Perspective
A wondrous dance of sex and spirit
By THOMAS C. FOX
The Catholic writer and psychologist
Eugene Kennedy said recently that “unless we get our sexuality right, we
won’t get our humanity right, and if we don’t get our humanity right,
we won’t get our church’s sacramental life right.”
The burden is on a healthy sexuality.
Truth is that most Catholics I know continue to struggle with
their sexuality. We’ve been off balance for so long that even when
we’re balanced we don’t trust ourselves. Attitudes toward our bodies
cause many of us unbearable pain. Our negative attitudes lead us to think we
are unlike others and incapable of truly being loved. In reality, more often
than not, we are just one more piece of clover in the pasture.
We Catholics have our sexuality stories to tell. They make a
point. Here’s one of mine. During my sophomore year in high school, a
Jesuit priest, days before a prom, offered a group of us in the high school
cafeteria this advice: “Men,” he said, quite authoritatively,
“most of you will dance with girls Friday night. If you get too close
expect at some point to get aroused. Watch out. Whatever you do, don’t
give in to the pleasure. Remember that the second you give in, it’s
a moral sin. You could be damned to hell for all eternity.”
His words lingered and, of course, focused our teenage attention
more than ever below the waist. Dancing became an excruciating wrestling match
between mind and flesh, with damnation in the balance: “Oh, no! …
I’m not enjoying this. … I’m not enjoying this. …Oh, God,
save my impure soul!”
I chuckle now. But it’s also sad. If anything, the priest,
whatever his intentions, only enhanced a view of woman as sex object. My
children did not grow up with such detailed admonitions, and I marveled at how
they all mingled, boy and girl, so much more naturally. I saw real friendships
cross gender lines.
We must get our sexuality right. It is at the core of our
humanity. It forms the images of our spirituality. It rests beneath our
religious communities and their experiences. I am cautiously optimistic we are
up to the task. Good and caring people are focused on the challenges as never
before.
In 1995, I wrote Sexuality and Catholicism (George
Braziller) to understand how Catholics got sexuality wrong. I discovered that
Jesus said virtually nothing about sex, reached out to women, listened to them,
felt comfortable among them. Above all, he respected them.
I learned our church’s teachings on sex are not rooted in the
gospels, but have been shaped by Hellenistic culture and its exaggerated
dualism: pure soul and vile body. I learned our church’s attitudes toward
women were formed by writers who denied women had souls, saw them as inferior,
and their bodies as fouled by sin and punished with menstruation.
No wonder male celibates were seen as responding to a higher call.
However, this is the 21st century and, as a married man, I find the
perpetuation of this thinking offensive and destructive to the church. It
should be rooted out.
Most Catholics I know have rejected many of the old absolutes and
are beginning, tentatively, to embrace a wondrous and intricate dance of sex
and spirit. However, we still lack signposts for the road ahead. These will
come out of gospel reflection and a more open sharing of our love-inspired
sexual experiences.
Are we ready to baptize the erotic in our lives? Are we capable of
cultivating and sharing the male and female in each of us? Can we see our
endless and seemingly uncontrollable desires for intimacy and physical union as
mere foreplay to total union, male and female, in God?
Finally, a heaven I can relate to.
Kennedy again: “We must understand our humanity and Catholic
sacraments are all sensual, sexual and spiritual at the same time.” When
is the last time you heard that in church?
Lacking women’s voices, we have hobbled, as church, on one
leg, pondering our sexuality. Now that leg has collapsed. If you have doubts,
pick up a newspaper and read the first story you come to about the church.
We are passing through darkness. So much attention on unhealthy
sexuality covers the liberating message of the gospels. We read too little of
Christian compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
The good news is that during this difficult period fresh voices
are speaking out. Women are writing theology. Couples are speaking of their
sexual experiences. Catholic moral theology, though in seeming hibernation, is
preparing itself for reconstruction.
What is required is an attitude of openness and exploration -- and
trust in the Spirit.
Expressed or not, we are coming to sense our sexuality and spirit
are one, with each transfusing the other. The mystic writer Fr. Edward Hayes,
in Prayer Notes to a Friend (Forest of Peace), writes that our bodies
are “soul-saturated and awesomely beautiful.”
“Whenever you become conscious of your body while dressing or
bathing,” he says, “pray a wordless prayer that you will never desert
your body, nor any parts of it, for some artificial state of
holiness.”
Another signpost of life, healing and healthy sexuality can be
found in Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality (Crossroad)
authored by Franciscan Sr. Fran Ferder and Fr. John Heagle, co-directors of
Therapy and Renewal Associates, a counseling and renewal center near
Seattle.
The authors write that the three traditional Greek love forms,
agape, philia and eros, have for too long been separated and
placed in a hierarchical order with agape, selfless love, at the top,
philia, the love of friends, in the middle, and eros, physical
and emotional love, at the bottom.
Ferder and Heagle connect all three, seeing them flowing
“from a fundamental moral disposition.” In this new context,
Christian sexuality is grounded in what they call a “passionate
reverence” for all people. “This inner way of viewing
relationships,” they write, “is ultimately a graced gift of God that
enables us to stand before other people -- whether they are strangers we meet
on the street or our most intimate lovers and friends -- with a spirit of
openness and reverence.” Read this book and taste, at long last, healthy
Christian sexuality.
The popular culture looks to self-help books for sexual advice.
Religiously motivated people come to sexuality at an entirely different level,
seeking to understand and cooperate with God in creation. The rewards of
getting it right reach from personal health to sacred communities with rich
sacramental lives still beyond our imaginations.
Tom Fox is NCR publisher. He can be reached at
tfox@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, December 13,
2002
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