"The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body ...

Flee fornication ... Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." – 1 Corinthians, 6.13,19.

At the heart of the Christian religion lies a disturbing hostility towards humanity's essential physicality. Though less stridently proclaimed today than in earlier eras, the circumspection, disdain and outright condemnation of human sexuality in the dogmas of the church has given rise, for two millennia, not only to the most monumental hypocrisy but to all manner of sexual-emotional disorders. In simple terms, sex was, and remains, a distraction, rival, and enemy of organized religion – and in private moments, an indulgence and reward of its high priests.

Repressed sexuality, on the other hand, can be channeled into a fierce piety and kill-joy religiosity, its uncompromising ardour harnessed for the purposes of the Church. But "inner conflict" is a predictable consequence, as is an obsessive preoccupation with other people's sexual predilections. The faith-based moralizer rages over private pleasures, such as homosexuality and the "sanctity of human life" – whilst condoning without embarrassment the slaughter of distant peoples who do not happen to share their own peculiar interpretation of the divine.

A weaker vessel

"Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands ... behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear ... let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel ... but after this manner in the old time the holy women ... in subjection unto their own husbands ... Husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel." – 1 Peter 3.1,7.



Though women are Christianity's largest and most loyal constituency, misogynous sentiments from the ancient world still agitate the ruling male patriarchy, reluctant to share power with a "weaker vessel". The attitude of the Church fathers towards women reflected widely held social attitudes of their time (and not any sentiments handed down from "Jesus"). According to their precepts, women were by nature inferior to men and were "not to usurp authority over the man." (1 Timothy 2.12). But the Christian bigots were worse than their pagan contemporaries, who indulged feisty women with a certain disdain. Noted the satirist Juvenal:

"Most intolerable of all is the woman who as soon as she has sat down to dinner commends Virgil, pardons the dying Dido, and pits the poets against each other, putting Virgil in the one scale and Homer in the other. The grammarians make way before her; the rhetoricians give in; the whole crowd is silenced: no lawyer, no auctioneer will get a word in, no, nor any other woman." – Juvenal, Satire 6, The Ways of Women



In the Roman world, fortunate women could become educated in the classics. Though they had no legal rights they enjoyed citizenship and a wide measure of personal freedom, which included attendance of the theatre, the baths, the festivals, and even the gladiatorial games.

But the Christian misogynists set about putting women "in their place". During the dark centuries of Christendom women would know only discrimination and repression, a subjugation scarcely distinguishable from slavery. They would be consigned to loveless marriages and short lives of unremitted toil and near continuous pregnancy. They would know violence and they would know terror.

The darkness would be relieved only by the flickering candles of the virgin, pageants for the saints and dreams of a bogus salvation beyond the grave.

Hypocrisy beyond belief "Henry, Bishop of Liège , was a legend in and beyond his own lifetime ... His children by many concubines, several of them nuns, numbered sixty-five, which was a trifle excessive for a prelate even in those days. He ended up murdered by a Flemish knight who was outraged at what the bishop had done to his daughter." – Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p417 Chased not chaste

Christian polygamy – a church privilege

"St Alban's Abbey ... was nothing but a den of prostitutes serving the local monks." – Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p413



Of all religions, Christianity alone regarded sexual relations outside of marriage as a grave sin. To this prohibition, the Church added the call to life-long celibacy, with the consequence that for c enturies millions of individuals suffered sexual and psychological misery. Worse yet, with sexual pleasure identified with demonic forces, even within monogamous marriage, only passionless intercourse solely for the procreation of children remained permissible, and even this was a 'venial' sin.

Yet the gangster prelates of the Church had no intention of living this way themselves. For them, celibacy meant freedom from the restrictions and responsibilities of marriage, not restraint from sexual activity. Indeed, a pan-European network of monastic houses and female "orders" ensured that a plentiful supply of unwed and institutionalised women were always available to service the needs of the clergy. It was a resource that far exceeded the seraglios of the sultans.

Monasteries were rather more than scriptoriums and vineyards: they were part of the penal system. With stout walls, severe discipline and often remote locations they served as the prisons of their age. "Management" of a monastery was often within the gift of a regional warlord, typically an abbot or bishop who was himself a warrior-brigand on horseback. A monastic house, with vast acreage under cultivation, provided a "living". A favoured son of the church might be rewarded with, or might wrestle from his rivals, hundreds of such "livings". The practice of religion formed no part of their activity. Access to vulnerable women, enslaved by the church , came with the property.

The 4th Lateran Council of 1215 made it obligatory for every person within Christendom to confess annually to the parish priest. It was a requirement which provided institutional cover every form of abuse imaginable:

"The privacy of the confessional provided the clergy with ready access to women at their most vulnerable, that is, when they were obliged by canon law to confess every impure thought, deed and desire ... Confession was thus often a means by which the clergy corrupted women and eluded the demands of celibacy." – De Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p423.



The immorality of the clergy, as much as the scandal of indulgences, would provoke the Reformation – as well as the crisis in Roman Catholicism in the late 20th century.

Medieval Church prescriptions Various handbooks for priests set out the occasions when sex was forbidden. The list included Advent, Lent, Easter week, Whitsun, fast days, feast days, Saturdays, Sundays, during pregnancy, lactation, or menstruation, during daylight, while naked, or when in church! Unenforceable, of course, but a wonderful source of guilt and the need for the services of a priest. At the same time, God-fearing Christians were urged to "be fruitful, and multiply." (Genesis 9.7).

Devil Woman – used and abused

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature ... The men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly ... God gave them over to a reprobate mind." – Romans 1.26,28 "Ignorant and clumsy physicians blame all sicknesses which they are unable to cure or which they have treated wrongly, on witchery." – Johan Weyer (1515-1588)



For many centuries the henchmen of Christianity, often in a psychotic denial of their own sexuality, turned their pent up frustration into brutal attacks upon women. For them, Satan appeared in the guise of a beautiful woman, stirring up thoughts that distracted men from God. Or else, women were the daughters of Eve, disobedient and weak-willed, corrupting male morals by their lascivious nature. Male responses were sometimes private acts of cruelty, meted either upon the temptress, innocent third-parties, or even upon themselves. But more tragic still was the madness which became a collective act of vengeance, as in the 16th and 17th century witch-hunts, when frustrated sadists in clerical garb waged a campaign of terror against an imaginary malevolence. In the dysfunctional Christian mind the nightscape had become populated with an odd assortment of demonic creatures, succubus, incubus, and not least, naked women on broomsticks – a tormenting fetish, if ever there was one.

Witch hunts provided employment for witch hunters and necessarily, the witch pricker. It seems the devil's mark was to be found secreted about the body. The genitalia – of course! – were subject to painstaking inspection. Warts, moles, liver spots, or any other blemish could all be indicative of demonic liaisons. An extra teat or nipple (by which the witch supposedly suckled her familiars with human blood) was proof positive. Yet extra nipples appear naturally in a small percentage of the population. Tough luck.

Redemption of "fallen women" During the 19th century, in Ireland and elsewhere, the Church established a network of asylums for women and girls who had offended its strict moral code or were deemed to be in danger of carnal sin. They entered against their will and could not easily leave. These institutions were not refuges but workhouses where the “Magdalenes” – so-called from Mary Magdalene, the prostitute follower of Jesus – were set to work "scrubbing away their sins" by scrubbing dirty laundry. The Church made profits but the women went unpaid. Brutalised and abused by sadistic nuns ("Sisters of Mercy"), broken in spirit and isolated from the world, many of the women remained in the institutions until they died. In Ireland alone more than thirty thousand victims were incarcerated before the closure of the last "laundry" in 1996.



The most bizarre sexual crime that a witch could be accused of was "penis thievery":

"And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's work and illusion ..." – Kramer, Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (2.1.7), 1486.



In the pandemic, whole populations were whipped into hysteria and recrimination, and thousands of hapless victims were hanged or roasted in public spectacles. This, at a time when the cult of Mary's "virgin purity" was at its height and an unnatural "abstinence" was urged upon the young. In this frigid world, in which sex was no better than a necessary evil, even masturbation was said to lead to insanity. True intimacy, in both adult sexual relationships and in physical affection between parent and child, was lost.

The wrong orifice? – Sodomy

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

- Leviticus 18.22. "In eternity there is neither male nor female." – Galatians 3.28.



Despite severe scriptural sanctions, the priesthood attracted the homosexually inclined because it provided ready access to adolescent males. Troubled, as they were, by natural desire for emotional companionship and physical intimacy, churchmen often faced the choice between a life sodden by drink or predatory homosexual encounters.

In the post "Da Vinci Code" world, it has become trendy to argue that JC had a liaison with Mary Magdalene. Why not? We're talking fiction after all. But historically one of the most popular icons in Christian art has been the androgynous Jesus, a suitable recipient for both male and female "love". Similarly, angels were often of indeterminate sex. In the Christian wonderland gender has no claims.

St Paul: "Queers don't go to heaven" "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind ...shall inherit the kingdom of God." – 1 Corinthians 6.10. St Paul: "God punishes art lovers with homosexuality" "Men are without excuse ... Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds, and four footed beasts, and creeping things. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another." – Romans 1. 20,24.

As recent scandals have shown, priestly abusers often enjoyed a career of serial rape, protected by a church hierarchy rife with homosexuals. Boys were selected for the priesthood before they knew what sex was. Entrusted to the "care" of a mentor they were physically and psychologically vulnerable.

Who was brave enough to challenge the integrity of a professional "holy man"?

In any event, throughout the Middle Ages, a priest's calling placed him beyond the authority of secular courts. Even in the modern era, complicity of and cover up by senior bishops has been scandalous. The abuse, involving hundreds of cases in the United States alone, has cost the Catholic Church dearly. But the crisis of sexual orientation continues to be traumatic for Episcopalians and Evangelicals too. And all because their mind is transfixed by ancient and irrelevant prejudices.

Father James Porter – 30 year career molesting children of both sexes. Much of Christian art is an obsession with pre-sexual infantile images – 'pure' and 'perfect'. Predator Priests Priests rape boys ! Father John Geoghan – 30 years of abusing hundreds of children

Paedophiles for Jesus

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." – Luke 18.16.



The psychosexual disorder of paedophilia may owe more to the psychotic malaise of Christianity than mere institutional opportunity.

In many respects, Christianity – and in particular its iconography – has an obsession with the "Christ child", a perfect, often naked, infant.

Does this encourage a morbid interest in prepubescent children? Does "love of Christ" lead inexorably into "love" of his children. For some among the many thousands of priestly abusers, this must certainly be the case.

Painfully mistaken – S & M for Jesus

Homosexual proclivities were but one consequence of Christianity's disastrous attitude towards sex. The same violent frustrations meted out upon women often found other victims.

As ever, "theology" provided a divinely sanctioned rationale. Christ had suffered on the cross for the sins of the world. It was only just that unrepentant sinners should be given a taste of that suffering. Pain was "good for the soul". It was a preview of damnation and ever-lasting torment. A goodly degree of torture, whilst it might destroy a victim's body, might snatch a soul back from the jaws of hell and therefore was an act of Christian kindness.

So widespread was the perverse notion of sacred suffering that the "flagellants," set about flogging themselves into a frenzy of ecstatic delirium, a painful but pious method of arousing an erotic response. Scourging and extreme asceticism, whilst masquerading as religious observance and submission to God, in any other context would be correctly recognized as masochism.

Christian prudery's gift to the world? – Syphilis

Before the 15th century, a non-venereal treponomal organism existed in the Americas as a relatively harmless childhood disease, endemic in rural areas, and transmitted by skin contact between naked children. Taken back to European cities by the early Christian adventurers, the disease subsequently mutated into a sexually transmitted disease in order to survive in the colder, non-tropical climate. Making matters worse, in the Americas Christian morality forced the native peoples into clothing to hide their "shame".

As a result many populations of native Americans, as well as Europeans, were decimated by syphilis in the 16th century.

Hypocrisy beyond belief "In the parish of St John Zachary in [15th century] London there was a church service of a very remarkable kind. It provided a brothel exclusively for priests and friars ... No doubt the women selected for this place felt that they had a special vocation. " – Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p413

Nice little earner – The pimping Church

In the dogmas of Holy Mother Church sexual intercourse was a concession from spiritual purity made in the interests of procreation. Inevitably indulgence in the act meant shame and sin. But of course, the grandees of the Church knew that such sinning was as inevitable as night following day – and where there was sin there was money to be made.

The Church waxed rich on the proceeds of its sex rackets. Sexual guilt, whether in thought or deed, required penance. The ceremony of marriage became a Church monopoly. The churching of children began the cycle of exploitation all over again. The unwed existence of a vast portion of humankind, regimented into 'orders', made available both males and females for nefarious purposes. Their celibacy ensured that the only beneficiary of accrued wealth was the Church itself.

Today the ludicrous and self-serving doctrines of the Church still extract a toll – in the anguish of unwanted pregnancy, abortion or divorce; in torments over sexual orientation; in the pain of guilt, loneliness and insecurity; and in the public scandals which, from time to time, dethrone an icon of rectitude and "family values".

Christianity's anti-sexual, puritanical doctrines have inflicted untold damage on the mental, emotional and physical lives of countless millions of people. Through the course of centuries this malevolent faith has left a trail of emotionally and mentally disturbed people, people who have punished themselves and caused distress to others, in a life filled with guilt, shame and denial.

Self-hatred leading to suicide, frigid marriages leading to violence, years of loneliness, anger and regret, are some of the milder consequences of the psychosis. Misogyny, pedophilia, homophobia, rage against abortion, opposition to birth control, obsession with virgin purity, obstruction of stem cell research, morbid self-denial, flagellation, censorship of literature and art, intolerance of alternative lifestyles – Christianity's legacy runs as a foul stain across the human landscape.

Sources:

Cullen Murphy, The Word According to Eve (Allen Lane, 1998)

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Bantam, 2006)

Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

Sam Harris, The End of Faith (Free Press, 2005)

Paul Tabori, A Pictorial History of Love (Spring, 1968)

Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (OUP, 1993)

Uta Ranke-Henemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven (Penguin, 1993)

Peter Brown, The Body and Society (Colombia, 1990)

P. Aries, A. Bejin, Western Sexuality (Blackwell, 1986)





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