Sexuality
• Human: Sexuality is essentially human; there has never been a normal human being who
was not sexual.
• Spiritualising: There is a danger in modern Catholic theology of a spiritualising approach
to sexuality and sexual intercourse in marriage.
To transfer human sexuality up to the exclusively spiritual level is just as untrue to human nature as is transferring it down to the
exclusively animal level.
• One Body: Becoming one person with another human being includes becoming not only
one spirit and one mind, but also one body.
Married love is agape, the love of the spouse for the spouse's sake, but it is also more than agape. Married love is philia, the love of the spouse as a friend, but it is also more than philia.
Married love is eros, the love of the spouse for one's own sake, but it is also more than eros.
• Selfish Love: Married love that leads two to become one body is never exclusively selfish
love, but it is unquestionably in part selfish love.
Married love is loving your neighbour (spouse) as yourself (Mt 22:39).
• Eros & Agape: Eros cannot be transformed; it is an essential form of human love.
We do better to accept it, to integrate it, and to give it a distinctively human form. That distinctive form appears when the power of eros is harnessed by human wisdom.
Eros, by definition, is the love of the spouse for one's own sake. Where eros dominates, I trample others and make them means to my ends.
Such an approach produces what it seeks to avoid, emptiness and loneliness. Where wisdom dominates, I recognise that my partner's happiness is the only way that I, too, can be happy.
In that wisdom, strangely, eros is not transformed into, but is allied to, agape.
It is precisely this alliance of eros and agape that allows married love to persist and to grow when those things that fuel eros, youth, beauty, health, grace, have long since passed away.
• Sexual Pleasure: Sexuality, sexual passion, sexual pleasure, eros, derive their sacramental
character not from any purpose that human beings might assign to them, but from the simple theological fact that they are from God.
They are God's gifts to us, and they are good gifts. For two human animals to become one body-person includes essentially,
though not exclusively, becoming one body physically.
Physical union is not all there is to becoming one body. Still it has a place in Christian marriage, as prophetic symbol of the
covenant uniting humanity and God, who does not shrink from proclaiming his love for his
beloved in that most beautiful, and most erotic, of love songs, the Song of Songs.
• Song of Songs: This Song has always posed problems for both Jews and Christians,
specifically whether it is a poem to divine or human love.
For centuries, unwilling to
consider that human, erotic love would have any place in the Scriptures, commentators
opted for an allegorical reading. The Song of Songs, they explained, was about divine love.
But even if it is, God, good communicator that he is, always reveals himself in the language of his hearers.
• Erotic Human Love: The emergence of the historical-critical approach to reading the Bible led to a growing consensus that the meaning of the Song was its literal meaning.
It is about the love of humans, male and female, who in love always seek the bodily presence
of the other.
This love is celebrated as gift, and as image of the Creator God and of his love for us.
• Acceptance & Integration: In response to the view that sex cannot be fully humanised, it
does not need to be humanised because it is already fully human, precisely as gifted to us
by the God.
Man and woman, husband and wife, do not become fully human by ignoring eros, or by negotiating their way carefully around it, above it or beyond it.
They become human only by accepting it and integrating it into the rest of their human and
Christian lives.
(From Michael G. Lawler, "Theology of Marriage: A Contemporary View," Chapter Four of Secular Marriage,
Christian Sacrament. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985, pp. 56-80).
• Human: Sexuality is essentially human; there has never been a normal human being who
was not sexual.
• Spiritualising: There is a danger in modern Catholic theology of a spiritualising approach
to sexuality and sexual intercourse in marriage.
To transfer human sexuality up to the exclusively spiritual level is just as untrue to human nature as is transferring it down to the
exclusively animal level.
• One Body: Becoming one person with another human being includes becoming not only
one spirit and one mind, but also one body.
Married love is agape, the love of the spouse for the spouse's sake, but it is also more than agape. Married love is philia, the love of the spouse as a friend, but it is also more than philia.
Married love is eros, the love of the spouse for one's own sake, but it is also more than eros.
• Selfish Love: Married love that leads two to become one body is never exclusively selfish
love, but it is unquestionably in part selfish love.
Married love is loving your neighbour (spouse) as yourself (Mt 22:39).
• Eros & Agape: Eros cannot be transformed; it is an essential form of human love.
We do better to accept it, to integrate it, and to give it a distinctively human form. That distinctive form appears when the power of eros is harnessed by human wisdom.
Eros, by definition, is the love of the spouse for one's own sake. Where eros dominates, I trample others and make them means to my ends.
Such an approach produces what it seeks to avoid, emptiness and loneliness. Where wisdom dominates, I recognise that my partner's happiness is the only way that I, too, can be happy.
In that wisdom, strangely, eros is not transformed into, but is allied to, agape.
It is precisely this alliance of eros and agape that allows married love to persist and to grow when those things that fuel eros, youth, beauty, health, grace, have long since passed away.
• Sexual Pleasure: Sexuality, sexual passion, sexual pleasure, eros, derive their sacramental
character not from any purpose that human beings might assign to them, but from the simple theological fact that they are from God.
They are God's gifts to us, and they are good gifts. For two human animals to become one body-person includes essentially,
though not exclusively, becoming one body physically.
Physical union is not all there is to becoming one body. Still it has a place in Christian marriage, as prophetic symbol of the
covenant uniting humanity and God, who does not shrink from proclaiming his love for his
beloved in that most beautiful, and most erotic, of love songs, the Song of Songs.
• Song of Songs: This Song has always posed problems for both Jews and Christians,
specifically whether it is a poem to divine or human love.
For centuries, unwilling to
consider that human, erotic love would have any place in the Scriptures, commentators
opted for an allegorical reading. The Song of Songs, they explained, was about divine love.
But even if it is, God, good communicator that he is, always reveals himself in the language of his hearers.
• Erotic Human Love: The emergence of the historical-critical approach to reading the Bible led to a growing consensus that the meaning of the Song was its literal meaning.
It is about the love of humans, male and female, who in love always seek the bodily presence
of the other.
This love is celebrated as gift, and as image of the Creator God and of his love for us.
• Acceptance & Integration: In response to the view that sex cannot be fully humanised, it
does not need to be humanised because it is already fully human, precisely as gifted to us
by the God.
Man and woman, husband and wife, do not become fully human by ignoring eros, or by negotiating their way carefully around it, above it or beyond it.
They become human only by accepting it and integrating it into the rest of their human and
Christian lives.
(From Michael G. Lawler, "Theology of Marriage: A Contemporary View," Chapter Four of Secular Marriage,
Christian Sacrament. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985, pp. 56-80).
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