"Western society seems obsessed with sex." "We never stop talking about it." "And this sexual chatter sets the West apart." "Every culture in the world has its own hang-ups about sex, but most don't want it to be a topic of conversation." "That would be rude." "I think there's a reason why us Westerners talk so much about sex." "It stems from the religion which, over centuries, slowly took over the West" " Christianity." "For nearly 2,000 years, Christian thinkers have worried away at sex, trying to lay down the law on what's right and what's wrong." "And this endless debate has turned sex into a Western obsession." "The trouble is that Western Christianity has never been able to decide once and for all what to say about sex." "Churches tear themselves apart about contraception, homosexuality, the role of women and revelations of clerical child abuse." "In 2013, at the height of a series of Catholic sex scandals," "Pope Benedict shocked the world by becoming the first Pope since the 15th century to resign." "While throughout the world, Anglican Churches are locked in trench warfare over women bishops and acceptance of gay marriage." "All this at a time when many of us see Christianity squabbling about sex as irrelevant." "Yet, like it or not, the Western world is still steeped in Christian sexual attitudes." "The West's problem with sex goes back to the first centuries of Christianity, when early Christians turned sex from a biological necessity into a vice - from a pleasure into a sin." "We've been struggling with the fallout ever since." "According to the Gospels," "Jesus Christ had very little to say about sex." "He insisted on monogamy in marriage and he decreed that there should be no divorce." "But beyond this, Jesus said virtually nothing." "One story more than any other sums up his attitude towards sex." "Jesus was teaching over there, in the Jerusalem Temple, where the Dome of the Rock now stands, when a group of men dragged in a woman accused of adultery." "They asked Jesus whether they should stone her to death, which was the ancient Jewish penalty for adultery." "But all Jesus said was," ""He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone."" "And when they had all shuffled off looking sheepish, all he said to her was to go off and sin no more." "It's a story of forgiveness and mercy." "Jesus was very hot on forgiveness and mercy." "So how did the Christian Church turn Jesus' few quiet words about sex into a noisy and often ill-tempered argument stretching over centuries?" "To answer this, we need to explore the world into which Christianity was born." "Jesus was Jewish and Christianity began as a sect within Judaism." "Jewish history was a story of conquest, humiliation and exile." "The Romans were the latest power to invade and colonise the Jewish heartland." "But Jews jealously preserved their religion and customs." "So what did Jesus' people have to say about sex?" "The answer is, rather a lot." "Central to Jewish attitudes to sex was a concern for the physical survival of the children of Israel." "For so much of their history they had been threatened with disaster and destruction and reproduction of the people became a sacred duty." "God told the Jews, "Be fruitful and multiply."" "Judaism placed a high value on sex as long as it led to the birth of children - a connection that Christianity would come to place at the heart of its teachings." "Procreation was the main object of Jewish marriage." "Every man and woman had a duty to get married, including priests and rabbis." "You might say that God took a dim view of anyone who stayed single." "But Jews also felt that sex was something to be enjoyed." "The result was a healthy, positive view of sex, which encouraged a warm family life, home and children." "But that was only one half of the picture." "Like most ancient societies, this was a male-centered culture." "Legally, a husband possessed his wife." "Her job was to serve him and her place was in the home." "An ancient Jewish prayer prescribes this thanksgiving for men." ""Blessed be thou, Lord God," ""who has not made me a gentile, a woman or an ignoramus."" "After all, it was Eve in the Garden of Eden who had eaten first from the Tree of Knowledge." "Adam just tagged along with the idea." "That planted the notion that women were nothing but trouble if you listened to their advice." "As in many male-dominated societies, Jews practised polygamy." "In the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament, most Jewish patriarchs had many wives." "King Solomon, the wisest of men, was said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines." "By Jesus' time, not many Jews were polygamists." "After all, it was expensive to keep more than one wife." "But polygamy did survive in the Jewish world long after Biblical times and it wasn't finally outlawed until he 11th century." "It's not surprising that if Judaism emphasised marriage and having children in marriage, there wasn't much room for what you might call alternative lifestyles." "Celibacy and adultery were both out." "And there was no question of homosexuality." "The Hebrew Bible condemns it outright, but it doesn't bother discussing lesbians." "It's only men who matter, of course." "Let's see what it says in the Books Of The Law in the Old Testament." "Leviticus says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind," ""as with womankind:" "It is abomination."" "Well, game, set and match, you might say." "That's what Christian moral watchdogs did say for centuries." "But let's read on a bit." "You'll find that equal abominations include trimming your beard, getting a tattoo and mixing fabrics in clothing." "Watch out barbers, tattoo artists and anyone who wears clothing." "So Jewish attitudes to sex were a mixed bag." "Sex in marriage was wonderful, anything else an abomination." "The early Christians would pick and choose what they decided were abominations but when they thought about sex, they heard other, more powerful voices, from completely outside the Jewish world." "The world into which Christianity was born was also deeply influenced by the ancient Greeks." "The Greeks had conquered lands stretching right through the Middle East, creating a vast empire." "By the time of Jesus' birth, these lands were under the control of the Romans, who were rapidly expanding across Europe and the Middle East." "But Greek culture didn't disappear." "The Greek way of life still dominated the Middle East - in every marketplace, on every street corner, you would hear the chatter of bad Greek." "The Romans deeply admired the Greeks and adopted many of their customs, including their attitudes towards sex." "One strand of the Greek sexual tradition affirmed sexuality and celebrated sexual pleasure and the world of the senses." "The Greeks celebrated physical beauty, stressing the importance of lovely bodies, especially lovely male bodies." "Contestants in the Olympic Games competed naked." "Likewise, when you went to the gym, the one thing you didn't need was a gym kit." "The Greeks didn't just celebrate the male body, they celebrated the penis." "It held the power of reproduction but much more - it was a symbol of good luck." "You'd find phalluses portrayed everywhere - on houses, gates, clothing, ornaments, household implements." "They warded off the evil eye." "Just like ancient Jewish society, Greek society was dominated by men." "Ancient Greeks kept their women indoors." "Wives had no more rights than slaves." "Their sole sexual purpose was to bear children, preferably boys." "But not all women were wives." "Men had other needs too." "Around 340 BC the Athenian statesman Demosthenes said," ""We have courtesans for pleasure," ""prostitutes to service our daily needs" ""and wives to bear us legitimate children and to look after the housekeeping."" "All women were there to serve men, one way or another." "Sex between men was also commonplace." "But the ancient Greek conception of homosexuality was very different from ours." "The Greeks encouraged relationships between a young man and an older role model." "It was an important part of becoming a citizen." "The older man was expected to teach the younger man how to play his part in society and much else." "These relationships had a definite educational purpose but it's clear from pictures like this on Greek pottery that they were also very often sexual." "There were strict social rules for these sexual relations." "The older man must be active and the younger man must be passive." "The younger man must be aged between the first onset of puberty and the first growth of beard." "Any younger and it was very bad form." "Any older and the pair began to look suspiciously like full-time homosexuals." "The Romans enthusiastically adopted many of these Greek sexual customs, including homosexuality." "Wealthy Roman men took sexual advantage of the slave system that underpinned Roman society, and prostitution, both male and female, straight and gay, was widespread." "But Rome was never quite the den of decadence and orgies that has become a disapproving Christian cliche." "Roman society officially preferred self-control and public decorum over wanton self-indulgence." "You might say that the Greeks and Romans taught that to." "Christianity, not the other way around." "Because Christians became fascinated by another strand in Greek thought about sex." "This was an austere denial of the flesh." "It had a lasting effect on Christianity and on centuries of Western society." "The anti-sex school of thought began to spread through Greek society in the fourth century BC when the philosopher Plato taught that there was a radical division between body and soul." "He insisted that the world of the flesh was false, an illusion." "Only the world of the spirit mattered." "Plato told a story to make his point - the Allegory Of The Cave." "Plato asks us to imagine prisoners who spend all their lives chained up in a cave, facing a blank wall." "Behind them a fire burns brightly." "People move in procession in front of the fire but behind the prisoners." "The shadows of the procession fall on the wall." "The prisoners watch the shadows." "That's the only reality these poor wretches have, just shadows." "The point is that what humankind thinks is reality - the material world - is nothing compared with the world of the spirit." "Greek philosophers increasingly saw the human race as spirits imprisoned in fleshly bodies until released by death." "They regarded all things associated with the flesh as inferior, worthless and that included all forms of sex." "Plato's division between body and soul, flesh and spirit, set a pattern for centuries in the classical world but, more than that, it became a basic instinct in Christianity." "One of Plato's pupils, Aristotle, made an equally fateful contribution to Greek discussion of sex and would be just as influential on Christian thinking." "Aristotle talked a lot about nature." "He defined natural and unnatural sexual practices." "He believed that the most important factor in conceiving a child was male seed." "He said it contained the entire unborn child in embryo." "A woman's contribution was simply to act as an incubator for male seed." "That made male semen very precious indeed." "A man producing semen in any other context was a murderer." "Masturbation was a crime against nature, let alone homosexuality." "All unnatural." "Nature is a Greek idea but it has resounded through Christianity." "All these ideas about sex were deeply ingrained in the world into which Jesus was born." "As he grew up, here in Galilee," "Jesus was surrounded by Greek, Roman and Jewish culture." "So he would have been well aware of the contradictory attitudes towards sex that were swirling around the Middle East 2,000 years ago." "But Jesus went his own way." "Jesus was a social radical." "He ignored the conventions of his time." "His teaching on sex was no different." "His insistence on monogamy and no divorce went against tradition." "It rejected the Jewish acceptance of polygamy and defied the practice of easy divorce which ran right through Jewish, Greek and Roman society." "This strict prohibition would form the basis of Christianity's later rigorous attitude towards divorce." "Jesus was also radical in the way he treated women." "Women figure in his whirlwind public ministry in a revolutionary fashion." "Jesus attracted a number of female disciples, many of them on the social and sexual margins - poor, outcast, widowed, adulterous, reformed prostitutes." "Women were so important to the Jesus story that the Gospels make them the first witnesses to the resurrection." "But Jesus said nothing about homosexuality and very little about celibacy, two topics which the Christian Church was later to invest with so much importance." "In fact, Jesus is not at all representative of what was destined to become a sexually repressive religion." "So when, and why, did Christianity begin to worry so much about sex?" "You can see the shift in the very first generations of Christians." "In particular, the apostle Paul, the man who within a few years of Jesus' death spread the Christian word far and wide, taking it beyond Judaism." "Paul had a foot in two worlds - he was a Jew and was also a Roman citizen." "When Christians spread from Jerusalem proclaiming their new faith, Paul was among their fiercest persecutors." "But only a few years after Jesus died on the cross, the persecutor was transformed - the original conversion on the road to Damascus." "Paul turned from one extreme to the other, from Christian-baiter to full-throttle Evangelist, who travelled the Mediterranean proclaiming his new message." "Paul toured new Christian communities, from Syria in the East to Rome in the West." "He came here to Corinth in Greece." "This was a major trading city, notorious for sexual excess." "The new Christian community here soon wrote to Paul asking him to clarify Christian teaching on sex and marriage." "His replies, Letters To The Corinthians, survive in the New Testament." "When you read these letters, understand what they are." "They are one man's response to specific questions arising from a specific place, Corinth - city of sin, and in a specific time - early Christians believing that Christ's second coming was at hand and that the end of the world was just around the corner." "They are not the definitive pronouncements on sex and marriage that Christians have taken them to be ever since." "Paul is torn about marriage." "If the world is about to end, which is what he believed, what's the point of getting married?" "Since time is short, Paul preferred celibacy, writing that it is good for a man not to touch a woman." "Paul saw marriage as a concession to human frailty, to save those who couldn't control themselves from the sin of fornication." ""It is better to marry than to burn," he said." "Yet as a good Jewish boy, Paul had been taught that marriage was good." "He reminded married couples that they had sexual responsibility to one another." ""The wife hath not power of her own body but the husband," ""and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body," ""but the wife." ""Defraud ye not one the other."" "Now, I find that very striking." "He's making husband and wife equals." "It's a message that Christianity has been very bad at hearing over the centuries." "So Paul looked two ways - sex-denying Greek philosophy and procreation-loving Judaism." "Paul's attitude towards women was also contradictory." "On the one hand, women were clearly very active in the infant Christian Church and Paul praises a number of female deacons and Church workers." "He even sends greetings to a woman in Rome called Junia whom he names as an apostle, just like himself." "But Paul also says this to the Corinthians." ""Let your women keep silence in the churches," ""for it is not permitted unto them to speak."" "Now, you'd expect these attitudes in the male-dominated ancient world, but they directly contradict what Paul says elsewhere." "And I'd like to have seen them telling the Apostle Junia to keep silent in the church." "Frankly, these words are a puzzle." "Not a puzzle which has troubled countless Church leaders over the centuries - they've just gone ahead and denied women leadership roles in church." "Many still do." "On other issues, Paul sounds far more clear-cut." "He denounces both male and female homosexuality." "In another letter to Christians in Rome, Paul wrote this." ""For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their" ""women did change the natural use into that which is against nature." ""And likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman," ""burned in their lust one toward another."" "Now, these words are virtually all the New Testament has to say about same-sex sexual relations." "Some 40 words out of nearly 200,000." "They are the basis of centuries of Christian anti-homosexual teaching." "If I had a fiver for every time I've heard them mindlessly used as a put-down, I'd be a rich man." "Christianity's long argument about sex had begun." "Paul's sexual teachings spread around the Mediterranean." "Port towns like this at Caesarea, now in Israel, were the sort of places where small communities of early Christians gathered." "The Roman authorities saw Christians as secretive, antisocial and subversive, which is why they sometimes persecuted them." "They thought that Christians ate and drank the body and blood of Christ." "They condemned Christianity as a religion of lust, which indulged in orgies and incest." "They couldn't have been more wrong." "The early Christians didn't adopt Paul's positive teachings about sex." "Instead, they increasingly listened to his praise of celibacy." "They were encouraged in this by the background noise of Greek culture, which increasingly celebrated austerity and elevated the soul above the flesh." "But there was also a new influence at work on Christian thinking - the celibate lifestyle of monks and nuns, which first appeared in the Christian world in the second century." "If you read the New Testament with a fresh eye, you'll notice something missing." "There's no mention of monasteries, monks or nuns anywhere." "Nothing like that in the Caesarea that the Christians first knew, and yet the monastic life has been crucial for later Christian history." "This is a bit of a surprise, a whole chunk of the Christian life missing from the Bible." "In fact, it came from much further east." "The Syrians introduced the monastic life to the West." "They were the great traders of the ancient world." "When they came home to the Roman Empire from trading in the East, they brought back more than just spices and silk." "They brought an idea - groups of holy people living a life of spiritual contemplation." "The Christian adoption of the monastic life was inspired by the example of Buddhist and Hindu monks." "Some Christians were so driven by their belief in self-denial that they decided to give up their worldly lives completely." "Some of them joined communities, others struck out for themselves - hermits." "They went as far as the deserts, they lived in constant prayer, they denied their bodies food, comfort and sexual pleasure in order to attain spiritual perfection." "The most famous of all the hermits was Anthony of Egypt." "In the late third century, Anthony gave away his land and wealth and set off for the Egyptian desert, where he spent most of his long life." "Anthony's story became one of the bestsellers of the ancient world, inspiring countless Christian men and women to give up their worldly lives and head off into the wilderness." "His biography became a how-to guide to holiness." "It's very practical." "It tells you you can't escape temptation by running away to the desert." "I think the devil's first effort to tempt Anthony is highly significant." "Satan appeared to him in the shape of a woman and imitated all her actions." "Anthony prayed and prayed and prayed the temptress away." "All trainee hermits, please take note." "Celibate holy men and women were becoming the celebrities of the Christian world." "Celibacy and chastity soon had more prestige than marriage and sex." "Some early Christians even began to rewrite their religion's own short history in order to emphasise the importance of virginity." "Here in Jerusalem, this church is said by some Christians to contain the tomb of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus." "By the second century," "Christians were intent on removing any taint of sex from Mary's story." "The Virgin Birth can hardly be described as an essential item of faith for the first Christians." "Only two Gospels out of four mention it - the others don't." "And even the two that do seem confused." "They set out at great length Joseph's family tree, which suggests that he was Jesus' biological father." "Otherwise, why would they bother?" "And Matthew's Gospel describes Jesus' brothers and sisters, which sits oddly beside a virgin birth." "100 years after the first four Gospels, new Christian writings, also claiming to be Gospels, began to emphasise Mary's virginity." "The Gospel Of James tells Mary's story from her birth through to the birth of Jesus." "It was never regarded as an official Gospel, but it was hugely popular in its day." "One of the main aims of the Gospel Of James is to emphasise that." "Mary didn't just start out a virgin - she stayed a virgin." "So in this copy of the key passage, a midwife examines Mary after the birth of Jesus and finds that she's still a virgin - after childbirth." "The midwife exclaims, "Behold, a virgin hath brought forth," ""which nature doth not allow."" "The Gospel has another new departure - the idea that God intervened in the conception of Mary herself." "It's the story of Mary's mother, Anna." "James tells us that Anna was infertile, and here it says an angel appeared to Anna, saying," ""Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer." ""You will conceive and bear a child" ""and the child will be famous throughout all the world."" "And immediately, Anna fell pregnant with Mary." "This is the origin of the Roman Catholic idea that." "Mary was conceived without sin, the Immaculate Conception." "Just take note, we're not dealing with the original four Gospels here." "But what about those references in the Gospels to Jesus' brothers and sisters?" "Christians now began to explain them away as Jesus' cousins, or Joseph's children by a previous marriage." "As a result, Christians came widely to accept." "Mary's perpetual virginity." "This means that the most important marriage in the Christian story doesn't involve sex at all." "There were plenty of intellectuals in the Christian world cheering on this great shift towards celibacy and against marriage." "In the early third century, two Christian theologians set the anti-sex agenda." "Clement of Alexandria emphasised that the only morally acceptable reason for sex was procreation." "He wrote, "To have sex for any purpose other than" ""to produce children is to violate nature."" "Now THAT is pure Aristotle." "But actions speak louder than words." "It's said that one slightly younger Alexandrian theologian, Origen, actually castrated himself in order to avoid sexual temptation." "Well, full marks for dedication, Origen." "The early Christians revered celibacy so much that they showed little interest in marriage." "After all, it was the gateway to a life of sex." "So the early Christian Church made no effort to develop a special service for weddings." "In fact, for the first 1,000 years of Christianity, most Christians would have looked at you in total bewilderment if you'd told them they should go to church to get married." "This may seem surprising, seeing how firmly modern churches have tried to keep a grip on the institution of marriage - most recently in their fight against gay marriage - when they don't actually own the institution of marriage" "in the first place." "Marriage remained what it had always been, a civil contract, and the Church kept its distance." "By the early fourth century, Christianity and its teachings about sex had spread across Europe." "It reached as far west as the coast of Spain and as far north as the Roman provinces of Britannia." "But it was still a scattered, minority religion, often facing persecution." "Suddenly, quite out of the blue, that changed." "In 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine opened the door to Christianity becoming a world religion." "Constantine was preparing for battle near here, the Milvian Bridge in Rome." "He was about to fight a rival emperor, Maxentius, for exclusive control of the empire." "Constantine later claimed that the Christian god had sent him a vision." "A cross appeared over the sun, and a voice told him to use the cross against his enemies." ""By this sign, conquer."" "Constantine had the Christian symbol marked on his soldiers' shields." "The result?" "A famous victory." "We can't be sure what Constantine saw that day, but we can be sure that he enthusiastically embraced Christianity." "The Christian god had delivered him the Roman Empire." "Constantine ended all persecution of Christians." "He poured money into the Church, building basilicas, granting the clergy privileges and promoting Christians to high office." "Constantine allied Christianity with imperial power." "The number of Christians rocketed." "The little sect from Jerusalem was on its way to dominating the Western world." "Within a century, it had become the state religion of the Roman Empire." "From now on, what Christianity said about sex today, the Western world said five minutes later." "By the late fourth century, Christian converts worshipped in new and expensive churches, like this one, Santa Costanza in Rome." "People of all ranks were turning to the Emperor's faith." "Christianity was now a religion of power, so the rich and mighty of Rome rushed to join it." "This presented the Roman clergy with a problem - how do you turn billionaires into pious Christians?" "Remember all that early Christian austerity and denial of the world?" "Not so easy when you're quaffing vintage wines and nibbling larks' tongues in aspic." "This was a job for a super theologian, and the man was on hand." "He was called Jerome, and he'd done his best to follow the example of the great hermit Anthony, and lived in the desert." "Like Anthony, Jerome was distracted by sexual temptation in the wilderness." "He reminisced that his mind was throbbing with desires, and the flames of lust." "To put it bluntly, Jerome couldn't hack it as a hermit, so he gave up and headed to the big city, where he landed a plum job as secretary to the Bishop of Rome and the Pope." "And he set out to frighten all those fashionable Roman converts out of their wits." "Jerome appointed himself the conscience of elite Roman society, and he preached a harsh message." "Sex is bad for you it may seriously endanger your salvation." "Jerome had many wealthy female admirers." "He taught them that sex was intrinsically defiling, that marriage was inferior to celibacy." "Jerome told his ladies that wives would reap a thirtyfold harvest of heavenly reward, but the widows who did not remarry would get a sixtyfold harvest." "Top of the score came virgins, with a hundredfold reward." "In fact, the best thing Jerome could find to say about marriage was it who produced children who might then embrace virginity." "But then Jerome was plunged into a tragic scandal in Roman high society." "One of Jerome's aristocratic spiritual proteges was a teenage girl called Blessila." "Under his instruction, she renounced her worldly life and surrendered herself to prayer and Bible study." "Plus a great deal of fasting." "There's only one word for this - anorexia, and Jerome encouraged it." "Guess what?" "Blessila sickened and died." "Jerome was saddened at her loss, but confident that he'd done the right thing." "He was so disgusted by sex and marriage that he advised a young and childless widow not to remarry." "Why, he asked, would she wish to imitate the dog in the Book of Proverbs and return to her own vomit?" "There were some Christian voices raised against this rush into austerity." "They openly challenged Jerome's claim that celibacy was superior to marriage." "First came the theologian named Helvidius." "He said that Mary had enjoyed a normal family life, rather than remaining a virgin." "Jerome publicly slapped down this outbreak of common sense." "In fact, he claimed that not only Mary but Joseph too had remained a lifelong virgin." "Then along came Jovinian." "He was a monk, but he praised marriage, and he insisted that all Christians, married or not, had an equal chance of getting to heaven." "Jerome trashed him too, calling him "the sleaziest of preachers"." "By crushing all opposition, Jerome reinforced the Christian belief that celibacy and chastity were superior to marriage and sex." "Jerome found a powerful ally in the greatest Christian thinker of his generation, the North African theologian Augustine." "Augustine reshaped Western Christianity, not least on sex." "He crystallised all the precious negative Christian thinking about sex, and came up with a startling conclusion." "We know a lot about Augustine's life, and it helps to explain what he said about sex." "He was a brilliant young man who behaved like other brilliant young men of his day." "For 15 years, he lived out of wedlock with a mistress." "They had a son, it felt good, but it became a problem once he decided to become a Christian." "He looked back ruefully on those youthful days, and his compromised prayer " ""Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."" "Augustine's sexual conflicts lay at the heart of his teaching about sex." "In 386, when Augustine was 31, his confused feelings about Christianity and sex came to a head." "One day, he was alone in a garden in Milan." "Augustine heard a child's voice repeatedly telling him to "take up and read,"" "and opening a Bible at random, his eyes fell on words of Saint Paul." ""Let us walk honestly as in the day," ""not in riot and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness." ""Not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ," ""and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."" "Augustine wrote that "In an instant," ""it was though the light of confidence" ""flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled."" "Now Augustine spoke bitterly against what he called" ""the bestial movements and lust in sex"." "He was alarmed by the sheer lack of control in sexual intercourse, the violent passions unleashed in orgasm." "Holiness demanded control." "Augustine turned to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden." "Augustine decided that God's punishment for their plucking the apple from the Tree of Knowledge was to curse." "Adam and his wife with a new sensation - sexual lust." "He believed that before they ate the apple, Adam and Eve had enjoyed full control of their genitals." "Their sexual intercourse had been calm, rational and dispassionate." "Now, God filled them with sexual passion." "In shame, they covered their suddenly unruly genitals." "But Augustine's conclusion was the real game-changer." "He drew a virtual equation between taking the apple and lust." "Adam listened to Eve and his lust." "Sex, that's how sin started - we all share in original sin, the sin originating from our first parents in Eden." "So, for Augustine, all sex is intrinsically evil and sinful." "Even sex within marriage for the purposes of procreation." "All children are born into sin." "As a result of Augustine's teaching that sex was a sin," "Western society began to see women as sexually unruly temptresses." "All ancient societies had seen women as inferior." "Judaism had cast Eve as "untrustworthy", leading Adam astray in the Garden of Eden." "But now Augustine taught that Eve had lured Adam into sexual passion." "Augustine's picture of female sexuality as wild and uncontrollable influenced Western attitudes to women for centuries, and we can't seem to shake off his notion that sex is shameful." "It explains our Western fixation with sex and our sense that sex is naughty." "Augustine's pessimistic attitude to sexuality is hard-wired into Western thinking." "Augustine's dark view of human nature was partly inspired by the fact he lived to see Roman power collapse in the West." "In 410, Germanic tribes attacked and took Rome, the first time the city had fallen in 800 years." "As the fifth century wore on, the Western Roman Empire dissolved into a series of barbarian kingdoms." "But when Roman government collapsed, Christianity did not." "Far from it." "Christian leaders stepped into the power vacuum." "The life of the Church offered guidance and a sense of stability in an uncertain world." "Clergy didn't just celebrate mass, they were among the rare few who were literate and educated." "The Christian Church became the only remaining safe deposit for knowledge and learning." "It dispersed its message among the masses, increasingly controlling their beliefs, their attitudes and actions." "Christian values became Western values." "Christian teaching was spread across Europe by monks." "They founded monasteries right to the edge of the Western world." "As far away as here, on the west coast of Ireland." "Monasteries may have started in the East, but now they were central to Western society." "Celibate monks ruled the roost." "Now men who'd chosen to renounce sex turned their attention to the sexual behaviour of everyone else." "These are the remains of a monastery established in the sixth century on the island of Illauntannig, off the Kerry coast." "In places like this, monks set to work making the laity fit for heaven, by cataloguing their sins and then showing them an escape route." "Monks produced books of sins and tariffs of forgiveness called penitentials." "The idea was that individuals would confess their sins to their priest, who would consult his penitential and give them the appropriate penance or punishment - usually days of fasting, prayer or sexual abstinence." "The priest would then absolve the penitent of their sins." "This was the origin of the confessional, the Western Church's very own way of shaping and controlling society." "The penitentials give a vivid sense of how the Church attempted to impose its teachings on the West." "They're filled with rules about sex." "For instance, they set down precisely when you can and can't do it." "The answer is - not very often." "No sex during the three great fasting times, that's 40 days before Christmas, Easter and Whitsun." "No sex on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights." "No sex during menstruation and no sex between conception and the birth of a child - and no sex AFTER the birth of a child." "33 days in the case of a boy, 66 in the case of a girl." "That leaves you with around only 100 days a year when you ARE allowed to have sex." "This penitential, written by the seventh-century Irish monk Cummean, gives precise punishments for sexual transgressions." "Adultery with a widow or a girl earned you two years' penance." "If a lay person fornicates with a farm animal, two years' penance if you're married, one year if you're not." "Those who befoul their lips - that's oral sex to you and me - four years, or if you kept on doing it, seven years." "Female self-pleasuring, one year, while woman with woman, three years." "It was all go in early medieval Ireland." "We simply don't know whether these rules accurately represent the sexual peccadilloes of Irish society, or whether they're the product of a feverish clerical imagination, but for the next 500 years, penitentials were the principal agents" "in transmitting a rigid Christian sexual morality across the West." "The Church was now invading people's sex lives as never before, telling them what they could and couldn't do between the sheets." "Christian leaders had turned sex from something about which." "Jesus had very little to say into an obsession." "It had taken almost 1,000 years, but centuries of Christian teaching had transformed the West's attitude to sex." "What had once been seen as a positive and natural part of life was now condemned as a sin, a source of shame and guilt." "And as Christianity approached its first millennium, the Church was about to extend its reach even further." "It would leave no sexual act or thought untouched." "In the next episode, the Church takes control of marriage, bishops runs brothels, and the Reformation splits the Church, resulting in new sexual freedoms, rumours of orgies and witch-hunts."