Both sadism and masochism have always featured prominently in (at least) European Catholicism. They say the last pope was partial to self-flagellation. Very holy, I'm sure.. Then there's the Opus Dei lot, with their barbed wire leggings (the cilice) and distinctly dodgy politics, especially the treatment of women. I don't have a problem with sexual perversion among consenting parties, but when it's supposedly done for religious reasons and the obvious sexual side (conscious or unconscious) is so righteously denied, it rather points to being something seriously wrong afoot, and the moral corruption it implies is, to me, quite disturbing.