…in the National Catholic Reporter for some time. I can’t even be bothered writing any kind of refutation since it does a good job of self-refutation by its own twisted logic.
Misogynist? Homophobic? We’ve got the church for you!
In its latest moves, the church has only further alienated itself from those who are seeking healthy, life-giving, and honest expressions of their sexuality rather than the harmful, secretive affairs that estrange us from ourselves, from one another, and from God. The new generations of Catholics will not have inherited the church’s reign of sexual guilt that marked those who grew up Catholic 40 or more years ago. Until the church authorities begin to deal with our human, God-given sexuality in ways that propel us towards growth and greater wholeness, the relevance of the Vatican’s teaching authority will only continue to dwindle within the generations to come.
Yeah…it’s like…whatever.
I have far too much respect for the Anglican communion to wish they would take the author off our hands.
What codswollop and tripe and waffle and pffle. “Healthy?” “life giving?” yeah right.
In its latest moves, the church has only further alienated itself from those who are seeking healthy, life-giving, and honest expressions of their sexuality rather than the harmful, secretive affairs that estrange us from ourselves, from one another, and from God.
Astonishing.
As someone else has noted, those who are worried the Church is getting more “conservative” are usually the ones who just wish it would go out of business altogether.
So, kinda don’t give a damn, really.
How about “Have no idea? We’ve got the Magazine for you!” Oh wait! There’s two, and the pill is actually even more radical.
I love (sarcasm alert) this idea that if you deny any aspect of your sexuality, then you are somehow ‘alienated’ from yourself. Which in turn, suggests that there is a true-self with which one can be united (I believe the Church calls this integration).
Now if this is the case, what is the true-self that one can be united with?
Isn’t this a discussion on philosophical anthropology that has just assumed a whole raft of arguments without trying to back them up? At the very least the Church has thousands of years of thinking on this topic with which to justify it’s position.
Modern interpretations of the meaning of sexuality really irritate me; mostly because of the struggle (I think most people experience) in truly integrating sexuality and sexual desire. The meaning of being a man or being a woman is entirely bound up in this question and the Church is for some reason accused of denying ‘life-giving expressions of sexuality’?!?! I’m sorry, but basic biology 101 – homosexual relationships, sodomy and contraceptive (I want to write contraceived: what’s the past-participle of contraception?) sexual acts are explicitly NOT life-giving. Even if we choose to interpret ‘life-giving’ in the broadest manner (as in, produces happiness) then these acts surely don’t measure up. Any concession of pleasure to the true meaning of the structure of the sexual act deprives us of happiness in a genuine sense. This isn’t even the Church fathers – one finds this argument in Aristotle (although far more eloquently expressed in the phenomenology of JP2: The Acting Person)
Hello Tom, love your answer.
Anne
Ps the phenomenology of JPII is magnificent
The only difficulty is that its magnificence is only matched by its density :)
OK but that only means that it has to be digested with much mastication and not gulped without thought.
Anne
“contracepted” perhaps?