Eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peter would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air, etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticizing the religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more earthly object of affection. And the like.
William James, from The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902
The easiest way for a sex magazine to write about Catholicism and all its obsessions and prohibitions about sex would be to fall into to the facile psychologizing that James criticizes. We could lament Christianity's distrust of pleasure, underscore its rejection of the body, and wash our hands of the matter. But such a process would efface the extreme complexity and tension that exist in the many Christian takes on sexuality, both now and over the ages.
Our mission, then, is not to "criticize religious emotion," but to explore Catholicism's historical approach to sexuality as seen through Christian texts, trends, laws and art. We've assembled five participants cultural critic CamillePaglia, ex-monk Thomas Moore, professor of religion Elaine Pagels, married priest Robert Francoeur and feminist Catholic reformer Frances Kissling whose careers and lives have given them rare insight into the connection between spirituality and sex.
Whether you worship God, nature, yourself or nothing at all, this discussion, as it unfolds over the next two weeks, might illuminate the ways in which the 2000-year-old Christian tradition directly and indirectly informs your culture and politics, your beliefs and behavior. Keep checking in, and remember, your confessions and testimonials are always welcome. n°
Question I Why has Christianity rejected many expressions of sexuality as antithetical to spirituality while various Eastern traditions Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism have been more accepting of sexuality, have even embraced sex as a vehicle for spiritual transcendence? What do you think about the connection, if any, between sexuality and spirituality? In the Christian view, is Shakespeare's mortal coil, Milton's perfidious bark, just a weight holding us down, preventing us from achieving greater divinity, or is the body, as Blake explains, a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses?
Question II Redemption though the mortification of the flesh fasting, hair shirts, flagellation, celibacy, reclusion, martyrdom, et cetera has been prevalent in the history of Catholicism. Since pain and denial can lead to an acute awareness of the body, did such practices ever have any sexual components for ascetics?
Pagels responds to Moore Francoeur responds to Moore
Question IV The Catholic Church continues to stand by its distinction between "natural" sex (heterosexual, married) and "unnatural" sex (homosexual, outside the sanctity of marriage) in a time when society is becoming increasingly accepting of "alternative" lifestyles. Do you think the Church is becoming any more or less tolerant? Should it by definition not be tolerant? Will unwavering commitment to this stance lead to an eventual decline in the authority of the Church? Or would altering the doctrine as it applies to contraception, female and gay priests, abortion, gay marriage and masturbation be an invitation to contumacy throughout the whole of the religion?
