One more thing about that Mark Shea piece

The most telling line in that Mark Shea piece is this one:

The trick, of course, is to communicate this, not in such a way as to terrify scrupulous people or unnecessarily enrage licentious ones, but to get people to see what the Church is trying to guard: namely, the joy of mutually self-donating marital love, which is one of our great icons of and sacramental participations in the union of Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride the Church.

 By "this" Shea means the Church's teaching that masturbation is a grave sin. And he has two kinds of concerns about why people might not be receptive. One is that scrupulous people will be scared in the face of what is a very broadly defined and, for most, impossible to avoid sin. The second is that people who are "licentious" will become angry. Notice, however, that Shea is only concerned with the possibility that people might not be receptive to the message of the church because of something that is wrong with them.

I tell you this, no one will ever believe the Church is truly repentant about the horrid abuses carried out by her members and, much, much worse, covered up by her bishops, until this arrogance disappears.

Every Catholic, whether clergy or laity, inclined to make moral pronouncements on sexuality (and yes, this includes me) needs to stop and recognize that the church has lost virtually all its credibility in this area. It will take decades to re-earn any authority to teach in this area and yes, it has to be earned. Telling people who might be resistant to Church teaching on sexuality that there is something wrong with them is not the way to go about this.