There’s wisdom in Church’s words on sex

I WRITE to comment on Suzanne Harrington’s article, “The joyless sects”.

From a secular and purely scientific point of view there is definitely something to said about the views of Veronica Farrell (Letters, Sept 24) and the Catholic Church with regard to sex and marriage. I noticed recently in the secular press that a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, which was based on responses from nearly 4,000 women found that almost a third who lost their virginity as teens, divorced within five years, and almost half had divorced within 10. Another study in the Journal of Family Psychology last December, which was based on interviews with 2000 married people showed that people who delayed having sex ended up having better relationships.

Also, child and adolescent psychiatrist Martin O’Sullivan says research in the area of early sexual involvement is not ambiguous: “Early sexual involvement correlates with other precocious behaviours — use of drugs and alcohol, non-attendance at school which put the young person at risk of poorer outcomes in adult life, including a reduced capacity to form stable relationships.”