I think it’s fair for you to describe your experiences as cult-like, but to be honest, every sexual religious principle you described is also part of mainstream Catholicism. Anal and oral sex are sins to all Catholics, and so is masturbation.
The nonsensical differentiation between using artificial contraception and having sex with a woman who is not capable of conceiving a child is maintained in mainstream Catholicism too.
I guess the big difference is that mainstream Catholics mostly laugh off the Church’s sexual rules and live their lives the way they choose. Data indicate that U.S. Catholics are as likely to use artificial contraception as anyone else in the country.
What’s interesting, is that if you had not been writing about Catholicism, I would have assumed you were writing about Evangelical Christianity, which imposes the same sort of purity culture on women in pretty much the same way as Catholicism. Minus the ban on contraception.
I remember as a boy sitting in church listening to preachers (using coded language of course) telling women that they owed their husbands sex, that refusing it was a refusal to obey God.
The way these religions try to control sexuality is creepy. It’s invasive. It’s abusive. And as in your case, it can lead to traumatic physical abuse, to rape.
The trauma I experienced as a boy because I realized I was gay was just another manifestation of that creepy control of sex for religious purposes.
Being creepy about sex is kind of a Christian obsession. I’m delighted many religious people reject that kind of thinking. Lay Catholics tend to be awesome, accepting people even though most priests and nuns continue being really creepy about sex.
Several mainstream Protestant denominations, like the Episcopalians in the United States, have worked really hard to stop being creepy about sex. The times are changing for the better, I guess. But Evangelical Protestants have chosen creepy sex teachings as a hill to die on.
For you and everyone else out there who has suffered because of teachings like that, I pray they don’t succeed in maintaining their obsession.
