What then is Sexuality?

What then is Sexuality?

Continuing our talk on homosexuality and homoeroticism and the preliminary foundations of a Christian eros we continue our discussion. We’ll be quoting other Catholic voices in this post, so keep up, and let’s explore the framework of a Christian eros. I will define the term here: and it will be available at the terms page in the near future.

Eros, in theological debates is usually seen as an ascending love, a possessive love. Yet, if you’ll notice I have taken the liberty of redefining this possessive love within the framework of nuptiality and being spoken for by the other. To define the term as I am using it in short: Erotic love is a desiring love, a love that seeks to hold and behold the other. Yet, where in the past some theologians have turned agape and eros into antitheses, Pope Benedict XVI offers a good corrective that helps us understand what I am trying to say.

Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature.

–Pope Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est.

My attempt has been to offer a vision of an eros that fits the Holy Father’s teachings, and speaks and operates within the life and language of nuptiality. I have been trying to establish in these commentaries a love that desires rightly, a love that is infused with a return to self giving, even from the depths of desire. Our love, our sexuality must speak the language of being spoken for, the language of nuptiality.

If our sexuality must speak the language of nuptiality, the language of being spoken for by another, either Christ, or the Church then clearly a body in the act of homoerotic union cannot do so. The only thing that homoeroticism speaks is being spoken of by the self, for it disregards the created nature of maleness and femaleness and their spokenness by and for each other. Homoeroticism is simply another manifestation of self-imposed contraception that silences the nuptial word the body speaks. Sexuality must testify to its spokenness either by the final advent of Christ, or by the gender counterpart for which their body was created, man for woman, and woman for man, and the possibility of fertility is included in this goal.

Any attempt at a true eros must embody this self-offering, self-receiving love. The homoerotic situation is lacking, it is not a true eros at all, but an imitation. It is truly a difficult struggle and it is not my attempt to undermine the difficulties. There are many answers we cannot possibly delve into for sake of time and relevance to our primary subject matter, suffice it to say this: We are creatures who find themselves between the fullness of sin and the fullness of redemption, and there is a constant struggle in the human heart.

A body may truly desire members of the same sex to be united with erotically, but this is not nuptial, nor can it be sanctioned by the Church by virtue of her teachings on what nuptiality is and means. Desire is desire, but not all desire is licit. By the very spokenness of Creation as male and female we understand that our bodies are spoken for and speak nuptially. If they are to engage in sexual acts, they must be of a type and this type is the nuptial type between men and women one for the other.

These desires do exist, but they should neither prohibit the authentic living of Christian life, so long as one discerns and fulfills their vocation faithfully, nor be grounds for prohibiting liturgical and ecclesiastical participation. Desires are desires, and like all sinful desires they can be mastered and are not mortal sin.

Let’s transition now to a different leg in our discussion, and look at Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s statements on the eros between men and women.

Not only is the eros between human beings the basis that permits God to impress his own agape on the human person; the encounter face to face between man and woman is also the basis that permits the possibility of such a face to face encounter between God and humanity. In the Church, humanity is given a face for God

–Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Glory of the Lord, Vol VII. Ignatius Press, 1991, 484.

I think that these are very dense statements, but let’s unpack them to help us close off this section of my little thought experiment. Balthasar says that the eros between humans permits God to impress His Divine agape upon us. How so? I think the answer is, if we look at what we have established in reading Pope John Paul II, the ‘nuptial echo’ of the inner Trinitarian life. Or, in other words, the way that through learning sacrificial agape through a true eros, humans learn to open themselves to the other and in so doing open themselves to God.

The sexual encounter is a face to face reality, a reality that allows the encounter between God and humanity is the other thing Von Balthasar is saying. How is this possible? Well, firstly, the Imago Dei, the image of God in which we were created male and female. The encounter between God and humanity that happens in the nuptial union of bodies is positively ecclesial. This goes back to what Pope John Paul II called the ‘prophetic nature of sexuality.’ When sexuality speaks as it should, with all the discipline inherent in its proper expressions it is an opening to the Divine encounter, it is the eros which draws us into true agape and thus into God Himself.

In short as we move to finish reading West’s article I notice something. The funny thing about sexuality in this vision, is that it is like Jesus teachings on having life, sexuality must be spoken for by the other. We must lose it to gain it, and just like there is a way of losing life to gain it, so too there is a way of losing sexuality to gain it.

I know that this too was lots of my opinion, but it is based on the conclusions we have drawn from reading Christopher West’s article, as well as Pope John Paul II. We’re almost done with the article, so stick around with me another week or two while we finish establishing some groundwork and finally get to the lectures themselves. I cannot wait for that day, and I assume you cannot either. I’m chomping at the bit, let’s see if we can’t finish soon, and undertake this monumental task of working through the Theology of the Body together.