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Document Details : Title: The Traditional Catholic Bias against Human Sexuality Subtitle: A Brief Historical Survey Author(s): TIRIMANNA, Vimal Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality Volume: 31 Issue: 1 Date: 2025 Pages: 3-21 DOI: 10.2143/INT.31.1.3294437 Abstract : Although the Bible evinces a very positive and optimistic view of human sexuality, the Catholic moral tradition, down through the centuries, has acquired a rather negative and pessimistic outlook on human sexuality. Any serious study as to why or how this happened would clearly show that there is not one single isolated factor for this strange phenomenon. Rather, as this article tries to show, there has been a complex of factors, most of which are inter-linked. In any case, the church still has a very important message to be shared with humanity with regard to this theme, though the consistent negative and pessimistic attitude of the church towards human sexuality has blocked the communication of such a crucial message to today’s world. It is high time for the Catholic church to reconsider its peculiar attitude towards human sexuality in view of the ten factors highlighted in this article. If the church sincerely reads the contemporary signs of the times, as recommended by Vatican II, and adapts accordingly, without of course changing the essence of its cherished teaching, then, it will still have a very important, indispensable and prophetic message to the contemporary world which often tends to banalize human sexuality. |
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