As part of a magazine article I plan to make out of one of my posts, I pointed out: That it is “the pelvic issues,” more than any others, which corrode faith among Catholics today has become such a media commonplace that it is no longer the embarrassment to the bishops that it should be. It should therefore come as no surprise that the media resume harping on that theme as the Roman Synod on the Eucharist gets underway. After all, what else is there to talk about? The Eucharist? ZZZZZZZZZ...... Catholics only believe that it's the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ and that the liturgy wherein he is thus made present is the "font and summit" of the Christian life. What is that compared with sex?
No media attention has been given to what the Pope actually said in his homily for the opening Mass. I can't even find it at Zenit yet, though it will doubtless be there shortly. Here's what they're talking about instead: During the three-week synod, bishops are expected to discuss a range of controversial issues with the new Pope. Church attendance, divorce, celibacy and abortion rights are all expected to feature on the synod's agenda. OK, only three out of four of those issues are about sex, marriage, or procreation. I've got to credit the reporter, if not for her originality, at least for having a more-than-one-track mind. Other stories on the Synod that I've seen, though, don't bother mentioning any non-pelvic issue. They simply assume that, whatever the ostensible topic, it all comes down to the Church's attitude toward sex and directly related topics. I'm reminded of the Jewish joke about how civilization has, literally, declined: "Moses seemed to believe that life is all about what's in the head. Jesus taught and acted as though it's all about the heart. Marx thought it was all about the belly. And Freud thought it was all about the genitals." And that's pretty much where people stay focused. Of course we could go down further to reach the feet. But we won't, because feet aren't as interesting as genitalia—unless you're a foot fetishist, in which case it's mostly about the genitalia anyway.
This sort of preoccupation illustrates a paradox I've discussed before. The more people think of freedom as autonomy rather than as the healthy exercise of a faculty within the limits of the divine and natural law, the more enslaved to their passions they become and thus the less free they become. The less free they become, the more they insist that the Church respect their freedom by allowing lots of sex with few inconvenient consequences. Hence the demands to end the celibacy requirement for priests, for giving the Eucharist to the divorced-and-remarried who haven't bothered with the "hypocrisy" of annulment, for the distribution of condoms to teens and promiscuous adults, and of course for the rock-bottom option: legal abortion for those embarassing occasions when contraception fails.
The result is what John Paul the Great termed "the culture of death." We're not talking just about abortion, which kills millions of human beings each year. We're talking about the slow suicide of the West generally. The more sex is detached from marriage and procreation, the less life-giving it becomes—biologically and spiritually. Not only is the birth rate now below replacement level in all "developed" countries; people find it increasingly difficult to see sex in particular and life in general as having any purpose other than self-gratification. For the majority, that means physical self-gratification. Consequently, we are becoming fewer, richer, fatter, and incapable of countering the spiritual energy of militant Islam. Western humanity is becoming a maladapted species. If we don't change, we will die—and deservedly so.
The antidote is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. He gives himself to us, literally, in the Eucharist. Catholics at least should be able to appreciate that and follow the Synod accordingly.
As Catholics we know (or at least should know) that the answers to the questions and issues being raised by the media are found, as you poind out, in the Eucharist. With the Eucharist as the perfection of nuptiality, the Body of Christ, and the full revelation of Truth, I don't think that it is a necessarily bad think that these issues of human sexuality are being raised as the Roman Synod on the Eucharist is taking place. In fact, the association of these isuess with this event gives me great hope. All these issue being attacked by the media and questioned by many Catholics, such as female ordination, cloning, abortion, contraception, gay-marriages, fertility treatments, abuse scandals, AIDS, euthanasia, divorce etc. . . can all be answered and explained, and in fact can only be properly understood in looking to the revelation we find in the Eucharist. If we spent more time reflecting on the fundamental components of authentic love and how they are reflected to us in the Eucharist, we would be better able to face these other issues and our hearts and souls would be opened to a right understanding of these "hot topics." Without a contemplation of the nuptiality of the Eucharist it is very difficult to understand the reasoning behind the church's teachings relating to human life and to see what constitutes a perversion of our relationships with one another as human persons. To life a moral life in Christ we must first turn to Christ in the Eucharist and draw on the fulness of Truth we find in His Eucharistic presence.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to agree, but I need more clarity about your concept of the "nuptuality" of the Eucharist. Care to elaborate?
ReplyDeleteThe mystery of nuptiality rests on three points: oterness, self gift into communion, and the fruitfulness of communion. That mystery is perfectly expressed in the Eucharist as the Bdoy and Blood of Christ in relation to the Trinity. In the Eucharist Christ satisfies our hungering for a return to the nuptial union we had “in the beginning.” According to Pope John Paul II "Nuputiality manifests the holy reality of the donation of which the first pages of Genesis spekas." (Love and Responsibility) God knows that we long to enter into communion with Him, to enter into the nuptiality of the Trinity, and allows us to taste and see this nuptial union in the Eucharist. As a groom proposes nuptial union to His bride, so too does Christ propose to us, in the Eucharist, to enter into nuptial union with Him. As in authentic love we are enabled to truly perceive the meaning of the personhood of the other; if we approach the Eucharist with authentic love we see the Truth of Christ. So when I speak of nuptiality in the Eucharist I am referring first to the mystery of the relationship withing the Trinity (Just as in the Trinity the Son is generated by the Father's love but not without Christ's reception of the gift, the same structure is present, or should be present, in human marriage) and secondly to Christ's espousal to the Church. In looking to the life of Christ through His body in the Eucharist, within the context of the Theology of the Body, we are reunited with the meaning of the nuptial union which we rejected with the Fall and which has been redeemed for us in Christ. Ultimately, rediscovering the nuptial meaning of the body through marriage and in the Eucharist is in fact rediscovering the whole mission of Christ and the whole reality of creation and redemption.
ReplyDeleteThat is profound and true. But I'm afraid my initial concerns were more practical. Is the Pope going to discuss all that at the Synod? Would the mainstream media report it if he did?
ReplyDeleteAficionados of the theology of the body, on which I'm planning to give a catechetical series at my parish, can well appreciate what you're saying. Alas, such are a distinct minority even in the Church. "We" might get the connection with the Eucharist, but I don't think most Catholics do. Certainly the media won't.
Still, one good step at a time. ;-)
I think that often we don't give enough people credit when it comes to the Theology of the Body. I agree, sitting down and reading John Paul II's Theology of the Body is not realistic for most people, but that doesn't mean that they can't grasp the concepts. The fact that the majority of Catholic don't see the connection between the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our faith, and the Church's teachings on human relationships, sexuality, reproductive technology, etc... is not necessarily fault of their own. I think that we who do know the Theology of the Body have an obligation to share this gift with others. While there are people like Christopher West making an effort to do that, first of all, the JPII Institute people can't do it all on their own, and secondly, there are serious gaps in resources that need to be filled. If young people aren't hearing Theology of the Body from the Church, they're definitely not going to be hearing it in their families. It is accessible. It makes sense. It helps one understand the Church's teachings on so many issues not from a legalistic dogmatic approach but rather from a perspective which draws the reasoning behind the teachings together. If we want to see a renewal in Christian Moral Theology, and a new springtime of life in our society, we need to spread the word on the basic principles of the Theology of the Body. Young children need to be taught about their dignity as humans persons and their relationship to the Trinity. Rather than presenting human sexuality as a long list of "do nots" to adolescents, they need to see the beauty in human sexuality so that they can understand that the Church's teachings serve to preserve something which is magificient and sacred. If they aren't ever explained the reasoning behind the Church's teaching on contraception or waiting until one's married to have sex, then why wouuld they follow the teaching? They can handle it. Not only can they handle it, they need to hear it. People today don't give the youth enough credit. They know they live in a broken world and they're searching for Truth and healing. Then comes the middle aged adults who have been completely confused on many of the issues the Church is facing today because of bishops and priests who told them they could follow their own conscience and do according to their own will in the aftermath of Vatican II. While it is true that we have a moral obligation to follow our own conscience, that conscience must be properly informed, and that's the key element the clergy neglected to point out to the faithful. Anyways, there is much healing and restoration needed in that generation as well. Anyways, sorry this is turning into a bit of a rant, but it's just something I feel so passionate about I can't shut-up.
ReplyDeleteAs George Wiegel said in "Witness to Hope":
The Theology of the body is a "theological time bomb set to go off."
who me:
ReplyDeleteI don't think I said what you disagree with. I do think the problem is what dilexit says: "While it is true that we have a moral obligation to follow our own conscience, that conscience must be properly informed, and that's the key element the clergy neglected to point out to the faithful." The fault lies with the clergy.
dilexit:
I agree completely. As for your closing quotation, I urge you to look at my post on it.
Best,
Mike
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteMike
ReplyDeleteI am a bit shy, so please excuse my deleted comment. I am going to try again.
"The result is what John Paul the Great termed "the culture of death." We're not talking just about abortion, which kills millions of human beings each year. We're talking about the slow suicide of the West generally. The more sex is detached from marriage and procreation, the less life-giving it becomes—biologically and spiritually. Not only is the birth rate now below replacement level in all "developed" countries; people find it increasingly difficult to see sex in particular and life in general as having any purpose other than self-gratification."
I agree about this culture of death. I wrestle with my own death instinct daily. And I studied Freud and wrote about him. Our book on this subject is called The Sacred Gift of Life Orthodox Christianity and Bioethics. There is some debate on the start of life.
What do you think about emergency contraception?
I think I am spiritually decaying because of the effects of sex...death inducing sex...in a spiritually dead marriage. For sure my husband used me as often as he could to gratify himself and he still desires to do so from afar. He was an altar boy gone bad. I am caught in the clutches of the culture of destructive sex. Although I am celibate the spiritual effects are long lasting. We are talking over a decade of this behavior...The sacramentally invalid marriage didn't change a thing. Can we dig deeper about the connection between sex and death?
Regards
Olympiada
Sex is a good and beautiful thing. It is an incredible gift from God. Unfortunately, Satan sees where the greatest good exists, deforms the truth in those areas, and then uses it to achieve the greatest evil. This seems to be where your experiences are. It is tragic that something as sacred as human sexuality has been so defiled in your own experience that your logical conclusion is that it is associated with death and my prayers are with you.
ReplyDeleteOlympiada:
ReplyDeleteKristina has made a good point. I'd like to add to it after responding to your question.
I favor contraception as a precautionary measure for women in a life situation where they stand a good chance of being raped. I am thinking of wives whose husbands have shown themselves likely to abuse them in such a serious way, and of unmarried missionaries or aid workers in a violent culture. Contraception in such circumstances does not violate divine and natural law because rape by definition is involuntary on the victim's part and, therefore, there is no unitive dimension of sexual intercourse to be violated by contraception, as there is when the deed is consensual.
However, even such "emergency" contraception must not be abortifacient, such as by preventing implantation of the fertilized ovum. At that point we are dealing with homicide. That is also why the Church opposes embryonic stem-cell research.
Now to the matter of your view of sex and marriage.
Freud's association of eros and thanatos is, I believe, fairly accurate as a description of people in a state of original and/or actual sin. But that is actually a perversion of how God created us and meant sexuality to be. The complete mutual self-donation of the couple in a true, sacramental marriage is a kind of death—but a positive kind, in which two free persons make an unconditional gift of themselves and thus "die" to self in the manner of Christ and the Church. That is life-giving, both biologically and spiritually. Outside such a marriage, however, sex deals death to the soul because it is a form of mutual use—a reduction, sometimes quite subtle, of the person to an object, and thus a descent into the bestial (or even, on occasion, the demonic, as can happen with painful or otherwise degrading BDSM).
It seems to me that your sexual history, culminating in your marriage, has almost ruined sex for you because it was of the spiritually death-dealing sort. The fact that you have a beautiful daughter is a sign of how God brings good out of bad and is always giving us the chance to love as he wills—if we would but have it so. I'm sure you know that, but it doesn't lessen the pain of being in a marriage that ironically illustrated and intensified, by deception of form, what's bad about fornication.
As for myself, I'm twice divorced-and-annulled. Sex was not the primary problem in either of my marriages and wasn't a problem at all in my second. In my first, I was too immature to make a true gift of myself as one free adult to another. In my second marriage, I was too depressed about the failure of my first, and the career consequences thereof, to make such a gift. I have learned some hard lessons, even though I haven't had to learn them in the ways you have. We all have our crosses to carry; but if we let the Lord carry us at the same time, they lead to resurrection.
Best,
Mike
Dil,
ReplyDeleteWhat about the association of orgasm with death, you know the little death. Or what about T.S. Eliot's "a lifetime's death in love". What if he is talking about the sexual aspect of the marriage being the death in love? He was Anglo-Catholic you know.
You know to me, it is death for junior college students to engage in fornication. It is death for unbenefited employees to marry. It is death for a woman to marry a man as opposed to a man marry a woman. It is death for a man to defile a woman after baptism and be enabled by a whole 'Christian' community. All these factors go into 'death' sex. It is death for a husband to use his wife's body to 'get going in the morning'. Or to relieve his back pain.
Did you know there are Protestant books such as The Power of a Praying Wife that encourage the woman to let the man have sex with her every day. Or Dr. Laura? That encourage that a man needs to have sex with his wife every day to be a man.
How is the man going to pay for food, clothing and shelter for all these children? My ex has 15 siblings and the marriage of his mother and father ended in divorce.
No I do not agree with this procreation position.
Regards
Mike
ReplyDeleteI prayed for my daughter. She was a planned pregnancy.
Do you know my whole 'Christian' community enabled my sexual abuse from my boyfriend and then husband? Very ugly. My best man sees racism in it and so do I. Very ugly. I was worthless. Offered over as a sacrificial lamb, a reparation. What makes it worse is my ex was an altar boy! An altar boy! And my mom, she was and is a lapsed Catholic! And she prefers my ex to me at times. Very ugly ugly stuff.
That is why I asked you what happened in the Catholic church in Oakland in 1960 whatever to make my mom lapse? Or in Southcentral LA in the 80's to make my ex lapse?
Bad religion!
You see the evil? Yes, truly demonic. And the priest that married us? A Catholic convert...
You see what happens when the Catholic religion goes bad? Exorcist is right!
Regards
Oly
"Contraception in such circumstances does not violate divine and natural law because rape by definition is involuntary on the victim's part and, therefore, there is no unitive dimension of sexual intercourse to be violated by contraception, as there is when the deed is consensual."
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to disagree on this one.
Humanae Vitae makes it clar that "there must be a rejection of all acts that attempt to impede procreation, both those chosen as means to an end and those chosen as ends. This includes acts that precede intercourse, acts that accompany intercourse, and acts that are directed to the natural consequences of intercourse. Nor is it possible to justify deliberately depriving conjugal acts of their fertility by claiming that one is choosing the lesser evil." (article 14.)
This seems fairly explicit to me that under no circumstances is the use of contraception valid.
This being said, under no circumstances should a woman be used as a mere means to an end (whether it be procreation or sexual gratification or any other reasoning).
Abuse is NEVER justified and the Church has never taught that a woman must remain in an abusive situation. Although it takes great courage the only way a woman can see her dignity restored is to remove herself from the abusive situation.
I'm truly sorry for what you have gone through and I am sorry that you have been a victim to such perversions. My heart breaks for you.
I am keeping you in my prayers.
Well Dil you should know it was an ex-Catholic convert priest that not only sanctioned by abuse but added to it with his verbage. He basically taught me I was worthless outside being a wife to an addict and a mother to his child. Surprise. Again, I would caution your high and lofty ideals. They make work for you and yours but not for me and mine. We are down here on the ground smashed to pieces. We are going to have some kind of middle ground, you and I.
ReplyDeleteBTW I posted something for you on my blog regarding, He On Masculine Psyschology.
Mike is quite generous to allow us to discuss on his blog isn't he. I am not used to this.
Regards
Oly
I am so sorry to hear the abuse you have been exposed to in the Church. I do not doubt that you have suffered greatly under the influence and words of this priest as well as under your husband. You have every right to, and perhaps should, bring this scenario to the attention of the bishop of the diocese if you think this priest is at risk of carrying out the same behaviour in relation to other women. There have, and continue to be, horrible crimes against the dignity of the human person both inside and outside of the Church. Our comfort lies in that these are the behaviours of individuals and not the Church. Like any other Church, the Catholic Church is full of sinners. One of the most encouraging passages in the mass for me is when the priest speaks these words "Look not on our sins but on the Faith of our Fathers." The Tradition of the Church has been guarded, protected and maintained throughout the centuries, despite the crimes which have taken place within the Church. This is a source of great hope.
ReplyDeleteI also understand that you are facing very real circumstances which I have not lived through myself. I do not suppose to speak for you and your experiences. I am simply seeking to provide you with insight into what the Catholic Church teaches and what my conscience tells me is Truth. I know you're not Catholic, and quite frankly, you might not even care what the Catholic Church teaches, but I'm just trying to give you insight into my understanding. Furthermore, I think when it comes to the Theology of the Body it speaks Truth into the lives of Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, etc... alike, since it speaks of the nature of the human person.
Perhaps it comes across as 'idealism' but that is because it is an ideal, but it is an ideal we are capable of achieving.
While we can discuss and I can share what I am confident is truth with you, I think it may be wise for you to seek some spiritual direction on these matters from an Orthodox priest you trust since we are not discussing a theoretical scenario but a very real and painful wound.
Yeah, you're right, Mike is being very kind to allow us to discuss this here.
Dil
ReplyDeleteMy priest does not like conflict and my bishop knows of the situation. I just thought you might like some reality to go with your idealism. You know a little salt. Forgive me, I was misguided. This is not the place to discuss. I need to discuss amongst my own.
Regards
Oly
Thanks for the consideration. I do agree. The more human experience and the wider variety of human experiences I can see, the better I will be able to see how the things I believe regarding the Theology of the Body relate to "real life."
ReplyDeleteWhile my own experience is very different from yours, God has given me my fair dose of salt on this issue. More salt is always welcome though.