The Gravity of Sexual Sin

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Why does the Church consider sexual sins a grave matter?

The Catholic Church doesn’t judge other people’s souls. The Church never says anybody is going to hell. She never says that a particular person is in mortal sin.

But the Church does say that certain acts are gravely wrong. Like, it’s gravely wrong to have an innocent person executed. Or to swindle people out of their life’s savings. To say that something is gravely wrong is just to say that it’s a really bad thing to do.

Most people would recognize that some sexual crimes are really bad, like if it’s nonconsensual, or if it’s against a minor, for instance. But they don’t understand why the Church makes such a fuss about so many sexual sins. Why does the Church teach that so many sexual misdeeds are gravely wrong?

The answer is that sexual sin destroys such great goods, such as marriage, family, kids, and society. And this has terrible consequences for oneself and for others.

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The Excellence of the Goods at Stake

Our sexuality is one of the most profound areas of our identity and our capacity for love. It lies at the heart of our union of body and soul.

Marriage, in which sexuality finds its proper context, is the most multi-faceted love possible between two human beings. It’s there that family is made, that the human race survives. It's there that the children of God emerge, and it's there where they receive the formation that will most help or most hinder them from an eternity of happiness.

Sexuality literally determines the future of the human race. It’s kind of important. And that’s why, when you violate it, when you misuse it, it’s a big problem. Which is what we mean by grave matter.

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Corrupting Our Identities and our Relationships

Our identity serves as the basis for the relationships that determine how we think of ourselves.

If you ask me, fundamentally, who am I? My first answer should be: a child of God, a disciple of Jesus Christ. But my second answer will probably refer to my family relationships: I am a man. I am a husband. I am a father. I am a son. I am a brother. This is who I am. These are my public roles.

It doesn’t make sense to say that our sexuality is a private matter, when all our most important social roles and relationships derive from our sexual choices and those of our parents.

If I live my sexuality badly, I live these roles and my identity badly. I become a faithless husband. I become a man who cheats on his family, a man divided from his kids. Do you see that that’s a big deal?

And what if I give into lust? What happens when I start looking at women as objects, when I reduce them to a certain part of their physiology? What happens when I become addicted, so I can’t do without my sexual drug?

How do I pray to the Mother of God? How do I look my wife in the eye? How do I convince my daughters of their dignity, or my sons of the importance and strength of self-control?

The whole edifice of love and family and prayer and just straight thinking starts to erode. My life starts to fall apart. Who I am begins to crumble.

Do you see that that’s a big deal?

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The Damage Sexual Sin does to Others

Sexual sin will compromise your identity, break apart your family, weaken your willpower, cause you to fail (even in advance) in being the man or woman you’re supposed to be. But it’s not just about you. It hurts so many other people.

Sexual sin is what leads to abortion. It’s what leads to spouses feeling unloved, and taking it out on their kids. It’s what leads kids to feel abandoned. It’s what leaves boys feeling like they’re completely on their own, that they’ll never qualify as a man. It’s what leaves girls feeling like they’re of little value, like being a girl means you don’t count for much.

Sexual sin leads to resentment. It leads to a sense of hopelessness. It leads to desperate, frantic efforts to find a substitute for the love you haven’t received because the person who should have given you that love was too busy pursuing their next romance or sexual self-indulgence.

So do you see that that’s a big deal?

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Not the worst sin

People will often say that sexual sin is not the worst sin and that’s quite true. There are other sins much worse. But that’s like saying a given kind of cancer isn’t the worst form of cancer. It may be true, but just about any kind of cancer, if you don’t take steps to address it, will kill you.

And that’s certainly true of sexual sin. If you don’t address it, it will ruin your life, and that ruination will cross over into the next life.

But the Church doesn’t just warn against sexual sin. She offers healing in Jesus Christ in the sacrament of confession. And she offers the model for how to live our sexuality in marriage and in celibate chastity.

If we avail ourselves of Christ’s help, and we make love and virtue the goal, we can live as the men and women God has destined us to be, in this life and the next.