theology of the body, philosophy of the flesh

Nearly sixteen hundred years after Augustine’s meditation on his struggle for sexual purity and chastity—and in our similarly lust-saturated society where feminism has duped women into imitating the worst of men’s behaviours—it’s fitting that a woman should follow in Augustine’s footsteps.  In The Thrill of the Chaste, New York writer and editor Dawn Eden has written an account of her post-conversion struggle for purity and the benefits of chastity after having been thoroughly disillusioned with the “sex-in-the-city” lifestyle.

Lost in the Cosmo

After years of playing the New York dating game — a game which follows what Eden calls the Cosmo rule: sex must drive the relationship — she decided to begin an experiment with chastity.  The Thrill of the Chaste documents what she has learned from that ongoing adventure.  What exactly is the thrill of the chaste?  For Eden it is a life that is more real, vibrant, intense and meaningful than anything the life of casual indulgence has to offer.

Eden exposes the vicious cycle of the sex-driven dating scene, that endlessly recurring circle of loneliness — quick fix — aftermath — loneliness.  Eden explains how she came to realize that she would never find the love and marriage that she was looking for without heading in a new direction.  The lack of vision of the dating game becomes apparent when some of Eden’s acquaintances sincerely wonder how she could meet a prospective husband outside of this scene, as if there were no other kinds of men to be found in the world except those found in singles’ bars.

The general effect of much of the book is the unveiling of the profound differences that exist between the life of chastity and that of indulgence. The goal might be the same, but the means employed reveal two completely antithetical visions of human love and happiness.

Dawn’s Wager

Eden’s perspective presupposes that most woman are out for something more than just meaningless flings, that they are expecting someday to win a husband from playing this game.  Eden’s story is intent on demonstrating why the odds are against it.

In fact, in a passage reminiscent of “Pascal’s Wager,” Eden explains that both the experience of pre-marital sex and the experience of chastity are centered on a kind of faith.  “One of them,” Eden explains, “relies on faith that a man who has not shown faith in you…will come around through the persuasive force of your physical affection.” “The other experience,” she says “relies on faith that God, as you pursue a closer walk with Him, will lead you to a loving husband.  Chastity opens up your world, enabling you to achieve your creative and spiritual potential without the pressure of having to play the dating game.”

Eden concludes that “when faced with a choice between two attitudes — both of which require looking beyond present reality — I choose the one that has a solid foundation.”

This is another Augustinian parallel because Eden declines to separate chastity from grace.  She doesn’t try to create a sort of secular version of chastity that could be presented in complete independence from faith.  She isn’t afraid to communicate her discovery that not only is chastity a solid foundation, but it is a foundation that rests on God.

Eden’s observations about her experience of both pre-marital sex and chastity are very astute and insightful.  And like Augustine before her, her self-reflection is unflinching (even merciless) and penetrating.  She doesn’t shy away from revealing her mistakes and weaknesses — in fact some readers may find her confessions uncomfortably thorough.

Purity Lost

But she does a great job of analyzing those experiences.  One of the great insights is Eden’s realization of the role her parents’ divorce had on her behaviour.  She connects the dots between her promiscuity, the fear of rejection, and her shattered security which was the fruit of her father moving away and seeing her mother playing the dating game.  It’s a sad and tragic story, but one that effectively demonstrates the harm caused by divorce.

Another gem is where she recounts how she slowly eroded her purity so that by the time she lost her virginity physically, she had in fact already lost it morally and spiritually long before.  She observes how, in apparently harmless activities like kissing, she was already learning to separate herself emotionally and spiritually from the physical aspect.  One could say she was learning a contraceptive mentality long before she lost her virginity.

This book is not for the squeamish, but it is a welcome counter-attack on the absurd sexual philosophy taught by our culture.  Eden calls the bluff on the sexual revolution’s promise of fulfillment, and proposes a more authentic revolution.  For those still stuck in the dating game, but unhappy, The Thrill of the Chaste will be a great help.  And for those of us already committed to chastity, she offers insights that are still fresh and original, confirming that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more: Oh, happy fault!

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Sexual orientation is thought by some to be irrelevant to marriage, as is evident by the push to legalize same sex marriage. But marriage is not the only thing where it is thought to be non-essential. Those that defend the ordination to the priesthood of people with homosexual tendencies also argue that one’s sexual orientation is not a threat to the meaning of being a priest. Many of these arguments hold one premise in common: that what really matters is sexual maturity, not orientation.

The Sexual Orientation of Celibacy and Marriage

Regarding maturity, the Vatican’s latest document on the ordination of men to the priesthood says:

The candidate…must reach affective maturity. Such maturity will allow him to relate correctly to both men and women, developing in him a true sense of spiritual fatherhood towards the Church community that will be entrusted to him.

This maturity is interpreted by some as meaning simply the ability to get along with men and women and being able to live a celibate life. But does this relating to men and women really have nothing to do with sexual differences? And does celibacy and the priesthood really have little to do with sexual orientation?

Incidentally, Pope Benedict in his former job oversaw a letter to the bishops on the collaboration of men and women which could be seen as an extended meditation on what “relating correctly to men and women” really means. In this letter we find that celibacy has a theological meaning, one that complements the meaning of marriage.

For those in married life, celibacy becomes the reminder and prophecy of the completion which their own relationship will find in the face-to-face encounter with God.

Celibacy points forward to the clear vision of that reality which marriage now sees through a glass darkly. Thus celibacy makes sense only in relationship to marriage; and marriage is based on those sexual values God has inscribed into male and female, which make men and women icons for each other. Thus the meaning of celibacy presupposes a specific sexual orientation; the orientation of men to women and women to men.

The Priesthood of Fathers and the Fatherhood of Priests

Still less is the priesthood separable from sexual orientation. The letter on the collaboration of men and women sets the foundational principle: “The human dimension of sexuality is inseparable from the theological dimension.”

It was the Lord Who associated His priesthood with fertility when He said that a grain of wheat must fall to the earth and die before it bears any fruit. Seed and sacrifice; masculinity and priesthood; bed and altar are analogous and inseparable.

The priesthood has a spousal character, and marriage has a Eucharistic character. Hence St. Paul associates marriage with the mystery of Christ and His Church, the husband gives himself up for his wife as Christ does for the Church. The kenotic nature of “giving himself up,” besides characterizing the self-emptying of God in the Incarnation of the Word, is written into the very structure of the husband’s embrace of his wife, when he knows her “in the manner of all the earth.” (Genesis 19:31)

The man who presides at the altar and the man who presides at the marriage bed are both called Father, for they both in their own way beget the Church. Like celibacy and marriage, spiritual fatherhood and biological fatherhood are inseparable.

Masculinity and Femininity are Signs

Dismissing sexual orientation as something unrelated to the priesthood is the same trivialization of sex that lurks in the demand for women priests, the acceptance of contraception, and the “polymorphous sexuality” of our culture. Sexuality — especially fertility — has always been perceived in man’s religious history as an epiphany, and therefore something sacred. It is only in our secular culture that sexuality is seen as a mere biological fact and fertility is treated like a disease. In the image of the grain of wheat we find a series of meanings inseparably united: seed (masculinity); death (love, sacrifice, priesthood); fruit (fertility, fecundity).

Many of the evils of our times result from trying to separate one or more of these. Contraception and homosexuality separate love from fertility, and the logic of homosexual ordination separates masculinity from priesthood; it contracepts—one might say—the priesthood in its distinctively masculine heart.

Whatever the causes of homosexual tendencies, same-sex attraction distorts the nuptial values that are part of being male and female. God made us male and female to give us knowledge of His nature. Sexual values exert an awe-full power over us because the mystery of heaven is inscribed within them — and so, too, the mystery of marriage, celibacy and priesthood.

If it’s true that the human dimension of sexuality is inseparable from the theological dimension, then sexual distortions must be theological distortions as well. A man who is confused about his masculinity will likely also be confused about what it means to be a spiritual father and a priest. This is why those who believe that sexual orientation has nothing to do with it always seem to regard the priest as a mere social worker, rather than someone who is essentially connected with the priesthood of Christ, the Seed of the new Edenic garden.

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To answer, we should ask if there is a mentality characteristic of those using contraception. A mentality that is different from those using NFP to accomplish the same goals.

Let’s try a little thought experiment. Let’s assume that there is no difference in environmental or health effects between NFP and contraception used for the identical purpose of avoiding pregnancy. Let’s also assume that the couple using NFP and the couple using contraception are both using their method for avoiding pregnancy for just reasons: another pregnancy would threaten the health of the Mother.

What would the difference in mentality be between the two couples? If you could avoid pregnancy for just reasons and never have to abstain from sex, why would anyone choose the more difficult path of self-denial and abstinence? What does each choice say about that person’s mentality and attitude? Anything at all?

Fertility in Fact vs. Fertility as Nature

I think the answer is that the couple using contraception display a certain utilitarian attitude towards fertility, while the couple using NFP show a more respectful and even reverential attitude with respect to their fertility. Why do I say that the contracepting couple has a utilitarian attitude towards fertility? I’ll try to explain.

Unless they actually wanted to get pregnant, the contracepting couple have no qualms about suppressing an otherwise fertile act which very well might lead to a pregnancy. They evidently don’t have much use for the fertile nature of the act they are engaging in outside of the possible consequences of the act. They seem to be saying: “Fertility is relevant only if we actually want a baby, otherwise it’s of no consequence to us.” The emphasis is on the consequences.

On the other hand, if we could read the mentality of the couple using NFP, it would seem to be saying: “Fertility still has an essential role to play for us even though we don’t desire the possible consequences of this act right now.” That’s why this couple will not suppress their fertility during those times when they know its probable that having sex will result in a pregnancy.

What Leads to New Life is Sacred

They would rather not do anything than to have sex at their fertility’s expense. They are not looking only to consequences, but also to the nature of the sexual act as an act that naturally leads to new life. Even though they don’t want the consequences of the act at this time, the nature of the act is still relevant and important to their sex life. It’s the nature of the act as a life-giving power that is still important even when they don’t desire the consequences of that life-giving power.

It’s the abstinence of the NFP couple—their unwillingness to tamper with that life-giving power—that reveals that unwillingness to reduce the significance of their fertility to a mere matter of consequence which they may or may not accept. Or rather, what is at stake is the very meaning and significance of fertility above and beyond its consequences.

To sum up the difference in mentality or attitude, one sees the fertile power of sex as sacred, while the other sees it merely profane.

Fertility is Part of Making Love

But what could it mean that the fertile nature of sex has a significance above and beyond the fact that it does or does not result in a baby as a matter of fact and at some point in time after the sexual union? This is the point as which sex starts to reveal its role as an expression, as a symbolic raw material for the use of a man and woman to say something to each other.

This leads us to a new realm of metaphors; that of music, song, and poetry.

But that will have to be the subject of another article.

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Nature’s Great Parable

In the image of the grain of wheat falling into the earth, we see one of Nature’s greatest parables. Human beings, always sensitive to what creation is revealing to us about God, have always seen in this great cosmic cycle, a great mystery.

The Literal and the Spiritual Sense

The Literal

Like the revelation that we call scripture, the revelation that is creation can be said to have two senses, the literal and the spiritual. Christ reveals the spiritual senses of scripture and creation, but before the advent of the Word among us, religious men did the best they could interpreting the meaning of the cosmic mystery which is contained in that grain of wheat. The mystery already contained many religious values, which touched on:

• sex
• hope
• life
• death
• sacrifice
• restoration
• renewal’

…and many others. But their interpretation, before the completion of the revelation brought by Christ, was too literal. This literalness showed itself mainly in two ways.

1. Human sacrifice. Life—it seemed clear—came from death.
2. The ritual orgy. The orgy was a kind of intentional nihilism that was meant to precede the return to the ‘beginning’ which would renew and restore life. There is in it the same logic of sacrifice, that life must be preceded by death. The orgy was the literal interpretation of “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…”

(It becomes clear as I write this, and maybe as you read this, how impossible it is to separate the religious values found in this great natural parable. You can’t separate sex from death, from the idea of sacrifice, from the mystery of life and hope for the future and for redemption.

And that sex is a cosmic mystery. It is very much connected to God because it is connected to creation. )

The Spiritual

Christ brought the completion and definitive interpretation of the ‘message’ of creation and the great natural parable. He did it by connecting it to his death and resurrection, which is the manifestation of divine love.

Life does not come from the literal death of human beings or other living things, it comes from that ‘death’ which is the gift of oneself to another.

The way that sex exemplifies the ‘great natural mystery’ is not by the symbolic destruction of order, but by the symbolic ‘death’ which is the gift of the self to one’s spouse, which is an image of Christ’s offering himself to his Church.

Once again, it is impossible to separate sex from the mystery of love, death, sacrifice, hope, the future, etc., properly understood through Christ—the true light of all of creation.

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According to C.S. Lewis’ brilliant little story, there are two main ways of knowing, looking at the beam and looking along the beam. The main difference between the two is that looking along the beam requires the observer to let his eye become one with the beam of light, so that in the unity of eye and beam, what is at the end of the beam becomes revealed. But to see what lies at the end of the beam, to see what lies outside the dark shed, one must be willing to give up looking at the beam, no matter how dazzling it is to the eye, with all the specks of dust floating in it. But in giving it up he discovers something else entirely, the leaves outside, and millions of miles away, the sun.

But the essence of looking at the beam is that the observer does not become one with the beam. The observe must look at it, he must keep it in front of him, there must be space between him and the  beam. If he let his eye become joined with the beam, it would disappear. He doesn’t want too see what lies outside of the dark shed, he just want to look upon the beam of light. But he does so at the cost of transcending the shed, and the beam never reveals its secret.

This is such an accurate metaphor of the two ways of sex—lust vs. love, or porn vs. participation—because they have so many similarities with these two ways of knowing.

The biblical understanding of ‘knowing’ corresponds to looking along the beam. The book of Genesis does not hesitate to refer to the ‘one flesh’ union of  Adam and Eve as knowledge (“and Adam knew his wife”).

Biblical knowing clearly adopts the ‘unity theory’ of knowledge. Knowledge comes from participation.

Our modern scientific understanding of knowing, however, corresponds to looking at the beam. Scientific knowledge is not about participation, it is about observation, looking-at-stuff. Lust and science share the obsession for looking at things, for power or sexual excitement, they are both voyeuristic in spirit.

In our knowledge of creation, we would do well to cultivate a more participatory form of knowledge, just as in the bedroom, we should avoid anything that is an obstacle to the true unity of the spouses, and their becoming one flesh.

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“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24

Natural Marriage

1+1=1

Gay Marriage

1+1=2

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“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

This sentence of 22 words from the Gospel of John contains much of the norms and spiritual structure of sex as taught by the Catholic Church.

These words that John’s Gospel attributes to Jesus, uses the natural generative cycle of the earth—which is also the figure of human generation and fertility—and makes it the figure of divine love as made visible in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Here are some of those implicit norms, with the relevant words italicized for emphasis.

Complimentarity

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth…”

Grain and earth, or seed and soil are complimentary. They are orientated toward each other for the purpose of bearing fruit. The seed is obviously the male principle, and the earth or soil is female. In the book of Job, for example, it says “naked I came forth from Mother’s womb, and naked I shall go back again.” This shows the connection in the human mind between the earth and women.

Unity

“Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth…”

The unity is first of all physical, with the grain falling into the earth and becoming one with the soil. Because the grain and the earth are already naturally complimentary the unity is a biological or natural unity first. In human sexuality, there is the possibility of a spiritual unity building on this biological unity. But there must be the biological or natural unity first.

Fruitfulness

“…but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

The fruit is not automatic, but the result of a process with a specific structure and requirements. Unless the grain falls into the earth, unless it dies, unless it does these things, it does not bear fruit.

Kenosis

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…”

The spiritual meaning of death in Christianity is love. Death becomes the image of loss of Self that happens in charity. It is not the annihilation of the self as in eastern religions, but the gift of the self for another. It is what is called charity. It is exemplified by the gift of Christ in emptying himself and becoming man to suffer and die in solidarity with the fallen human race.

Making love, being analogous to the self-emptying of God, should also be a dying.

Relationality

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone…”

The act of sex should be part of a positive and objective relationship, not something in which the persons remains alone, either through deliberate isolation or through the refusal to make the gift of self that making love should symbolize. Sex which is driven too much by lust is an act where the participants remain alone. Making love only happens when the act reflects a true kenosis, achieving a spiritual connection rather than a mutual aloneness.

This true and objective spiritual connection is fairly difficult to achieve.

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For our cultural contraceptive mentality, where fertility is divorced from sex and no longer seen as an essential aspect of it, sex ends after intercourse ends.

But in reality, the nature and significance of sex reaches far beyond the individual act of intercourse. And only by seeing it in relation to everything it affects as a whole, does one really see what its true nature is.

We might say, then, that sex ends with the conception of a child. This brings fertility back in the picture, making an essential connection between sex and children. And this is correct, but we can go further.

Perhaps sex is really complete after the newly conceived baby is born. And there is some truth to this as well. Nothing shatters the myth of casual sex then holding a newborn infant in your arms. It’s in that moment, holding tiny new life in your hands after the ordeal of labor, that one knows that sex is definitely not casual. On the contrary, it is the stuff of life and death.

And still we could keep going. For now the love of a man and a woman has a face in a third person. Now a family exists. The child will now learn what it means to love and forgive and be human primarily from his parents, whose love conceived him and now nourishes and educates him (could it really mean nothing that a child is raised by a man and woman, as opposed to two men or two women?).

The child will grow up and perhaps have children of his own, teaching them in turn what it means to love and forgive and be human, perpetuating goodness, virtue and human dignity to new generations.

Does sex ever really end? It seamlessly opens out  into the future, bearing fruit long after two intentional lovers collapse in each others arms.

If we respect its nature, sex moves like a spiral galaxy; its arms slowly opening up, unfolding and embracing the universe. Now the idea of sex being something that only affects the people who play with it looks to be as much a myth as the idea of casual sex. Our culture’s sterile sexuality is more like a black hole, that collapses into itself, taking everything—even light itself—with it.  The cult of sterile sex begins and ends with “me”. It is anti-social, anti-relational, and anti-future.

But the spiral galaxy grows out, not in; it unfolds, not collapses; it holds countless young stars within its arms, not sucking all light into its darkness; it is generous, not selfish; it is birth and growth, not death.

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“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

‘”For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church’. (Ephesians 5:31-32)

John and Paul are covering the same ground here. But St. Paul makes explicit the human sexual element with the Genesis allusion of becoming “one flesh”.

In John there is no explicit human sexual element, but instead the invoking of the fertility of the earth. But the two are very closely connected. Human and natural generation are analogically related to each other and symbolically inseparable. Nature’s power of generation is the figure of human generation. Hence, Paul’s “one flesh” is analogous to John’s “grain of wheat”.

When a man and woman become one flesh, the seed falls into the earth and dies, and so bears fruit, etc.

Paul connects the mystery of becoming “one flesh” directly to the mystery of Christ and the Church.

In John, Jesus does not directly mention his passion, death, and resurrection, but this passage is clearly alluding to these impending events.

So Paul and John seem to be in agreement here, that the great mystery of Christ’s relationship to the Church is imaged by the great cosmic mystery—of which man in his sexual nature is a part—of the generation of life.

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