Protestants, who deny that marriage is a sacrament, don’t have the same consolation.

Physical sex as something sacred has been preserved within Christianity by Holy Mother the Church. Brief historical footnoting might be useful. By definition, the sacred is what is set apart from the profane. Many pagans consider various forms of physical sex to have no more moral meaning that burping or passing gas: Sex is, therefore, profane. If you spend your life “doin’ what comes naturally” you never do anything supernatural.

Only when limitations are placed on sex, can it become sacred. You don’t even have to be a religious believer to realize that couples saying “No” to multiple sex partners tend to have higher levels of trust with each other. And it is not necessary here to rehearse the statistics showing that as a general rule, faithful couples live longer and healthier lives, divorce less often and produce happier children than promiscuous couples. (These are only general statistics and there is no guarantee that a particular Christian marriage will achieve these advantages or that non-believers won’t.)

Of course, Christians did not invent the idea of sacred sex. The ill-named “temple prostitutes” of antiquity, for example, were actually celibate most of the time, practicing the sexual act only in rituals so as to make that moment sacred. The Taínos of the Caribbean at the time of Columbus did not have sexual relations when mining for gold, because “otherwise they would not find the gold.” Thus, “sacred sex” implies periodic celibacy.

The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are well known for sanctioning sex only in the context of marriage. Going beyond the rabbinic teachings of his times, Jesus eliminated divorce and polygamy for his disciples, while opening the possibility of a celibate life as a sign of the approaching Kingdom of God. Paul the Apostle echoed the value of the celibate life but also described marriage as a sacrament. Christian marriage, he said, symbolized the love until death that Christ had for humanity.

Of course, teachings get distorted with time. Paul included huge dollops of the puritanical revulsion Jews felt towards the casual sex of the Hellenist world. I have seen explanations of Paul’s misogynist views as the result of his “thorn in the flesh” meaning that the Apostle was a closeted gay. While intriguing, such speculation does not alter the importance of the sacramental dimension of marriage for Catholics.

Puritanism entered full force into Christianity with Calvinism in the 16th century. Rather than ask, “If it feels so right, how can it be wrong?” the puritanical impulse asks: “If it feels so right, how can it be sacred?” The idea that sex was a “duty” and that it ought not to produce pleasure became part of theology. But Calvinism, Puritanism, Jansenism and the like, need to be considered “developments” or “accretions” or even as “heresies” within Christianity. If you are to critique Christianity, start with the pre-Reformation, medieval model.

Balanced by admiration for celibacy in monasteries and convents, medieval Christians had generally healthy attitudes towards sex, little burdened by taboos. Children were prized and raised in extended families. Brothels were licensed with church approval to contain extramarital needs and persons did not need a clergyman present to exchange marriage vows. While poverty intruded itself into family life with all too great frequency, few questioned physical sex as a legitimate pleasure. I think this medieval model is found most faithfully today in Latin American Catholicism, which --- at least in this regard – is more true to the Christian teaching than some Northern European versions.

Note as well that medieval Christianity was far more forgiving of sexual sins than of heresy. Having children out of wedlock, for instance, did not mean you should replace a king, a priest, bishop or even a pope. While no one ever denied that such things were sins, they did not disqualify the perpetrator from communion in the church.

Denying Christ or blaspheming God, on the other hand, were far more serious offenses, especially because they did not arise from natural human desires. In sum, while it would be wrong to consider Christianity the exemplar religion for making sex sacred, it would be erroneous to ignore the particular ways in which Catholicism is prominent for blessing the physical enjoyment of sex.