Dear Laura:

Alley, Hail and Well Met:

I cannot find any credible source to confirm this myth about the Catholic Church. The sources I do find that mention this appear to be writing from an agenda.

There are many myths about the Catholic Church, hundreds of them, that are sourced originally in anti-Catholicism, or sometimes from a lack of talent in scholarship. These myths are then passed on from person to person, writer to writer unchallenged and thus take on the air of "fact" over time. You should be familiar with that phenomenon since the same thing has occurred with Wicca.

Speaking of which, I applaud you for having an "ear" to suspect the validity of this myth and for seeking out verification.

Although at the moment I cannot verify that these sexual prohibitions ever existed, we can presume that they did, it is certainly possible, but it is extremely unlikely that they were ever Church teaching.

The prohibitions you describe smack of some ideas that a couple of heretic groups held. The Church had to deal with some heretical groups that thought the body and all material existence was evil (therefore sex was evil). The Church corrected that error.

It is also possible that some sect was borrowing from, or taking the lead from the ancient Hebrews who had numerous ritual purity laws involving when sex could be performed.

I don't know, as I said I could not find a credible source, so I am only speculating.

One thing that is for sure, is that oftentimes non-Catholics mistake the practices of individuals or groups with official Church teaching. Just because a Catholic performs a certain practice does not mean that it is approved or taught officially by the Church. Even if a priest or nun says so, does not mean that the Church actually teaches it.

Nuns have told children that they will go to hell if they eat meat on Friday. That is not true. I know priests who have told their congregations that the Church no longer teaches that Catholics must attend Sunday Mass, or that masturbation is okay, or contraception is okay. These are lies and those priests know it. They will stand before God in judgment for misleading their flocks.

So the question must be that even if Catholics were involved in these prohibitions, even if priests taught these prohibitions, were they actually official Church teaching? I can find no evidence of that. In addition, such prohibitions are inconsistent with what the Church does teach about marriage and sexuality.

It is also inconsistent with the New Covenant economy. Abstaining from sex before certain holy days and the like was part of the economy of the ritual laws of the ancient Hebrews that were done away with by Jesus and the New Covenant. So, I highly doubt these sexual prohibitions had anything to do with official Church teaching.

Such practices could have been part of the social convention of the time and place. But social convention does not equal Church teaching.

Many of the things that the Church is accused of was not the Church at all, but the sins of individual laymen, priests, bishops, or popes. Men sin. Those sins are violations of Church teaching. Even if it is a Pope who sins it is still a violation of Church teaching. We have had corrupt Popes, but none of these Popes ever translated their personal sin into official teaching, in fact, it would not be possible for him to do so anyway.

An example of this phenomena is the "burning times" (the burning of witches). The peak of this atrocity was the 16th and 17th centuries done mostly by Protestants not Catholics, but there were certainly instances of Catholics doing this too. But, this was not Church teaching. Witches are not even mentioned in Canon Law and the death penalty was not then, not now, not ever a penalty in the Catholic Church. The worst penalty the Church can impose is an anathema (a severe form of excommunication).

When the death penalty was imposed against a heretic or witch it was done by the State not the Church, at least in instances involving Catholics (I think much of the Protestant buring of heretics or witches were done by vigilante groups or Protestant Church officials but I am not sure).

The State did impose the death penalty to heretics because, to the State, heretics were a disruption of public order. In some cases heretics were not only rebellious to the Church but also rebels to the State causing a national security problem from the State's point-of-view. This was out of the Church's hands.

With this said, there were at times clerics conspiring and cooperating in setting up a person for the State imposed death penalty. Whenever any Catholic cleric conspired like this, he was sinning (violating Church teaching). A famous example is the Bishop who conspired with the French Dauphin to kill Joan of Arc. The Bishop participated in the trumped up charges of heresy when in actuality it was the Douphin who wanted her death for political reasons. That bishop will stand before God for what he did. (The Church later cleared Joan's name and declared her a Saint.)

While I am at it, just briefly, the case of the Inquisition in general needs to be mentioned. Non-Catholic historians have affirmed that the Inquisition was not the bloody mess that is popularized by anti-Catholics and the media, such as the unHistory Channel. Relatively few deaths or tortures occurred and certainly not the millions that idiotic anti-Catholics like Jimmy Swaggert assert. Only a few hundred, and at most a couple thousand, I believe it was, were actually executed (and again, that was by the State). The famous Spanish Inquisition was condemned by the Pope when he found out what Ferdinand and Isabella were doing with it.

Again, this is an example of anti-Catholics exaggerating things and repeating it often enough that it takes on the air of "fact" over time. I think is was the propaganda minister to Hitler who said that a lie told often enough will be believed, and the bigger the lie the more it will be believed.

Bottomline: If these prohibitive practices actually occurred, it is most likely a practice of social convention, or improper teaching of clerics, or that of heretics, but it is not likely that it was official Church teaching.

Brightest blessings,
Bro. Ignatius Mary
~~~a pushy Christian :)