DREADTALK: 'Holy Sex & Christian Friendship' John Heard - Life Week 2009 At The University Of Sydney - Remarks

DREADNOUGHT delivered the following prepared remarks during a Life Week event at the University of Sydney. Afterwards, there was a lively question and answer session. Audio (and some iPhone video) might be forthcoming.

:: A Same Sex Attracted Catholic Speaks Out ::

-- LIFE WEEK ADDRESS --

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Holy Sex And Christian Friendship

John Heard*

Before we begin, let me thank His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, the Patron; Father Dominic Murphy, the University Chaplain; and Thomas Waugh, the Catholic Chaplaincy Convenor. It is an honour to speak during Life Week this year. I must also mention Mary, and the rest of the Catholic Chaplaincy team, and applaud them for all their hard work. I am delighted to be here with you.

That great Catholic, the American Southern writer, Flannery O’Connor would introduce herself to college audiences in the middle of last century by saying that she was:

"…a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary and guilty".

At quite a remove in terms of years and experience, not to mention geography, and a same sex attracted man from a generation known for its relative traditionalism, I find that I am not quite like O’Connor. I am, indeed in some profound ways, a modern peculiarly possessed of the Catholic consciousness, that thing Ratzinger describes as historical, communal / communio, and innocent.

Those concepts - the historical, the communal, and the innocent - will help us as we venture to say something of some value about holy sex, and Christian friendship.

I was tempted to take the topic, generally, in two parts. Holy sex, of course, and then Christian friendship - but, as you will hear, the two are not properly conceived of as discrete.

The reason why is that the Catholic tradition encourages us to think of life as a unity ("from conception, until natural death"), and a flourishing human being as a properly integrated whole, rather than as a more or less chaotic association of desires (c.f. Nietzschean flux).

It is a fact of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, then, that there is no such thing as a "sexual orientation", not at least as that phrase has been used in the secular world. There is, after Genesis, simply the knowledge that "male and female He created them". Everything else - one’s sexual nature, his experience, her love - is human. There is no great gulf, no fragmentation, no split other than that – "male and female He created them".

All men have a sexual orientation, then, and all women, too, have a sexual orientation. That sexual orientation is human, understood as male and female, a division that is - nonetheless - complementary.

The Historical

So let us start with the historical. Here, of course, many people find cause against the Church. History is not an easy thing to pin down, but there is a sense that – at least since the Enlightenment – the Western world has moved beyond religious proscriptions, and achieved a certain level of freedom, and a particular kind of happiness, unchained from superstition. We have been set free from so-called Christian bigotry.

This critique is popular, after previously being merely political (although it might be political again, in places such as New South Wales). It was first seriously advanced, by figures high and low, during the French Revolution – that great dilution of the bonds of family, state, and Church - and it has come to dominate the discourse, even to set the limits of the debate, in centres of learning such as the University of Sydney.

In many respects, then, history is against the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Why, however, might Pope Benedict XVI describe the historical sense as important to Christians’ efforts in the world?

Well, to tighten the language, it helps to know that the Pope does not speak directly about history; rather he regularly expresses his regard for continuity: for development in continuity. He has spoken of a "hermeneutic [or a method] of continuity". Continuity, of course, makes no sense without history – we cannot know if we continue the work of others if we have no knowledge of their work – but the meaning of the word "history" does not exhaust the meaning of the word "continuity".

Not, at least, in the way that the Pope uses the word. When he speaks of continuity, the Pope presupposes a sort of charity.

Charity has, in the Catholic tradition, a peculiar meaning and a body of knowledge – but the contemporary English meaning of the word – self-giving, or service to the poor and vulnerable – is not far off the mark.

What is missing from the contemporary definition is, however, a more solid stress on the relationship between charity and love. Caritas, the Latin word from which charity is derived, means, of course, love – and the Catholic understanding of continuity, the whole pattern of history, must be read with the emphasis on love.

In this way, and against some of the more shrill claims of activists and others, the history of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality must be a history of love. When the Pope speaks about marriage, he speaks about the continuity of love. When the Church issues a document on family, or homosexual acts, she is conscious at all times of being part of a dialogue stretching through the centuries, a dialogue of and on love - a discussion about man’s sexual nature - his desires and urges, her experience of and in the world - and the demands of love.

This view is complicated further by the fact that Christians believe that G-d is love. Christ is, for us, love crucified. Love is not some abstract notion, some Hollywood fantasy, and it is not necessarily whatever it is that one feels at ejaculation!

The Communal

Which brings us, inevitably, to the communal.

Love, conceived of as Christians conceive of the concept, always sends the individual out from herself. The Christian is sent out to others. In his first Encyclical, on Christian Love, Pope Benedict wrote that:

"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

The Pope wrote of "the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others".

We are called into community with others.

The Catholic teaching on human sexuality is, then, a communal teaching. It presupposes a community of individuals, and – shifting the discussion slightly to sexual ethics – it imagines a community of moral agents. On this view, my actions in relation to sex can, and often do have important, sometimes life-changing repercussions, quite beyond the incredible biological fact of reproduction. Sex is a significant consideration - with regard to my flourishing, in relation to my moral standing - not least because it can influence the happiness of others.

This fact about the Catholic teaching on human sexuality sets it up against rival views, especially those that treat sex as an always-private phenomenon. In Catholicism, the space of sexual activity is never a "judgement free" zone.

Sex is always meaningful, then, and Catholic sex is always ethically meaningful. The importance that Catholics place on the teaching on human sexuality relates, therefore, to the understanding that love is at the centre of the Christian’s view of the world.

There we have, very briefly, the historical, and the communal contexts for any discussion of human sexuality.

We have already touched on the Catholic teaching on human sexuality as it relates to sexual orientations – (i.e., there is no such thing, beyond male and female) – and we have had a quick look at how Christians think of love, and how that thinking colours the ethics of sexual activity.

Now, then, let us look at the innocent.

The Innocent

I wanted to speak about the innocent because, whereas as Flannery O’Connor, paying homage to Jung, stressed the guilt that characterised the modern experience, the Catholic Church actually speaks about sex in the language of innocence. Certainly, my experience as a same sex attracted Catholic has not been one of crushing guilt.

This is not a small distinction.

One of the liveliest criticisms of the Catholic Church, one of the most frequent claims made about her teachings on sex, is that she unfairly, wrongly, and / or unnecessarily induces massive guilt in otherwise functioning individuals.

There are clichés, of course: the repressed priest who leers after choirboys. The compacted nun whose sexuality is so tamped down, and locked up, that she beats and beats, can barely suppress, the nubile teenagers under her care. In movies, music, and other artefacts of popular, English speaking (post-Christian?) culture, the Christian is likely to be depicted as the prude, the buttoned up wowser, and /or the skulking hypocrite.

Such depictions, however, have always sat uneasily alongside what we know of the vibrant, exuberantly sexual cultures of Latin countries such as Spain, Italy, and Mexico – and they clash with that other popular Catholic cliché – the mega family in a people mover.

It is also interesting to note, that Latin prayers, incense, fine vestments, flowers, and other distinctly Catholic and so-called "Popish" [sic] attributes were considered in Victorian England, and beforehand, to be effeminate, and their defenders regularly characterised as queer. Catholic priests were thought to reek of sexual sin, and anti-Catholics attacked monasteries as hotbeds of sodomy. Catholic priests were, right up until the late modern period, regularly depicted as masturbatory confessors, feeding off the improprieties and peccadilloes of their randy flocks.

So, on the one hand, we have the Catholic prude – and on the other – the Catholic sex fiend. The popular, cultural treatment of the Church – even in our own times - typically swings between these poles, sometimes in the same instance. Many Sydneysiders will remember, of course, the almost schizophrenic attitude of some protesters at World Youth Day, those who denounced the pilgrims’ commitment to abstinence and purity, and simultaneously, decided that those same pilgrims would need, really need, thousands of condoms during the event.

Let me say, then, against most of the clichés, certainly against the prude, and against the naughty nun – an outrageous regular at Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras - that the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is – perhaps uniquely among world religions – joyous, and pro-sex.

But it is, explicitly, innocent.

Sex Without Limits

The important thing to say about Christian sex is, then, that the Christian is striving, in sex as in all things, to return to a state of innocence before G-d.

For it is the case that Christians believe that the world is broken, and that human beings, because of what we call "original sin", are particularly vulnerable. We experience profound passions, and because the world is warped, we sometimes choose to entertain warped desires. At times, we act out on these desires. We sin.

So, in the Catechism, the Church calls the desire to perform homosexual acts, for instance, "objectively disordered" (or, warped towards sin); and she describes homosexual sex acts themselves as "intrinsically disordered" (that is, always sinful).

Disorder in this context does not refer, of course, to a psychological disorder. That must be made clear. The Catholic teaching on human sexuality, indeed Catholic teaching on all moral issues does not prescribe or participate in, any particular psychological explanation or suggested psychiatric treatment. The Church is not a medical fraternity, and there are no Catholic, properly Catholic, "reparative therapy" courses.

I cannot stress this enough.

The passions anyone experiences are, indeed, properly understood as morally neutral. No man is guilty of sinning because he finds himself thrown, unwilled, into a state of shock at the sight of a particularly beautiful thing – be it a pile of gold, or another man at the beach.

Only afterwards does judgement come down, when the moral agent makes a choice, and exercises his will; when he entertains warped desires, or performs sinful acts. There must be a conscious, informed choice, against what is good, true, and beautiful – otherwise there is no sin.

On same sex attraction, then, the Church teaches against homosexual (or homogenital) acts, she does not teach against those who might experience same sex attraction. In fact, the Church does not teach against intense friendships. She does not even bar two men from prudently living together. She does not teach against mingling estates, or leaving your superannuation to your same sex companion.

The Catholic Church does not, of course, condemn homosexuals as a class.

In fact, the Catechism specifically forbids any "unjust discrimination" against same sex attracted men, and women.

This is because, remember, the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is innocent of "sexual orientations". It is innocent of sexual classes.

Sodomy is condemned, then, likewise with fellatio, - certain acts are off limits - but the Catholics who might feel – from time to time - drawn to those acts, whether male or female, whether with someone of the same sex or someone of the opposite sex, are not divided up into separate pens. Again - there are only the acts, which are condemned, and individual Christians - those of us who are called to return to innocence, in sex as in all things, before G-d.

All of us are in the same boat, then. This is the sensibility that permeates the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. There is a profound sense of sexual innocence lost, across the board.

So, how do I get my innocence back? In relation to sex, at least, we have some remarkable guides.

Holy Sex

In the Theology Of The Body, certainly, the Christian has a blueprint for modelling perfect, or innocent sex.

What is the Theology Of The Body? It is a troubling, profound, typically beautiful approach to many of the questions we ask about the human person.

Unfolding during audiences given at the Vatican between 1979 and 1984, the Theology Of The Body was outlined by Pope John Paul the Great, and it is - as Dr Christopher West has written - an "integrated vision of the human person". In brief, and:

"As [the Pope explained, the idea is that the]…physical human body has a specific meaning and is capable of revealing answers regarding fundamental questions about us and our lives".

Those answers, as David B. Hart has written (.PDF), "enunciate…with extraordinary fullness a complete vision of the spiritual and corporeal life of the human being". It is, getting back to something I was saying at the beginning, not a properly modern work. Given as a series of lectures, the Theology Of The Body introduced, explained, and developed a program for holy sex.

Indeed, the Theology Of The Body describes, in some fairly profound language, an attempt to reach back beyond the first Fall of Adam and Eve, a path back to the Garden of Eden, and it enables Catholics to speak meaningfully of man’s original nature. In the Theology Of The Body Pope John Paul II spoke, then, of how we were meant to be, he tried to sketch out ways of thinking about how we were meant to love one another - and at the same time, marked out quite a unique diversion in the stream of contemporary thought.

With regard to the Christian understanding of "original sin", indeed, the prehistoric error that Christians believe first led humanity away from happiness, the Holy Father wrote – rather densely that:

"If this sin [original sin] signifies, in every historical man, a state of lost grace, then it also contains a reference to that grace, which was precisely the grace of original innocence… Precisely [the Christian's] perspective of the redemption of the body guarantees the continuity and unity between the hereditary state of man's sin and his original innocence..."

What this means, when it is unpacked, is that holy sex enables a return to innocence. Or, better, it is a participation in that innocence that men and women knew before sin. Inasmuch as Christians believe that our bodies were changed after original sin, holy sex is a participation in our true nature.

The Theology of The Body is in this way partly mystical, properly Scriptural, and profoundly intellectual. I am no expert, and some of the concepts escape my grasp, but the lectures are objectively beautiful. The Catholic teaching on human sexuality is said to put man in touch with his true self. The notion is deeply impressive. It demands attention.

It is not perverted, and it is not prudish. Catholic sex, as explained by the Popes, is historically implicated, gender communal, and fundamentally innocent. Sex is a mighty thing.

A mighty thing is, of course, not treated lightly and – without going into too much detail, I am not a Scripture scholar, and I am no theologian – this properly Catholic treatment of sex helps to explain why there is so much controversy over the Church's view of human sexuality. At times, it seems as though a great many rules - some have said too many rules - regulate the sexual conduct of Christians.

But nothing less than our true selves are at stake.

When Catholic sex is even partially unwound, then, as we have started to do here, we begin to glimpse a tradition that understands our bodies as vehicles of goodness, in the service of love. We do not just interact without anything of much consequence going on. Human bodies come together, and spark.

If love really does make the world go round, Catholic sex, then, has the whole universe (physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual) jumping.

Unjust Discrimination?

Which brings us, loving and human, sparking - apparently - to whatever it is that falls short of holy sex.

Unholy sex - or better yet, masturbation, fellatio, sodomy, etc., let's talk about acts as acts - describes those acts that fall short of innocence. They are condemned in Christian Scripture, in the living tradition of love in the Church, and when implicated in public legislation and judicial rulings, they are properly understood as sins against the unity, and tranquillity of a well-ordered community.

Indeed, instead of getting human beings back to innocence, at the very best unholy sex acts make us tolerate the status quo. Laws that enshrine a right to, or encourage a fixation with, such acts are obviously unjust. We come to think that ordinary sex, or what has been called, in some practical ethics courses, "just sex" - sex without commitment, sex without love - is okay. At the worst, unholy sex acts may draw us even further down into the mess of the world.

So what?

For Catholics, the consequences are obvious. A woman who cannot get back to innocence cannot fulfil her potential. She is blocked, and stunted. She cannot properly reconcile herself to herself, and she cannot become fully human. And a sinful individual - Christians believe – can have no proper part in the life of the Divine.

Is this view unfair?

Certainly, I regularly hear from some activists who claim that the Catholic teaching on human sexuality is, specifically, unfair. They often point out that one of the rules about holy sex is that it can only be had by one man, and one woman, in the context of marriage.

Yes, I say to them, and so what?

Well, they ask, what about same sex attracted individuals who do not think they can be good husbands, or faithful wives? Doesn’t the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, therefore, unjustly discriminate against them? Aren’t we consigned to miserable lives, to being lonely, to being characterised by what amounts to hate speech?

What I think the activists might be asking is, indeed, something like this: does the Church leave same sex attracted men and women any other option?

The answer is, of course, that she does, because the Catholic understanding of flourishing is not limited to marriage. One need not participate in holy sex to return to the sort of innocence, the righteousness, that Pope John Paul described so profoundly in the Theology Of The Body.

Christian Friendship

So what else is there? Well, there is Christian friendship. The other side of the coin.

The first thing to say about friendship is that it is not, of course, secondary to, or worse than, or somehow inferior to – holy sex. A friend – properly understood – is a life partner as rich and rewarding as a lover.

If holy sex gets the universe jumping, Christian friendship taps the "love that moves the sun and other stars" - to borrow Dante’s remarkable description.

Indeed, Christians understand friendship as a manifestation of the One Love, the One G-d Who is Love, under a different name. Love cannot be divided against itself, and true love cannot be separated into greater, or lesser sorts.

In fact, the Christian understanding of love borrows from the Greeks, and we think of love under the names eros, agape, and philia. Eros relates to erotic love, the love of the bedroom, whereas agape describes a more mature love, untainted by jealousy, a love that is not even necessarily sexual.

Think of a newlywed couple.

Now, think of your grandparents.

Chances are, the newlyweds will be taken with erotic love, a love that will move - if properly cultivated - into agape, the sort of love, that your grandparents show to you - chances are - and to each other.

Philia is the third variety of love, and it relates to concepts like brotherhood, or sisterhood. Philia describes the love, then, between soldiers, for instance, or teammates, or the bonds between family members related by blood.

It would be a brave man, and a silly one, who would try to say that one or other of these three sorts of love is the better one.

So it is with those who attack the Church. They are right, after all, to point out that the Church teaches that sex is only holy, and innocent, when shared freely and openly as a gift between one man and one women inside marriage.

But that does not mean that Catholics thereby condemn same sex attracted men and women – indeed all unmarried people – to a loveless life. To claim as much would be to miss at least two thirds of the love picture. It would be to denigrate philia, and agape – and to elevate the erotic above all other sorts of love.

The Catholic teaching on human sexuality cannot be so glibly, or crudely misstated. It is - as we have seen - historical, communal, and innocent - implicating my passions, your desires, our actions in the great sweep of human love. If anything, the Church's position has much to say to the secular world, and it continues to perfect the lives - and discipline the loves - of good people everywhere.

Thank you very much.

- - END - -

30 Mins

:: The Upshot ::

DREADNOUGHT will address another university audience in the coming months. Given the limitations on this speech (length, time, etc.), and some of the follow-up questions asked by the wonderful students, I will likely use that next appearance to attempt an answer to the question: "what happens to erotic love in Christian friendship?"

:: Resources ::

- A selection of photographs taken on the day:

Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173 Begins To Fill.

(L) Father Dominic Murphy O. P. University Chaplain, and (R) Mr John Heard.

The University Of Sydney, Australia.

Life Week Posters.

Catholic Sydney, St Mary's Cathedral.

John Heard Speaks At The University of Sydney.

- Eve Tushnet's blog, recommended in response to a question about sublimating eros. 

All Images © John Heard 2009, All Rights Reserved.