We all want to love and be loved.
And most of the time for most people, the desire and need to love and be loved draws us to be one with one another physically.
So whatever the Church teaches in the area of human love, it should recognize this reality and it should encourage all of us to love truly, deeply, and sexually.
Love is one of the core aspects of who we are as human beings. The more we love and are loved, the more complete and authentic we are as human beings. And, consequently, the happier we are as human beings.
“To love another person is to see the face of God” is a line from the last song of Les Miz. For most people, human love is as close as we get to Divine love in our everyday experience. I think that is the message and teaching on which the Church should focus.
The Church does a real good job of talking and teaching about love of our neighbor. But I have hardly ever heard anything memorable or inspiring that the Church has to say about loving another person when that love includes a sexual relationship. To the contrary, if love which includes the desire to be one with physically/sexually does not take place within a marriage context, it is forbidden and condemned by the Church.
The Church needs to teach about human love in a way that inspires all of us to seek loving relationships within which we connect deeply and joyfully with other human beings, including connections and relationships which include sexual activity.
Two possible sources upon which the Church could build its teaching are the wisdom contained in the “I-Thou” relationships described by Martin Buber and the book The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. These writings and ideas have inspired me for the last 50 years. The result of that inspiration has been a great deal of joy and growth in the capacity to love not only my wife of 45 years, but my children, my grandchildren, my sisters and brothers, my friends, and the many people I have worked with and who have worked for me over the years.
Marriage between a woman and a man is one form of living in a loving relationship, but it is not the only way. Most people recognize that which is why Church teaching is so ignored by so many. Also, so many people ignore Church teaching because those who promulgate the teaching have little or no credibility with those they wish to influence. Church teaching about birth control, women’s subordinate role, homo-sexuality, and pre-marital sex as developed by old men over 3,000 plus years just does not inspire or move people to live a life of love which includes sex. Throw the pedophilia scandal on top of that, and people not only ignore the Church’s teaching, they flee from it.
As one of my uncles said many years ago when my cousin was driving an hour and half each way every day after work to visit his girlfriend, “Ain’t love grand!”
Love is grand and love can be experienced and lived in many ways. The more the Church teaches us to love, without centuries of useless baggage, the better off we all will be as individuals, families, communities, nations, and the world!
Submitted by Robert Beezat, Author of Knowing and Loving: The Keys to Real Happiness
www.knowingandloving.com
Maybe the total absence of sexual comment at the parish level, as noted by almost all the commentators, will be the final answer to Church and sex. Another generation of sex silence will make it as relevent at filioque. .
Paul Baumann writes that his mother "seemed to think that when it came to the Church, you were either all in or all out." That's what I was also taught and as an ex or lapsed Catholic married outside the Church, when I go to Catholic weddings or funerals I never take Communion. It is always a moment of embarrassment for me to step aside while relatives move around me to go to the rail. Yet I am almost always surprised to see other younger relatives, usually nieces and nephews who are divorced and remarried or in one case married outside the Church by a rabbi take communion. What has changed in Church teaching that allows this or how have Catholics changed that allows them to participate in good conscience? I am not condemning them; i am simply puzzled.
Your essayists have done a helpful job of turning these issues over to be viewed from various angles. That none are totally satisfying to me only underlines the difficulty of the issues. But my reading was stopped short when heard Mr. (?) Reno explain where the "animating ethos of the Catholic Church" comes from. Surely he can't mean that the people of the Church (lay and clergy) have no part in the creation of that ethos. If he does and if it's true, that would get my nomination for the "ticking time bomb."
Saint Mary, the parish where I am active, especially at Christmas and Easter Masses, the pastor invites those who feel alienated to "come back". He asks for forgiveness for any time anywhere anyone was hurt or alienated by the church.
And this pastor makes himself available to any who take him up on his invitation. See web page http://www.stmarysjc.org and scroll down to the Pastor's Christmas message.
This, to me, is the most important article Commonweal has ever published. Thank you. It is difficult to add anything to a subject so superbly covered, but I will mention some frequent ways Catholic couples used to cope with the Church dictims. Some husbands would "man up" and get the vasectomy, taking on sure hellfire and damnation, but--it was assumed--sparing their wives that damnation (because it was his sin only). Another solution was a sympathetic Catholic doctor recommending a hysterectomy as a means of birth control (not usually stated so explicitly). These were not amusing stories then, but accounts of desperate people in dire situations, trying to save their marriages and their sanity, while still being accepted as faithful Catholics. On the divorced-remarriage issue (sans annulment), is it not ironic that the Church accepets this on the condition that the Catholic spouse not have sexual intercourse with his/her mate? The Church OKs such a union if it is lived out in a way which is the legal grounds for divorce or annulment!
We all want to love and be loved.
And most of the time for most people, the desire and need to love and be loved draws us to be one with one another physically.
So whatever the Church teaches in the area of human love, it should recognize this reality and it should encourage all of us to love truly, deeply, and sexually.
Love is one of the core aspects of who we are as human beings. The more we love and are loved, the more complete and authentic we are as human beings. And, consequently, the happier we are as human beings.
“To love another person is to see the face of God” is a line from the last song of Les Miz. For most people, human love is as close as we get to Divine love in our everyday experience. I think that is the message and teaching on which the Church should focus.
The Church does a real good job of talking and teaching about love of our neighbor. But I have hardly ever heard anything memorable or inspiring that the Church has to say about loving another person when that love includes a sexual relationship. To the contrary, if love which includes the desire to be one with physically/sexually does not take place within a marriage context, it is forbidden and condemned by the Church.
The Church needs to teach about human love in a way that inspires all of us to seek loving relationships within which we connect deeply and joyfully with other human beings, including connections and relationships which include sexual activity.
Two possible sources upon which the Church could build its teaching are the wisdom contained in the “I-Thou” relationships described by Martin Buber and the book The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. These writings and ideas have inspired me for the last 50 years. The result of that inspiration has been a great deal of joy and growth in the capacity to love not only my wife of 45 years, but my children, my grandchildren, my sisters and brothers, my friends, and the many people I have worked with and who have worked for me over the years.
Marriage between a woman and a man is one form of living in a loving relationship, but it is not the only way. Most people recognize that which is why Church teaching is so ignored by so many. Also, so many people ignore Church teaching because those who promulgate the teaching have little or no credibility with those they wish to influence. Church teaching about birth control, women’s subordinate role, homo-sexuality, and pre-marital sex as developed by old men over 3,000 plus years just does not inspire or move people to live a life of love which includes sex. Throw the pedophilia scandal on top of that, and people not only ignore the Church’s teaching, they flee from it.
As one of my uncles said many years ago when my cousin was driving an hour and half each way every day after work to visit his girlfriend, “Ain’t love grand!”
Love is grand and love can be experienced and lived in many ways. The more the Church teaches us to love, without centuries of useless baggage, the better off we all will be as individuals, families, communities, nations, and the world!
Submitted by Robert Beezat, Author of Knowing and Loving: The Keys to Real Happiness
www.knowingandloving.com
I'm 63 y.o. and go to Mass weekly. Even I don't believe anymore that marriage is a "sacred" institution. It is the love between the two people--on those rare occasions when its truly there--that is sacred. And it would be sacred marriage or no marriage. Marriage may be many things--a way of ordering society, dispensing benefits, etc etc. But sacred, I don't think so. We need to move on.