and our minds to Christ’s message – that the road to salvation is narrow, and the road to perdition is broad. “Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to destruction is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14). Christ shows us how to give of ourselves entirely for the sake of the beloved – to die to oneself, to sacrifice – as He did on the cross for His bride, the Church. We should never despair but instead throw ourselves at the merciful feet of Almighty God. When we or our loved ones wander into lust and sin, let us always remember that God’s Mercy is ever present if only we will repent and seek His forgiveness.
Let us all embrace this profound truth, and as the Synod on Synodality begins, let us resolve to stand firm and reject anything that deviates from this truth: that sexual activity outside marriage is always gravely sinful and cannot be condoned, blessed, or deemed permissible by any authority inside the Church. And let us rejoice in the mystery and the gift of our sexual nature and strive to shape it according to God’s plan of love.
Remaining your humble father and servant,
Most Reverend Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop of Tyler, Texas
