Sex and Sin

Disclaimer: This is not a book review

The first discovery made by Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God was sex. Sex is sin in Christianity except when the union takes place with the sole intention of procreation like a farmer sowing the seed. Saint Augustine said, Adam and Eve would have procreated by a calm, rational act of the will if they had continued to live in the Garden of Eden. The Catholic Church wants sex to be a rational act for it not to be a sin.

The body and its passions are evil. The soul is holy and belongs to God. One of the most poignant novels I’ve read about the body-soul conflict in Catholicism is Sarah Joseph’s Othappu. Originally written in Malayalam, it was translated into English with the same Malayalam title. The word ‘othappu’ doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English. Approximately, it means ‘scandal’ as in the Biblical verse: “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” In the Malayalam version, cause to stumble’ is ‘to give othappu’.

The protagonist of the novel Othappu, Margalitha is a young nun who feels drawn to a young priest, Father Roy Francis Karikkan. The attraction is a double sin. First of all, it is sexual. Secondly, Catholic nuns and priests should have no sexual desires; they are supposed to control them with asceticism.

Right from the first woman Eve, all women are evil simply because they lead men to sin. This is one of the beliefs of the Church. A preacher in Joseph’s novel says, “Sin originated in the world through a woman…. I have learnt that woman is more bitter than death. Her heart is a snare and her hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her. But the sinner will be trapped tragically.”

No woman in the preacher’s audience questions the view. Because the preacher is quoting the Bible [Ecclesiastes 7:26].

The body with its passions like lust is evil, according to the Church. You have to constantly strive to overcome those passions, overcome your body. Be a holy soul through austerity. Interestingly, the priests of the Church have ended up equating passion with sex; they eat gluttonously and enjoy luxurious lifestyles, the novel suggests more than once. But sex? No, never.

Karikkan, as Margalitha calls the young priest, is troubled by this body-soul conflict. He is drawn to Margalitha, a young and beautiful nun. But he knows that a woman’s heart is a snare and her hands are chains. He, a priest, a man of God, should save himself from the snare. The conflict drives him crazy. 

Illustration by Gemini AI

Both Karikkan and Margalitha abandon their religious vocation. But their society won’t accept them because that society is taught by their religion and its holy book that lust is a cardinal sin. The sinfulness becomes more severe when a priest and a nun are involved.

Margalitha has the courage to dare the society. Karikkan doesn’t. He abandons the pregnant Margalitha and goes to a faraway place to save his honour as well as soul by performing the penance of cleaning a churchyard daily with his bare palms. Karikkan is running away from himself, Margalitha tells him, because he is unable to rise above the indoctrination fed into his very being by his religion. His God had died on the cross. Karikkan is now nailing himself to a cross. Karikkan is rejecting one whole part of his being: his body.

Repression of a passion is never a solution. Karikkan could have remained a priest if he had learned to integrate his bodily impulses into his spirituality rather than viewing them as sinful. He could have transformed passion into compassion, which is what ‘successful’ religious people do. There are more priests who hit compromises and go on, like Father Daniel in the novel.

There are hints in Joseph’s novel that the Church should allow its priests to marry if they wish. Sexuality can be part of the sacred, why not? Karikkan is driven mad by his repression of a very integral part of his being: his intense sexuality. His final collapse is not just a personal fall: it symbolises a spiritual system that has lost harmony between body and soul.

Margalitha, on the other hand, refuses to suppress either. She embodies what Karikkan could not: a spirituality that embraces both eros and agape, the human and the divine.

Sex is not sin, in other words, in Sarah Joseph’s vision. Without the body, there is no life. You can’t just deny the body and be a whole person. Karikkan could have remained a priest only in a Church that recognised the holiness of the human body. The Catholic Church is not quite the place for him. Yet he clings to it because of his upbringing as well as deep guilt feelings over the suicide of his father. His father killed himself when the son left priesthood. A priest in the family, marked by poverty, is an honour. The father couldn’t live anymore with the dishonour of a son who left priesthood for lust, the most shameful evil. 

Clinging to a church to which his being doesn’t belong, Karikkan goes cranky. Abandoning that church, Margalitha redeems herself. If your religion doesn’t bring you internal harmony and peace, what use is it? Sex can be holy, Karikkan should realise, even by quitting his religion.  

PS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025