I was brought up by a Catholic mother and a Church of England father and the main religion of the house was the Roman Catholic faith: we went to church every Sunday and I went to a Catholic Convent Boarding school in the UK, which was run by nuns. I was a boarder there from age six to thirteen and continued as a day girl until I was seventeen.
There’s one aspect of my upbringing that is really only now sinking in, and that is the sexual repression.
There was always a joke about Catholic girls being rather naughty when it came to sex and that’s probably a form of rebellion from the complete repression that takes place within the Catholic Church. The opposite is also true, with some girls growing up very nun-like in their prudishness.
Where does the rebellion come from? A celibate life is celebrated and priests and nuns are not allowed to marry, but is a celibate life normal or healthy for everyone? We are taught that Jesus was single, but that would have been very unusual in his day: he is more likely to have had a wife and at least three children. Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?
I don’t remember anything in the bible specifically that talked about relationships between men and women, but I am aware of the messages that have constantly played out in my head to this day and I’m sure they are as a result of my Catholic upbringing, because my parents never talked about sex and at school conversations were very limited, and the nuns didn’t offer any support when it came to relationship issues. In the 60s, I recall one religious education class where we were discussing how far you could/should go with a man before marriage and the answer was holding hands at the garden gate. We all laughed in disbelief. Sex before marriage was definitely not supposed to happen and the pill or other forms of contraception were banned. Just the natural rhythm method, guaranteed to fail. And, of course, many Catholic girls did get pregnant and their babies were adopted away, leaving young mothers distressed for the rest of their lives.
The main message I received growing up in a Catholic boarding school for girls was that “Boys are only after one thing,” i.e. all boys want to get their hand up your skirt. I am sure that, like me, many women have experienced boys at parties trying to touch their breasts or their genitals, or seen men exposing their penis in the street (flashers); and on London’s busy underground trains there are numerous opportunities for men to push themselves up against women. These kinds of activities support the generalised belief that all men are only interested in sex.
Judgements about men and sex were embedded in my education, and I grew up with an unbalanced view of men. I cringed whenever any man I was with would ogle a girl, focussing on her breasts. I felt offended but the men would see it as a ‘healthy appreciation,’ whereas for me it has always felt sleazy.
I have always wanted men to see me for who I am, not just a sexy body, and I’m sure many women feel the same.
Some women hide their bodies by wearing totally frumpy clothes or the opposite, using sexy, revealing clothes to have power over men. Neither offers equal respect between men and women.
At our Catholic school sexual relationships were never openly discussed so we were not encouraged to speak openly with each other about intimacy in relationships. I have since learned that intimacy is not just about being close in bed with a man or a woman, but about being deeply honest and sharing what we feel in all our relationships. That requires us to be deeply honest with ourselves first. We create ideals and pictures about how we think our relationships could or should be instead of feeling in each moment what is going on and being able to express and honour those feelings and our awareness.
In our history, and continuing today, there are many stories of women being raped by strangers, by family members or by their husbands. Nowadays, through the teachings of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, I am slowly learning that there is a way of making love that is truly love, where the woman’s body is treated as sacred and nothing takes place that does not honour that.
Whilst in the past I may have used sex with men to make me feel better about myself, these days I know that in order to make love, rather than have sex, I need to start off feeling good about myself. I need to love myself first and feel the sacredness that my body was born with before I can truly offer my love to another. This is not something that I was taught by the Catholic Church.
My experience of the Catholic Church was that the teachings made all women feel unworthy, like second-class citizens, fit only for being a dutiful wife and mother and exclusively defined by their relationship to a man and their babies.
Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?
Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel? We have been encouraged to be martyrs, do ‘good deeds’ and to put everyone else’s needs before our own. The natural sacredness and natural sexiness (not sexual) of a woman is deliberately suppressed. The Catholic Church is not alone in this but it is the only church I have personal experience of.
The sexual repression evident in many institutionalised religions, including the Catholic Church, is carefully crafted and can pass on through several generations if not caught and turned around. We women need to reclaim our bodies for ourselves and then what we can offer our partner is a woman in her fullness: tender, precious and full of love, a woman who doesn’t want sex but who can be very sexy in her sacredness when she is truly making love.
By Carmel Reid, NSW, Australia, Student of The Way of The Livingness rediscovering God and true love.
Further Reading:
Making love vs having sex 101
Episode 12 – Sex, Nakedness and Making Love
Catholic Religion Today – is it a Healthy Option?
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Claiming a true intimacy and integrity within your own body is felt by others.
Everyone is innately delicate and beautiful. Even the most horrible people you can think of weren’t that way when they were days old. It’s systems like these that are designed to crush our sensitive, loving nature. If left to be, those gaining from such supremacy would have nothing..
A religion that doesn’t talk about relationships is not a religion because religion is about relationship! We are in relationship with everything and everyone around us, so it is actually impossible not to be religious. However, when we have a world that makes religion about ‘my way or the high way’ then no wonder there are so many of us who would or have found it very difficult to say they have a religion or are religious.
The Catholic Churches treatment of women and the child abuse that was accepted and hidden by the church, is this the tip of the iceberg?
This is one of the reasons I find it so hard to accept religion, so much horror is played out in the name of religion that completely exposes the roots of the religion cannot be in Love because Love would never consider abusing another.
Wow you nail this Carmel, excellent unfortunately you speak also for many other religions that have seemed to squash the natural innocent sexiness of a women.
The Catholic Church establish a way of living that is based on being celibate whereas it is an organization with numerous cases of sexual abuse towards children. This exposes the falseness and the lack of transparency in which some priests and nuns operates, allowing this to happen behind the scenes while words like ‘hope’, ‘faith’, ‘peace’ or ‘love’ are spoken in their celebrations. It simply makes no sense. I hate this kind of manipulation and I love having the reflection from Serge Benhayon and other presenters from Universal Medicine who live with integrity and walk their talks. In my experience every presentation makes sense to me, not because I believe what they say but because I can feel and discern from my body what is Truth. Every presentation is delivered with such care, transparency and from a place of true equality that makes me feel inspired, like an equal important part of the group. For me they are the teachers I’ve ever wanted, the ones who ignites my power and invites me to explore how my essence looks like as a woman.
I am sure there has been a point in the life of every Catholic where they have questioned Catholicism and have had doubts as to the veracity of what they are being sold. I was brought up as a Catholic and was certainly in this camp. With the Ageless Wisdom there isn’t a smidgen of a doubt in my entire body!
With the recent exposure of the corruption of the Catholic church with all the sex offending it is a wonder why there are still so many practicing Catholics. At some point we have to look at this corruption and honestly ask ourselves if this institution really does what is says it does on the box, or honestly admit that we have been hooked into something (the allowing of which is ours to look at responsibily) that never had our best interests at heart but was rather more self serving without any true connection to God and to the love of God.
A woman who has reclaimed her sacredness within her body can’t ever be fooled. She knows very well what is and what is not. She doesn’t let anybody else tell her how she should or shouldn’t be and feel. There is more for us as women, we deserve to be living naturally in connection with our body, which is sacred and pure by nature. We don’t need to be apologetic or shameful because we love, enjoy and explore how our very essence looks . One of the things that inspires me most from Natalie Benhayon and many other women like you Carmel, is their permission to just be, free of any rules or impositions, the power and beauty you all emanate feels very precious and nurturing, thanks for sharing.
It never occurred to me that the nuns along with children would be a target for sexual abuse. Everything is coming to light and being outed.
For lies to exist, they need energy to support them. It is estimated that the Vatican is worth $30 billion. Does money buy silence?
Yes Julie, it didn’t really occur to me either because no one has talked about it before. The shame these women must have been living with must have been acute for the conversation only to have started now. The rot is to the core of the institution and it certainly needs exposing.
There’s this polarization when it comes to sexuality – repression or gratification, and it almost feels like there is this desperate effort to not hit the bull’s eye, as if we are having to make it into anything other than the simplest of what already is, by not accepting and appreciating ourselves for who we are.
It’s interesting how no one can really define the difference between sex and making love. We can use sex as a distraction, a way of getting recognition, satisfying a need for intimacy or as a tool of relief, which is a far cry from the tender celebration of oneself that one brings to a partner, who in turn is celebrating of themselves. This union under this circumstance is absolute in its confirmation for the pair as one, with no need, repression or gratification in sight.
Amazing michelle819, thank you. I can feel the difference between the two in my body when you share.
When I was reading this blog, I could feel many memories of sexual repression, or sexual ramifications/punishments for partaking in what is naturally with in us.
If we look at the animal kingdom, they follow the cycles of the female, along comes a male and then months down the track, the litter etc. are born. There is no repression, there is no impositions, no beliefs, churches temples, synagogues, etc, it is innately in us. No one or thing bastardises it.
Years ago, when I was a studying a pre-nursing course, I have never forgotten an experience when I visited a mental health hospital. In this place was a woman, who was probably in her 60’s or 70’s, had difficulty interacting / communicating. What was sad was the fact that she had been incarcerated for getting pregnant out of wedlock. The child, I believe was placed in an orphanage and she was placed in a mental institute from a very young age. So it was a no wonder this woman had no social skills, and was dependent on cigarettes. All I saw was this body walking around, and there was nothing in there.
A sad state of affairs, when a human being can do this to another human being. A system can do this to a human being. A family that would allow this to happen, with their belief systems or ways of treating another human being.
There is much to ponder and question with the state of this world, religion being one of them.
As a society we have really allowed the beliefs that have come through the church’s teachings to have a number on us.. The cruelty we have inflicted on women, just because they are women and reproduce simply doesn’t make sense and yet as women we have aligned to the sexual repression, subscribed to the notion that we are lesser, have lived for eons unclaimed in our authority and true delicacy. Collectively we have chosen this and the fall out has been heavy on us all – not just for us but on the whole of society.
We the people have turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse the Catholic church is built on, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to continue for so long.
When such preposterously false man-made ideals and sentiments are ascribed to God, it becomes clear that there is no aspect of any institutionalised religion that can or should be taken for granted as being true to what they purport to be conveying. Everything ought be discerned, and throughout history there have sure been plenty of lies and atrocities sold under the banner of “the will of God”.
What I find preposterous is that not only are man-made ideals and sentiments about God made, they are be felt to be false, and then they attract so many followers!
Yes, the rebellion and the repression are two sides of the same coin – both are empty and devoid of truth. In the rebellion are we being any more honest than those who impose? To get under the hurt of the imposition we need to get really honest about what our own ideals and beliefs are and to take responsibility for our own choices and where we have been loveless too, especially towards ourselves.
“Why are we women not taught to honour and express how we feel? We have been encouraged to be martyrs, do ‘good deeds’ and to put everyone else’s needs before our own.” This is still so prevalent and as you go on to say our sacredness is denied. Time to reclaim it for ourselves.
There is no-one more stunning, powerful, authoritative, playful or sexy than a woman who walks claimed in her sacredness.
“Why is it not part of the Catholic doctrine to teach about the sacredness we women are born with in our bodies?” It is because the church is not about empowering people to be themselves. It is an institution whose priority is to maintain its authority, power and dominance at any cost – how they have covered up the sexual abuse within the church is living proof of this.
The hypocrisy of the church is fully exposed when its claim that it represents the word of God and love is juxtaposed with its actions. The way the church operates and behaves is far, far from loving. I am incredulous that it still has a such a huge following and yet so it does. We may think we can accept some parts of it over another, but energetically we are getting the whole package. When we say yes to some of it we are in fact saying yes to it all, whether we like it or not. It is our responsibility to be aware of this and to understand what it is we are saying yes to.
Great blog Carmel. Thank you for raising the conversation. It’s interesting how women are not encouraged to feel the sacredness that comes from their bodies and to live from that connection.
There are so many levels of suppression in our society to downplay and stop the absolute beauty and sacredness women hold, it’s almost at us from every angle. Billboards with cheap pictures, women’s magazines, media and also the social norms about what is ok with sexual abuse and what is not. I personally have found that even having a relationship with my feminine self has always been clouded by so much in every way. Even from being embarrassed about having periods, or feeling sexy and how I will be perceived.
“Is it possible that the Catholic Church rewrote history to suit their agenda?” This is a very pertinent question, and one that, if true, would potentially expose much controversy about the Catholic Church.
The word shame comes to me when I read about repression. There’s no understanding and no love in repression, only judgement and condemnation of not just the behaviour but who we are in essence. This is a great tool for controlling people- it’s dealing in the commodity of redemption in exchange for conformity and subservience. This is pretty disgusting.
Karin, this is so clearly expressed. When we are owned by a consciousness it is really difficult to see the wood for the trees. The clarity you offer is testament to the fact that you have broken free of it and in your expression you present with authority that there is another way.
Just considering how suppression and oppression are one side of the coin with expression on the other.
When I consider the changes in my relationship with my body since working with Universal Medicine it is nothing short of a miracle. From loathing and disdain I now spend more time knowing the sassiness and sexiness that my body is and expresses, and that these qualities are part of the sacredness of every woman.
This is amazing Matilda. I had such self-hatred for myself and my body prior to working with Universal Medicine and have now connected to a sacredness I never knew was possible. I also know the choices I’ve made that result in me not feeling this. This is very empowering whereas before I choose to remain blind to what I was choosing.
Totally awesome Matilda. I have experienced the same where I have come from abject self loathing which manifested in lack of confidence, huge personal judgment and criticism of my body. Now I absolutely love being a woman and there isn’t one part of my body (which is ageing) that I would even consider criticising being much more accepting and in love with who I am and what I bring. To me, a miracle of healing and as such I couldn’t appreciate everything Universal Medicine has brought me more.
The Catholic Church has a lot to answer to in the way it has behaved towards others, especially around abuse. I get the feeling that it still thinks itself untouchable and unanswerable to the law. This is in every way shape and form completely unacceptable.
The corruption within the Catholic church is ever so slowly getting exposed. Yes – it still has the pall of the medieval around it, of the dark ages, of the denial of responsibility it has to the people it professes to serve. It keeps them low so that it can manipulate and control and this corruption runs so deeply that it is not seen from within but is covered up with a piousness that professes to be love that is far from the truth.
Yes the corruption and manipulation is being slowly exposed, as you say. The domination and power that the catholic church once held is diminishing. Truth will out.
I am married and when I am not feeling great about my body – then I do not enjoy making love. But when I honour myself then it is a totally different experience. This of course was never shared in my catholic education but something that is totally part of our everyday.
What a simple concept and in it, we are given the keys to self-love and the sharing of that with others. The Catholic church has been set up to do precisely the opposite – to hinder that natural and innate expression – to debase the power we have, that as you say HM is not just our normal every day but our birthright.
This is simple but profound statement, HM. How important is then, that we are all supported to feel great about ourselves and our bodies from young.
Within many religions, there is a huge implication of guilt around sex, love making and any form of physical intimacy but with the rebellion of this, it has pushed people into choosing behaviours of extreme sex and orgies etc. Neither is a true expression of how we are and can be with each other, and so remains for each of us to explore this true way and claim it for ourselves first before we can truly share that with another. Learning to love oneself without guilt and with full honouring is a work in progress.