This document could prove a By Michael Ingram, OP

disaster for the Church
THE VATICAN'S declaration on sexual ethics, instead of making the pastor's job in giving guidance and help easier, has served to confuse the issues.
There is a grave danger that priests may use this document to be stricter with their people and ignore its advice to act with prudence and compassion.
If this happens, far from being helpful to the Church, the document could he a disaster, another blow to the Magisteriron as a wise teaching authority.
With pre-marital sex, "sleeping around", trial unions and the relationship of two people committed to each other for life. but who for external reasons are not getting married, need to be distinguished from one another.
Piiherty is occurring earlier today than 100 years ago, and the age at which young people arc allowed to leave school has been increased. We have the grossly anomalous situation of sexually mature young people still at school like children.
To treat them as children and to demand adult responsibility in sexual matters is a psychological contradiction. The easy availability of contraception is advocated by some as a means of helping young people to exerci.se responsibility at least in the effects of their sexual relations.
It seems to me that it is important to encourage young people to he able to integrate their sexual desires, rather than indulge in them at a v. him.
In married life there are times when a wife does not wish to make love with her, husband. If he is properly integrated, he will accept th is. If he has never learned to tolerate delayed gratification there arc likely to be difficulties between him and his wife.
It makes sense to me. therefore, to discourage "sleeping around" hut to do so with the greatest care and understanding, respecting the difficulties young people have nowadays. Trial unions are a monstrosity. Love is not love unless it is an unconditional acceptance of one anothele
Genuine pre-marital relations are a different Matter. Here there is no casual gratification of young people using each other. or trying each
other out, hut an unwillingness to wait until the wedding day,
Few Catholic thinkers would publicly encourage this as being desirable, hut also few counsellors would want to make an issue of it and prejudice their chances of helping young couples to look at far more important matters concerning their future married life.
It is very important to sort out what masturbation represents for the person performing it. A blanket condemnation or something that adolescents do because they have not yet learnt to integrate their sexual powers. something that a prisoner does in prison, and so on. need not necessarily lead to a clarification isf the Church's teaching. hut only further confusion.
In counselling practice I find it usuully advantageous to distract attention front the morality or the act to what it represents for the one performing it. To emphasise the guilt. the moral culpability tends to lead to a cycle of masturbation, guilt. reassurance through il further
act, and so on.
Masturbation is an unsatisfactory act. 11 is self-frustrating because the
mutual love that is Fostered by a MU! lit4 act is absent. It is therefore common to find feelings of guilt, or self-dissatisfaction after the act, and the. prudent counsellor will help the subject to look at this.
Thus. with adolescents, I help them to see in the act a lack of inlegi abort because it is something they say they are not able to contra]. To do otherwise, to give too much reassurance about the act. can take away a valuable incentive tawerds integration.
A clear statement about the sinfulness of the act can help to snake conscious and clear the natural regret at the unsatisfactoriness of the act. hut only if applied with the greatest of care — with understanding rather than condemnation.
My cruet regret at the recent document is that overpermissiveness is condemned (and with this I fully agree). but not the enormous harm that is done to very many young people by imprudent. over-strict priests and counsellors.
On the other hand, when counselling someone who is masturbating because of loneliness and depression, it does not help at all to
discuss the sinfulness and guilt but to discuss only the ways to end the isolation and unhappiness. This is not permissiveness, hut a means of helping to overcome the difficulty.
I have counselled many homosexuals and in every one I have found a history of a disturbed relationship in early years with a parent of the opposite sex.
I regard homosexuality, which is notoriously difficult to treat by psychotherapy. as a personality damage and it should not be condemned any snore than one condemns a misshapen leg. It is unnatural to walk with a limp if one has two good legs, hut not if one leg has been damaged.
In the opinion expressed above I ant at variance with the campaign for homosexual equality. but I will not change it until I can find one homosexual who has not had a history of psychological trauma.
Couriselline a homosexual often means trying to help him to accept his condition without feelings of guilt. A condemnation of homosexuality will make this zipproach impossible, and u counsellor following the recent decree will find himself in the same situation as if his subject had sexual desires for young children.
He will have to help the subject to strengthen himself against the inclination to make love with a partner and to live a life without physical love. The Pope has reiterated traditional Catholic teaching, hut the document may cause many unhappy people to cease coming to the Church for help. This would deprive them of the help of a counsellor in their moral growth and development.
For example, if one can help a man to stop picking up strangers in St public lavatory, one has already made moral progress. If living with a lover becomes a permanent mutually supporting and sustaining relationship, one has made more progress.
It is still less than what the Church demands. But starting with a moral condemnation would make any improvement in morality impossible.
• Er Michael Ingram. OP, Chaplain to the English Community in Geneva. is a trained child counsellor and has practised as a child psychotherapist.