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Sexual Health eBook Volume3
Chapter 3

Catholic Culture and Sexual Health, Robert T. Francoeur

This chapter examines three philosophical premises in Catholic thinking on sexuality and sexual health: distinctions between formal and informal values, natural and unnatural sexual activities, and value systems based on a fixed worldview and on a process/existential worldview. The construction of Catholic thinking on sexuality is examined starting with the positive but ambivalent influence of Hebraic thinking and the example of Jesus. The subsequent replacement of this healthy synthesis with a very misogynistic, anti-pleasure, and repressive sexual view is illustrated with quotations and teachings of Greek Platonic dualists, Gnostic thinkers, and Roman Stoics as these were adopted from pagan sources and incorporated into a negative view of sexuality, sexual pleasure, and women. This evolution is described in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and more recent times. Twentieth-century social changes that created a fertile seedbed for a rapid evolution of sexual values are brought into perspective, followed by examination of a tentative existentialist value system from a 1977 keystone evaluation of new directions in American Catholic thought. Finally, changes and the potential for further change are described for five problematic issues: anxiety and guilt, monogamy, homosexuality, masturbation, and abortion.

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