A wake up call addressed to the Catholic Church
Click on the above links and read a wake up call to the Catholic Church to update their code of sexual morality.
Source: What do we know, What can we Believe?
Challenging Traditional Beliefs and Practices James Wall
First published 2001 by Ginninderra Press
Printout of the above links pp 43-50:
Sexual Morality
ln the opinion of very many members of the Church, the area in
which it most needs to update its teaching is sexual morality. Church
authorities have intruded into this area to a most unwarranted extent.
They have reached conclusions which seem both ludicrous
and at variance with the welfare of church members. Their concentration
on sexual morality has resulted in a disproportionate significance being given to
this one area of conduct. The inability to adapt to the reality experienced by
most people living active sex lives today has brought into question the whole
teaching authority of the Church across the breadth of Christian beliefs and practices.
It is therefore worth considering this matter in some detail.
As far as my research for this book has been able to determine,
the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on sex derives from a
standpoint of philosophy, rather than from revelation or from a
strictly theological perspective, and is coloured by an asceticism
that acknowledges no inherent benefit in pleasure. According to
this asceticism, all pleasure is there for a purpose, to ensure the
bringing about of an end that would otherwise not occur. The only
justification for pleasure in this view is the fulfilment of the purpose
it is supposed to effect. Thus, people have pleasure in eating
in order to ensure that their bodies are nourished. It could be questioned
whether they would starve themselves if eating were not a
pleasure. Despite that, it is difficult to see how pleasure could not
be inherent in the act of eating, especially for the undernourished
and for growing children. Of course the pleasure does not incline
everyone to eat only food of appropriate nourishment and sufficient
but not excessive quantity.
Pleasure, according to the Church’s apparent view as presented
by ecclesiastic authorities, merely ensures that a divine purpose is
fulfilled. The Church presumably sees no value in pleasure as something
beneficial in itself that can help human beings live better and
more satisfying lives or even as an aid in maintaining sanity in the
face of the stresses most people experience.
In the Church’s traditional teaching, the principal purpose of
sex, the sexual joining of a man and a woman, is the propagation of
the human race. Furlhermore, the Church regarded that end alone
as necessitating the joining of the sexes. Despite more recent acknowledgment
that sexual intercourse also has affective and bonding
significance for couples, the Church still seems to imply that
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any essential benefit to the two partners apart from conception could
be achieved by other means. Following this line of reasoning, the
Church has concluded that each and every act ofsexual intercourse
must be open to the primary purpose of conception, despite the fact
that conception will not be a real possibility during a large proportion
of most couples’ active sex lives. It also begs the question as to
why sexual appetite should remain long after fertility has ceased.
Apart from partial or total abstinence, the church hierarchy does
not approve any use of human ingenuity in sexual relations calculated
to space out and/or limit the number of children conceived.
The Church now acknowledges two functions in sexual relations,
the unitive function and the procreation function, as already
mentioned. It is arbitrary, however, to maintain that men and women
may never separate these functions. Nature itself ensures that the
procreative function is not operative during most of the menstrual
cycle and not at all after menopause, and the rhythm method ol’
fertility control, which the Church approves, deliberately sets out
to exploit the separation.
Church authorities have become locked into a quite mechanical
assessment of sexual intercourse, which at times seems to be at
odds even with the key purpose, the possibility of which they claim
is mandatory on all occasions. One may wonder whether that is
because the men (it is only men) who formulated the teaching arc
also charged to be celibate. Although, superficially, it may be thought
that celibacy could produce objectivity, as celibate clergy have no
vested interest in this matter, it would seem more likely to pose a
barrier to understanding. Aperson who takes a vow in good faith to
remain celibate cannot engage in sexual activity without breaching
the vow and incurring guilt in doing so. He or she cannot even
mentally entertain such activity without at least entering what the
Church calls an occasion of sin. Sex under these circumstances
becomes something to be fought against. That is quite at odds with
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the joyful experience of men and women living a loving, sexually
active life together. They will experience anticipation of their physical
union, prolonged enjoyment through restraint in meeting each
other’s mood and timing, and feel joy in each other for some time
after intimacy. Unforlunately, not all couples maintain the experience
of such intimacy.
It is difficult to see how those voluntarily committed to celibacy
could achieve the same understanding as a couple living together
of the meaning of sexual activity in human life. Of course, it cannot
be denied that celibacy can bring other advantages or that there
may be benefits in the Church having some celibate clergy.
An example of how the Church has allowed itself to become
locked into a mechanical and seemly contradictory position on sex
can be seen from the implications of the ‘Ethical and Religious
Dictates for Catholic Health Care Services’ issued by the National
Conference of Bishops (USA) in November 1994.It states,
Homologous fertilization (that is, any technique used to achieve
conception by use of gametes of the two spouses joined in marriage)
is prohibited when it separates procreation from the marital act in its
unitive significance (e.g. any technique used to achieve extra-corporeal
conception.
Thus, in cases in which there is difficulty in getting spem to
penetrate beyond the cervix, it is said that the directive would permit
the use of a condom, provided it had a hole to enable some
ejaculate to escape during intercourse and possibly lead to fertilisation.
The whole reason for the condom in such cases is to trap the
ejaculate so that it may subsequently be injected to achieve conception.
A hole, therefore, would hardly facilitate accomplishment
of the primary purpose as enunciated by the Church. Furthermore,
it would seem incongruous for a group of bishops to sit down and
formulate a detailed dictate to this effect.
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A newspaper reported another odd application of this teaching
that includes a ban on contraception. Although evidence has not
been found to verify the story, nor has a refutation of it been discovered,
even though the story has had wide circulation. European
missionary nuns, in danger of being raped during conflict in an
African country, are said to have requested permission to take the
contraceptive pill to guard against becoming pregnant. The local
bishop is said to have denied their request on the grounds that it
was against the Church’s teaching to artificially interfere with conception.
One can only wonder at the bishop’s reasoning and at why
the nuns felt any need to seek his permission.
The Church’s position on contraception may have made sense
at an earlier time. Then, for instance, infant and child mortality was
high; the requirements of formal education for children were negligible
or non existent; the labour of children was most useful or
even necessary for family support; and there seemed to be no limit
to the number of people the earth could accommodate. It makes
little or no sense now. Population growth threatens the capacity of
the earth to support the number of people who will shortly inhabit
the planet. Childhood labour is generally and appropriately outlawed,
at least in developed countries. Adequate education for living
in the contemporary world can take until a child turns eighteen
years or much older. The expectation of life at birth is considerably
over seventy years. Furthermore, couples in the child-bearing ages
tend to ignore the hierarchy’s teaching in the interests of their marital
stability, their obligations to existing children and their capacity
to fulfil demands on them as individuals, parents, workers and citizens.
For some couples, the teaching causes stress, unhappiness
and/or financial hardship. For some it can occasion marital breakdown.
The reality for young couples in many countries today entails
twenty years or much more of responsibility for the education and
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support of each of their children. They also face the prospect of
unemployment in middle age and beyond and of extended periods
out of work for their offspring after the latter reach adulthood. The
current teaching allows couples little hope for a responsible approach
to environmental concems in the light of world population
growth. Perhaps it relies on ‘God will provide’. Ordinary people
do not have that luxurY.
Considering the positive effects of an active sex life in a loving
relationship, there would seem to be little valid purpose in placing
unnecessary restrictions on it or in denying it to fertile couples who
have a compelling reason for not producing children or not producing
more children. A satisfying sex life together can be a lifelong
blessing for a couple but some men and women are not dissuaded
from fiustrating even this side of their lives without any need for
misdirection from church authorities. Nevertheless, it is quite clear
that substantial numbers ignore the church’s prohibition against
so-called artificial birth control, apparently with clear consciences
and despite the notions of sin and guilt that have been projected
onto this aspect of human behaviour.
Provided that couples have a sincere respect, or preferably a
deep love, for each other, the mechanics of their mutual sexual activity
should be irrelevant to a church. Perhaps the church fears
that any weakening of the nexus between sexual relations and the
propagation of children would remove the moral censure from sex
outside marriage. That is not necessarily so, although there would
seem to be a good case for the degree of censure to depend on the
circumstances.
The Catholic Church had a chance to develop its teaching consistently
with contemporary reality during and in the aftermath of
the Second Vatican Council. The chance was lost when Pope Paul
the Sixth withdrew the matter from the assembly of the council
and then rejected the recommendation of the commission he had
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established to examine it. The encyclical, Humanae Vitae, reaffirming
the prohibition of artificial birth control, was published in 1968.
The encyclical gave more weight to not contradicting the outdated
line of the Pope’s predecessors than to compassion for those
affected or to the changed circumstances of married couples during
their child-bearing years in the twentieth century. The chance was
lost to develop a policy which reflected the growth in knowledge,
consequent changes in perception and altered conditions in the
world. The encyclical unleashed widespread disenchantment with
the Church’s teaching authority, known as the magisterium, from
which the Church has not recovered. Later authoritarian reassertion
of the ecclesiastic prohibition on birth control has done nothing
to improve the situation.
Another aspect of sexual morality is also ripe for revision. It is
now widely recognised that sexual orientation is genetically determined.
Consequently, the Church’s attitude to homosexuality needs
reappraisal. A complication may exist because some married men
also exhibit homosexual tendencies and some married women are
attracted to lesbian relationships.It may be just as relevant, of course,
that some married people are attracted to and also experience heterosexual
relations outside their marriages but that is not a condemnation
of heterosexual activity as such.
Extramarital sexual activities constitute a breach of trust where
the couple has a commitment to exclusivity in their sex life and
should be censured on that account, although there may well be
mitigating circumstances. There is a similar commitment in the unions
formed by many contemporary young people but without the
formality of marriage. It could be argued that there should be a
mechanism for the recognition of such unions. In a Christian marriage,
after all, the partners themselves are the celebrants of the
sacramental union freely entered into through their mutual commitment
to each other. The civil law in Australian and some other
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countries, for instance, has come to recognise mutual property rights
in ‘de facto’ relationships in the interests of justice between the
partners.
Some couples, however, marry without any commitment to exclusive
sexual rights and there are casual relationships that also
lack that commitment. In those cases it could not be claimed that
extramarital sex or sex with other partners was a breach of trust,
but the moral force of the marriage could be questioned, and sex
without commitment could hardly be considered virtuous. Some
unions between same-sex couples do seem to entail commitment
akin to that in a fully committed marriage.
When the practice of taking people into slavery was more common,
the Church agreed to permit spouses to remarry who had been
denied contact with their husbands or wives after the latter were
taken into slavery. Consideration now seems overdue with respect
to other conditions that effectively terminate a marriage and may
warrant acceptance by the Church of the right to remarry for a husband
or wife.
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Antony Ruhan said,
October 20, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Amen.