One of the commonest complaints against Catholicism is that it is the religion of “no,” especially in regard to the sexual dimension of life.
As the rest of the culture is moving in a progressively more permissive direction, the Church seems to represent a crabbed, puritanical negativity toward sexuality.
Different kinds of ‘no’
I think it is important, first, to make a distinction between two modalities of “no.” On the one hand, there is “no” pure and simple — a denial, a negation of something good.