Sirach,
Chapter 4, Verse 20
My son, watch for the
right time; fear what is evil; do not bring shame upon yourself.
Shame is generally connected with
sexual ungodliness. Leviticus which is the book of the law on holiness in chapter
18 lists every sort of sexual sin. Sex is good and was invented by God and
carries no shame if it is done at the right time open to life between a
husband and a wife.
Leviticus 18 begins with:
My decrees you shall
carry out, and my statutes you shall take care to follow. I, the LORD, am
your God. Keep, then, my statutes and decrees, for the
person who carries them out will find life through them. I am
the LORD. None of you shall approach a close relative to have
sexual intercourse. I am the LORD. (Lv. 18:4-6)
Leviticus 18 ends with:
You, however, must
keep my statutes and decrees, avoiding all these abominations, both the natives
and the aliens resident among you—because the previous
inhabitants did all these abominations and the land became defiled; otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it,
just as it vomited out the nations before you. For whoever
does any of these abominations shall be cut off from the people. Heed my charge, then, not to observe the abominable customs that
have been observed before your time, and thus become impure by them. I, the
LORD, am your God. (Lv. 18:26-30)
Catechism
of the Catholic Church
I. "MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED
THEM . . ."
2331 "God is love and in himself
he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his
own image. God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and
thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. "God created
man in his own image male and female he created them"; He blessed them and
said, "Be fruitful and multiply" "When God created man, he made
him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed
them and named them Man when they were created."
2332 Sexuality affects all aspects of
the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns
affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way
the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.
2333 Everyone, man and woman, should
acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual
difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and
the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society
depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual
support between the sexes are lived out.
2334 "In creating men 'male and
female, God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity." "Man is a
person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness
of the personal God."
2335 Each of the two sexes is an image
of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different
way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh
the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father
and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." All
human generations proceed from this union.
2336 Jesus came to restore creation to
the purity of its origins. In the Sermon on the Mount, he interprets God's plan
strictly: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit
adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has
already committed adultery with her in his heart." What God has joined
together, let not man put asunder.
The tradition of the Church has
understood the sixth commandment as encompassing the whole of human sexuality.
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