By: Diana García

Instinctive tendencies and pulsions are not bad. What is bad is to separate them from the spirit and disconnect them from the values that give them their range and sense.

Teaching people that everybody can do whatever they want with their body and its phenomena, is to confine man inside himself. It means to disable him from having an education process for love, that gives him enough inner freedom so as to rank values and give superiority to the most important ones.

When an unmarried couple decides to have sexual relations, they are carrying out a dishonest and senseless act. Such couple will be affected by this initial wrong behavior that tends to lead to disappointment and blindness in front of those values that help to build love. These blind experiences lead the couple to overlook the way sexuality integrates to love dynamics demanding marital commitment.

Premarital relations make man and woman more selfish; center them in themselves and obsess them with sexual impulses. It disorients and depresses them.

The sexual act must not be an act for the self of each individual, it must be an act for both of them as a couple and for the family and the social community in which every individual is born to life and must blossom in love. That means he/she must be truthful in every dimension. This act is only genuine when it complies with the conditions of total and definite commitment in marriage.

That is why the Church says: “no matter how strong the intention of the people involved in these premature relationships is; it is unquestionable that such relationships are not a guarantee of the sincerity and fidelity of an interpersonal relationship between a man and a woman and are not protected against the ups and downs and the inconstancy of passion”. Feelings and desire are not enough, not even the partial decision of the couple.

Sexual relationships outside marriage are disturbing and not advisable because they have a meaning that does not correspond to the true feelings of people.

Demanding premarital relationships during a courtship relation is illegitimate, it is a wrong practice and ignoble blackmail.

The present dominant culture tries to seduce us with the powerful and subtle strength of images and affective impacts. That is why it is important to differentiate between good and bad in the deepest levels of affectivity so as not to be manipulated or dragged along by libertinism. It is necessary to distinguish between good and bad spirits. Hedonism, the search of immediate pleasures and moral subjectivity, especially, among young people.

Reference: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “Declaration on certain questions of sexual ethics”. Rome, 1975.

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