Instead
of being an expression of self-giving love, human sexuality is often reduced to
the mere experience of various kinds of enjoyment.
Human sexuality: God’s plans vs. a modern alternative
by
Fr. Michael Callea, M.I.C.
Jesus has brought Good News into the world. This good news
is all-encompassing: It is good news for all creation and for every human
person. It pertains to man in his entirety as a physical, emotional,
psychological, spiritual and social being. And it pertains to man as a sexual
being. Jesus has revealed God’s plan for human sexuality, the plan God intended
from “the beginning.” In the midst of a world plagued by sexual chaos, the
Church continues to make known this revealed plan. She encourages everyone — especially
those who have experienced firsthand the viciousness of the false sexual gospel
of this world — to experience the goodness of the good news brought by Christ.
What is the plan of God for human sexuality? To answer this
question it is best to start at the beginning: Prior to all things is God.
Nothing exists outside of God so man and his sexuality can only be understood
“in God,” that is, within the context of God himself, of who God is. God is
love He has made man in his image so man is called to love. Precisely how man
is to love is clarified by further reflection on what it means to be made in
the image of God.
Being
made in God’ s image means that man has an intellect and a will — the ability
to know and the ability to freely choose. These faculties in man are the basis
for his ability to love: In recognizing what is truly good, he is able to
choose it for himself or for another. Roughly speaking, the sensible appetite
is that dimension of man’s soul which presents what is “pleasing,” what is
apparently good, to his intellect. Man uses his reason to determine whether
what is presented is truly good and if he judges it to be so he uses his will
to pursue it. According to this ideal — God’s original plan for man — the
powers of man’s intellect govern his appetites and, in virtue of this, man
enjoys a harmony within himself, a certain self-possession. Since man cannot
give what is not under his control, this self-possession, giving man full
control over himself, is what makes possible man’s ability to give himself.
Thus, being made in the image of God also means, as the Catechism of the
Catholic Church teaches, that “[man] is capable of self-knowledge, of
self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with
other persons” (357). Being fully self-possessed, the ideal man is able to give
himself in his totality to God and to others.
In the first creation account in the book of Genesis it is
written, “God created man in his image . . . male and female he created them”
(1:27) . This differentiation of human beings as male and female in the very
creation of man reveals something about man and the meaning of his life: Even
though man is complete in himself, he is not made for himself alone but for God
and for others. Furthermore, the complementarity of
the man and the woman of Genesis reveals that they are for one another in a
special way. (A sign of this complementarity is even
manifested by the physiological compatibility of the man and the woman.) Together they form a union of two distinct
persons, fully equal in dignity, each contributing his or her own unique
contribution to the shared vocation to love. Just as man’s vocation to love
reflects God himself who is Love, so too this communion of man and woman
reflects God who is himself a communion of (divine) persons: God is community.
Hence, man, made in God’s image is called to community. While some,
impelled by a special grace, give themselves to God alone through vowed
virginity or celibacy, the community to which most people are called is that of
marital union. Thus, God’s plan for human sexuality can only be understood
within the context of God’s plan for married (conjugal) love.
Regarding this love, the Catechism of the Catholic Church
teaches the following:
Conjugal
love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter —
appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration
of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that,
beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands
indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to
fertility (1643).
Thus, the Catechism points out that conjugal love gives rise
to a personal unity characterized by permanent commitment, fidelity, and
openness to new life. Because Christian marriage is a sacrament, a
participation in the life of Christ, these “normal characteristics of all
natural conjugal love” are given “a new significance which not only purifies
and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the
expression of specifically Christian values” (CCC 1643) . In other words,
through the sacrament, the natural reality becomes a supernatural one.
The three characteristics of marital love mentioned above indicate
that marriage is ordered to the good of the spouses and the propagation of
children (who are themselves a tremendous good of the spouses) The community to
which man and woman have been called, the marital union, is then the means to
the establishment of a still greater communion of persons: the family. It is in
the context of God’s plan for the family that his plan for human sexuality is
further elucidated: The family is called to be a domestic church. While its
ultimate goal is the salvation of its members, by its life and works it is to
build up the
Human sexuality has a role to play in this plan. God is
Life. Therefore the man/woman unity created in his image is called to be
life-giving. Having and forming children to the glory of God is the particular
way married couples contribute to the Church’s mission of salvation and praise.
Additionally, in Gaudium et spes,
it is stated that the sexual act in
marriage is good and holy because it can foster the self-giving which the act
signifies and it can also enrich the spouses in joy and gratitude (49). The
self-giving signified by the marital act is total self-giving. The necessity of
permanent commitment and faithfulness arises out of both the needs of the
offspring and this total self-giving:
By its very nature conjugal love requires the inviolable
fidelity of the spouses. This is the consequence of the gift of themselves
which they make to each other. Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an
arrangement “until further notice.” The “intimate union of marriage, as a
mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demand total
fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between them” (CCC
1646).
The expression of human sexuality within marriage, then,
testifies to the unitive and procreative ends of
marriage. Attentiveness to these ends manifests the generosity of the spouses. It is this generosity with its concomitant
indissolubility, faithfulness, and life-giving potential which is a sign of
God’s own union with his covenant family. All Christian family life,
faithfully lived, bears witness to this mystical but real union of God and man.
As already mentioned, the self-giving signified by the
marital act is a total giving of self. Yet genuine self-giving without chastity
is impossible. This is why chastity is necessary even within marriage. Sex in
the Catholic tradition has always taught that the union of man and woman in
marriage is potentially holy. At the same time, all people married and
unmarried have to learn chastity to have freedom of self-possession and not be
controlled by an unrestrained and impulsive sexual desire unworthy of man. In
an authentic marital act, some self-mastery is given up, but it is also meant
to be shaped by high motives immediate to the act as well as by ultimate
motives of religion and charity. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts
it:
Chastity
means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner
unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality,
in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed,
becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of
one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a
woman. The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person
and the integrality of the gift (2337).
Thus, in the ideal order of things, total self-giving presupposes total self-possession.
Unfortunately, at the very beginning of his history, man
abused the freedom he had received and, contrary to his own good, chose to
disobey God and the design of God for creation and for man himself. As a consequence of the sin of mankind’s
first parents human beings now find themselves living in a new “fallen”
condition: “The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original
justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over
the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions,
their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (CCC 400)
Having
fallen into sin, man, who was created to control his passions, is now often
dominated by them. In regard to his sexual appetite, he must battle with lust:
“Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure.
Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its
procreative and unitive purposes” (CCC
2351)
Examples of disordered enjoyment of sexual pleasure abound.
Fornication is disordered because, lacking an explicitly permanent commitment,
it offends against the meaningfulness of the sexual act as a sign of total
self-giving. Because children have a right to be raised in a family with two
mutually committed parents, it also offends against the good of fertility by
ignoring the welfare of the offspring. Masturbatory, contraceptive, and
homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered because they stand fundamentally
opposed to new life. Lacking a receptive “other,” masturbation offends against
the unitive end of the marital act. This is also true
of the contraceptive act because by “holding back” their fertility from one
another the contracepting couple fail to give fully
of themselves in a way which respects the integral relationship between their
persons and their sexuality. Homosexual acts, unable by nature to share
fertility, suffer from the same defect but also from the defect of being
contrary to the natural design and purpose of the body. Additionally, acts of
rape and incest, being centered in self-gratification without regard for the
good of the “other,” are contrary to the ends of marital love. Adultery and
polygamy are also disordered expressions of human sexuality because they offend
against the undivided and exclusive nature of conjugal love. Although not a
sexual act, divorce too obscures and denigrates the meaning and purpose of
marriage. (Of course, legal physical separation of spouses for a legitimate
reason is not the moral equivalent of divorce and in a culture of widespread
divorce it can, quite ironically, actually bear witness to the sanctity of the
marriage bond.)
Sexual
desire in marriage is not of itself disordered nor is the intense enjoyment of
sexual pleasure in marriage necessarily inordinate. But, as many of the above
examples illustrate, even sexual desire within marriage can be perverted.
Similarly, even sexual pleasure within marriage can be lustfully enjoyed. Here
an important distinction must be made. While it is true that all instances of
sexual climax involve a momentary loss of self-control regardless of the
circumstances surrounding the sexual act, a major difference exists between
lustful intercourse and legitimate intercourse. Lust involves an excess of passion that moves man to act contrary to
reason causing him to seek pleasure solely for its own sake. Legitimate sexual
desire moves man to surrender himself in accord with the demands of reason,
always respectful of the ends of marriage, if not explicitly so then at
least implicitly and habitually so.
This self-love which emerges from the disharmony introduced
by sin has led to a flawed view of life, marriage, and human sexuality. The
following sentiments aptly reflect many of the basic tenets of this skewed
vision of reality:
Life is meaningful to the extent that one is able to fulfill
oneself. It is far more valuable to do this with others than with oneself
because experiences of domination and submission enrich sex. Marriage is
neither a vocation nor a ministry of creating new persons. Rather, marriage is
an arrangement which enriches sexual enjoyment for some people with sexual
gratification.
In contrast to the appropriate progression of Christian
thought on human sexuality from the meaning of man’s life in God to God’s plan
for married love to the role of sexuality within that plan, this selfish
manifesto progresses from the meaning of man’s life (without reference to God)
to the importance of sex in man’s life and only then to the relative value of
marriage for man.
Self-fulfillment as the ultimate meaning of life follows
from a way of viewing life based entirely upon the self. Such a manner of
viewing life places great emphasis on human consciousness and considers human
persons primarily as conscious subjects who know and use their bodies as
something practically extrinsic to “who they are.” Contrary to Christian anthropology which sees human persons as
soul/body unities who can know and will, this “anthropology of the modern
world” frequently denies the soul altogether, replaces it with consciousness,
separates consciousness from the body, and severely weakens free will by
claiming that the choices made by man are based primarily upon personality
which is thoroughly influenced by forces beyond man’s control such as heredity
and environment. Such a conception of man minimizes his responsibility for
his actions: “I can’t help it,” modern man protests, “it’s who I am.” It also
suggests that meaning does not exist “in nature,” in God’s design of creation,
but instead arises solely from human consciousness. Values, in turn, are
invented by man according to his own purposes and there are few if any moral
absolutes because all goods are relative to capricious human consciousness.
Not surprising then, human acts are not considered to have
any significance outside their impact on human consciousness. Indeed, altering
human consciousness has become the means for achieving the self-fulfillment
which is itself the measure of the meaningfulness of life. Those acts which
yield happiness (the desired state of consciousness) are considered good and
those acts which yield unhappiness (the undesired state of consciousness) are
considered the only true intrinsic evils. The means to the end is not so
important as the end itself. Thus, a utilitarian mentality has a role to play
in this schema: Human actions which are likely to cause more pain than
enjoyment are to be avoided. Yet, some (physical) evil may be done to self or
to others that good may come of it provided that the good sought is considered
to be of sufficient value relative to the evil done. Man’s vocation in such a
conception of reality is to seek out and live positive experiences all the
while being careful not to prematurely judge the moral worth of any experience
before its time. Should self-fulfillment escape him or suffering so diminish
his “quality of life” as to make it no longer meaningful to him, suicide would
not be an action inconsistent with man’s vocation.
While
self-fulfillment as the meaning of life may seem unarguable in today’s world,
it is important to distinguish between self-fulfillment and personal
fulfillment. Whereas with the former concept the subject is in a sense the
creator of his own reality to which he assigns his own meaning, with the later
concept the “I” discovers meaning already existing in the created world and
experiences fulfillment by living in accordance with that discovery. Such
personal fulfillment, which is the fruit of a Christian life of
self-transcendence, of “dying to oneself,” stands in marked contrast to the
self-centered fulfillment groped at by those who reject the truth about man.
The anthropology outlined above has consequences for
understanding human sexuality. Since the goal of man’s vocation is to seek
experiences which delight his consciousness, the pursuit of pleasure — even for
its own sake — is viewed as a legitimate good to be pursued. Since sexual
gratification is the most intense of the sensible pleasures, it takes on the
importance of a great good in itself without regard to any other goods. Thus,
human sexuality is understood to be a veritably essential element of
self-fulfillment. Indeed, just as a man would endanger his well-being by
abstaining too long from a basic human need such as food, so too would he
endanger himself by abstaining too long from sexual satisfaction of some type
or another.
Just as previously the meaning of life was evaluated from
the point of view of the self only, so now human sexuality is evaluated
according to the same limited point of view. Instead of being an expression of self-giving
love, human sexuality is reduced to the mere experience of various kinds of
enjoyment. It adopts a utilitarian disposition towards the “other” whose value
is identified only with the degree of enrichment that he brings to the sexual
encounter. Thus, human beings are treated as sex objects. This is made clear by
the interest given to domination and submission in sexual experiences: By the
nature of such experiences one person has power over another. The participants
are not equal subjects but unequal objects of one another’s passions. Such an
exchange cannot be characterized as mutual self-giving because, again, by the
very nature of the activity it is a matter of taking and manipulating absent of
the freedom necessary for genuine acts of self-donation. All this stands in
stark contrast to the mind of Pius XII who said: “Happiness in marital life is
in direct relation to the respect husband and wife have for each other, even in
the intimate act of marriage.” In the Catholic tradition, a person may never be used merely as a means to an end but must always
be respected as an end in himself.
Predictably, marriage too is viewed only from the point of
view of the self. Following the same logic already articulated, it exists only
for the sake of the individual though not necessarily for the good of each of
the spouses: It is not ordered to an “other” whether that “other” be spouse or
child. As such, contraception and abortion as means of avoiding responsibility
and the unpleasant states of consciousness which often accompany it are easily
reconciled with this view of marriage and human sexuality. Neither is marriage
a vocation, the response to a call originating from outside the self which
presupposes something greater than the self which demands obedience to its
“rules.” Rather, it is merely an arrangement entered into for the sake of
sexual enjoyment. Hence, its purely utilitarian nature is revealed: Those who
find that it enriches their sexual gratification will pursue it while those who
do not will not pursue it. And marriages which have lost their utility for one
or the other of the spouses may very likely end in divorce, an evil committed
(that is, a negative experience endured) for the sake of some significant
foreseeable good such as personal freedom or a more satisfying sexual
relationship with someone else.
Thus, underlying the vision of reality based on excessive
self-love is a basic philosophy of man, human sexuality, and marriage. If the
basic ideas of this philosophy progress from man to sex to (optional) marriage
it is because, contrary to the Christian conception of human sexuality, the
philosophy fails to recognize the essential relationship between human
sexuality and marriage and, for that matter, the essential relationship between
marriage and human anthropology as well.
Thankfully, the story does not end here. Jesus Christ has
come into the world. He has brought news of salvation. Man in his totality,
including his sexuality, has been saved, redeemed. Although he remains injured
from his fall, grace has come to heal him and strengthen him. What was once
vaguely revealed in the very design of his being has now been made clear. Now
man knows not only that he is to love but how he is to love. God’s plan for
human sexuality is part of this revelation. It will require sacrifice but in
accepting his cross for love of God, self, spouse, child, and neighbor, man
will be imitating Christ himself who willingly laid down his life that we might
have life. And that’s Good News!
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