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2021

"Saving Myself": Young Catholic

Women's Experiences of the Church's
Sexual Ethics
Ashley Douglas

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 THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

“SAVING MYSELF”:

YOUNG CATHOLIC WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF THE CHURCH’S SEXUAL ETHICS

By

ASHLEY DOUGLAS

A Thesis submitted to the

Department of Religion
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with
Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Fall,

2021
 2

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Ashley Douglas defended on
November 17, 2021.

Dr. Joseph Hellweg

Thesis Director

Dr. James Sullivan

Outside Committee Member

Dr. Aline Kalbian

Thesis Co-Director

Signatures are on file with the Honors Program office.

 3

Contents

Acknowledgements 3

Introduction: Reflections of an Insider Ethnographer 4

Chapter 1 Research Methods: An Ethnography of Lay Theological Formation 7

Chapter 2 Review of the Catholic Church’s Sexual Ethics Teachings 10

Chapter 3 Five Factors Shaping Young Women’s Acceptance or Rejection of

Church Teachings 16

Conclusion Looking to the Future: Renewing the Church’s Approach to the

Moral and Sexual Dilemmas of Young Catholic Women,
and Beyond 37

References 40
 4

Acknowledgement

As I wrote my thesis, I received incredible support and assistance from many people, to

whom I will take a moment to express my gratitude.

First, I am extraordinarily grateful to my committee members for their support and

encouragement. I cannot begin to express my thanks to Dr. Joseph Hellweg, my committee co-

chair, for his constant guidance and encouragement, without which this project would never have

begun nor been completed. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Aline

Kalbian, my committee’s other co-chair, whose encouragement as my professor and whose

expertise concerning Catholic sexual ethics was invaluable. I also sincerely thank Dr. James

Sullivan, whose expertise in psychology and knowledge of Catholic wonderfully bridged my two

fields of interest, psychology and religion, and complemented this project exceptionally well.

Thank you all for your encouragement and suggestions given at my defense and for the influence

each of you have had upon me as your student.

Second, I would like to thank the members of Florida State University’s Catholic Student

Union who participated in this project and encourage me daily to pursue the truth without

flinching. To my participants, thank you all for your vulnerability, your boldness, and your

courage as women of God. I am proud to call many of you my friends, and your support of this

project has meant the world to me.

Third, I would like to thank my family, especially my parents Kathy and Allen Douglas,

for their constant love and support. Thank you for always listening to me and appreciating my

work. Your unwavering belief in my abilities and dreams has been a source of great

encouragement to me throughout this project and all of my life. I love you both.
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Fourth, I would like to thank my friends who have uplifted me by their love and support.

Thank you for always listening to me in my excitement and frustration, for engaging in

meaningful and profound discussions with me, and for encouraging me every step of the way. I

cherish you all, and I am grateful to each of you.

Finally, I would like to thank God for whom I began this work. I long to see Your Church

on Earth become a place that welcomes and invites every human being into Your Love, without

exception or hesitation. It is Your Love for us that inspires me to dream of all that could be. I

love You, and I thank You for everything.

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Introduction: Reflections of an Insider Ethnographer

Studying religious communities from the perspective of their members has been of

interest to me since I began taking religious studies courses in college. It seemed to me that the

investigations of intellectually and emotionally removed observers of religion were studied far

more often than the perspectives of its participants, if my classes studied the latter at all.

Objective observation, analysis, and critique are certainly essential work and necessary for the

study of any subject, but true understanding requires more. I in no way deny the value of

objectivity so much as I wish to elevate the value of personal experience. I believe that we must

incorporate the understanding believers have of their own religion in order to get a more

complete picture of the religion itself; otherwise, one will only know the thing from the outside,

so to speak, as removed observers, without a familiarity of the inner workings of practitioners’

lives.

While my curiosity about religious experience emerged from what I perceived as a lack

of attention to the voices of believers, I also credit it to my background in psychology. I have

been interested in psychology since high school, and I will have graduated from Florida State

University with two bachelor’s degrees: one in psychology, the other in religious studies. The

mind’s workings fascinate me, especially in terms of how the mind responds to religion. In my

clinical psychology courses, I remember discussing with professors and peers how individuals

can experience the same event but produce different responses. Then, as my interest in religious

studies grew, I became more curious about how members of the same religious communities—

who hear the same sermons, read the same books, and go to the same faith formation and social

events— may adopt such widely varying beliefs and opinions on the very matters that they

received the same instruction on. In the broadest sense, I explore how people experience religion
 7

emotionally and mentally as well as how their experiences affect their acceptance of church

teachings.

In fact, I only committed to starting this project after a friend shared with me her thoughts

and feelings about her past religious experiences. She grew up Roman Catholic, attended

Catholic school from kindergarten through eighth grade, and attended youth groups throughout

middle and high school. Several times, she went to a well-known, week-long Catholic summer

camp. The camp’s schedule always culminated in a night-long Eucharistic adoration event

known for its emotional and spiritual intensity. Such events typically feature the following:

praise and worship music, opportunities for camp counselors and mentors to pray over teenage

campers, priests available for confessions, and always the presence of the exposed Eucharist in

the center or front of the room—the Eucharist being a piece of consecrated bread which

Catholics believe to literally be the body of Jesus.

The friend with whom I was speaking was reflecting on her experiences with these kinds

of nights. While she had previously remembered these experiences in a positive way, she told me

that she now considered them to be a source of religious trauma. She felt that the environment

and peer pressure coerced her into having an overwhelming emotional experience framed as an

authentic spiritual encounter. She said that she could no longer know with any certainty whether

her encounters with God were real or fabricated due to the context in which she experienced

them. From her story, I began to wonder how people’s perspectives on their own religious

experiences change over time and about what might lead them to revise their beliefs about her

own experiences.

While I originally wanted to examine experiences at Christian summer camps for my

thesis, I decided to focus on something more accessible given my resources and lack of research
 8

experience as an undergraduate student. I subsequently developed the following research

question: how do religious adherents come to accept, reject, or modify the doctrines taught to

them?

This question would allow me to address multiple topics in any religious context. I

decided to focus on Roman Catholicism, the religious tradition with which I am most familiar,

and the topic of sexual ethics, which I knew was of interest to college-aged Catholic women. In

this thesis, I seek a greater understanding of how and to what extent college-aged Catholic

women internalize the sexual ethics of the Church. Through qualitative research, and open-

ended, semi-structured interviews in particular (Bernard 2002, 203-220), I elicited interviewees’

memories, experiences, beliefs, and understandings related to Catholic sexual ethics. Their

unique viewpoints and the discussions that we had reveal something of how Catholic women live

in relationship to the teachings of their faith.

While my primary goal for this project was to explore life as young Catholic women live

it, I hypothesized that I would find instances of acceptance, modification, and rejection of

teachings throughout my project. In this, I was correct, but I found that these classifications

succeeded only in marking points along a far more subtle continuum. The forces which move a

person along said continuum took more work to elicit. In this thesis, I therefore present and

discuss a model of acceptance of any teaching as a continuum. At either end of the spectrum

stand acceptance or rejection or rejection of the Church’s position. Five principal forces move a

woman along this spectrum in either direction: (1) her understanding of the Church’s teaching,

(2) her experiences related to that teaching, (3) her experiences with members of her Catholic

community, (4), calls on her conscience, and (5) the nature of the moral question at hand.

Although I address these factors individually, they depend on each other for coherence. Young
 9

women draw on each and any number of them to understand their lives and experiences and

determine their responses to the Church. I conclude this thesis with a discussion of the future of

sexual ethics in the Catholic Church.

Ultimately, I hope that my thesis adds the voices of Catholic laywomen to academic and

theological dialogues. It is laywomen who feel the greatest impact of the hierarchy’s discussions

and decisions about those women’s lives; yet these same women often have little, if any, say in

the discussion. There can be a damaging powerlessness in feeling that one’s voice and

experiences mean little, or perhaps nothing, to those who tell one how to live. This

powerlessness most especially silences Catholic women, as they can hold no positions in the

Church’s teaching and decision-making hierarchy. The only opportunity a Catholic woman has

to have a voice within the Church is to become a theologian. Even then, a theologian lacks

influence compared to a priest, bishop, cardinal, or pope: those persons with hierarchical and

institutional authority. She can never be a member of the Magisterium, nor can she participate in

their discussions, conferences, and synods except at their invitation; even then, the hierarchy has

never permitted women to vote on any concrete proposals at such events (Povoledo 2018). While

I envision this thesis as a mostly academic venture, I also intend it an active attempt to give

laywomen more opportunities to speak about their experiences, opinions, beliefs, and questions

on topics for which the Church’s male leaders rarely if ever request women’s input.

Research Methods: An Ethnography of Lay Theological Formation

For this project, I interviewed nine women who are active or were recently active

members of the Catholic Student Union (CSU) at Florida State University. I received internal

review board approval for my project design and obtained informed consent from each
 10

participant. Of the nine women I interviewed, I discuss stories shared with me by four of them.

In this thesis, I provide each of the women with pseudonyms. Maria is twenty years old, and I

discuss how her increased understanding of Church teachings led to her deeper acceptance of

them. Rachel is twenty-one years old, and I examine her experiences related to the Church’s

teachings and with members of her faith community as they tend to hinder her acceptance of

Church teachings. Lastly, I compare the stories of Chloe, who is eighteen years old, and

Katherine, who is twenty-two years old. Their experiences exemplify the effects of a woman’s

conscience and the impact of the nature of the moral question each woman faced, on her

acceptance of Church teachings.

Given my involvement with the CSU, I was acquainted in some way with all of my

interviewees, which I count as an advantage. My familiarity with them created a comfortable

atmosphere during the interviews in which they could share difficult and/or intimate experiences.

Their comfort may have diminished with an unfamiliar interviewer. My knowledge of the CSU,

its approach to Catholic moral teachings, and the activities in the CSU prepared me to ask

particular questions and raise topics that an outsider may well have overlooked. Above all, I was

aware of the status of John Paul II’s (2006) Theology of the Body, a common subject of

discussion in the women’s group of the CSU

At the same time, my insider status may have prevented women from sharing opinions

which questioned or contradicted the Church's teaching or that they considered controversial. To

reduce such anxiety, I began each interview with this prelude:

Seeing as we know each other, I also want to reemphasize that everything you say is

private and will not be tied to you or your name in my final project. I also want to

emphasize that as an interviewer, it is not my job to judge any of your thoughts, beliefs,
 11

or behaviors. At all times, I seek to be objective and non-judgmental. Whatever you

decide to reveal to me will be kept solely between us and will not affect my view of you

as a friend/acquaintance/fellow Christian.

I hoped in this way to put the women I interviewed at ease by emphasizing my role as

compassionate listener, differentiating our interviews from more potentially judgmental

encounters in the Catholic Student Union, where I have held positions of leadership.

These interviews enabled to document women's experiences with Catholic sexual

teaching throughout their lives up to the present. I devised a list of questions to which I

continually referred as we discussed different stages or settings of each woman’s life, although I

also allowed my interviewees to direct our conversation. In analyzing their interviews, I mapped

the various stages and settings of their typical lives across their experiences of church and

Sunday school; elementary, middle, high school, and college careers; and their participation in

the CSU.

I began each interview with the question, “At what age or stage of your life do you recall

the most formative memories related to your sexuality?” This question allowed each interviewee

to set the stage of her interview at the point she believed most relevant and to devote the most

attention to subsequent periods containing the richest information about her experiences of the

Church’s teachings on sexual ethics. I tailored my approach to the ethnographic nature of my

project, in which I describe a process: namely, how Catholic women’s beliefs concerning sexual

ethics change over time. I performed no “experiments,” engaged in no statistical analysis, and

had no intention of collecting a representative sample. Instead, I have evaluated and analyzed

what interviewees revealed to me about the living relationships that they maintain with the

Catholic Church and its moral teachings.

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This project is my first attempt at conducting qualitative research. Because I managed to

read only two articles before I began my interviews (Harrell & Bradley 2009, Bernard 2002), I

lacked formal training in qualitative research methods. Like most researchers, I also gathered

more data than I could possibly analyze for my current project. I therefore consider this project

to be pilot research, undertaken to initiate a longer-term study of the lives of young Catholic

women in the Church. I aim here to offer a framework for future research, which will include

further and more complete analyses of my interview transcripts for insights into lived

Catholicism. In the meantime, I want to note a few lessons that I have learned during my

research.

The content of my earliest interviews sometimes informed my focus in later ones. This

seemed a helpful tactic at the time. I now realize that I may have led the interviewees in this way.

Indeed, during my analysis, I identified several instances of potential leading, especially by

providing “possible answers” at the ends of my questions. I hardly noticed that I was doing so.

Although many scholars advise against asking leading questions, my familiarity with my

interviewees often gave them license to reject or modify my possible answers according to their

own thoughts. In future work, however, I will avoid this tactic altogether.

Review of Church Teaching on Women’s Gender and Sexuality

I now turn to a brief review of Catholic teaching on gender and sexuality as taught to my

interviewees. Many misconceptions surround the Magisterium’s teachings on these matters,

especially due to the saturation of contemporary, popular, Catholic moral thought with Protestant

and especially evangelical, moral ideals. Catholic behavioral prescriptions associated with sexual

ethics hinge on certain implied theological principles and ideas, which I attempt to outline below.
 13

Most fundamentally, the Catholic Church affirms the Biblical notion that God made

humanity in His image and likeness:

So God created humankind in his image;

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27, NRSV)

For the Magisterium, humanity’s likeness to God counts as the unique privilege of human

beings. Indeed, the Catechism notes that only human beings can fully “know and love [their]

creator,” and that God made human beings simply for the sake of doing so (Catholic Church

1997, 356). That God created humans in His image therefore gives them dignity (Catholic

Church 1997, 357). And, if God, who is love, made human beings in His image out of love, then,

“to love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” (Catholic Church 1997,

1604).

With these principles in mind, one can more easily surmise that human beings reflect the

image of God as individuals but most especially in marriage, who together with another person

fulfill that fundamental and innate vocation of loving. In loving each other, they reflect God’s

love for humanity:

Since God created [humans] man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the

absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man (sic). It is good, very good, in the

Creator’s eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be

realized in the common work of watching over creation: “And God blessed them, and

God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’” (Catholic

Church 1997, 1604)

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Love, marriage, and “fruitfulness,” –referring to procreation—are all "very good." Thus, sex and,

by extension, human sexuality, are also very good, to the extent that sexuality leads to and

enables human, biological procreation. Sexuality, then, as understood by the Catholic Church,

"concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the

aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others" (Catholic Church 1997, 2332). Thus,

sexual ethics outlines the proper conduct of one’s affections within one’s relationships.

While God made human beings and their sexualities good, the Church also teaches that

the fall of Adam and Eve wounded human nature (Genesis 3), and as a result, humans are

“inclined to sin” (Catholic Church 1997, 405). The concept of sin implies that humans may

choose a wrong way to live, a way that leads them away from God. It follows, then, that a

proper, “natural” way to live one’s life also exists, a way that leads people toward God. The

Church professes that a natural moral law exists and “enables man (sic) to discern by reason the

good and the evil” (Catholic Church 1997, 1954). It “prescribes for man the ways, the rules of

conduct that lead to the promised beatitude; it proscribes the ways of evil which turn him away

from God and his love” (Catholic Church 1997, 1950).

The concept of natural law grounds Catholic moral theology. According to the Catechism

(Catholic Church 1997, 1954), “The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and

every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin . . .

But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and

interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted.” The

Church teaches that God inscribes this moral law on the heart of every person, and that even if

one rejects it, “it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man” (Catholic Church 1997,

1958). Because “the precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone clearly and
 15

immediately… man needs grace and revelation so moral and religious truths may be known ‘by

everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error,” (Catholic Church

1997, 1960). In short, in order for humanity to accurately understand the natural law, the

individual requires God’s grace and the Church’s revelation.

The Magisterium thus informs the Church’s authoritative moral teachings by this concept

of naturalness as rightness. The proper use of one’s sexuality, then, according to Catholic

theology, occurs in the context of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage, when sexual

expression it is freely given, a total gift of oneself to the other, in the context of a faithful

relationship to one’s spouse, and open to new life (Paul VI 1968, 9). These principles are meant

to direct a person’s sexuality to a state in accord with natural law. Actions that the Church

considers sexual sins typically fail to meet one or more of the latter requirements.

From this understanding, the first of many ethical prescriptions arises: sex must be had in

the context of marriage. One cannot overstate the fact that in Catholic theology, marriage and sex

are inseparable. Fornication—sex between unmarried partners—decouples sex from marriage,

forgoing the requirement of the total gift of oneself to another, as Pope John Paul II (1981, 11)

elaborates in his encyclical Familiaris Consortio:

[Sexuality] is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by

which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The

total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal

self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if

the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in

the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.
 16

That is, a total, permanent commitment to another person must exist in order for sexuality to be

“realized in a truly human way.” Essentially, one cannot reserve the right to leave the other

person in the future while claiming, through sexual activity, that she or he is giving a total gift of

her or himself. Thus arises the need for a man and woman to marry in order to properly conduct

their sexualities. To wit, Catholic marriage—even with the possibility of annulment, a process by

which the Church determines no marriage ever occurred—is indeed permanent, lasting until

death.

On similar grounds, the Catholic Church also denies its blessing to same-gender

marriages or any same-gendered sexual behavior. The Catechism states that homosexual acts

“close the sexual act to the gift of life” and “do not proceed from genuine affective and sexual

complementarity” (Catholic Church 1997, 2357). Essentially, because homosexual acts cannot

lead to the creation of new biological life, a woman cannot give herself totally to another woman,

nor a man to another man, because such partners cannot naturally procreate. I now, therefore,

briefly turn to the principle of sexual complementarity, as it stems from natural law and is

another crucial concept in Catholic sexual ethics.

According to the Church. God created humanity male and female (Genesis 1:27). On this,

the Catechism elaborates:

“Being man” or “being woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God: man and

woman possess an inalienable dignity which comes to them immediately from God their

Creator. Man and woman are both with one and the same dignity “in the image of God”.

… Man and woman were made "for each other"—not that God left them half-made and

incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be

"helpmate" to the other, for they are equal as persons… and complementary as masculine
 17

and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming "one flesh",

they can transmit human life: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." By

transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents

cooperate in a unique way in the Creator's work (Catholic Church 1997, 369 & 372).

Men and women complement each other exclusively; therefore, only heterosexual erotic acts can

meet the requirement of being "open to new life." Non-heterosexual acts, in contrast, remain

closed to new life, to the total gift of the self, and to realizing one’s fertility as part of oneself.

Similarly, the Magisterium also declares "without hesitation that masturbation is an

intrinsically and seriously disordered act… for it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the

moral order," (Paul VI 1975, 9). The Catechism likewise describes pornography as a perversion

of the conjugal act because it “[displays sexual acts] deliberately to third parties… [doing] grave

injury to the dignity of its participants,” (Catholic Church 1997, 2354). Neither masturbation nor

the use of pornography enable total gifts of the self to another or promote the transmission of

life, making both contrary to God’s design for sexuality as outlined by the Catholic Church.

Furthermore, contraceptive actions or devices, even in the context of a heterosexual,

monogamous marriage, pervert sexuality. Pius XI (1930, 54), in his encyclical, Casti Connubi

explains: “Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of

children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin

against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.” While the Church

allows couples to deliberately track a woman's ovulation cycle in order to avoid having sex

during fertile periods, it forbids the use of condoms or birth control pills for non-medical

purposes as well as "any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse,

is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means," (Paul VI 1968,

 18

14). This proscription covers practices such as the "pull-out method"—by which a man removes

his penis from a woman’s vagina before ejaculation—or other acts performed during sexual

intercourse that prevent pregnancy.

Contraception, in effect, sterilizes sexual acts, preventing a couple from being “open to

life” and restricting their gifts of themselves to something less than their “total” potential by

withholding their fertility (John Paul II 1981, 32). In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI (1968)

further defended this position. While the Church refrains from declaring any specific

heterosexual acts illicit, couples must orient all sexual acts toward procreation. That said, the

Church emphasizes that sex serves more than procreative purposes, give the unity and pleasure it

accomplishes for the spouses involved. Thus, procreation and unity form the "two-fold purpose"

of sex, an indivisible one in the Magisterium’s understanding of sexuality (Paul VI 1968, 12).

Further behavioral prescriptions instruct the proper expression of sexuality, such as those

related to adultery, divorce and annulment, and concerns related to cohabitation by unmarried

couples, but I have summarized the points most relevant to my analysis of the interviews that I

conducted.

Five Factors Shaping Young Women’s Acceptance or Rejection of Church

Teachings

During my research, I discovered five factors that may move a young woman in either

direction along a spectrum between the acceptance and rejection of Church teachings: (1) her

understanding of the Church’s teaching, (2) her experiences related to that teaching, (3) her

experiences with members of her Catholic community, (4), calls on her conscience, and (5) the

nature of the moral question at hand. From interviews, I learned that experiences related to
 19

Church teachings and experiences within a young woman’s faith community are essentially

different kinds of experiences, although young women often refer to them together. The former

concerns how experiences related to the teachings affect adherence, the latter how interactions

with other people in one's faith community affect one's adherence to teachings. I feel as though

the distinction is necessary, even if you women frequently cited them as occurring in

conjunction.

I now discuss each of these five factors in turn, beginning with a young woman’s

understanding of Church teaching. One’s understanding of a concept or principle may alter one’s

perception of it. Multiple interviewees discussed having felt apathetic or resistant towards

Church teaching until they encountered Pope John Paul II’s (2006) Theology of the Body. I

therefore briefly discuss this work. The Pope intended to publish his thoughts on the matter as a

book but ascended to the Papacy before he could do so. Since Popes do not traditionally publish

books, he instead preached a section of his work every Wednesday for five years. Only later did

others organize these homilies into a single text, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology

of the Body (2006).

John Paul II’s work neither contradicts nor argues against any official Church teachings

on sexuality as outlined above. His work is largely inaccessible to laypeople, given its length and

use of flowery philosophical and theological language. Nonetheless, it has become a

phenomenon within some Catholic circles. One might best describe the Pope’s goal in penning

the book as making the Church’s teaching more appealing rather than more accessible per se. In

fact, several women with whom I spoke said that the Theology of the Body had changed their

lives, or at least their outlook on marriage and sexuality. As Jason Evert, a Catholic apologist
 20

who often speaks to young Catholics on matters related to sexuality and chastity, writes (2017,

xiv),

It has been said that rules without a relationship creates rebellion. This is true with

parents and children, and it’s especially true with the relationship between God and

humanity. John Paul knew that laws don’t change hearts. When people view morality as a

rigid list of imposed regulations, they might temporarily behave themselves out of guilt

or fear, but they often abandon the faith. The Pope understood the futility of this

approach, and knew that a fresh re-presentation of the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics

was overdue.

For Evert, the Theology of the Body presents Catholic moral precepts in a way that emphasizes

one’s relationship with God over one’s obedience to the rules.

Although none of the women with whom I spoke have read the Theology of the Body,

they have typically read books about the work and/or received instruction on the book’s

principles from various speakers in Catholic ministry, both inside and outside of the CSU. Thus,

most have received the message of the book infused with other authors’ or speakers’

commentary, informed by some particular agenda, likely influencing their perception and

understanding of the book in some manner.

In any case, the Theology of the Body does reframe Catholic sexual ethics in a positive

way, despite—or perhaps because of—the historical use of sexual ethics teachings as a means to

subjugate women and keep them in a subservient role to men. As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

(1978, 142) notes, regarding previous iterations of male-female dualist theologies, “Women then

represented sexuality, carnality, and evil. … [This tradition] sees woman as determined by her

‘nature’ and sexuality” (142). In other words, women represent that which the Church instructs
 21

the faithful to tame. Catholic moral theology has “a place for women in the Christian community

only as mother or virgin” (142). That women may only marry or profess vows as a religious

sister or consecrated virgin continues, unaltered, today. Although the Church claims to treat men

and women equally in its moral teachings, it still grants men superior status to women, as only

they may become priests and seek higher positions of authority. Excluded from the hierarchy,

women remain subordinate to men in the Church, despite its attempts to promote an “equal but

different” male-female duality (142).

Several of the women I interviewed to me, for example, about talks on purity or chastity

that they had heard which included negative images or demonstrations related to women. For

example, one woman, who I will call Rachel and whose story I discuss at length later, recalled a

male speaker using an image of handing your spouse a crushed flower on your wedding night,

likening the damaged plant to one’s damaged moral status after having committed premarital

sexual sin. The spouse in the story rejected the flower, thus the moral: you must stay pure if you

hope to be loved.

Another woman, who I will call Maria and also discuss later, remembered a female

speaker listing sexual sins as she tore wrapping paper from a gift box. She recalled that the

speaker pointed to the box and said something to the effect of, “See, now this box is ruined.” The

underlying message, as in the last example—not uncommon by the accounts of the women with

whom I spoke—was that sexual sin irreparably damages or changes a person, making her

undesirable—bad, dirty, used, disposable.

Other women with whom I spoke characterized learning about the theology of the body

as a positive experience, focused less on rules for how to live than on the reasons for the rules.

These rules stipulate that love, sex, and marriage are good and reflect the image of God, that men
 22

and women are equal and complement one another, and that using sexuality’s proper use brings

one closer to God and to one’s spouse. One woman distinguished Church’s previous approach to

sexuality from the theology of the body as follows: one explains what one must not do to stay

pure; and the other imparts what one can do. In sum, although the theology of the body explains

the consequences of sexual sin, it primarily emphasizes both the goodness of God’s design for

human sexuality and the goodness of the subsequent sexual ethics that the Church derives from

that design.

This shift in tone has moved many women, to varying degrees, to accept many of the

Church’s sexual ethics teachings by providing what they perceive to be positive rendering of

those teachings. For instance, in my conversation with Maria, we explored how her reading

about the theology of the body in college moved her from a mere personal acceptance of Church

teachings to a deeper understanding and active promotion of them. In high school, she had

attended youth conferences organized by the conservative Franciscan University of Steubenville,

Ohio. These conferences featured talks on a variety of topics by Catholic speakers and public

figures.

One year, Maria heard the talk containing the gift-box demonstration. She could not

recall much about the talk aside from that incident and said, "I remember thinking… I know this

is, like, not true." The following year, however, she heard a talk from Emily Wilson, a popular

figure in Catholic women's ministry. Maria recalled that she and her peers found the story of Ms.

Wilson's then-recent marriage moving:

I remember, like, she showed her wedding video… and everyone was like, in tears. But

like, I think everyone kind of realized like no, this wedding was actually like, was

actually so special because of like, the promise that this couple had made. This wasn’t the
 23

only reason that it was special, but like, that was like, one aspect like made it like, extra

special and extra blessed, was the fact that they had both vowed to save themselves for

marriage in a world where that is like, not popular.

Emily Wilson’s story so impressed Maria that, after hearing it, she decided to “save” sex for

marriage: “And I did that—maybe I didn’t actually, like, fully know what that meant or what that

entailed, but I knew that like, me doing that was like, very important, and that like it would

hopefully bless my future marriage.” Her first deliberate commitment to abide by the Church’s

teaching on sexuality, then, arose after hearing about another woman’s positive experience of

that teaching.

Maria then told me that she could not explain at the time why “saving” herself for

marriage was a good decision; she just seemed to know that it was. When I asked if she felt like

she could explain it to me now, she said yes, citing a confidence in her decision to abstain from

sex until marriage that she did not have in high school. She credited this confidence to learning

more about the subject from the theology of the body: “That teaching actually … changed my

life,” she said. “It reaffirmed and reconvicted my decision to save myself for marriage.” In other

words, the theology of the body provided rationalized and sustained her decision to practice

abstinence.

She explained that Jason Everett’s book (2017) had first introduced her to the theology of

the body. When I asked what about the book had impressed her, she asked if she could read to

me a passage from the book, which she had brought with her. She read: “Purity does not involve

having a negative attitude towards sexuality” (20).

 24

Then, pausing to comment, she explained, “So like, a lot of time, I guess I thought of

purity as … ‘Oh like, sex is bad … refrain from sex. Like, sex is bad.’ That’s … what I thought

until I read this book.”

She continued reading, “Only the pure in heart are able to understand its greatness…

When the sexual act is divorced from the spousal meaning of the body, it is robbed of its depth,”

(21). Commenting, she added,

Which I thought was like, very, very powerful, because like, how like our society views

sex is just like, “Oh it's like a fun, pleasurable, enjoyable thing, that I can just like,

separate from marriage and it’s, like, fine.” But that's probably, like, why so many, like,

issues like, stem from that. Yeah, but I remember reading that and being like, “Wow,

like, there actually is like, such great depth to like, sex,” like this sexual act that Jason

Everett was talking about. And the only way it can, like, remain in such depth is if it's,

like, connected to like, a real true meaning, like a meaning that's like, deeper than like, “I

just wanna, like, satisfy this, like sexual desire of mine.”

When I asked her to clarify the problems to which she referred, she mentioned sexual sin, higher

divorce rates for couples who had sex before marriage, unwanted pregnancy, and abortion.

“So many issues could be avoided,” she continued, “if, like, people actually related sex to

like, the spousal meaning. That’s, like, much deeper than like, our world could perceive.”

Maria’s remarks exemplify how a young woman’s personal understanding of Church

teachings can change her attitude towards them, especially if she moves from acceptance to

further acceptance. In high school, Maria had already decided that refraining from sex until

marriage was good after hearing a speaker explain how it had blessed her marriage. Then, after

reading about the theology of the body in college, she no longer simply hoped that following
 25

Church teaching could bless her future marriage; she wholeheartedly believed that it would. She

accepted that if everyone could understand, accept, and follow the Church’s teachings, then the

world would reap a similar reward. Marriage and sex would gain the same depth and meaning

for all that she has given them; sexual sin and its consequences would diminish; and the state of

the world, at least as far as marriage and sex are concerned, would improve.

I equate her experience to that of a conversion, in William James’s (1984, 229) terms, for

whom conversion is “an absolute addition to life,” something that transformed Maria’s moral

conviction into “enthusiastic espousal.” Her encounter with the theology of the body gave her a

new sense of reality. Her experience synthesized, in Clifford Geertz’s (1972, 81) terms, the

Catholic “worldview” of natural law, or “model of the world,” with a Catholic sexual “ethos,” or

“model for the world” that is, for acting in it. The result was a new vision of the “really real,” a

sense of clarity for managing her sexual life, one that empowered her to act with new resolve

(Geertz 1972, 88). By exploring her beliefs, she determined their soundness, deepening her

convictions. If, in her personal exploration, she had found the Church’s sexual teachings lacking

in some way, I doubt that she would have continued to subscribe to them. Now she not only

accepts Church teachings for herself but promotes them to others.

While Maria originally accepted the Church’s negative messages about her sexuality, she

later abandoned them for a more positive version. Yet, I also spoke to Rachel, who had so

internalized the Church’s negative messages about her sexuality from a young age that she

rebelled against them beginning in her adolescence. Her story demonstrates the extent to which a

woman’s experiences related to the Church’s teachings, as well as her community’s responses to

her concerns and behaviors, can alter a woman’s perception and acceptance of the teachings.
 26

One of the first experiences that she related to me occurred at her Catholic middle school.

She remembers adults checking the length of her skirt by placing an index card at her knee; her

skirt had to fall below the top of the card. “And I struggled with that,” she said:

Because the Church teaches us that, you know, our bodies are good. Why do I, as a

twelve, thirteen-year-old, have to cover my body so much? Because I think at that point, I

didn't understand the greater picture of why we had to and how men and other women,

uhm, sometimes view our bodies as objects.”

According to Rachel, she and her female classmates learned to take responsibility for young

boys’ thoughts as early as middle school. She recalled feeling shame for one of the first times in

her life when her skirt fell shorter than the required length. She emphasized again that at the

time, she had no sense of “how men see us, and impure thoughts come in, and—and I didn’t

really have my first experience with that until high school.” This experience went poorly.

I asked her about that first experience, and she told me about her first boyfriend in her

freshman year of high school. “He was not respectful of my body, and he was not respectful of

the rules that my parents and I came up with for our relationship. It was very lustful, very

hormonal.” When I asked her to elaborate on how she felt while she was in this relationship, she

said,

I didn't, I mean, it all came after we broke up, and I saw the way even some of my

friends, from within my small Catholic group from church, when I would share my

experiences with them, how they would turn their heads like away from me and uhm, you

know, that's kind of when I first thought, “Oh I am, I am gross, I, I shouldn't have made

the decisions that I did with him,”

 27

And uhm. Yeah, it was—even with people from, even [adults from the youth

group] from church, I remember we went on a retreat, and I talked about that guy and I’s

relationship, and I got in trouble for it. And uhm. Just for sharing about it, it was like it

wasn't—I wasn't capable, I wasn't allowed to share. And I think that was the first time

when church became and like it wasn't safe for me anymore. Because I was going to be

judged. And, I mean, don't preach forgiveness if you can't show it, you know, show it to

me.

Rachel felt rejected for wanting to share about her experiences with her peers, and as a result, she

recoiled from her faith community and, by extension, the Church.

This incident was only the first of several ones like it that she shared with me. She also

attended Steubenville conferences in high school where she first heard the crushed flower

metaphor. She shared none of Maria’s fondness for talks by Emily Wilson. Of the talks that she

heard at Steubenville from Emily Wilson and others, she said, “I almost think in a way that they

pushed me to break myself, pushed me to make sinful choices because I'm the type of person

who didn't wanna follow authority in that way. I, I didn't really care what other people thought.”

She believes that the teaching methods of those who spoke at the Steubenville conferences

piqued her rebellious nature, resulting in a shift in her behavior.

Because she specifically mentioned Emily Wilson, so I asked for her thoughts on an

apology video that Emily Wilson posted on YouTube in 2019 titled, “I’m Sorry for All the

Damaging Purity Talks.”

“I have a thing against apology videos,” She replied,

Uhm, I'm not for apology … But you as a person hurt me so much to the point where I

just threw myself to men because, you know, once the deed was done, I was like, “This
 28

feels good. I like this.” At that point—I mean at that point, when you're so broken and

you're so used and—seeing an apology video, it's like, I don't care what this is. I mean, I

don't accept your apology. This should have been dealt with when you received feedback

during your years doing Steubenville. No hate. But I just, when I saw that video, I was

like, “The damage is done.”

No apology could satisfy Rachel for the damage that the Church’s negative approach to sexual

ethics had done to her. Indeed, she blames Ms. Wilson for not addressing problems as they arose

during the years that she gave such damaging talks.

I will share two more stories that Rachel shared with me. First, she told me that, after

deciding to have sex for the first time, she looked at her purity ring and began to cry. When the

boy she was with asked her what was wrong, she told him, “No one’s gonna want me now.”

Then, at another point during high school, she endured sexual assault. When she told a trusted

mentor in her youth group about the assault, that mentor blamed her for the attack. When she

later miscarried, the same mentor blamed her too, calling the miscarriage a “consequence” of her

irresponsible behavior. When she later told her youth minister about these remarks, she felt as

though neither the youth minister nor anyone else in her church community either believed her or

cared to hear her feelings.

She said that her shame and rebellion followed from the way in which Catholic adults in

her life taught and enforced Church teaching to her as a young girl, as well as from the responses

of her mentors and peers when they learned that she was behaving in ways that contradicted

official Church teaching. The community that could have provided her a safe, Church-informed

place in which to talk about and process her exploration of her sexuality became a place from

which she felt excluded. Members of the group pushed her to the fringes even as they wanted to
 29

draw her closer and convince her to live by the Church’s teachings. This speaks to a larger

problem within female Catholic communities: the taboo of sexual sin, which I propose results in

part from the Church’s idealization of women.

While contemporary Catholic theologians may no longer demonize women’s sexuality,

they now tend to portray it as superhuman. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1978, 144) approaches

this issue in her discussion of “the myth of female power”: the “awe” that some Catholics

express for “the magical female power to give life”. Once, after Fiorenza finished speaking at a

faculty retreat a few weeks after giving birth to her daughter, the chair of the event announced to

the participants, “Elisabeth did something that none of you men could have done. She gave birth

to a child, while at the same time working at methodological theology” (144). The chair lauded

her academic work as more impressive on the basis of a non-academic quality: her biological

capacity to give birth. Fiorenza, in contrast, saw no relation between the two.

I have similarly heard priests and other male Catholic speakers idealize—if not idolize—

women. Despite the theological principle that men and women share equal dignity, such speakers

claim, for example, that no more beautiful a creation exists than a woman, or that women are the

“crown of creation,” adorning and completing it in a way that no one and nothing else can. Yet,

in the Church’s institutional behavior, the opposite attitude prevails: men rule over women and

claim the right to regulate their moral and sexual behavior. Such praise, then, no matter how

well-intentioned, therefore appears to limit, rather than empower, women by placing an

inordinate amount of pressure upon them to embody Catholic moral ideals, more so than men.

“The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall,” they say. So, when women fail to be gentle,

emotional, maternal, or chaste, women like Rachel find themselves looked down upon,

questioned, outcasted, or outright attacked. Such adoration also overlooks women’s physical
 30

needs and desires. Their sexuality, then, is spoken of most often in reference to marriage and

motherhood. Several times, in various ministry settings, I have heard male and female speakers

alike stress that men experience physical and sexual drives more than women do, and that, for

women, sex is primarily satisfies emotional, rather than physiological, needs. An inaccurate and

stultifying gender dichotomy results, which feminist theologians like Mary Daly (1979, 55)

would have credited to ecclesiastical patriarchy.

Not surprisingly, Catholic ministries speaking about female sexuality almost exclusively

in terms of abstaining from sex before marriage. Rachel reported wishing that she could go to the

men's talk at Steubenville conferences, as she knew that they discussed overcoming pornography

addiction—information of interest to her. Women’s ministries are now moving toward covering

topics like this, however, albeit slowly. For instance, I recall hearing three testimonies and

watching one documentary concerning pornography and masturbation in my four years as a

member of the CSU women's community.

The fourth dimension relevant to how young women determine their attitudes toward

Church teachings on sexuality is the role of conscience in making sexual decisions. On

conscience, the Catechism states,

Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate

moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those

that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth

in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes

the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God

speaking. (Catholic Church 1997, 1777)

 31

In other words, one’s conscience acts as an internal judge of right and wrong. The Catechism

further states that, “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If

he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself” (Catholic Church 1997, 1790).

The Church nonetheless considers the conscience fallible. The Catechism warns that numerous

things can misinform the conscience and lead it to erroneous moral judgment (Catholic Church

1997, 1792). The Church therefore encourages individuals to inform their consciences with

Scripture and the Church's authoritative teachings, as well as to regularly examine their

consciences with the aid of the Holy Spirit (Catholic Church 1997, 1785).

Two instances from my interviews illustrate of how young Catholic women exercise their

conscience in relation to Church teaching. In the first, a woman, whom I call Chloe, told me how

she and her boyfriend set boundaries regarding their physical intimacy. They both strove to

follow the Church in abstaining from sex until marriage. Indeed, Chloe expressed high loyalty to

the Church and its teachings. Given that nothing else apart from premarital sex itself is

technically illicit for heterosexual couples, however, they had to determine for themselves where

they should set their boundaries for physical intimacy:

And yeah, it was definitely hard at first because when we first started dating. It was kind

of funny. We actually had, uh, like a mini date where we talked about just like, our

expectations. And at this point we knew like we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and like

exclusively dating. So we just kind of had like the boundaries conversation and we both

agreed, like, making out is wrong. And it took about like three weeks then we were like,

“Never mind.”

Although they agreed that “making out” went “too far,” they found it challenging to keep the

rule they had set: “Then we were like, ‘Never mind’.” Chloe and her boyfriend believed it was
 32

wrong to make out because of statement made by speakers at the CSU on the topic of physical

intimacy. As a result, the young couple felt guilty until they renegotiated their boundaries a few

months later: “We sat down and had a conversation about it again and I was like honestly, I just I

feel like what we're doing— I think we're being really hard on ourselves and like, we literally are

falling in love. We are in love at this point and, like, the intimacy that comes with that, it should

follow.” She and her boyfriend began to think that, as they fell in love, they should allow

themselves to be more physically intimate than before.

She continued:

I was like, I think we should just kind of, you know, trust ourselves and trust that, like,

we're going to know, like, when we're doing something wrong, like, we're going to know

at that point and like, the Lord's gonna make it really clear that like “Hey, this is too far,”

and it's not going to be like had confusion. Feeling of like “Was it too much? Was it not

too much? We don't know,” like we're going to know. Like, the Lord's gonna, like, tell us

and we're going to feel it in our guts and in our hearts.

Chloe explained how she and her boyfriend have attempted to discern in their consciences

whether they are going “too far.” Both before and after they renegotiated their boundaries

concerning physical intimacy, their consciences informed them of how to do so. Before they

discussed thing, however, the expectations and beliefs that they had held before their relationship

informed their conscience, such as the notion of the inappropriateness of making out. When they

failed to meet this expectation, they felt guilt. In contrast, when they began renegotiating their

boundaries based on their experiences—as opposed to their consciences alone—they concluded

that their guilt resulted from being overly scrupulous and that they could engage in more

physical intimacy than before.

 33

Another woman I interviewed, whom I call Katherine, felt unsure about certain teachings

due to concerns of her conscience. While she was growing up, her father discouraged her from

asking questions, often making her feel unintelligent for doing so: “Growing up, again, in my

family was, you don't really get to ask questions because if you don't understand it, shame on

you, like you suck. So, no one ever asked questions about, ‘Why do we believe what we

believe?’” Later, when she joined the CSU at FSU, she met people who allowed her to ask

questions and to seek a deeper understanding of Church teaching. Yet, she still struggles with the

Church’s teaching against gay marriage.

Like, a lot of people from the Catholic Church fight against gay marriage. Just because,

as someone in the arts, I do come across a lot of people that have different sexualities and

identify differently, and so [my sister and I have] had a lot of conversations about—I

understand that the Catholic Church doesn't want to have gay marriages happen within

the Church, and I think that's, that's okay. That's a religious aspect, but I think it—I mean

still to this day it frustrates me that a lot of Catholic people are like, voting against gay

marriage, like in a political sense. I think, you know, and then it's been a—it—we've had

a lot of conversations about it, and I'm still struggling to understand. Again, just because I

interact with so many people, and, to me, it just seems a little unfair, but I understand—

no gay marriages in the Catholic Church. That's a different thing, but in—you know?—

not a religious sense. And [my sister and I have] had the talk about, “Oh, well, marriage

is a holy sacrament.” You know, to a lot of people, it's not, so, I don't know, I think—in

my humble opinion—I think there needs to be a line drawn there. Because it's not for a

lot of people, you know what I mean? If, if we're allowing people to get married in front

of other gods and in front of other—you know, not in the church at all and still come to
 34

our church, then maybe—maybe make two different words. Matrimony is for the church

and marriage is for the secular world. You know what I mean? I think it's important to

make a distinction there.

Here, Katherine expressed her struggles with the Church’s opposition to gay marriage, especially

as a political position. The Church can sufficiently respond to her concerns within its own line of

reasoning, and I believe that she knows this; but, unfortunately, the Church’s standards for a

sound approach to gay marriage may fail to satisfy hers. She and the Church appear to diverge on

how they define an informed conscience.

We returned to the issue of gay marriage again later in the interview after I asked why

she thought the Church focuses so much on questions of sex and sexuality. She replied:

Like, I'm—I am not the kind of person that you're just gonna look at and be like,

“Hey, believe this.” I am gonna have questions. You know what I mean? And I think

that- that because of the world that we live in now where there are so many people who

are gay or bisexual or transgender, whatever the case may be, these questions are way

more prevalent and they feel like it can be threatening at times 'cause it's like, “Oh, if

you're asking these questions, that means that you think it's okay for gay marriage to

happen in the church,” and it's like, I didn't say that. I just want to know why it shouldn't

happen in the church.

You know what I mean? And I- I think a lot of times it's like, “Oh well you

can find that answer on your own.” And it's like I—but I want to have a conversation

about it. You know what I mean? I think the biggest thing is because it feels threatening.

I then asked, “Where do you think that feeling of being threatened might come from?”

She said:
 35

I think because we're taught in the, you know, in the Bible and we're taught, you

know, growing up that gay marriage is wrong and all these things, it's almost like if you

have questions, it's like, oh you could be gay and that's why you want these—it's like no

dude. I just want to know why we are not allowing that same blessing to everyone.

And it's again, it's like you can find it on your own. I just want a conversation

about it, I'm not like, “Oh well I'm gonna get you because you don't allow gay

marriage.” No, like I just want to know. I just have some questions, and I think

it comes from a place of—because it's so prevalent now, I think a lot of people feel

threatened, because maybe that's the case with someone that you know or someone that

you love and now the Catholic Church is going to tell them that they don't get that; they

don't get that blessing. So, I think a lot of people can feel threatened by that specifically

in the Catholic Church.

“Entertaining the question feels like a threat to worldview,” I offered.

“Yeah, it does,” she replied. “Entertaining the question almost feels like you’re allowing

it.”

I heard Katherine saying that she wants to discuss the Church’s teaching on gay marriage,

but she fears that to do so would appear to undermine or doubt the Church’s moral authority. Her

conscience, informed by her experiences and relationships, as well as by Church teaching,

demands a more thoughtful response from the Church. The lack of such a response appears to

have distanced her from the Church.

Chloe and Katherine’s testimonies highlight the conscience's subordinate nature in

Catholic moral reasoning. Conscience, when properly ordered, by the Church's definition, will

always conform to Church teaching. When there is no explicit rule, such as when Chloe and her
 36

boyfriend tried to determine how far was “too far,” the Church allows the faithful to exercise

their conscience to determine how to act. But hen one’s conscience questions or disagrees with

Church teaching, as when Katherine could not accept the teaching against gay marriage at face

value, the Church considers the individual’s conscience misinformed. In each instance, however,

experience and exploration informed the women's consciences. In effect, the Magisterium

instructs the faithful to ignore those experiences that undermine or spark questions about its

teachings and/or challenge the level of control that the Church exerts over moral matters.

The call of one’s conscience, no matter what informs it, however, is a powerful thing. A

good conscience can still ask, “Why has the Church decided this way and not some other?” In

other words, one can seek to understand Church teaching while feeling uncomfortable with it.

But what if a young woman has no one with whom to engage her moral concerns in

conversation, or if her Catholic communities insinuate that she should ignore her concerns? As

Katherine said, a woman can surely find answers on her own; but there is a considerable

difference between reading about the reasoning of the Church in a book or on an apologetics

website, as opposed to talking about, negotiating, and reasoning to a conclusion with another

person. The former can have an almost dehumanizing effect on some young women, especially

like Katherine. Women like Katherine, deprived of such conversations with other people as they

grew up, may feel the harm even more profoundly.

Why do the Church and many of its members resist such conversations? Because, as

Katherine stated, it feels like a threat to entertain “forbidden” ideas? Because it feels akin to

apostasy, just to permit them in one’s thoughts or discussions? Perhaps a person thinks, “What if

I can’t successfully rebut this idea that I perceive as threatening? What if this is the moment that

I find out that I was wrong? What will I do then?” However, if one thinks of the truth as the
 37

Magisterium does—as divine, immutable, and unmovable—then the truth should withstand even

the gravest doubts. In that case, no actual threat in entertaining “forbidden” ideas, only a

perceived one.

Conversations that allow for genuine exploration of ideas that lie outside the prescriptions

of the Church point the way forward for Catholicism and Catholic communities. The Church and

its members must confront ideas at forefront of the social consciousness—that is, social issues

that the majority of society wrestles with in some way—with a genuine willingness to engage

with ideas outside those accepted or promoted by the Church. I do not mean that Catholics must

be willing to alter their beliefs, only that we must be willing to allow the ideas, perspectives, and

experiences of others to challenge our assumptions and broaden our worldview.

The Church must also accept that, while its moral precepts may remain unchanging, they

are disempowering and pernicious for some. Although the women I interviewed all identified as

heterosexual, one persistently questioned the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. Indeed, while

the Church’s sexual ethics can inspire heterosexual, cisgender women to new levels of self-

determination, as when deciding the limits of physical intimacy before marriage, the Church

condemns, to obligatory celibacy, women attracted to women, offering them little agency.

Although some lesbian Catholics may embrace celibacy, finding solace in obeying the

Church's laws, others find only misery in doing so. How can they then reconcile the idea of a

God who loves them with that of a God who would rather they be lonely than in love? How can

the Church approach and minister to their pain, aside from insisting that a painful celibacy be a

source of godly pleasure? While a steadfast and consistent morality may bring great ethical

certitude, questioning Catholicism’s fundamental moral assumptions, such as those about gender

and sexuality, should reinvigorate, rather than rout, one’s faith. Such ethical upkeep has long
 38

played a central role in the Church’s history, moving the Church to abandon its practice of

slavery, concerns with “usury,” and demonization and marginalization of women. Certainly, the

theology of the body exists to redirect Church teaching and discussion toward a positive

understanding of human sexuality, one that previous theologians would have condemned.

I therefore turn, at last, to how the nature of the moral question or qualm at hand

influences a young Catholic woman’s position the spectrum of acceptance or rejection or the

Church’s teachings. I can best exemplify this factor by reviewing and comparing the stories that I

have already shared. For instance, one may note a subtle but critical difference between Maria

and Rachel’s stories, both of which relate to the negative teachings they received in youth

ministry settings. For Maria, the question at hand seems to be, “Why is the Church’s teaching

good?” or “Why is it necessary?” For Rachel, however, the question seems to be, “Is it bad to

disobey the Church’s teaching?” or, perhaps more precisely, “Am I bad for disobeying the

Church’s teaching?”

On the other hand, a subtle difference distinguishes Chloe and Katherine’s stories, which

deal with matters of conscience. Chloe and her boyfriend seem to ask, “How do we best conform

to the expectations of God and the Church?” For Katherine, however, the question is, “Should I

conform to the expectations of the Church?” or perhaps even, “Are the expectations of the

Church in line with God’s expectations?”

Listening to these women’s stories makes it easier to see why Catholic communities and

the Church hierarchy more readily accept some lines of questioning overs others. Maria and

Chloe already embraced Church teaching as they questioned them. In other words, they

questioned in order to affirm what they already hoped or believed to be true. Rachel and

Katherine, however, remain open to possible answers beyond the rigid mores of the Church.
 39

They do not question to necessarily confirm Church teaching, but rather as a method of seeking

the truth of the matter, whether inside or outside of the Church’s teachings. It is not that Maria

and Chloe evade the truth, only that they presume in their manner of questioning that the answer

must lie somewhere inside the Church; Rachel and Katherine make no such assumption.

While the Church may understandably resist more expansive lines of questioning,

Catholic communities and the Magisterium must overcome their hesitation. The Church can no

longer take for granted that the faithful will assent without question; indeed, it should denounce

such an expectation. After all, the rich intellectual tradition of the Church does not exist because

the Saints refused to question. Moreover, as moral and cultural values in the West shift, the

Magisterium must engage reasonably with contemporary gender theory and notions of sexual

orientation, although they stand in opposition to the Church’s own ideas; such alterative

positions are more than fanciful notions.

American Catholics especially find themselves immersed in a culture that questions and

undermines principles such as gender complementarity, the gender binary, and the condemnation

of homosexual acts. The Magisterium can no longer presume that Catholics are inclined to assent

to such principles on the word of Church authorities alone, nor can the Church afford to ignore

Catholics inclined to resist. As a matter of pastoral care and evangelization, the Church must find

new ways to convince its adherents that the ancient way of thought is still the better way, or,

alternatively, to annul positions that never deserved the Church’s confidence in the first place.

Indeed, in the socio-cultural context of America, with its high esteem for independence,

individuality, personal freedom, and rebellion, to expect obedience on the basis of authority

amounts be a poor strategy for recruiting and retaining members.

Conclusion: Looking to the Future

 40

To grasp the spectrum along which young Catholic women position themselves in

relation to their relative acceptance or rejection of Church teachings, I have determined that five

factors defined their movement in either direction: (1) her understanding of the Church’s

teaching, (2) her experiences related to that teaching, (3) her experiences with members of her

Catholic community, (4), calls on her conscience, and (5) the nature of the moral question at

hand.

Regarding the first factor, Maria read about theology of the body and moved from a

faithful acceptance of Church teachings to their active promotion of it. Concerning the second

and third factors, which interviewees often addressed in conjunction, Rachel’s sexual

experiences in high school marginalized her in her faith community, subsequently altering her

opinion on Church teaching. Regarding the fourth factor, I spoke of Chloe and Katherine, who

exercised their consciences in different ways in relation to sexual ethics. Chloe told me that she

and her boyfriend pay attention to their consciences to determine when they are going “too far”

while being physically intimate; and Katherine expressed her concerns related to the Church’s

teaching on homosexuality. Both instances revealed the subordinate nature of one’s conscience.

Only when the conscience assets Church teaching does the Church considered it well informed;

the Church does not consider an individual’s conscience correct otherwise. Finally, I considered

the nature of the moral questions posed by my interviewees and found that while the

Magisterium predictably resist some forms of questioning, such resistance must be overcome for

the sake of the faithful and the Church itself.

Several relevant topics remain for future research that may lead to a fuller understanding

of Catholic sexual ethics as lived by the faithful. The first concerns how Catholic men live in

relation to the Church’s sexual ethics and comparing that to the experiences of Catholic women.
 41

The second relates to the experiences of as well as how LGBTQIA2S+ Catholics live in relation

to the Church’s sexual ethics. I am especially interested in speaking to LGBTQIA2S+ Catholics

who dissent against the Magisterium’s teachings on gay marriage and how they live within a

Church that is hostile to them and their relationships. Additionally, given the preoccupation of

the Church with sexuality and marriage, I want to speak to Catholics who experience no

romantic or sexual attractions. I also hope to explore how Catholics cultivate their gendered

identities and gender expressions, especially given the Magisterium’s opposition to

contemporary gender theory (Congregation for Catholic Education 2019).

Additionally, as an extension of some of the stories shared by interviewees like Maria

and Rachel, I would like to investigate Catholic retreat settings through the lens of crowd

psychology. To what forces do believers attribute their spiritual experiences and why? If the

causes by which they explain their experiences to changes over time, then what altered their

opinion? The ideas of psychologists such as Gustave Le Bon (1895) and William James (1982)

would be essential to such a study.

With my thesis, I hope to have contributed to the general knowledge of the Catholic faith

as lived by its adherents live and as heard through their personal stories. I have proposed what I

hope is a constructive critique of pastoral approaches to sexual ethics teachings in the Catholic

Church and, especially, in Catholic youth and college ministries. I have also analyzed how the

Church’s moral theology and treatment of women have contributed to the ambiguous pastoral

care of young Catholic women in the United States, and I have noted issues upon which the

Church should continue to reflect in order to improve its pastoral mission.

As I consider the future of the Catholic Church and its approach to sexual ethics, I am

reminded Simone Weil’s thoughts on truth:

 42

For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough

with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to

him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the

truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. (2021, 30)

It is my hope that the Catholic Church will continue its tradition of wrestling with the truth, in

the same spirit that Weil described, by consistently putting the spiritual and pastoral needs of its

people ahead of the promotion of its long-held principles. To be clear, I do not mean that the

Church should cease promoting its principles—I mean that a genuine willingness to understand

another person’s thoughts and experiences must come first, if only to tailor one’s approach to the

promotion of Church teachings to that individual’s needs. When John Paul II penned The

Theology of the Body, he felt that the world needed a Church that values compassion and

understanding as a means of achieving obedience and conformity. I suggest that a greater need

has arisen for the Church to value its people and its principles in cooperative and equal measure,

for a Church that is truly both mater et magistra. Now is the time for the Magisterium and the

world’s Catholic communities, in sustained and ongoing dialogue with Catholic women, to move

toward this goal by reevaluating the Church’s pastoral priorities in the realm of female sexual

ethics.
 43

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