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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
May 1, 2005
Preaching the sexual
I have this reputation for prolonging discussion of subjects a week beyond when everyone else has moved on. It is a hard-earned reputation, and I would not casually give it up. Let us continue discussing Benedetto Sedicesimo, the new Pope in Rome.One of the changes to expect, from the old regime to the new in the Vatican, is a new approach to the discussion of sexual morality. This is inevitable, because the late Pope's "theology of the body" was as personal to him as it was a brilliant exegesis of Catholic teaching on the "human life issues". Pope John Paul II had the qualities of a global-village parish priest, founded not only in his own genius for the dramatically personal (he was an accomplished playwright, after all), but in his broad acquaintance with everyday life in the Poland from which he came. Pope Benedict XVI has likewise a wealth of human experience, as we've learned from the newsmen who swooped down upon his native Regensburg, after the election, and asked around. From those who have met him (including me, briefly), we know he has an extraordinary ability to read into the eyes ofthe people he meets, in every condition of life. But compared to his predecessor, he is more aloof, more the image of the celibate in the popular mind. He is not shy, however, and those who have read him as, among other things, an interpreter of John Paul's theology of the body, will expect himto be perfectly direct when required. To be a Catholic priest is to be a Confessor, and to be a Confessor is tolearn far more, and in much greater detail, about the human condition than would ever be told, even to psychologists or gossip columnists. Those without religious convictions can easily believe cynical things about what goes on in "the box". But those in some consciously personal relationship with God -- though they will appreciate the terrible dangers of corruption -- also know how seriously this "Sacrament of Penance" is taken. That box is a place where, to the faithful, you tell the truth or (quite literally) go to hell. One of the more arrantly nonsensical ideas, taken for granted in our post-modernity, is that the only way to really know another person is by copulating. It is true that an "old celibate" simply cannot know what goes on between sexual lovers from the inside. But, no one outside the relationship can know; it has nothing to do with celibacy, per se. Moreover, as this old non-celibate can tell you, one can be in just such a relationship, and still not know what is going on, across the immense chasm that exists between any two persons, which can be bridged only when "love conquers all". I grew up among a generation and class that laughed at chastity, and hopped casually into bed -- and have by now begotten children who go again into such a dangerous world, where hearts are broken, and lives smashed. And on this, greater than Papal authority, I can assure my reader of what he should anyway know for himself: that "having sex with someone" is among the unlikeliest ways to bridge the chasm. It is the most treacherous possible beginning to a "relationship"; not a short-cut to love and intimacy, but a prescription for their failure. The Popes are not the only teachers in this school. Since time out of mind, all the great religious traditions have conspired with human experience to enlighten us on this subject. All have taught, that sex is immensely more important than appears to the glib view. And the argument for chastity outside marriage is hardly confined to old-fashioned priests. But the new Pope now takes up, among his many onerous responsibilities, that of being backstop for moral principles that are witnessed throughout and beyond what remains of Christendom. He now draws the line, by subconscious reference to which every other living moral teacher locates his own position. He will begin to do it, I should think, in a very public way in August, when he appears before the immense crowds of World Youth Day in Cologne -- at the very least, an enthusiastic audience for the paternalism it is his duty to supply. And it is to their generation he must find a new way to preach, howand why "mere sex" is at the centre of our lives. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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