
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 6, 1995                   TAG: 9501060085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BOOK SAYS CATHOLICS HAVE MORE FUN

STAND-UP COMICS will have to change the way they make fun of Catholics: A new study finds that Catholics are less sexually repressed, more sexually playful and have sex more often than Protestants.

You've read the books, seen the movies and heard the stand-up comics describe Catholic sexuality as a procession between the bedroom and the confessional.

Now hear the facts: Catholic sex is not an oxymoron, a prominent sociologist says in a new study.

Catholics have sex more often, approach sex more playfully and are more likely to enjoy sex than non-Catholics, concludes the Rev. Andrew Greeley in a new book, ``Sex: The Catholic Experience.'' The book reviews survey data from 1989 to 1991 on Americans' sexual behavior.

In fact, the data suggest those people looking to spend more time making love than falling asleep watching TV on the couch should consider Catholic spouses. In one survey of Protestants, more than 60 percent who were married to Catholics reported having sex once a week or more. In comparison, 54 percent of Protestants married to Protestants and 40 percent of Protestants with Jewish spouses reported having sex with the same frequency.

Catholics ``may well be repressed,'' Greeley said in an interview. ``The only point in my book is that they are less repressed than others.''

Greeley, a Catholic priest and senior director of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, said the findings will burst a few bubbles. Both those people who desperately want to believe Catholics suffer from terrible sexual inhibitions and church officials who continue to warn even married couples of the dangers of unbridled lust will be offended by the results, Greeley said.

But findings from representative surveys of more than 4,400 people from 1989 to 1991 collected by the National Opinion Research Center and his own research into more than 1,300 cases for a study on American marriage in the early '90s portray a Catholic flock that is more sexually liberated than other groups.

by CNB