The deluge of advice concerning sex that greets freshers, much of it depressingly grim and notably humourless, and the discovery that many a College laundry room may lack an iron but never fails to have one or even two condom machines, prompts one to wonder whether we haven’t, somewhere along the line, lost the plot.

No one can or should deny that a healthy appreciation of our sexuality is essential to a balanced, integrated and flourishing life – essential, that is, to happiness – and an unhealthy view of sexuality has the opposite effect. But it surely doesn’t follow from this that you can’t be happy without having sex – and lots of it. That sex and happiness automatically belong together is nothing but wishful thinking, which would be risible if it wasn’t so damaging. Sadly, many people coming up to Cambridge fall victim to the prejudice that sex is proof of social success and a non-negotiable ‘must’ if you’re normal or, at least, acceptable among your peers. This failure to distinguish sexuality and sex reduces sex to nothing more than genital plumbing and cuts off the groin from the heart and both from the head.

Sexuality pervades every aspect of our lives, including the spiritual. It is an immensely powerful drive, a formidable force for life and love. But, misunderstood or badly managed, it can be the cause of unimaginable unhappiness.

There are many ways of misunderstanding both sexuality and sex, but two stand out. The first is prudery and prudishness, often attributed specifically to Catholics: on this view, sex is far too messy to be regarded as an important part of our lives, and certainly has nothing to do with the spiritual life. Admittedly, this has been the view of many religious sects in history, some of them Christian heresies, but it is a view that leads, at worst, to neurosis, hypocrisy and hardness of heart and, at best, to missed opportunities for human flourishing.

Whatever individual Christians may have thought and taught, Christianity as such does not deny the intrinsic goodness of our sexuality. Christian mystics have freely and famously used the language of erotic love and sexual metaphor to describe the communion with God to which Christians believe all human beings are called. And theologians of unquestioned stature have taught the goodness of our sexuality. St Thomas Aquinas, for instance, unambiguously asserts that it is, in itself, good (Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 23.1 ad 1) and that lack of due delight in our senses is a serious failing (ST 2a2ae 142.1). According to Aquinas, God has given us our senses so that we might delight in his creation.

If the first misunderstanding fails to register the importance of sexuality, the second makes of it an idol. Our age is undeniably genitally-fixated and the conflation of sexuality and having sex is one of the causes. The confusion is a failure of imagination that has led to thinly concealed boredom, instead of mutual delight and life-giving intimacy. The everything for nothing of the ‘one-night-stand’ leads to nothing for anybody. In an oddly paradoxical twist, permissiveness and prudishness arrive at the same impoverishment.

A flourishing and shared life of friendship and love depends on much more than our sleeping arrangements. One can have lots of sex and yet miss out entirely on love and friendship. And nor does having sex necessarily ease loneliness: indeed, empty physical intimacy can make it much worse. You’re never more alone than when you’re not alone in a loveless and empty show of false intimacy. And there’s no lonelier place than a loveless marital bed.

Our sexuality is intrinsic to our natures as human beings and it follows that sex can never be insignificant, no matter how casually we may treat it: it will always either build us up or pull us down; either enhance life or diminish it. In a committed, exclusive and permanent relationship, it can be life-giving in every sense, leading to lifelong trust and love. Conversely, casual or ‘recreational’ sex trivialises trust and alienates us from one another.

Popular culture, of course, protests that this is to accord too much importance to sex, which doesn’t or needn’t carry such significance. Sex, on this view, is no more psychologically significant than any other mutually satisfying pastime.

But anybody who holds this view must surely be struck by our growing awareness of the socially and personally destructive impact of sex misused. We’re more conscious than ever before of the tide of human suffering caused by sexual abuse of all kinds. And it’s not just violent, non-consensual sex that damages and destroys: casual, impersonal, uncommitted sex has equally damaging consequences. Sex never happens without some consequence, at the time or in due course.

Sex is safest (in the fullest sense and not just from an hygienic point of view) and therefore most positively significant, in the context of a permanent, exclusive and committed relationship, open to the possibility of new life, in which the free gift of shared intimacy is not inhibited by a desire to avoid the consequences of commitment in both biological and psychological terms.

By its very nature, sex is a unique bodily language expressing trust and mutual commitment through time. It is a gift of self in the most vulnerable of all human situations. Where these qualities are not present, there is inevitably a damaging dissonance between our deeds and our intentions. Sex in the absence of these conditions is a pretence, a charade, an empty and meaningless gesture, going nowhere and conveying nothing: “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame”.

A final point about the much-misunderstood and unfashionable virtue of chastity. Chastity doesn’t mean not having sex: the virtue of chastity is as much at home in marriage as anywhere else. Nor does chastity mean being a prude: being prudish offends against chastity as much as being prurient and promiscuous. In fact, chastity isn’t primarily concerned with sex at all. Chastity has to do with all our relationships, including our relationship with ourselves. It primarily concerns reverence and respect for ourselves and others.

To be chaste is to relate to others freely, respectfully and with integrity, without manipulating or invading their freedom to be themselves. It is to relate, in other words, within appropriate personal, emotional and physical boundaries: within the boundaries, that is, set by another person and the truths that inform and shape their lives. It is to treat other people as ends and never means, relating to them in themselves and for themselves. Of course, chastity is particularly important in the area of sex because, more easily than many of our other appetites, it can lead us to offend against another’s or our own good by crossing boundaries.

To fear and dislike sex is as much a negation of chastity as to abuse it for selfish gratification. Chastity protects and enhances the significance of our sexuality, challenging prudery as much as promiscuity. Instead of either escaping or exploiting our sexuality, we should rejoice in it and be grateful for our bodily natures, living our lives lustily but never lustfully.

Father Alban McCoy has been the Catholic Chaplain to the University since 1998. He lives at the chaplaincy, which is at Fisher House, next to the Cow pub. Before coming to Cambridge, he taught philosophy. His latest book is An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Christian Ethics.