Q:
I
know that living with your girlfriend/boyfriend is a sin, but is
sleeping
over a sin if you have no intentions of bad thoughts?
-H.
A:
This
is one of those questions that makes me want to go home and take a nap.
(By myself, that is). Because it's tricky. And I hate tricky.
The safe, easy answer is to
say it's a sin if
a girlfriend/boyfriend sleeps over. So don't do it.
But because I have a
"minimum word" quota I must
fill to get paid...I'll elaborate:
Where a person actually
sleeps is not sinful.
(Though my bedroom is such a mess it probably borders on sin). The sin
is not related to where the actual sleeping is done. But it's the stuff
that might happen before the sleeping that the Church is more
concerned
with.
For instance, I once had a
girlfriend (please
stop laughing) who lived out of state. I went to visit her, and her
parents
were cool with me staying over at their house. My girlfriend and I
didn't
sleep in the same room; in fact, they wanted to build a separate wing
on
the house just to keep me away from everyone in the family. But by
sleeping
in the same building as my girlfriend, we hadn't committed sin.
If, however, we shared the
same room...and the
same bed? That's another story. And gets us into the area of at least
the occasion of sin. And an occasion of sin can, in fact, lead to sin.
But thankfully - with my snoring -
that's
not a sin I risk committing very often.
Remember: The Church isn't
there to set a bunch of rules down to makes our lives miserable. But
She, like any good Mother, is looking out for us.
