What are the views of the modern Catholic Church on sex for pleasure? Does it encourage people to abstain from sex until marriage? Is virginity of any value for the Catholic Church?

I’ll just let an actual Catholic take a swing at this.

Monday, February 5, 2018, Brad Miner (The Catholic Thing: The Apostolic Secession)

Catholics between the ages of 13 and 29 (and older) who believe in same-sex “marriage,” artificial contraception, pre-marital sex, and a “woman’s right to choose” are not going to reward the Church for kowtowing to their opinions, by trying to sweeten the message with a New, Newer, or Newest Evangelization, and for two reasons:

First, because these un-Catholic opinions are rooted in a rejection of the very idea of sin, and the Church cannot abandon belief in sin. If it did, there’d be nothing to believe in {my emphasis}, because there’d be no need for redemption.

Second, because to compromise on any one of these matters, beginning with Communion for Catholics remarried without annulment, is like playing the game of Jenga, in which players try to remove pieces from a tower of blocks without causing the edifice to collapse. The fun of the game is that it always collapses. This would not, however, be enjoyable in the Roman Catholic Church.

Got that? If the Catholic Church gives up on its core tenets, it ceases to have a rationale for its existence. Officially, the Church is always going to play hardball at the top of the hierarchy.

Virginity very neatly keeps those non-heterosexually married, non-straight, non-obedient people in line with the threat of sin. Without it, it’s simply just another choice amongst many.

If you’re like most social-justice leaning Catholics, however, you’ve probably already rejected the official party line.

Thank goodness I’m an atheist.