The Battle for Purity

Paul S. Loverde, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, has an interesting essay on the First Things site (Let the Battle for Purity Begin). Based in part on the new edition of his pastoral letter on pornography, “Bought with a Price” (available at Amazon for Kindle and at http://ift.tt/1lN8Fzr), Bishop Loverde writes that

The pornography epidemic is something to which all people of good will must devote more attention and talk about more openly, but first we need to understand something of the scope and character of the problem.

He goes on to say that

Those who deny that the act of viewing pornography has any negative consequences must understand just how toxic the situation has become. It may be that a man now in his forties, say, remembers being a curious adolescent, stealing glances at a magazine in a neighbor’s home or in the aisle of a convenience store. As morally problematic and harmful as that act surely is, such behavior was arguably slow to become habitual and the physiological and psychological consequences were infrequently severe. That experience is far removed from what young people face today.

He goes on the discuss briefly some of the scientific research about the effects of pornography as well as the moral and spiritual consequences that he’s seen in his own pastoral ministry.

As an Orthodox priest, I found his pastoral letter is well worth my time to and I would encourage other Orthodox clergy and laity to read it as well.

I think that if we as Orthodox Christians are to take seriously the concern raised in the bishop’s letter, we need to take more seriously our own preaching and teaching on human sexuality. While essential it isn’t enough to simply condemn pornography (and Bishop Loverde goes beyond saying “No!”). We must also make sure that cohabitation, artificial contraception as well as divorce and remarriage are rare among us. Yes, this is a huge task and pastorally this is not an issue that lends itself easily to a “one size fits all approach.”

However important it is to say “No” to sin, we must offer as well a positive teaching on chastity both inside and outside marriage. I think as Loverde’s essay title suggests, this will be a battle and one fought not only with those outside the Church but also within our parishes and dioceses. I say this not because of any lack in the tradition but in the sober realization that Orthodox Christians men and women of all ages are also victims in the wars of “sexual liberation.” Many of these men and women are our own walking wounded and we need to care for them if we hope to be faithful in our witness to the Gospel.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Related articles

• A bishop’s pastoral letter on Pornography


• Let the Battle for Purity Begin: Love vs. Pornography


• A Strong Bishop Speaks Out on Porn


• Bishop Loverde’s exhortation to combat the scourge of pornography


• Bishop issues letter on the ‘epidemic plague’ of porn, calls on men to recommit to purity

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The Proposition 8 Case and the Equality Argument

Robert John Araujo, S.J., the John Courtney Murray, S.J. University Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law has an interesting essay on the California Proposition 8 case currently before the US Supreme Court (you can read it here). Here are some excerpts:

Yesterday’s oral arguments on the California Proposition 8 case disclosed many interesting thoughts about the meaning of marriage not only in California but everywhere else. Today’s oral arguments which should be underway by now will likely do the same. The scope of my posting today is limited to the very first remarks made by Theodore Olson arguing on behalf of the Respondents (those seeking to legalize same-sex marriage in California, and elsewhere) and the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. who argued in support of the Respondents’ position. Mr. Olson opened his argument with this:

[Proposition 8] walls-off gays and lesbians from marriage, the most important relation in life, according to this Court, thus stigmatizing a class of Californians based upon their status and labeling their most cherished relationships as second-rate, different, unequal, and not okay.

In his opening words, General Verrilli said this:

Proposition 8 denies gay and lesbian persons the equal protection of the laws.

Both of these opening remarks are important and expected claims; however, both of them are untrue. Proposition 8 does not deny equality to anyone. Rather, it levels the playing field so that any person is treated the same when it comes to marriage. No one is stigmatized. No one is second rate. No one is unequal. All persons—heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual, transgendered, questioning, etc.—are in the same boat under Proposition 8; therefore, all are treated equally. There is no denial of equality; there is no instantiation of inequality by Proposition 8’s operation.

Knowing that I am entering a topic that bears great sensitivity, I want to express clearly that it is not my intention to insult, demean, or marginalize anyone and the dignity that is inherent to everyone. I think that there must be equal access to the claim of dignity which does not imply or require the further conclusion that all persons are equal in all respects nor must their ideas and positions be judged equal in all respects. To disagree with someone with different views on any subject—including same-sex marriage—is precisely that, to disagree—a disagreement that is based on intelligence comprehending and intelligible world. The nature of disagreement is to enter a debate with reasoned analysis and objective commentary supported by factual analyses. To disagree is not to demean; to debate is not to insult; to contradict with objective reasoning is not to marginalize or unjustly discriminate.

By insisting through legislation or adjudication that one thing is equal to something else does not in fact make it so (our human intelligence and our understanding of the intelligible world lead us to this conclusion)—for there must be some foundation based on facts and reason that can justify the equality claim (once again, our human intelligence and our understanding of the intelligible world inexorably lead us to this second conclusion). If this factual-rational foundation is lacking, the equality claim must necessarily fail unless the legal mechanism considering the claim is a purely positivist one. This is patent when the physical differences of male and female and their biological complementarity essential to the continuation of the human race are taken into account. The promotion of “legal argument” that attempts to justify same-sex unions as being the equal of opposite-sex marriage is a contradiction of reason and fact which destabilizes the integrity of a legal system and the substantive law that undergirds it. Reliance on an “equality” argument to advance legal schemes to recognize same sex-marriage does not make relations between two men or two women the same as the complementary relation between a man and a women when reason and fact state that they are equal in certain ways but not in other ways that are crucial to the institution of marriage. While the sexual relations between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples may both generate physical pleasures through sexual intimacy, these two kinds of sexual relations are substantively different in that the latter exemplifies the procreative capacity that is the foundation of the human race based on the ontological reality of the nuclear family (the fundamental unit of society) whereas the former is sterile from its beginning and cannot achieve this objective.

But let us assume for the moment that I am in error on other pertinent issues regarding same-sex unions and that the relationship between two persons of the same sex is the equal of the marriage between a man and a woman. What conclusions do we then reach as further considerations surrounding the marital context are pursued? These considerations include: equality claims made for other relationships in which proponents argue that these relationships can also be marriages if the relationship of same-sex couples can become a marriage; moreover, by denying the marital status to the partners of these other relationships is there also a violation of equality? A list of such affiliations might include these: a collective of men or women—or a mixture of both sexes—who claim the right to be equal and therefore married in a polygamous context; a sexual affiliation of someone in age-minority and someone in age-majority who claim the right to be equal and therefore married in spite of current prohibitions on age limitations; a sexual relationship of closely related persons who, in spite of legal prohibitions due to degrees of consanguinity, claim the equal right to marriage; or any combinations of human beings who wish to associate with other biological entities who (at least the humans) insist that their relation is or should be considered the equal of a marriage between a man and a woman.

The equality argument supporting same-sex marriage runs into difficulty when one considers that the heterosexual marriage partners, because of their biological nature, are typically capable of reproducing with one another but the homosexual partners are not. It is absolutely essential to take stock of the indisputable about the physical nature of the human being and its bearing on marriage. A homosexual man and a heterosexual man are presumed equally capable of inseminating any woman, and a lesbian and a heterosexual woman are presumed equally capable of being inseminated by any man. Why? Because intelligence and the intelligible world demonstrate this conclusion to be true. But no man, heterosexual or homosexual, can inseminate any other man. Nor can any woman, heterosexual or homosexual, inseminate another woman without the assistance of artificial means. Neither judicial nor legislative fiat can alter this biological reality of human nature. Any man can deposit his semen and sperm in another man, but this does not lead to fertilization of human eggs and procreation. No woman can produce sperm-bearing semen and inject it into another woman thereby leading to the fertilization of the second woman’s egg. The procreation argument against same-sex unions works not because of legal fiction or artifice but because of biological reality that is inextricably a part of human nature that has been a part of the traditional definition of marriage that the majority in Goodridge could not dispute. Again, human intelligence and the intelligible world are working in tandem when these conclusions are reached. Put simply, the Goodridge majority and others making similar claims ignore these crucial points about reality, and ignoring reality does not make for wise and sound law except for the steadfast positivist whose will typically overcomes the intellect. The only way to overcome this obstacle to the same-sex marriage campaign is to put aside the natural and historical definition of marriage and manufacture a new one that suits the needs of same-sex marriage advocates.

The final point I’ll offer today is this: heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual, transgendered, and sexually questioning persons share the same position under Proposition 8 which treats all alike. No heterosexual man can marry another man regardless of his orientation. No homosexual man can marry another man regardless of his orientation. No heterosexual woman can marry another woman regardless of her orientation. No homosexual woman can marry another woman regardless of her orientation.

This is not inequality; rather it is equality pure and simple. This is another reason why Mr. Olson’s and General Verrilli’s assertions are without merit.

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And Now Back to Condemns, Sex, the Human Person and Culture

When I think of safer sex and condom education and the anthropology that it informs it, I am struck by the superficiality of its vision of the human. It is not unlike a toddler's temper tantrum; if only I am loud enough, angry enough, assertive enough, I can get what I want. Sadly, and as anyone who has seen a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, if the tantrum is allowed to progress, it quickly becomes an end in itself; self-assertion quickly becomes self-destruction; rage at others and frustration at their lack of submission to my will, quickly becomes terror at my own rage and a growing sense of my own impotence to accomplish my own desires.

So what then should be done?

The great tragedy of human sinfulness, of my sinfulness, is that I am not simply indifferent to my own humanity and yours, but am actively hostile to it. What this means is that I invest immense amounts of energy in avoiding my dependence upon God and neighbor for my self-discover, self-expression and self-fulfillment. I express this in one of two ways.

First, and this has be the main focus of these posts to this point, I simply refuse to acknowledge my dependence. Instead of humble openness and patience that acknowledges the foundational role of your hospitable for my self-fulfillment, I proceed autarkically; I do not receive my life with gratitude but seek to create my own life through the imposition of my own will upon not only the world of persons, events and things but also myself. Life, in this vision, becomes a project of my own ego, a quest for power and control that eventually comes to encapsulate not only the world around me but me as well. I become, in effect, my own project. Ironically, to be even temporarily realized control requires that I narrow the parameters of my life until, and again in parody of the Gospel, my life becomes “one thing,” be that one thing professional success, material wealth or sexual desire.

Compare this to Sören Kierkegaard's description of purity of heart:

Father in heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing.

For the Christian tradition, and I suspect for most traditional societies that stress the communal nature of the human, willing one thing is not reductionistic, but transcendent. Insofar as safer sex and condom education limits its concerns to the biology and mechanics of sexual intercourse, it offers only a “half-finished work.” And this work, Kierkegaard reminds us, remains opaque, to the degree that our vision remains limited to the specific work itself.

But there is another way that I can be hostile to my own dependence on God. If in the former, I try and impose myself on myself, in this second case, I simply refuse to undertake the work of self-discover and self-expression. (As an aside, this was part of what I was getting at in a series of posts on the psychological foundations of jurisdictionalism.) Instead, I limit myself to simply maintaining the forms of my tradition but never allow those forms to challenge me to self-knowledge and self-expression in any depth.

In either case, however, what we see is an abdication of chastity or a life that is respectful of self and others. Rather than respect, I live a life that sees self and others in purely, or at least largely, instrumental terms, as I try and shape them and reality to my own, increasingly encapsulated will.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Pansexualism: “Do You Think I'm Sexy?”

We see nowhere see the efficiency and popularity of autarky then in matter of human sexuality. Far from being the obsession of the right wing ideologues, unfettered sexual expression has become the rallying cry of contemporary secular society. As Craig Carter, who teaches theology and ethics at Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto and who serves as "Theologian in Residence" at Westney Heights Baptist Church, has written,

Pansexualism is the real ideology driving the sexual revolution. It is the doctrine that sexual liberation means that all should have sex with all at will. It holds up promiscuity and the unisex ideal as its goods. True sexual liberation can only occur when sexual pleasure has been totally detached from the bonds of family life and procreation. Pansexualism seeks to sever the connection between parents and children because that tie stands in the way of complete sexual liberation for the autonomous individual. Parenting prevents individuals from satisfying their hormonally driven desires with whomever they feel like doing it with at any given moment. So the family must die. It is an obstacle to individual fulfillment; it is inherently "oppressive." (h/t: Dr Edward Green)

It is worth noting, if only in passing, that the gods of the Ancient Near East, the gods that tempted Israel to deny God and her own identity, where in the main fertility gods who worship embraced prostitution ( Ishtar) and infant sacrifice ( Moloch). While some contemporary scholarship questions the existence of sacred prostitution, for example, the association between sex and apostasy is unquestioned in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament (see for example, Deuteronomy 23:17-18 and Hosea 4:14 and their parallels).

Pansexualism stands in stark contrast to the Christian (and not merely Christian) notion that human greatness, human transcendence is dependent upon an act of mutual hospitality and service. For me, this requires that I cultivate in myself the virtue of humility, that is an appreciative awareness and acceptance of my dependence on your hospitality and the hospitality of God.

More tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

A Gift Given to be Received

While sexual ethics are not, by any means, the whole of moral concern, they have become so for contemporary culture. Even as other areas of human life come more and more under societal, and even governmental, control, human sexuality seems to be something of a cultural free zone. Where political power is brought to bear at all it is in the service of imposing of sexual freedom grounded in individualistic desire. Contraception, abortion, divorce, to name only three, are all in the service of undoing and even defiling the natural symbolic connection between human sexuality and community. No longer do we see society embodied in procreation. Instead of new life as a gift from a gracious God and the fruit of conjugal love between man and a woman, we come to see procreation more and more as the expression of our own mastery over the human bodies. No longer is a child a gift given to us or not as God (or the gods) decide.

Shorn of gratitude and its connection to what is beyond the person, sexuality has become an instrument of mere self-expression. Culturally, human sexuality no longer reminds us that even in our most intimate desires and moments, we are meant for something larger than ourselves or even each other. Now it seems, that which is larger, that which is shared, has come to serve intimate human desires and moments. But in this service, what is larger is made smaller and cheaper.

Where in traditional societies, immanence and transcendence existed in an ordered partnership (hierarchy) each with its own place and integrity relative to the other, we now see a new hierarchy being proposed in which transcendence is to serve immanence. In doing so, however, transcendence has ceased to what orders human affairs and so both have ceased to be themselves. Returning to what I said above, in this submission of the transcendent to the immanent, the communal to the individual, I see a parody of the Incarnation.

St Paul says of the Incarnate Son,

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5-11)

The self-emptying (kenosis) of the Son is in the service of human transcendence, deification (theosis) in the traditional language of the Christian East. Or, to borrow from Hasidic spirituality, my self-contraction is always in the service of your self-expression; I make myself small so that you can grow larger.

Alas, where have now come to a place culturally (and safer sex and condom education are illustrative of this) where we have lose sight of the anthropological fact that I do not grow except by the gift of another's self-limitation. It is “ your” kenosis that makes possible “my” transcendence. And the first step of that transcendence is gratitude for the great gift of your self-limitation.

This all reflects an anthropological vision that is greatly at odds with contemporary understandings of the person. In place of an anthropology of mutual kenotic self-limitation as the means of our shared self-discover and self-expression, contemporary secular culture offers an autarkic anthropology that sees the self-discovery and self-expression of others (whether human or divine) as obstacles to my will. What you have, you have taken from me and so my self-realization must, necessarily, proceed along the path of your destruction or at least submission to my control.

While traditional (and Christian) societies often fail to realize the anthropological vision I have outlined, secular autarky has proven itself to be deadly efficient and terrifying popular in embodying its own anthropology.

More tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Conflicting Views of Self-Interest

For radically individualist, for those who hold to what Robert Bellah and his colleagues in Habits of the Heart call ontological individualism, the traditional notion of community is at once both attractive and frightening. A traditional life is attractive in that it offers an end to loneliness, to a life of isolation in which the person is left to his or her own ever diminishing physical and spiritual resources. But a traditional life is also frightening in that admission to such a life is never something I can simply will; I cannot in the strict sense choose this life, I can only be admitted by the invitation of a hospitable other. The love embodied by a traditional society is not mine. Rather life in as a member of a community is, in the strict sense, outside of my control, it a gift that is first and freely given and only then before can I receive it.

And, once received, it limits my autarkic mode of self-presence and self-expression. Contemporary culture is an autarky predicated as it is on an (illusory) ontology of self-sufficiency; traditional societies, for all their differences in religion and even morality, are based on an ontology of what Western Medieval philosophers describe as primary and secondary contingency, on our radical dependence on God and our proximate dependence upon humanity.

Self-discover and self-expression (including in the sexual dimension) remains an essential developmental goal for the human person in both contemporary and traditional societies. And, and again in both, these are done not simply within social structures but with others.

Where contemporary secular culture deviates, however, is on the goal, or teleos, of human self-discovery and expression. In the autarky that is secular culture, human development is directed toward a self-sufficiency that beings and ends in the individual while in traditional societies, our self-sufficiency is in the service of the community and indeed remains inchoate if it is not in the hospitable and gracious service of the community.

Safer sex and condom education, to return to where I began, seem to me to appeal (rightly I think) to self-interest. We hear similar appeals to self-interest in the Scriptures. For example, in Jeremiah, God instructs His prophet:

"Now you shall say to this people, 'Thus says the LORD: "Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him. For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good," says the LORD. "It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire."' (21.8-10)

But where traditional forms of self-interest and expression, to repeat what I said above, are grounded in and return to an appreciative and obedient service of the community, contemporary appeals to self-interest are typically set in opposition to the community. No where is this difference as clearly seen then in matters of sexual ethics.

More tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Biology Isn't Destiny But It Isn't Optional Either

A human being is not, as I said yesterday, a being-in-itself but rather a being-with-others, that is to say a social being.

The social nature of the human person is to say rather a bit more that the I simple fact that the human person is a member of something called the the human community in general sense. Bracketing for a moment ontological considerations, it is to say that our being arises not simply out out of a concrete sexual community constituted by a particular man and a particular woman, that is our mother and father.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas reminds us with his usual poetry, that this community is primordially an ethical community. The fecundity of the human is not merely biological, he observes, but moral; a woman becomes a mother through an act of hospitality by which she welcomes into her the intimacy of her own body a stranger whose presence will necessarily reconstitute her life transforming her from a biological to a moral agent.

In most traditional societies, and especially within the Christian community, this biological fecundity is a natural symbol for humanity. To be human is to be a being whose existence transcends the brute givenness of biology and really that whole order described with such precision by the empirical natural sciences. Before all else, I am a being whose being comes to from outside and as a gift from a hospitable other. And I, in turn, become most full myself when (in imitation of my mother) I embody concretely my own willingness not to simply to welcome the stranger into my life, but to allow my life to be reformed and transformed by the presence of the stranger.

For both the pious Jew and the committed Christian, that stranger is not simply a human other but the divine Other. I become who I am by an act of hospitality and care not only for strangers, but the Stranger, Who is God. While I cannot explicate it fully here, it can be argued that the human community as a whole is fundamentally feminine and that while women are by nature maternal, men are only analogically paternal.

Certainly cultural factors play a large role in the development of gender, gender roles as social constructs are themselves grounded in the sexual differences of male and female. The gender roles of a given society may more or less accurately reflect these biological difference, even as they may revere they respect these differences. But it seems to me that we can neither deny the real biological difference between male and female nor can we rid ourselves of gender roles for men and women. The denial of these biological and social differences requires that an anthropological vision that is at odds with most traditional cultures and especially with the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Within the Christian tradition specifically, Levinas' analysis of human fecundity and the maternal hospitality of all human beings leads quickly and directly to a consideration of the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ. Human sexuality and reproduction point beyond themselves to a communion that is both ground in the Most Holy Trinity and which embraces the whole created order.

Even if other traditional societies are not themselves predicated on faith in Jesus Christ, there is (or so it seems to me) these societies share a “family” resemblance with the radically communalism that is at the anthropological heart of the Christian tradition. While not universal, nevertheless the communalism of traditional societies stands in stark contrast to the radical individualism and physical reductionism that has come to evermore characterize contemporary Western culture in both North America and Europe.

More tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

More on Condoms, Sex and the Human Person and Culture

Several weeks ago, I posted a reflection on the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing the spread of AIDS in Africa (see Mirror of Justice: Harvard's Dr. Green on the Pope, Aids, and Condoms in Africa). What caught my eye about the original report was the agreement on the matter between Pope Benedict XVI and Harvard scientist and AIDS researcher, Dr. Edward Green.

Somewhat to my surprise (and delight) Dr Green left a comment on my post asking me to say a bit more on what I see as the anthropological contradiction at the heart of most safer sex education programs. So this week, I will in fact try and say a bit more about this.

Specifically, in the main most safer sex advocates would assume that the person is (or should be) free of any external constrains on his or her behavior. At the same time their educational outreach is predicated on the notion that shared or cultural norms (in the current case, the use of a condom) ought to intervene between desire and action; indeed the public health norms of the program should determine the person's behavior rather than the person's own desires. Or to put the matter differently, the person should desire for him or herself what public health officials desire for him/her. In either case what safer sex and condom education advances and seeks justifies for public health reasons is the virtue of chastity even if they do not advance the as it is usually understood in the Christian tradition.

However noble the goals, safer sex and condom education programs are (I would suggest) contain an inherent anthropological contradiction. While understood in clearly different ways, both the Christian tradition and safer sex educators are advocating for some form of chastity. But while the Christian advocate for chastity argues from within a concrete tradition that sees tradition itself as having a normative and even determinative role for human behavior, in the main those advocating for safer sex practices reject the notion that personal behavior should be shaped by tradition.

Within traditional societies I think it likely safer sex education advocates would be perceived as an attempting to replace the traditional culture with a culture grounded in contemporary scientific theories of physical health. Let me please be clear, I am not rejecting the findings of modern science, far from it. But if I may risk the ironic use of an idiom, safer sex advocates have thrown the baby out with the bath water. In their zeal to protect the health of those at risk of HIV/AIDS they have neglected to see the disconnection between their public health goals and their neglect—and at times open hostility—to the anthropological fact that the human person is foundationally a traditional being. The irony of this becomes all the more biting when we realize that sexual activity is in and of itself a more or less natural symbol of the fact of my human being not a being-in-itself, but a being-with-others.

More tomorrow.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory