RANSVESTIA

What had me, a Catholic priest, reading Sexology in the first place? I had long looked for a viable philosophy on sex within my own church and found it wanting. From the moment an old Redemptorist priest had told me in Confession at the age of thirteen or fourteen that I was guilty of mortal sin because of something I had confessed to him I knew something was wrong with my Church's teaching on sex. This was re-inforced in the seminary when I discovered it was easier for a man to be impotent in the Church's eyes than in the eyes of a woman. A man had to be able to deposit his semen in the woman's vagina. All the woman had to be able to do was receive it. She could be sterile. He could not be impotent. Again the teaching on masturbation did not add up. Nocturnal pollution was all right if you did not deliberately bring it on by thinking of sex the night before, but masturbation was wrong because it was unnatural. That put the Catholic Church into the bind she's still in today of making the stupid kind of statement that says every act of intercourse must be open to procreation. Of course, there are many sophisticated Catholic moral theologians that I respect that could put the Church's point of view in a way that would seem more rational. I have been pinning my hopes on them to some extent, but in Pope Paul's papacy there have been two major setbacks for rationality, Humane Vitae and more recently a document on Sexual Ethics. The latter is more humane than anything I'm aware of from the Vatican up to now. It take a more sociological view and is not condemnatory of sex-orientation. It agrees it is not a sin to be a Homosexual, but implies it would be sin to practice it. Transvestism can take some hope. I would judge from the document that the Church would have nothing against heterosexual transvestism which is the kind most of us practice and that is encouraged by Virginia. All I can see the Church saying that we might not like, is to be careful of it because it is not accepted by society and might be difficult for your wife to accept. She would say don't go ahead with your marriage unless your fiance knows you are a transvestite and agrees to it and established guidelines for implementation, to be extended as society becomes more tolerant. The Church seems to be close to the idea that anything is all right in marriage which promotes the marriage. Transvesticism by a heterosexual man or woman that is totally accepted by the spouse is a transvestite's dream. Again the Church would be right in there with Virginia. She would encourage Transsexuality. Me, I think I'm going to be with the Church all the way then it becomes a little more enlightened and draws the line just at abortion. I think even that when the Church

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