Sex and sensibility

By Michael Cartstens

Recent events in the life of the Church have put the spotlight firmly on the question of sex and sensibility.

This issue has been simmering for decades, if not centuries, until it exploded in the sex abuse scandals which continue to rock the Church. It raises some fundamental questions about the Christian understanding of human sexuality.

The first fundamental question is whether human sexuality should be feared or embraced?

In a document written by the late  Fr Daniel Rees and titled “Considering Your Call”, the English Benedictine Congregation in 1978 said: “From St Augustine’s time onwards the official teaching (of the Church) reflected a distrust of sexuality.” This negative attitude has pervaded western Christendom for many centuries. Paradoxically, secular humanism has developed a more positive approach in keeping with the Biblical tradition.

The publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae four decades ago sent shockwaves throughout Christendom, and effectively pitted much of the laity against official Catholic teaching. Today the issue of artificial contraception is almost a dead letter. The laity by and large now make up their own minds on the issue.

But the issue raised deeper questions: what is sexuality; what is its purpose? The religious philosopher Rollo May wrote in Love and Will: “Eros is the drives which impels man not only towards union with another person in sexual or other forms of love, but incites in man the yearning for knowledge and drives him passionately to seek union with the truth—God.”

Sigmund Freud has often been blamed for the lack of sexual morality of previous and present generations. But, as the English Benedictines noted, “since Freud it has been commonly recognised that human sexuality comprises both genitality and affectivity; that is, it included not only a genital-physiological but also an affectionate-social side… Their integration is a human and Christian task”. For those who take the creation of humankind and innate sexuality seriously there can be no thought of dualism in its various forms, even spiritual ones.

What happens when our understanding of our creation, our sexuality is flawed? Rollo May observes: When the “demon” (sexuality) is repressed it tends to erupt in some form… its denial is in effect a self-castration in love and self-nullification in will… and springs immediately to mind.

The popular notion that the Fall was sexual in nature is far from the truth. Rather, it was pride and arrogance. But what is the authentic tradition of Eastern and Western Christendom? The English Benedictines again: “The priestly writer in Genesis describes the creation of a bisexual humanity as the climax of God’s work. Man and woman form the human icon of God”. “And God saw that it was very good.” So unless we accept the intrinsic goodness of human sexuality (in spite of its misuse) we verge on pagan dualism, vestiges of which lurk deep in our subconscious.

Flowing from the creation of mankind is another fundamental question: do we truly believe that the Divine Logos, the creator of the cosmos and ultimately mankind, became fully, completely and wholly human? The answer to this is vitally important, especially in view of the prologue to St John’s gospel and the teaching of St Athanasius of Alexandria. The latter spent his life defending the doctrine of the Incarnation against the Arians and was the driving force in the theological debates at Nicea in 325.

We are thus faced with a profound mystery which either leaves us dumbfounded, or merely playing with cute nativity cribs and tinselly angels. The implications are startling: “The Word was made flesh, embracing the whole reality of what is to be man and ennobling every element in the human condition, including sexuality.” Do we truly believe in the full Incarnation and of Jesus the God-man, or is it tinged with Docetism? Our very redemption rests on the Incarnation and the possibility that we can become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

In October, Fr Geoffrey Farrow of Fresno in California announced to his parish that he would vote against Proposition 8, which sought to reverse legislation permitting same-sex civil marriage, and that he was himself a gay priest. His bishop immediately stripped him of his post, and (in a profoundly compassionate move) withdrew his salary and health benefits.

This dedicated and faithful priest was cast into “outer darkness”. As a recent editorial in The Southern Cross asked: “How can Catholics who defend their Church from the charges of homophobia continue to do so when the Vatican, in conflict with the Catechism, discriminates unjustly against homosexuals?”

The archbishop of San Francisco, and the Knights of Columbus, collaborating with Mormons, donated more than 21 million dollars to the campaign. Proposition 8 won in the referendum. The backlash was remarkable. There have been demonstrations outside Catholic churches and Mormon tabernacles.

In the meantime the Vatican continues to insist that same-sex orientation is an “inclination”, the latest example being the psychological screening of seminary candidates for signs of homosexuality (among other things). What would they have recommended in the cases of Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great, the emperor-general Hadrian, Leonardo da Vinci, Tchaikovsky or Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer?

Surely the Vatican bureaucrats must be aware by now that their ideas about the nature of homosexuality have been thoroughly debunked and discredited. Surely they must know that sexuality is a broad spectrum or continuum. Not an either/or?

Again, a fundamental question faces us. Let us revisit the English Benedictine Community and their document, for which the late Benedictine Cardinal Basil Hume wrote the foreword: “The process of [sexual] integration implies the incorporation of the positive characteristics of the opposite sex under the unambiguous sign of one’s own sexual identity…the acceptance of the degree of homosexuality or homosexuality in one’s personality. All normal, mature people are ‘bisexual’…of having an ability to relate to either sex.”

Do we accept the empirical evidence of the human sciences or a theological pseudo-psychology?

Michael Carstens has a teaching qualification in theology and history from the University of Oxford (DES). He lives in Pietermaritzburg.