Two weeks ago, on the feast of the Holy Family, we discussed marriage and family life, and some of the wonderful blessings that God bestows on the world through his gift of human sexuality. Today, St. Paul reminds us that along with that gift comes a responsibility to use it well.
"The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord," he says. Elsewhere in the same chapter he writes: "neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate [molles], nor those who lie with men [ἀρσενοκοῖται / masculorum concubitores], nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
The New Testament proposes an incredibly high standard for sexual morality, and relates it to whether or not one will enter the kingdom of Heaven. And what St. Paul says here is not even as provocative as what Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew when he taught that anyone who even looks at another person with lust is guilty of the sin of adultery: "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Seeing that God wants us to live this way, we would be right to ask the question: WHY?
The Church's answer to this question is that God calls us to live the moral life for the sake of our own happiness; and for the purpose of human flourishing, of becoming greater than we presently are. Departing from the Church's teaching on the moral law makes people sad, angry, and bitter.
Fifty years ago, in 1968, Pope Paul VI predicted that society would become sad, angry, and bitter as a result of the abandonment of the moral law, beginning with the world's embrace of a contraceptive mentality. In his prophetic encyclical Humanae vitae, he wrote:
"Responsible individuals will quickly see the truth of the Church's teaching if they consider what consequences will follow from the methods of contraception and the reasons given for the use of contraception. They should first consider how easy it will be [for many] to justify behavior leading to marital infidelity or to a gradual weakening in the discipline of morals. [...] Indeed, it is to be feared that husbands who become accustomed to contraceptive practices will lose respect for their wives. They may come to disregard their wife's psychological and physical equilibrium and use their wives as instruments for serving their own desires."
"As instruments for serving their own desires." Pope Paul VI predicted that if people treated God's gift of sexuality not as a means for bringing new life into the world, but merely as a way to find pleasure, men would treat women, certainly not as equals, and sometimes not even as people, but simply as "instruments for serving their own desires."
And boy, have the chickens come home to roost on that one. Our country has recently begun to have a long-overdue conversation about how wrong it is for anyone to treat another person as an "instrument for serving their own desires." At the Golden Globes last week, Oprah made a grand speech about the #MeToo movement, and everyone has banded together to proclaim that is always, absolutely necessary that each person in a relationship must give their CONSENT to what passes between them; they must CHOOSE any behavior in which they might engage. This contains a wonderful underlying assumption: YOU CAN CHOOSE! You need not make decisions based solely on what you feel! You can choose whether to follow your base instincts, OR—if you see that a choice would not make you happy, or see that it would hurt another person, or that it would be contrary to God's law—you can choose to rise above your passions and make your choice according to the rational consideration of whether it is the right thing to do or not.
Now, Pope Paul VI in Humanae vitae was speaking specifically about contraception, but his basic message applies broadly. One of the things I love about the Catholic moral system is its internal consistency. Everything has reference to everything else, and nothing is arbitrary.
One element of a moral system with internal consistency is that it all stands or falls together. Humanae vitae says that "each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain ordered towards (per se destinatus) the transmission of life." That is the teaching of the Church: human sexuality must always be aimed at bringing about new life. That is why every method of contraception, or anything that would frustrate the sexual act from being able to generate new life, is a sin. That is why pornography and masturbation are both sins. That is why the Church can not recognize a "marriage" between two people of the same sex: because their love for each other can not, in that way, culminate in an act that generates new life.
(If I can be allowed to insert a side-bar here about homosexuality: I've met gay Catholics pretty much everywhere I've been, and I have to say that I number some of my gay Catholic friends among the most faithful Catholics that I know. The rest of us are constantly encouraged by the Church in our vocations, either the discernment and living out of marriage, or the life of celibacy in priesthood or consecrated life. But those who have courageously chosen to embrace celibacy because of their homosexuality have frequently encountered from their fellow Catholics and from their priests either outright hatred, or, at best, a well-meaning but weak-hearted refusal to really have an honest conversation about how their particular circumstances can be shepherded by the teachings of the Church to foster their growth in holiness and their more perfect following of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And yet despite this lack of encouragement, they remain loyal to the Scriptures and to the Church. I know of few examples more inspiring than theirs.)
When Pope John Paul II came to America in 1995, he challenged us with this question:
"Can the Biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from [the] debate [about morals]? Would not doing so mean that America’s founding documents no longer have any defining content? [...] Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."
And this is the question: WHAT OUGHT WE TO DO?
Should I act selfishly? Or should I find some source of meaning or purpose outside of myself, greater than myself?
When Saint Paul says that those who engage in various kinds of immorality "will not inherit the kingdom of God," some people ask, "Would God really send someone to Hell" for x, or y, or z? I say, that's God's business. Let Him worry about whom He will command be delivered from eternal damnation. It doesn't do a lot of good to wonder about, or even particularly to worry about, the eternal salvation of anyone else, because the only person whose eternal salvation you can directly affect is your own.
And so again, many people then ask the question, "Would God really send me to Hell” for this or that or the other thing? But I think that's the wrong way of approaching the issue.
Living the moral life as proposed by the Church is difficult. Sometimes extremely difficult. It requires courage, and virtue, and a willingness to suffer. But it's worth it.
In the Gospels, in that same chapter where Jesus teaches about even lust being adultery, He says that "Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." If someone wants to adopt the attitude: "Could I make it to Heaven without fully committing to Christ's teachings?"—if you want to settle for less, I can't stop you. But as for me, I want to be numbered among the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven! Or even if I fail, which I probably will, I want to be able to look God in the face when I die and be able to tell Him that I tried. That, to me, is what the moral life is about. Christ proposes to us, through the Church, a way of living that is incredibly difficult, and radical, and which will probably cause some of our family and friends to look down on us as someone who's living in a way that is unhealthy and just downright weird.
But those who follow Christ, God will make great. So aim high!
My dear people, let us journey together to Heaven.
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