On Faith Panelists Blog

April 22, 2010

A refreshing alternative to the hook-up culture

By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Q: Do your religious beliefs exalt or stigmatize sex (or both)? Is religion a useful tool for helping young people navigate the treacherous world of sex, love and relationships? Does religion present an alternative view of sex and sexual relationships to the culture at large? Should it?

My religion, Catholicism, often is portrayed as a stumbling block to healthy attitudes about sex, and the clergy abuse scandal dominating headlines in recent days has done little to counteract that portrayal. That's a shame, because Catholic teachings on human sexuality - and, indeed, the broader Christian virtues of chastity, fidelity and temperance - serve as a much-needed corrective to the excesses of our hyper-sexualized culture.

This is especially true for young adults. In my interviews with hundreds of young Christians for The New Faithful, I was surprised to find that often it was precisely the countercultural quality of traditional Christian moral teachings on sex that made them attractive to today's young adults. Yearning for moral guidance in an age of moral relativism, and floundering in their attempts to play a post-sexual revolution mating game devoid of rules, many found the clarity and challenge of Christian sexual ethics refreshing.

That doesn't mean they found it easy to live these teachings or that they accepted them without question. We have all seen the surveys that show young Catholics bucking Church teachings on controversial moral questions, particularly when it comes to their views on sex outside marriage, contraception, homosexual relationships and cohabitation. Yet many of the same young Catholics who reject those teachings have never heard them explained in a clear and winsome way by their parents, professors or pastors - often because their elders fear such teachings will "turn off" a young Catholic to the rest of the faith. Those who have heard the reasons behind the rules, and who find a supportive community to help them live the Christian ideal of chastity, often become outspoken champions of the Christian vision of human sexuality that they consider much more conducive to human flourishing than the one peddled by our pop culture.

The Christian idea of the body and sex as sacred, and of the lifelong bond of marriage as the appropriate context for sexual intimacy, is a profound challenge to the anything-goes ethos of today's hook-up culture. Perhaps even more challenging is the signature idea behind the late Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body: that men and women bear God's image in and through the sexual difference imprinted on their bodies, and it is this very sexual difference that makes possible a profound, life-giving union between them - a union designed not simply to gratify our desires but to reveal God's love to the world.

It's heavy stuff in a culture that prefers to treat sex as a contact sport best played between strangers. But for many young adults quietly leading lives of integrity and fidelity, it is message far more liberating than anything Hollywood or Madison Avenue could manufacture.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is author of “The New Faithful,” an ex-presidential speechwriter, op-ed columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and host of “Faith & Culture,” a TV and radio show on EWTN.