.. zing, at first, with out knowing how far they have gone.
For most college student’s sex is a source of pleasure and a release, not relating sex to marriage or love in any way. Many students do however eventually grow out of this stage of wanting premarital sex but by then it is too late and they have already committed the sin. Many students have to drop out of college due to a pregnancy that developed from premarital sex. Other students, however, may find someone special, perhaps the person they hope to marry, and feel that their love legitimizes premarital sex within a monogamous relationship. Like never before, students in this situation may begin to question and examine the sexual values they have been taught. Many teens are going against everything they have been taught in Catholic schools and CCD classes.
They are giving up on God and choosing premarital sex over God and their families. In early Christian times, many couples would marry at an early age most of the time under twenty years of age. Now marriage is pushed back to around twenty five years of age, making a longer period of time before marriage also make a larger period of time in which a couple can perform premarital sex. Many couples are finding it harder and harder to resist the temptations of premarital sex because they have to wait so much longer to marry. We Christians see our sexuality as a wondrous gift from God.
We are male or female at every level of our being. Our sexuality colors who we are, and how we think and feel and act. Sexual intimacy is sacred. It involves a profound giving of oneself to another.
It is a sharing in God’s own creativity, bringing new life into the world. The Bible condemns not only adultery, but also premarital sex, or fornication6. The wisdom of our Christian tradition teaches us that only the complete commitment to one another that comes with marriage is the proper setting for sexual intimacy. Marriage is much more than just a piece of paper. It is only in marriage that we publicly give ourselves to each other, belong to each other, become responsible for one another, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, all the days of our lives. Prior to marriage the couple have not yet made a public, permanent commitment to one another.
If, for example, a boyfriend or girlfriend should have a tragic accident and become disfigured or handicapped, the partner might chose to spend the rest of his or her life caring for the one injured. But there is no social obligation to do so. The injured party is still the responsibility of his or her family. Once a couple marries, however, they become immediate family to each other. It is in marriage that two become one–begin to share their lives, their hopes and fears, their dreams and disappointments, their finances. They make a home for themselves, and hopefully, for their children, as the fruit of their love.
Christian marriage means much more than sex, but the delight and joy of lovemaking is integral to marriage. The marital embrace is the culmination of the total self-giving of husbands and wives. “Those who seek to justify premarital sex find it difficult to explain what marriage means, and what difference it makes to marry.”5 Since the creation of mankind, right up to only about one hundred years ago, people of what is know as the college age, would in all likelihood already be married and raising their children. The progression of mankind now demands long years of education and maturing before one is ready to enter into the sacred sacrament of marriage. Teens go through a stage in life called puberty, in which they sexually mature, they ripen for love; they grow more lustful each passing day.
This stage takes effect well before marriage, which makes it even harder for one to stay a virgin. The elongation of adolescence puts a tremendous strain on teens, making chastity extremely difficult, and making premarital sex look like a good option. On the other hand, nowadays marriage is sometimes put off too long. Couples wait for everything to be perfect before marrying. They sometimes unwisely expose themselves to the dangers of long courtships, waiting, for example, to complete graduate school.
When marriage is delayed into some far off indefinite future, it can become extremely difficult to delay sexual intimacy for the honeymoon. As St. Paul advises: If you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry–it is better to marry than to burn with passion,”1 No one ever said chastity would be easy. But it sure beats the heartache that comes with fornication, the spiritual death that comes with trying to live with the Lord, and yet giving in to the desires of the flesh.
Tragically, our society is sending young people the message that they cannot live chastely. But we Christians have much higher esteem, and expectation, for youth. We know that God’s strength is stronger than our human weakness. We include God in our romance, and ask God to bless our marriage.
We ask God to help us through the hard times, when we are tempted by lust, we pray to him and ask him to give us the strength necessary to follow his law. God can’t always help us though, sometimes we have to pull through and stop ourselves, but the best way to avoid the lusting of premarital sex is to avoid any chance of premarital sex itself. Knowing when to stop and how far to go is the first step in avoiding premarital sex, sometimes it might be hard to stop but if you love God then you will always find the strength to stop. Chastity is a gift of God’s grace and a firm desire to follow the Lord’s way of happiness. To remain chaste we must avoid those books, photos, movies, conversations and fantasies that feed lust.
Our society promotes sex, it is all around us, and we must learn to block those things out that promote premarital sex or adultery. We must pray that God’s strength will carry us in our weakness. If and when we should fall, we continue to trust in God’s love and mercy. We refuse to get discouraged or give up. We ask God for forgiveness, and for help in forgiving ourselves. We let go of the past, so that God can pick us up and set us back on the right path.
Even if we fall to the temptation of lust, God will always be there for us. If we ask God for his forgiveness, he will always allow us back with him. God will never turn us down if we ask for forgiveness. Even though premarital sex goes against everything the Catholic Church teaches, and it goes against everything God has ever wanted us to do, God will still take us back and make us his children if we just ask for his forgiveness.
Penance was created in order for people to talk to God and ask his forgiveness through a priest. The priest absolves us from our sins and we can once again regain our relationship with God. As a teenager I see other teens all the time going against God’s law and performing premarital sex. I feel that premarital sex is wrong, I believe in God and I follow the Roman Catholic Religion. I feel that people should wait until marriage until they perform the act of sex. Premarital sex is wrong, you are joining into a covenant with God that you are not ready for.
Marriage is one of the most sacred sacraments that one can take part in. I believe that couples should wait until after the sacrament of marriage has been performed until they fulfill the sacrament with the sign of sexual intercourse. Through my research I have learned that from the earliest days of Christianity, Christians have believed that premarital sex is wrong. There is no form of premarital sex that is right, no matter how much in love or your plans for your future together with your partner, premarital sex is still wrong. In this paper I have shown that premarital sex goes against the Catholic Religion, however, many people still insist on having premarital sex.
There are many reasons that people tend to have premarital sex, peer pressure, not wanting to wait until marriage, not wanting to marry, and many others. As our culture develops many more people are drifting away from the Catholic way of life and are increasingly tending to sin more often with serious lack of guilt from hurting their relationship with God. I feel that the day will come when premarital sex is widely accepted by all people, and God will be put to the side when deciding whether or not to wait till marriage to have sex. Bibliography Bibliography 4.
DeLamater, J. and MacCorquadale, P. “Premarital Sexuality” Madison University, of Wisconsin Press 1979. 2. Ira L. Reiss, “Premarital sexual standards in America” 1960 The Free Press: New York.
6. Mark 7:21; Ephesians 5:5; Hebrew 13:4 5. Menken, Jane “Teenage sexuality, Pregnancy, and child bearing” New York Press, New York 1981 1. Saint Joseph Edition, “The New American Bible” Catholic Book Publishing Co. New York: 1996 3.
Zelnik, Melvin “Sex and pregnancy in adolescence” Sage Publishing INC Beverly Hills, California 1981 Social Issues.
