"There is no sex in the Church!"

A worthwhile read from Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov's blog...

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Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov. “There Is No Sex in the Church!” American Theological Inquiry. Vol. 4, No. 1, January 15, 2011, pp. 61-87.

This paper explores the attitudes within the Russian Orthodox Church toward marital sex by putting the issue into historical,theological, and pastoral contexts. It strives to begin a dialogue between the laity, married clergy, and monastic hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church about one of the important aspects of every Christian marriage–marital sex.

It begins...

Arguably one of the most difficult topics to approach within the framework of modern Russian Orthodoxy is that of marital sex. Attitudes appear to be much more pronounced with respect to premarital sex: just don’t do it. There are efforts by parish priests, Sunday school teachers, various youth group leaders, and the like to raise the issue of premarital sex with young adults and thus offer a forum for discussion. Understandably these discussions have severe limitations due to the fact that the position of the Church toward premarital sex is overwhelmingly negative; most adults possess healthy inhibitions when speaking with teenagers about matters of sexuality in any detail. There are exceptions, but for the most part, adults hesitate to discuss some of the taboo topics with teenagers because the latter are so impressionable and can be easily guided by things they see or hear. A confessing priest would be worried about suggesting or describing sins of which young people might be unaware. As Archpriest Afanasii Belyaev wrote after hearing the confessions of Tsar Nicholas II’s children, “... I was decidedly unsure whether I as a confessor should remind them of sins which may be unknown to them...”

A priest, however, is usually not a young person’s primary source of information about sin. Matters of morality and propriety are most often dealt with on a family level and among peers. And it may be that patterns of sexual behavior are discovered and formed primarily in peer groups. Perhaps an interesting illustration of the thought process of a typical modern young Orthodox person dealing with issues of premarital sex can be found in an essay by Laryssa Grinenko titled “Trials of Dating in College”...

Read the full article here