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The Sexual Person
By Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler
Georgetown University Press (2008) $29.95
Review summary by Dan Brent
Since the Paul VI encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968, spiritual directors,
confessors, and married couples have worked from a gut intuition that the birth
control issue is more complex than the simple papal prohibition. Father Charles
E. Curran and others have taken issue from the beginning with the pope’s
reasoning and conclusions. This book brings the complex arguments together. But
be warned—it’s heavy reading.
The authors identify two main approaches to the issues around sexual morality.
One school looks at physical sexual acts and how the church has traditionally
categorized it’s morality. Another looks instead at the person and his/her
relationships in light of valuable contributions from psychology and sociology.
This later approach is more complex and leads to different conclusions about
sexual morality.
Gaudium et spes, the Vatican II document on the church, shifted the priorities
of moral theology to describe marriage as an “intimate partnership of conjugal
life and love.” (#48) Previous church teaching (included in earlier Canon Law)
understood marriage basically as a contract giving and receiving rights to
intercourse.
The “intimate partnership” teaching opens new perspectives on the morality of
various sexual behaviors.
This book first reviews the curious history of sexual morality in the Catholic
tradition. The bible begins with creation – “It is not good for man to be
alone.” So “male and female God created them” and commissioned them to “be
fruitful and multiply.” Thus mutual help and procreation are both embedded in
the creation stories. Marriage is the norm for people throughout the Old
Testament. An unmarried person is not seen as a whole person.
Later biblical texts add the notion of marriage as a covenant similar to God’s
bargain with the Jews. Hosea forgives and “redeems” Gomer who has become a
prostitute. And the Song of Songs celebrates sensual love. In the New Testament,
Paul bucks the prevailing male-superior social assumptions with his assertion
that men and women are equal in Christ. But he often reads as negative toward
marriage because of his mistaken belief that the last days would arrive very
soon and marriage would distract from preparation for that.
The early Christian writers, fearful of the licentious cultures of Greece and
Rome, and influenced by the discipline of the Stoics, tended to take a narrow
and negative view of sex. They conceded its need for procreation but began to
extol the virtues of celibacy. This mindset against sex except to beget children
– the “traditionalist” position – came to dominate Christian, then Catholic
sexual theology until Vatican II.
Not surprisingly, that view was built into the preliminary material about
marriage that was developed by the Roman Curia in preparation for the council.
But the bishops at the council took a different direction. In Gaudium et spes
(1965), they deliberately refused to give primacy to procreation in marriage.
They moved beyond the “traditionalist” position “to embrace in the very essence
of marriage the mutual love and communion of the spouses.” (p.43) This gave
impetus to a new “revisionist” view of sexuality which understands sexuality as
a means for expressing and growing a committed personal relationship. (“Making
love.”)
Three years after the council, in 1968, Paul VI issued Humanae vitae, the
controversial encyclical which restated the church’s condemnation of artificial
birth control attempted to restore the “traditionalist” position. But the genie
was out of the bottle. Today, most Catholic theologians support the
“revisionist” approach, focusing on “holistic complementarity”.
The authors examine “nature” since traditionalist logic is based on the natural
order. But it turns out that much of our perception about “nature” is shaped by
our social circumstances. “Every judgment of truth – including theological truth
– is a limited judgment.” (p.53) So “epistemological considerations caution
against positing a one-size-fits-all morality deduced from ‘nature’.” (p.54)
New Natural Law Theory (NNLT), a recent effort to bolster the pope’s
traditionalist position, focuses on genitalia rather than on relationships and
fails to rescue the weaknesses of the old positions. The “NNLT is less than
credible in its attempt to justify absolute sexual norms” because “all theology
must be in dialogue with human experience.” (p.73)
“In a moral sexual act, the genitals are at the service of personal
complementarity.” (p.91) But for traditionalists, “the focus is on the act, not
on the meaning of that act for human persons and their relationships.” (p.92)
The relationship approach “which sees the physical genitals as organs of the
whole person . . . allows us to expand the definition of a natural, reasonable,
and therefore moral sexual act to include both homosexual and heterosexual
nonreproductive (contraceptive) sexual acts.” (p.67)
Salzman and Lawler now turn to presenting their own assessment of where sexual
morality should stand. Gaudium et spes states that sexual acts “signify and
promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each other.” (p.125)
Sexual acts are “a means of personal communication.” (p.125) “Sexuality is a
gift from the creator God to facilitate men’s and women’s task of becoming fully
human in and through interpersonal relationships with others.” (p.138)
At the heart of the necessary distinctions that shape the morality of sexual
acts is the complex notion of “complementarity”. The church’s traditionalist
position is that heterogenital complementarity is a precondition of moral sexual
acts; i.e. the couple must have functioning male and female genitalia. Lacking
that – as in homosexual relations – any sexual act is “intrinsically disordered
and sinful.”
Taking issue with that position, the authors respond, “We suggest that the
needed complementarity for a truly human (i.e. moral) sexual act is holistic
complementarity that unites people bodily, affectively, spiritually, and
personally under the umbrella of a person’s sexual orientation.” (p.151)
One implication of this position: “There is extensive anecdotal and empirical
evidence that homosexual individuals can exhibit this holistic complementarity.”
(p.151) After all, “In a truly human (i.e. moral) sexual act, the genitals are
at the service of personal complementarity.” (p.152)
Another implication: “This personalist interpretation allows us to embrace both
heterosexual (contraceptive) and homosexual nonreproductive acts.” (p.158)
Scholastic moral theology, based on scientific theory appropriate to the day
held the sperm contained the whole fetus; mothers provide only a place for it to
grow. The ovum was not discovered until the 1850’s. Little wonder that sexual
moral standards were inadequate.
Continuing to develop their position the authors add provisions regarding sexual
conduct. To be moral, sexual acts must be “not only in accord with holistic
complementarity but also just and loving.” (p.157) They also must be mutual –
freely chosen by both individuals. And they must be the expression of a
long-term commitment.
The authors conclude with chapters specific to marriage, cohabitation,
homosexuality, and artificial reproductive technologies.
On marriage, they note Vatican II definition as an intimate partnership of life
and love. “The focus on animal bodies and their acts is replaced by a focus on
persons.” (p.182) This means that any “moral judgment that has to be made on
contraception has to be made on a basis that includes what is good for the
couple, their marriage, and any children previously born.” (p.189)
On cohabitation, the authors point out that for most of Western history and in
many areas of today’s world, some form of betrothal has represented the time
when intercourse was seen as appropriate for couples, with a later wedding
giving legal recognition to their relationship. The authors support premarital
cohabitation but not without the long-term commitment. They see advantages in
considering formally adopting the . . . (1) betrothal, (2) cohabitation, even
having children, and (3) marrying . . . order of things!
Their treatment of homosexuality begins early in the book when they “understand
sexual orientation (heterosexual and homosexual) as a deep-seated dimension of
one’s personality . . . not freely chosen.” (p.88) They lament the bias of the
Catholic magisterium which sees heterosexuality as “the norm against which all
sexual acts are judged.” (p.89) Salzman and Lawler incorporate “orientation
complementarity” as foundational to the “holistic complementarity” which makes
sexual acts moral. Homosexuality has gotten a bad rap. The biblical texts which
seem to condemn homosexuality fall one by one to closer examination. Empirical
studies now challenge the magisterium’s traditional position. So, “the Church’s
teaching needs serious reevaluation” because “regrettably, in this area, the
Church teaches badly.” (p.235)
On artificial reproductive technologies (ART), the authors’ bottom line is that
couples need individually to discern what best serves their relationship. They
reject the church’s position that virtually all ART’s are immoral. But they
caution that the discernment process must consider that more than a third of ART
pregnancies result in babies with birth defects.
“This book is written to invite conversation,” the authors state at the end. I
hope it does. |
