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Catholic to Kinky…Why So Consistent?

Why we end up here is no coincidence.

I was talking to an ex-Mormon at a church function the other night and got to introduce him to this phrase “high demand religion.” It does not meant that the religion is in high demand, like, everyone wants to get some, but that it places high demands on its followers.

I’ve spent a lot of time on deconstruction Tik Tok and there are some amazing conversations there that have reframed my own Catholic upbringing. For context, the following oddities are true about my childhood:

Both sides of my (obvious, large!) family are Catholic and I went to Catholic school and lived in a neighborhood that was mostly Catholic, frequently known as a parish. Catholic rituals were an integral part of my daily life, including prayer, discussions of sins, restrictions on diet and compulsory weekly attendance at Mass.
I did not meet more than five people that I knew were NOT Catholic until I went to college at nearly 18 years old. There were two Lutheran kids a street over, a girl on my tennis team, a guy who worked at the restaurant who was Episcopalian and…that’s about it. I now recall that three people from my grade in school were not Catholic because they sat out of receiving the sacraments, but I really was never clear on that.
I was taught by nuns throughout my entire kindergarten to 12th grade career, including having Sisters of St. Joseph and Franciscan nuns as my principal, history teacher, religion teacher, driver’s education instructor and computer science teacher. They were all sensible women, some of them fairly terrifying, but undoubtedly dedicated and disciplined. Priests were around less, serving more administrative roles and of course, celebrating Mass as they are the only ones allowed to.
I went to church at least twice a week, once on Sunday and once with my class, throughout grade school. Sometimes, if my parents weren’t sure they could get me to the Sunday evening youth service, they would make me go in the morning just in case, so it wasn’t unusual for me to go twice in one day. The parish church was an old style Gothic cathedral, with stained glass windows to the ceiling, marble, dark wood, red candle glass and the lingering scent of incense. We kneeled, we said the rosary, we did Stations of the Cross, we went to confession in dark wooden closets with screens and talked to men in the dark. We admitted our sins, and we were given penance.
I have tracked many of my confusing sexual hang ups and contradictions to my Catholic upbringing. Now that I have some distance from it, I see was damaging to me as a human being who has inherent worth and dignity, and deserves pleasure as well as the ability to endure suffering. I left the church more than 20 years ago, and yet I still need to examine where some of the odd feelings or inclinations I have came from. This deconstruction cycle it’s where my kinks come from, as well as how I developed habits and patterns.

Born Bad

So much of this is about original sin, an idea, (and not one that Jesus came up with, it was likely St. Augustine) that human beings are inherently sinful. It is too much theological depths to delve into now, but this shame is a major part of kink. Some of it is just embracing it — I’m going to do this thing that is shameful and revel in it; while another way of processing it is to flaunt the directive and discard shame instead.

It is a strange contradiction that if you believe an all powerful being made us, that so many of our features would be intended not to be used. My favorite point to make is: “the clitoris has one purpose — to enable sexual pleasure. Surely our creator must be in favor of that, at least for women.”

The sexism of the church is one of the foundations of sexism in our culture…and one of my most important reasons for my own transgressive nature.

Shame and Penance

One of the ways to cope with shame is to distance yourself, “I didn’t want to, he/she made me do it!” or to say that it’s just a one-time slip up “I don’t know how that happened, I’ll never do it again.” But another Catholic aspect is that you are given penance after you confess your sins (to a priest who is sitting in to represent Jesus) and thus, there is a punishment delivered then and there, even though it is just prayer and contemplation.

But you’ll see this “punishment for naughtiness” play out in a lot of BDSM, in which, even if it’s meant to be a deterrent against future behavior, may be convoluted into a trade: “I will accept the sting of the spank since I am engaged in illicit behavior.”

Confession is a sacrament, and it involves a purgative factor — getting rid of the sin. The absolution, or forgiveness, can be very mentally cleansing and it mimics what many people call “sub space,” the

Ritual Trappings

Sacraments are fundamentally “outwards signs of inner change” and thus the symbols surrounding them end up being highly visible. Catholic churches more than new age Christian churches, are full of rococo details, with angels carved into pillars and hidden alcoves with statues of Mary or Jesus or the patron saint of that parish. The altar is marble and polished wood, the fabrics of the altar cloth and religious vestments are embroidered, and the implements holding the Eucharist are covered in gold.

There are candles and incense, there are special clothes that indicate roles and status, there are things for all of the senses. The hard pews for the sinners, the kneelers, the books, the tables and iron work. The lighting and the sunshine through the stained glass, the stone baptismal font, the mysterious curtains hiding relics, the holy water in the fonts by the entrances. This a sensory feast, and full of pageantry. Access is limited, with the dusty leaded glass obscuring the restricted areas of the building — these are all similar to the mystery of a good dungeon scene.

Sexual Repression

Tying it all together…we have a repression of sexual desire that leads to sin, sometimes much more explosive sin than if we’d be encouraged to explore in small ways. If we had been encouraged to explore our own body’s pleasure, instead of being surprised when someone else touched us the first time. If we’d learned more about good sexual practices instead of taking what we could get, if we had the agency and boldness to say no, to give instructions on what we wanted…we would be less repressed. Thoughts and conversations about sexuality would be open and flowing instead of bottled up.

While I could say a lot about the treachery and moral injury wrought by celibacy in priests and nuns, I’ll stick with those of us out here in the real world who are coping with the damage of repression.

I’ve written before about the “Christianity is a reproductive cult” aspect and the more I dig, the more I believe that. It’s not about human flourishing. It’s not about right behavior related to serving the poor. It’s not about sharing our resources with our neighbors. The sexual restrictions only serve to control people, and the people that the church is most interested in control is those who stray from the man + woman = baby formula that they have prescribed. That includes sex acts that have no chance of being procreative (masturbation, making out, fondling, oral, anal, homosexual, sex toys) as well as intentional prevention of birth by condoms, birth control and abortion.

Let it Go…

I encourage my fellow recovering Catholics to unpack and discard what doesn’t work for them. As I look at my high demand, agenda-of-control religious and family life in the review mirror, it’s easier to see just how twisted and life-taking it was. I can’t comment on the intentions, only the impact.

I made choices out of shame, when I had done no harm, while people who did real, lasting harm were protected — and for that, Christianity has lost me forever.

I have a spiritual life that is important to me, and helps me live a better life. It doesn’t matter if others agree with it, as it is my own conscience I must answer to. And, to that end, I will endeavor to make space for what is life giving, and purge the shame. Whether I do that at the end of a paddle or not, has yet to be seen.