A guide to a healthy sex life is nothing unusual in the 21st century except, that is, when it’s a sex manual that’s written by a Catholic monk.
The author of “The Act of Marriage”, Father Ksawery Knotz from the Polish town of Stalowa Wola, has already been dubbed ‘the high priest of the Catholic Kamasutra’. But the monk says he is only talking about lovemaking between married couples and his teaching doesn’t go against church doctrine.
“This book is based on the Bible and even Catholics often don’t realise that the Bible contains different texts which refer to the sexual act,” Father Knotz explains.
He says that sex is often perceived as something bad or sinful, and that’s wrong. In a passage entitled the ‘Theology of the Orgasm’, Knotz compares it to meeting God in heaven.
Some argue that as a celibate man of the cloth he lacks the experience and so can’t advise on something he has never done. But the priest claims that from talking to hundreds of couples, he knows more about the problems of married life than the couples themselves.
“If we judge the experience [of sex] by the number of people you’ve had sex with, it would seem prostitutes are the wisest experts on the topic of love,” Knotz says.
Now the priest is working on his second book, ‘Sex That You Don’t Know’. He says it will concentrate more on the practical side.
Weekend and six-day workshops given by Father Knotz are booked solid for the next few months.
Jan Mastalarczyk has been married to Teresa for eleven years and they have four children. Jan says that after implementing some of the priest’s advice, he had no regrets about going.
“My wife has become calmer, she is more satisfied, especially with sex and she is much healthier,” Jan says.
The issue of celibacy
The pleasures of lovemaking are, of course, forbidden to Catholic priests for whom celibacy is not a choice but a duty. But some say it’s time those rules were changed. A recent study suggests more than 50 per cent of priests would like to get married, while 12 per cent admitted being involved in a relationship.
Monk Pawel Kozacki also thinks the issue of priests’ celibacy should at least be discussed.
“The Bible says that a bishop should have just one wife. So it’s obvious that in those times priests were allowed to have wives. [Celibacy] was introduced as a measure of discipline by the Catholic church,” the monk says.
Former priest Tadeusz Bartos left the Dominican order two years ago and is now in a relationship. But he’s sceptical about the issue being openly discussed any time soon.
“It’s a very authoritarian and centralised organisation and it’s accepted that the average Catholic should accept the teaching of the Pope and repeat it mechanically,” he says.
Tadeusz admits that he faced a lot of criticism after he criticised some of the church’s rules and dogmas. He thinks that although the Catholic Church can accept a book about sex written by a priest, it is not yet ready to allow carnal pleasures to be experienced in its own parish.