{"id":2170,"date":"2006-01-18T14:52:21","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T19:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theanchoressonline.com\/?p=2170"},"modified":"2017-03-17T21:37:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T21:37:33","slug":"oh-hes-on-about-sex-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theanchoress\/2006\/01\/18\/oh-hes-on-about-sex-again\/","title":{"rendered":"“Oh, he’s on about SEX, again?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Word is that Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s first encyclical of his pontificate<\/a> will be released this Friday, and that it deals with the topic of love, in various forms, and the topic of sex. You know it will be the sex part the world will pay attention to.<\/p>\n

\u2026(in it the) Pope issues a warning in the document, entitled Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), <\/em>that eros risks being \u201cdegraded to mere sex\u201d if it is not balanced with spiritual or divine love founded on the teachings of Jesus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, boy, am I ready to read this one! I\u2019ve been praying that the church would finally start teaching sex from this perspective for some time, now, and have written frequently \u2013 both here and elsewhere \u2013 that disconnecting Love from the idea of God has empowered evil mightily.<\/p>\n

I can hear the secularist reaction, now. \u201cOh, is he writing about SEX again? Why won\u2019t the church stop telling everyone that sex is bad; sex is GOOD and sex is NO BIG DEAL and the matter is \u201csettled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well\u2026the church doesn\u2019t tell us that sex is bad. Quite the contrary. Sex IS good \u2013 great, in fact. But it IS a big deal, because it is SACRED<\/a>\u2026and it\u2019s hardly \u201csettled.\u201d<\/p>\n

For too long, particularly when the nuns were overwhelmed in the schools, trying to teach teeming classrooms of 40-50 boomers, every day (yes, that many students per class \u2013 and somehow we all learned!) the message of human sexuality was condensed down to \u201cdon\u2019t unless you\u2019re married,\u201d and explained as \u201cit\u2019s bad. It\u2019s shameful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShameful\u201d became understood to mean \u201cdirty\u201d and things went downhill from there. But since we in the church seem to have come to the end of rampant deconstructionism, perhaps it is finally time to re-construct those sentiments a bit more broadly. Perhaps \u201cshameful\u201d should not be construed as \u201cunfresh\u201d but as \u201ctrivializing what is Holy.\u201d Seen in that context, suddenly we find that compost heap onto which human sexuality and debate has been tossed is \u2013 when stirred up \u2013 rich and fertile.<\/p>\n

For too many \u2013 far too many \u2013 sex has been sold as a by-product of our humanity, a tension-reliever, a party favor. The instinct to chastity<\/a>, rather than being applauded as self-empowering and self-respecting, has been roundly mocked and condemned as \u201crepressive and uptight\u201d by the too-cool generation which has defined down so many of our high ideals. The resulting decades of rampant promiscuity have served up nothing good, healthful or enlightening, but much that is demoralizing, diseased and destructive.<\/p>\n

The act of lovemaking contains within it the power of Creation, itself. It is, therefore, great and grave<\/em>, not a mere bodily function or entertainment. The Creation of lovemaking is new life, and the new love that accompanies that New Creature (between mother\/child\/father\/aunt\/grandparent) is a love that has never before existed<\/em> \u2013 it is ever ancient, ever new. This Love is the Eternal, the Regeneration, as it were, of God.<\/p>\n

If Love is God, and God is Love, then God touches every aspect of Creation, including the sexual aspect, and all Creation is itself, Love. Which is God.<\/p>\n

Stomp on the act of Creation and you stomp on God. Stomp on the New Creature \u2013 who brings Love \u2013 and you stomp on God, again. And again.<\/p>\n

This is what the church has been trying to say, one way or another, for millenia. Particularly since Pope Paul XI\u2019s encyclical Humane Vitae<\/em>, the \u201ctoo smart, too cool\u201d people, those who have come to believe that everything that came before their generation is irrelevant (and who never wanted to hear the word \u201cno\u201d) have been resolutely keeping their hands over their ears and singing, \u201cLalala, I can\u2019t hear you!\u201d<\/p>\n

But Humane Vitae<\/em> was prophetic. Paul understood that the \u201clittle issue\u201d of embraced contraception would become a much bigger, much greater issue, which would affect the whole world and its values. And since that writing, we see that for too many in the world, a baby is less a blessing<\/a> than a burden, and the no-accountability Orgasm, that unending myth, has been embraced as a god<\/a> \u2013 one that seems to feed on the awful destruction of aborted babies (Love destroyed) and AIDS.<\/p>\n

Funny\u2026in Catholicism, we have a God who feeds us<\/em> with his own Body, in the Eucharist \u2013 who at His very Incarnation suggested as much when he was born to lie in a manger, a foodbin. In the secular world, their god of Orgasm feeds on them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

John Paul II made great headway in dissolving the whole \u201cthe church hates sex and is trying to keep us from having it\u201d narrative, but his writing is so dense, so impenetrable for some, that it will take decades to really unwrap and decipher all he said. This Benedict, on the other hand, is as-prolific-if-not-moreso than John Paul, and he writes in an accessible style that is clear and direct.<\/p>\n

And he is about to condense several thousand years of teaching, debate, philosophy and insight into something we can understand and which the world desperately needs to not only hear but digest: GOD IS LOVE. LOVE IS GOD.<\/p>\n

And when the Love that is God, the God who is Love is stomped on\u2026only the Evil is filled with glee.<\/p>\n

Whispers in the Loggia has Benedict ad libbing some of this encyclical<\/a>:
\n
\nIn this sense and with many sentiments, I follow in the footprints of Pope John Paul II next Wednesday, 25 January, the Feast of the Conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to pray with our Orthodox and Protestant brothers: to pray with thanks for all the Lord has given us; to pray because the Lord guides us along the path to unity.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the same day, January 25, will finally be published my first encyclical whose title is already well-known, \u201cDeus caritas est,\u201d God is love.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an immediately ecumenical theme, but in the grand sceheme of things it provides a backdrop to it, because God\u2019s love is our love, and the state of Christian life is the state of peace in the world. In this encyclical, I\u2019d like to show this concept of love in its different dimensions. In today\u2019s terminology, love appears far, very far, away from that which a Christian thinks when speaking of true Christian charity but, for my part, I\u2019d like to demonstrate that it expresses itself its one unique movement with different dimensions.<\/p>\n

There is eros; this gift of love between man and woman which comes from the same font of the Creator\u2019s goodness, and with it the possibility of a love which gives itself in favor of another, that eros transforms itself in agape only by the measure by which two people who really love each other become, finally, no longer about more for themselves, their own joy and their own happiness, but above all become about the good of the other person. And this eros transforms itself in love in a path of purification, of greater depth. It opens itself then into the family, which then opens itself toward the larger family of society, toward the family of the Church, toward the family of the world.<\/p>\n

Oh\u2026if this is a trailer, I can\u2019t wait to see the movie! :-)<\/p>\n

UPDATE: A slight delay, it seems as they polish the translation<\/a> to Benedict\u2019s satisfaction. Good idea.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Word is that Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s first encyclical of his pontificate will be released this Friday, and that it deals with the topic of love, in various forms, and the topic of sex. You know it will be the sex part the world will pay attention to. \u2026(in it the) Pope issues a warning in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,43,44,62,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benedict-xvi","category-catholic-vocations","category-catholicism","category-culture-of-lifedeath","category-john-paul-ii"],"yoast_head":"\n"Oh, he's on about SEX, again?"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Word is that Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical of his pontificate will be released this Friday, and that it deals with the topic of love, in various\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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