The Truth About Sex
Professor of Moral Theology
Redemptoris Mater Seminary
Yona, Guam USA
In the May 2, 2005 issue of Newsweek there was an opinion column by Andrew Sullivan entitled “The Vicar of Orthodoxy.” It was a piece on the new pope. The subtitle that caught my eye read: “The Pope’s dogma is a circular system that’s immune to reasoned query.” “Interesting!” I said to myself. If ever there was an article in the secular press that cried out for an answer, here was it.
In case you do not already know Andrew Sullivan, he is a Catholic who has a very public struggle with his sexuality. He cannot understand nor accept the Church’s teaching regarding the immorality of homosexuality. He is not alone. There are many here in Guam with the same struggle, even if it is more private and avoided in public discourse. If you find yourself in this suffering, these words are meant to help you break the “circular system that’s immune to reasoned query.”
The Catholic Church teaches that sex is a language. It is a way of conveying a message. It says: “I love you - completely, irrevocably, unconditionally, exclusively - for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, until death do us part.” Sex is linked therefore inextricably to marriage. You can only speak sexually the truth of sex when in reality you have committed yourself publicly to someone in this way and you have the marriage certificate to prove it. Anything less is an equivocation. Some of these equivocations are big lies, others are little lies, but all are lies since they separate in one degree or another sex from commitment.
Love conditions our relations with others in such a way that the use of one by the other is excluded. The other does not exist in function of me. The dignity of the human person requires that he always be related to as and end in himself and never as a means to my ends. This means that sex needs a justification to insure that both parties are on a footing of equality so that one never becomes the means for the other’s ends. There has to be a common good to which both parties can submit themselves and nurture their relationship in the pursuit of that common good. Without such a good that transcends any private good, the sexual relationship would become simply the use of the other to achieve his private ends. This means that sex is not only linked to marriage, but that marriage is linked inextricably to procreation. The willingness to cooperate with God in bring new human beings into existence is the guarantee that the sexual act does not turn us in upon ourselves. The willingness to be a father or a mother is what gives sex its dignity and its social significance.
Many object to linking sex with the service of life. Mr. Sullivan is one of them. “What is wrong with separating sex from the service of life?” they ask. The answer is very simple. There would no longer be a common good to be pursued in having sex, only a private good, sexual gratification. In order to be rational, pleasure is meant to be a consequence of the pursuit of another good. When it is pursued for its own sake, it always remains a private good. It can never be shared. The other may or may not have pleasure, but that remains outside the purview of the pursuit of my personal ends. It enters, at best, only as a means to obtain a greater satisfaction. The consequence of making such a separation is that sex, instead of building a relationship, destroys the relationship since the other picks up very quickly that she (normally!) is being used.
This teaching about the intrinsic link between love and life is not limited by any means to persons with a homosexual orientation. It applies to everybody, because it supplies the reason why the Catholic Church rejects the contraception lifestyle. This is a lifestyle embraced by the overwhelming majority of our contemporary culture. “Homosexuals” have lots of company. They are not being singled out for discrimination in any way.
Mr. Sullivan would object, I feel, to such a claim. After all, does not the Catholic Church consider homosexuals as (to quote his words in the article) “beset by an inherent tendency toward an ‘intrinsic moral evil’ and are thus by nature ‘objectively disordered.’” The real answer is NO! Why? Because the Catholic Church does not categorize people as “heterosexuals” or “homosexuals.” What is objectively disordered is the sexual inclination toward persons of the same sex, not the person with such an orientation. We all have many inclinations that are in fact objectively disordered. It is the consequence of original sin. These include the inclination to eat too much, to drink too much, and to talk too much. However, it would be a mistake to build a personal identity around such an inclination. We are more than the sum total of our inclinations.
It would also be a mistake to paint oneself as the victim of our inclinations, as if we do not have the duty to take responsibility for the training of our inclinations in virtue. We are all inclined to be self-centered. As a result, certain virtues do not come easily. Chastity is normally at the top of everybody’s list of difficult virtues to be cultivated. Mr. Sullivan, welcome to the club. However, we do not solve the problem by denying that chastity is a virtue.
The pope’s praise for motherhood and virginity as “the two loftiest values in which she [a woman] realizes her profoundest vocation,” brings from Mr. Sullivan the query “So a woman is less a woman if she is a scientist or journalist or Prime Minister? That’s what “nature” seems to tell us. What happens when nature suggests that some women are not cut out for motherhood or virginity?” Then those women are rebelling against their full potential.” Mr. Sullivan does not have a question mark after “potential,” but the implication contained in his comments would seem to warrant it. The answer to his questions is very simple. We are made for love in the service of others. This is why being a mother or consecrated to God by vow of virginity are vocations that engage the full depth of our personalities. Being a scientist, or journalist, of Prime Minister are jobs, not vocations. Even as jobs they are honorable and do not exclude a vocation. A woman journalist can still be a mother. Her deepest fulfillment, however, will not be because she is a journalist, but because she has the chance to nurture a child. It is written in her cells.
The real problem that Mr. Sullivan has is entering into the cross. His cross has not been enlightened for him. He does not see the love of God in his homosexuality. In the suffering that marks his life, God can easily appear as a monster. Mr. Sullivan, however, tries to defend God against such a charge by painting his mother, the Church, as the monster. As brothers in his struggles, we announce to him and to all in similar circumstance: Courage! Be not afraid! God does not make mistakes. It is through this cross that you will encounter his love that turns all things to our good.