Theology and Sexuality
A few days ago on another blog, there was a discussion of the guidelines given by the US Catholic Bishops recently on contraception. I mentioned an article - Roman Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Dissenting View - and another commentor wrote that there was a word for Catholics who dissent ... heretic.
One such heretic was Karl Rahner, perhaps the most respected Catholic theologian of the 20th cnetury, who wrote that in a case where a person had conscientiously decided to use contraception, against the decision of Humanae Vitae, ... Such a Catholic need not fear that he has incurred any subjective guilt or regard himself as in a state of formal disobedience to the Church's authority. - ( "On The Encyclical 'Humanae Vitae,' Theological Investigations, Vol. II (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974)
Sexuality and Theology ... contraception for the married and the not, condoms for AIDs sufferers, marriage for same-sex couples, how we feel about ourselves, how we treat others, and even how we are with to Jesus/God ... whew!
A book that deals with the subject is Theology and Sexuality - Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by: Eugene F Rogers (University of Virginia). Rowan Williams writes of the book ...
Sexuality is a bitterly contested territory for many, probably most, Christians these days, and the climate of rather frantic controversy hasn't encouraged a really theological debate. Here is a first-class resource for such debate, not propagandising, but setting out a broad spectrum of reflection on the issues that underlie the sniping of sexual politics - reflection on the meanings of the body itself for Christians, within a richly informed and traditionally literate framework. It is very welcome.
Here below are online writings by some of the contemporary contributers to the book ...
- Rowan William's essay The Body's Grace
- Marilyn McCord Adams's sermon on human sexuality
- Stanley Hauerwas's article Sex and Politics: Bertrand Russell and ‘Human Sexuality’
- Mark Jordan's ... introduction to Authorizing Marriage? Canon, Tradition, and Critique in the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions
One such heretic was Karl Rahner, perhaps the most respected Catholic theologian of the 20th cnetury, who wrote that in a case where a person had conscientiously decided to use contraception, against the decision of Humanae Vitae, ... Such a Catholic need not fear that he has incurred any subjective guilt or regard himself as in a state of formal disobedience to the Church's authority. - ( "On The Encyclical 'Humanae Vitae,' Theological Investigations, Vol. II (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974)
Sexuality and Theology ... contraception for the married and the not, condoms for AIDs sufferers, marriage for same-sex couples, how we feel about ourselves, how we treat others, and even how we are with to Jesus/God ... whew!
A book that deals with the subject is Theology and Sexuality - Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by: Eugene F Rogers (University of Virginia). Rowan Williams writes of the book ...
Sexuality is a bitterly contested territory for many, probably most, Christians these days, and the climate of rather frantic controversy hasn't encouraged a really theological debate. Here is a first-class resource for such debate, not propagandising, but setting out a broad spectrum of reflection on the issues that underlie the sniping of sexual politics - reflection on the meanings of the body itself for Christians, within a richly informed and traditionally literate framework. It is very welcome.
Here below are online writings by some of the contemporary contributers to the book ...
- Rowan William's essay The Body's Grace
- Marilyn McCord Adams's sermon on human sexuality
- Stanley Hauerwas's article Sex and Politics: Bertrand Russell and ‘Human Sexuality’
- Mark Jordan's ... introduction to Authorizing Marriage? Canon, Tradition, and Critique in the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions
posted by crystal | 11:46 AM
14 Comments:
"A heretic." That's lovely. Some of the Catholics out there in the blogosphere are really embarassing.
At least the auto de fe has gone out of style :-)
You're reading my mind, darling. Come over and comment on tonight's post about anatomically correct gingerbread men :)
Hi Doug - I'm on my way :-)
You can add to that list a very thoughtful work by German Protestant theologian Helmut Thielicke, Volume IV of his Theological Ethics (volume III in the English language version, published independently under the title The Ethics of Sex) deals with sexual ethics as a kind of case study in a broader Christian ethical context. Volume I, in English titled Foundations, lays the groundwork for the systematic theological ethic which is basically a situational ethic. The subsequent volumes then look at spheres of moral activity through the lens of the ethical framework laid in the first volume. Anyway, The Ethics of Sex, of course, looks at sexual activity through the lens of Thielicke's broader Christian ethic, seeking to help Christians discern for themselves when their sexual behavior accords with the will of God, and when it does not.
Like all thoughtful treatments of human sexuality, Thielicke rarely treats any case within the broader heading of sexual ethics as a black or white, either or proposition. That keeps him from making the kinds of declarative statements on the subject that the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church has made; declarations which, by the way, are routinely ignored by the faithful.
Perhaps I will pick up Thielicke again soon, and write some posts on his Ethics.
"A heretic." Right. But consider the source!
;)
Hi Chris,
thanks for the book recommendation. I have mixed feelings about situational ethics. - maybe I'm a closet Platonist :-) It seems like some things are always wrong, though they may be done for the right reasons ... like maybe killing someone against their will, even though they're a bad person (the Bonhoeffer/Hitler thing). Does that make any sense?
Hi Talmida :-)
Chris's author Thielicke sounds interesting. I like both Hauerwas and Curran.
I wish there was a happy medium to be found on these issues. Sex is a wonderful gift from God, but the divine energy in it needs to be respected, especially because it exposes us in all of our vulnerabilities. Does it need to be puritanism vs. libertinism all the time? In Anglo cultures especially, this seems to be the case.
Sex can be a weapon that can savage people. When someone is selfishly used and exploited for it, the pain it causes can be just as intense and searing as the joy it can bring.
I think there is much wisdom that the Church can bring to bear when speaking on sexual issues, but unfortunately it has tried too often to stake its credibility on fighting from certain trenches that have already been overrun. Without nuance being brought to bear, the world puts its hands over its ears to whatever the Church has to say, even when it has something valuable to say.
Jeff,
I agree about the possibility of sex hurting people and the church's take on it is idealistically beautiful. I don't, though, see much of a downside to contraception. An inability to plan a family can be linked to poverty and most of the people who are poor in the world are women and children.
And then there's the thing about AIDs and condoms ... married women in Africa and India are the biggest growing group of AIDs sufferers because their infected husbands won't wear condoms, I think.
Crystal,
I think that you could have a radically situational ethic which would still do what you want it to do with regard to taking someone's life against their will.
What I mean by that is this: a situational ethic is an ethic which, rather than first making declarations and then imposing those declarations all all situations, first considers the situation. That the person to be killed wills not to be killed in every concrete instance of a person being killed against there will is a part of the information in each situation, and as such is a moral consideration in that situation.
As far as Bonhoeffer's participation in the plot to kill Hitler, that is a particularly sticky situation. One the one hand, it is easy for some of us to say now, knowing Hitler as the personification of evil in the world, that he was not in fact a "person," that is, someone with moral standing, to whom one can act morally. It is easy to see Hitler as a kind of metaphysical corruption to be wiped out by any means necessary.
But, of course, Hitler was a person, even if a particularly corrupted person. And Bonhoeffer saw him as such. So, for Bonhoeffer, Hitler was a moral agent both in the sense that he could act morally and in the sense that he had moral standing, and so could be acted upon morally. As such Bonhoeffer was extremely conflicted.
Ultimately what his situational ethic allowed him to do was to weigh various moral options against each other. While not quite Utilitarian, in that Bonhoeffer had moral concerns that Utilitarians do not share, he could engage in a sort of Utilitarian calculus, weighing the harm of killing Hitler (as he is a person with moral standing, he cannot be killed or even harmed without there being some moral harm) against the harm of not killing him (Hitler is free to continuing running rough-shod over Germany and exterminating Jews, gypsys, etc.)
What he arrived at was something like this:
To kill Hitler, as it isvolves the killing of a person, would be bad.
To not at least try to kill him, since he reasoned that killing Hitler was the only way to stop him, would be worse.
The problem with this sort of thinking, as I'm sure you've guessed, is that when it is applied to other situations things get sticky indeed. Leaving so much up to the moral agent allows for some serious harms to be justified. The best example of this is when an anti-abortion activist uses the same kind of reasoning to justify killing doctors who perform abortions.
But to say that the possibility of serious moral error undermines the project of situational ethics altogether is to overlook that all other ethical systems are open to similar abuses.
Chris,
thanks for the explination. Someone told me about "proportionalism", a Catholic philosophy that's somewhere between situational ethics and absolutism ... i have to read more about that.
The thing I don't like about situational ethics, especially in a case like Bobhoeffer's, is that it treats people like widgets. A greater number of lives is more valuable than a smaller number or one (I think Captain Kirk had something to say about this :-) Is it ok to kill one person to save many? Lives shouldn't have price tags, and the value of one should be non-different than of many ... that's what an absolutist would say, I think.
Maybe some things are more important than life?
Crystal,
Please don't confuse situational ethics with Utilitarianism. There was some Utilitarian thinking in Bonhoeffer's rationale, but that is not necessary for situational ethics.
Ultimately, situational ethics is simply the assertion that the moral value of a particular action depends on the circumstances of that action. Utilitarianism is a bit more specific than that, asserting roughly the following:
1. Pleasure is good.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Anyone/thing that is capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, and of expressing preference, has moral standing.
4. One's primary moral goal, then, is to maximize pleaseure and minimize pain, thus (and this is the Utilitarian maxim):
The best action is that which produces the most good for the most people.
That kind of moral reasoning did factor into Bonhoeffer's calculation that it would be less bad to kill Hitler than to let him live, but such a calculation is not necessary for a situational ethic, as ultimately a situational ethic is simply the assertion that the moral value of an action depends on the situation surrounding that action.
Thus to say that an ethic is a situational one does not tell us the specific content of that ethic. It does not help us understand the concerns of that ethic, what that ethic thinks has moral value. Rather it simply tells us where the ethic begins: with the circumstances surrounding an action rather than some moral norm which is made to fit all situations as the starting point.
I say that not to say that I think that you are necessarily wrong in your assertion that Bonhoeffer used poor moral reasoning in his decision to participate in the plot to assasignate Hitler. Rather, I say that to clear up any confusion you may have about the terms we are using, especially as it seems my last comment, in pointing out the Utilitarian considerations that Bonhoeffer used, encouraged you to conflate Utilitarianism and situational ethics.
Thanks Chris - I think I am confusing utilitarianism and situational ethics, and probably throwing in pragmatism and consequentialism too :-) I'll read some more ...
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