Transcript of CS#76: Dr. Greg Popcak Holy Sex

Transcript of Interview with Dr. Greg Popcak about Holy Sex. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Holy Sex is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004771/Holy-Sex–Catholic-Guide-to-Toe-Curling-Mind-Blowing-Infallible-Loving/

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Chris Cash:  This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast where we talk about what’s new, cool, and exciting in the Catholic marketplace.  I’m your host, Chris Cash, director of eCommerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Chris Cash:  And today in the Spotlight, we have Dr. Greg Popcak, author of Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.  You know, I saw the name of that book come across my desk and I said, “This is going to be a fun book to talk about.  What do you think, Dr. Popcak?”

Greg Popcak:  Well, I certainly hope so.

Chris:  And welcome!

Greg Popcak:  It’s great to be here with you, Chris.  Thanks so much for having me on board.

Chris:  Now you are an extremely busy guy.  I’m very thankful that you were able to make it on the show.  I know you’ve got your own medical practice as well as a couple of radio shows.  So you’re no…

Greg Popcak:  We do a telephone counseling practice with Catholics all over the world and they contact us for the Pastoral Solutions Institute.  We do marriage and family and personal counseling all over the telephone.  And it’s been a great resource for folks who can’t find faithful counseling in their area.  We’re very blessed to be able to provide that service for folks.

Chris:  It sounds like an excellent service for sure.  And then of course, you’ve got your radio shows, are they on Sirius?

Greg Popcak:  Well, we are daily noon to one Eastern on the Ave Maria radio network so we’re in about 25 Catholic stations around the country and through that, and then every evening, every weekday evening from 10 to midnight, we’re on the Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 159, the Catholic channel with our program Fully Alive.

Chris:  And that also goes along with out good friend Greg and Jennifer who are on from 10 to 1 on Sirius 159.  So, we are very glad you found time in your day to come talk to us.  So let’s get started with Holy Sex.  Can you tell a little…oh, and I need to make sure to mention that exceptionalmarriages.com is where you can find Greg’s website, if you want to learn more about his ministries as well.

Greg Popcak:  Great, thank you.

Chris:  And we will have that in the show notes, if anybody’s looking.  So tell us about Holy Sex!  What was it that got you interested in writing this book in particular?

Greg Popcak:  Well I mean, as I said I work with an almost exclusively Catholic population in the counseling practice, the telephone counseling practice now and we field a lot of questions on this topic obviously because it’s really in the top three reasons why couples will initiate marital counseling and it’s the number one reason that men initiate marital counseling whenever they’re the ones who make the call.  So that’s one factor.  The other factor was that, you know, I’m hearing from a lot of couples as the awareness of the Theology of the Body is increasing who go to, for instance, weekends or talks, popular talks about Theology of the Body and are getting really excited about what Pope John Paul II had to say about this really as well as which I will put it, this cultural time bomb that is the Theology of the Body.  But then you know, couples will get charged up and then they come home and they stare at each other across the bedroom and say, “Now what?”  Because it takes some doing to translate those really remarkable, incredible, and life-changing ideas of the Theology of the Body into a practical and passionate and realistic plan for marital intimacy.  And so, this book really tries to unpack the Theology of the Body into very practical, simple, direct ways that answers a Catholic’s questions about sexuality but really shows how the Catholic vision of love and marriage is a positive option to what the popular culture is peddling.

Chris:  So what are the usual reasons?  You say that it’s the top reason and that men tend to be the top reason for them initiating, is it that they are just very concerned for how they are coming across in the bedroom with their spouse?  Or what kind of a reason is it that they…

Greg Popcak:  Well, they often admit, it’s more of some kind of disagreement about either frequency or what’s permissible in the bedroom, disagreements between husband and wife about either, you know, different practices or frequency, as I said, is a bigger issue as well.  Just when one person wants to make love more often than the other, how do you deal with those kinds of concerns?  That’s usually what men will raise.  When women discuss sexual issues in the context of counseling, they will often look at it from a sense that they struggle with feelings of being used perhaps because their husbands are not paying attention to them until they want physical intimacy or perhaps they’re afraid of being asked to do something that’s immoral.  A lot of disagreements, for instance, about natural family planning or birth control in general.  How do you negotiate those kinds of differences especially whenever it’s so…you know, so in those cases, of course, you’ve got an objective wall that you’re bumping up against there and the Church is pretty clear about what you can and can’t do with regard to family planning.  But if a husband and wife are in disagreement about that, how do you negotiate something like that?  Everything from that to grayer areas where the Church isn’t quite so clear.  How does a couple negotiate comfort zones around certain sexual practices or positions or frequency and those sorts of things?  You know, the reality is, a lot of couples don’t realize it but sexual problems in a marriage really are the, how do I put it?  The sign of other areas in the relationship, you know, the physical relationship…a couple’s physical relationship is where all the other aspects of the relationship become obvious.  So a couple’s capacity for communication, for partnership, for playfulness, for joy, for a real practical spirituality, all of that gets played in a healthy sexual relationship.  Of course, you know, things like respect or having a good sense of self-esteem or a genuine understanding of what it really means to be loving to each other.  All of that that’s hopefully going on in a relationship all day long, gets played out in the sexual sphere in a very concentrated form.  So whenever there are sexual problems regardless of what they are, they always point back to issues in the larger relationship that are not being resolved as well as they need to be.  And so, you can look at the sexual relationship as kind of a microcosm or a concentrated form of the entire relationship and really see, if you want to make improvements in the physical relationship, but it needs to kind of back up and say, “What can we do to improve these other areas of our marriage so that those benefits can flow into the physical intimacy?”

Chris:  Now one thing that you touched on just a second ago was that the Church has very clear teachings on a lot of the aspects of physical intimacy; however, how do you approach a situation when there is a non-Catholic spouse involved in the mix who does not have that faith background to back up…to participate in sexual intercourse the way a Catholic would?

Greg Popcak:  You know what?  I’ll answer the question, I think you’re asking me then you can kind of correct me if I’m wrong about that.  I mean, so if I’m understanding you, what you’re saying is, when you have a husband and wife who are not on the same page spiritually, say with one spouse is not Catholic and other one is, how do they negotiate that?

Chris:  Yes, yes.

Greg Popcak:  Well, I think that the faithful spouse has to be level in that situation.  That’s a very difficult position to be in but you know, to whom much is given, much is required.  And if the faithful spouse has the knowledge then that faithful spouse has the responsibility to call their mate on and that is a huge issue that we will deal with in the counseling practice.  For instance, when one spouse is really not on board on the Church’s teachings, that can be a special hardship but I run into a lot of people whose faith is very important to them but who will often make compromises and that’s because they want to ease the conflict in their marital relationship.  And I think that’s a mistake.  I think that there is something to this idea of redemptive suffering.  When we stand up for what is true in our faith, even in those areas that are very controversial like sexuality, that’s what ultimately calls our spouse on to holiness and when we make concessions there, then we’re really making an idle lot out of the marriage.

We’re putting what we’re calling “peace in the home” ahead of our duty to God and it’s not really peace in the home anyway.  What it is is it’s settling for quiet as opposed to peace because as Augustine said, “Peace is a tranquility that comes from right order.”  You know, it’s not just the absence of conflict.  So I think that it falls on the faithful spouse to really know why the Church teaches what it teaches, how it is a benefit to stand up for what the Church’s teaching is about sexuality and marriage and to find the support that they need to insist that, “You know, look, you married me as a Catholic and you have an obligation to help me become everything God wants me to be in this life and to be prepared to meet Him in heaven.  And so whether you agree with the Church’s teaching or not, you know that I do and as a matter of simple respect and love for me, you’re going to need to support me on this.”

Chris:  Now you’ve just got a wealth of practical experience in dealing with this which I think is tremendous for an author.  What do find to be the basic building blocks of a healthy, sexual relationship between Catholics?

Greg Popcak:  Well, you know, several things like I was saying before, that the actual day-to-day relationship is absolutely key.  That the couple recognize that there needs to be a continuity between their daily life, their respect, their love, the intimacy, the partnership, the prayer that they share and that is being reflected in their physical relationship as well.  But you know, in the book, I talk about eight different virtues that are at the heart of a healthy sexuality because for the Catholic, living out a healthy sexuality is really about being a virtuous spouse.  So for instance, having a healthy sense of what’s self-donative love is, not just in the sexual sphere but in the day-to-day sphere.  How can I make a gift of myself in a way that really builds up my mate and leads to becoming everything God wants them to be?  Responsibility is another important virtue.  I’m talking there about both self-discipline and stewardship.  In other words, being able to be a person who can be trusted, a person who has good self-control, a person who knows how to prioritize those things that are important over those things that are less important.  That’s a very important quality for physical intimacy because I need to know how to have the self-control to love my mate the way she deserves to be loved.

Faith is absolutely essential.  That’s the third quality for a healthy and holy sexuality because it places the physical intimacy in its appropriate spiritual context and reminds couples that they’re not just loving each other but that they’re supposed to be physical signs of God’s own passion for each of them.  Respect is another one of those eight virtues that I talk about in the book where a couple have to have both self-respect and respect for each other with that desire to really be safe and feel safe with each other and to inspire that healthy vulnerability on which a really authentic and joyful and holy sexuality rests.  Intimacy is the fifth quality that I think couples need to cultivate in their day-to-day relationship which means that they’re comfortable sharing both their emotions as well as their hopes and their dreams in a spirit of noncritical and prayerful discernment and support.

Cooperation in another really important quality that couples need to be practicing in their daily life to exhibit a healthy sexual relationship because how a couple solves problems and negotiate differences of opinion is absolutely going to reflect on their ability to resolve sexual disagreements or sexual issues in the bedroom.  Joy, of course, is another really important quality for a healthy sexuality but it can’t just start in the bedroom.  It’s got to be practiced all day long.  A couple who is not playful, isn’t joyful, doesn’t look for ways to be happy and make each other happy all day long suddenly cant just spontaneously generate that in their sexual relationship.  You have to have that present throughout the day.  And the eighth quality I talked about is the virtue that John Paul II talked a lot about but you don’t hear much about it, it’s called personhood.  In other words, it basically means two things or really, really it’s going to be three things.

The first one is that having an appreciation for what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God; and secondly, having an acknowledgment of the goodness of the body and a respect for the spiritual meaning of the body; and then finally a healthy understanding of what it means to really be a fully functioning Christian man or woman.  So those eight qualities are the virtues that I say that a couple have to be really quite good at practicing in their day-to-day relationship in order for their physical intimacy to really flourish and be what I call, holy sex.

Chris:  Right, well we are going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor and when we come back, we’ll be speaking more with Greg Popcak, Dr. Greg Popcak about Holy Sex!  This is the Catholic Spotlight.

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Chris:  And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Dr. Greg Popcak, author of Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.  So Dr. Popcak, one of the things that you really emphasize in your book or at least you start out with is why is sex holy and why is it different from eroticism that we see in so many aspects of today’s society?

Greg Popcak:  Well, I mean that’s an important distinction because honestly, when the Church talks about holy sex or what I call holy sex, they will often get two different reactions from the world.  Either people are scandalized that the Church is making so much out of what they consider to be so little or people are offended because the Church is talking at all about something so earthy.  Well the problem is, is that when the Church talks about sex, she is talking about what I call holy sex while what people are hearing the Church talk about is what they would consider or what might be more appropriately considered as eroticism.  And the thing is, superficially, holy sex and eroticism have a lot in common in the sense that they’re both very pleasurable.  But that’s really where the similarities end and there are differences even in the pleasure that can be derived from eroticism versus holy sex but beyond that, holy sex is driven by intimacy and arousal.

Okay so it’s driven by both intimacy and arousal where eroticism is just driven by arousal.  Where holy sex overcomes shame, it helps people overcome that basic sense of shame and reluctance they have in revealing themselves to another; eroticism actually causes shame.  It makes me feel used.  It makes me question whether you really love me.  Where eroticism is focused on using the other person as a means of scratching an itch, holy sex is really all about working for the good of the other person and helping them feel more love because they’ve been in my presence.  Where eroticism fears children because the two lovers are really psychologically and spiritually speaking children themselves and they can’t stand the competition, holy sex is actually welcoming to life and welcoming to children.  Where eroticism withholds the self, it says, “I only want to give you the part that makes me feel good.  I don’t want to give you my heart and my soul and my spirit and my life and my commitment.”

Holy sex shares the whole self and says, “I want to give you everything and I want to keep giving it to you for the rest of my life.”  Where eroticism is more stagnant and boring with them, kind of like a drug that needs stronger and stronger doses and sort of stranger and stranger manifestations to keep it alive; holy sex becomes more joyful and vital with time.  Again, because it’s been formed by intimacy as opposed as to just arousal.  And then finally, where eroticism brings disease and death, holy sex actually gives life and health.  So there are big differences between these two things and the reality is that eroticism dies in the presence of marital grace.  So a couple who unfortunately engaged in premarital sex might say something to me like, “We had this great sex life before we got married and then once we said I do, the whole thing just died.  I don’t understand why.”  Well why that isn’t is because they weren’t having sex at all, they were engaging in eroticism and they don’t know how to actually be lovers to be each other.  They know how to be erotic with each other but real marriage and real grace demands real love and that’s what holy sex requires and that’s what I talk about how to develop in the book.

Chris:  And one of the other things that is touched on in the book is why against the common wisdom, the sex among Catholics and Christians is often seen as more fulfilling at least in terms of the studies that have been done.  Do you want to talk a little about that?

Greg Popcak:  Yeah, sure.  I mean, you know, generally speaking, of course, we’re told that Catholics take a very dim view of sex and they shouldn’t even enjoy it or even enjoy thinking about it, for heaven’s sake and you know, really that’s just not the case.  I mean, research consistently shows that people of faith have a deeper appreciation of all the levels of sexuality and so are able to get much more out of it which just makes sense if you’re able to…for instance, if you’re able to look at a piece of art and really know something about art, you can appreciate it more than you could if you don’t know anything about it, you’re just looking at a pretty picture.  I mean, you know, you could get something out of it either way but the person who has a real love and knowledge of art really understands what’s going on and the same thing is true.  You know, God gave sex to the godly and when we can apply our faith to our sexuality, we really understand all the different levels of intimacy that are going on there and we can get a whole lot more out of it and there’s actually some very good empirical research to back that up.  But you know, the main message of the book is that Catholic Christianity does not take at all a dim view of sexuality, that the perception that it does is actually a lie.  I take quotes from all of the Church fathers in their reflections on the Song of Songs and I am able to show from history that the Church has a very positive view about sexuality and always has done so, as long as it’s expressed in a loving and faithful context.

Chris:  Now how has the Theology of the Body impacted you in your practice?

Greg Popcak:  Well, it’s the basis for my entire practice.  I like to quip that the theologian is…or how do I put it?  The theologian is to the psychologist as the architect is to the general contractor, you know.  The theologian says, “Okay, this is what it’s supposed to look like.”  And then the psychologist has the job of finding healthy ways to build the crazy thing, you know.

Chris:  As an ex-engineer, I can appreciate that.

Greg Popcak:  Sure, well, you know, and of course, I don’t mean to say that the Theology of the Body is crazy but I mean, if people will sometimes look at it, in fact I’ve read even reviews in Catholic magazines that just sort of say, “Oh my gosh!  What was John Paul talking about?  This is just insane.”  But the reality is that, it’s not insane, it’s incredible.  It’s the most amazing work that can ever show us what human beings are called to be and what human relationships are supposed to look like and it’s the job of the Catholic helping professionals to figure out how people can build that life and those relationships and so the Theology of the Body become really the basic goal of the underpinning for all the work that I and my associate counselors through the Pastoral Solutions Institute.  Whether we’re doing individual, marriage, or family work, we’re always mindful of the call of the Theology of the Body and what it means to be an authentically Christian human person.  So I mean, yeah, that really serves as the foundation for the work that we do and everything.

Chris:  And we are about out of time today.  Was there anything that you wanted to share with our listeners before we wrap up?

Greg Popcak:  No, I just really, you know, just to repeat that God gave sex to the godly and that godly people shouldn’t be afraid of physical intimacy.  We need to learn what it is, what it isn’t, and how to take it back so that when people attempt to run us down for our faith or tell us that our Church hates sexual intimacy or says other lies, that we know how to defend it but more importantly, we need to not just intellectually defend it; we need to live out that difference in our everyday lives.  We need to live out that difference in our marriages so that when people can look at our relationships, they can say, “Look at those Christians and see how they love one another.”  You know, that’s what ultimately going to bear witness to the Theology of the Body, whenever it bears the fruit of incredible enviable marriages, when you can have the kind of marriage that makes the angels smile and neighbors sick with jealousy, then you’re living out the Theology of the Body in your marriage and that’s what we’re trying to do in the book, to teach the basics or how to do that.  And that’s what we do everyday in the counseling practice as well.

Chris:  So everybody, be sure to check out Holy Sex by Dr. Greg Popcak as well as Dr. Greg’s website exceptionalmarriages.com and for those of you who are common listeners in the Spotlight, it’s a new month now so please go ahead on over to PodcastAlley, vote for us there.  Help us to get some listeners in, maybe even leave a review over on iTunes, it helps bring more people in and helps make the show better.  So Dr. Greg, it has been great having you on.  Thank you so much.

Greg Popcak:  Great being here.  God bless you, Chris.

Chris:  God bless you too.

Chris:  Thank you for listening to the Catholic Spotlight, a production of the Catholic Company, your source for over 10,000 Catholic books and gifts that make a difference.  Find us online at CatholicCompany.com.  You can find more podcasts from the Catholic Spotlight at catholicspotlight.com, and if you have a question, comment or would like to be featured in our intro, call our voicemail at (206) 312-0069.  We would love to hear from you.  You can find more info on being featured in our intro at catholicspotlight.com as well as announcements about future interviews.  Have a great day and God bless!

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Transcript of Interview with Dr. Greg Popcak about Holy Sex. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Holy Sex is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004771/Holy-Sex–Catholic-Guide-to-Toe-Curling-Mind-Blowing-Infallible-Loving/