The distinction between natural and unnatural sex goes back 2400 years to Aristotle, a pagan philosopher-scientist who based his ethical conclusions about the ethics of human behavior on what he knew of the natural world from his own primitive observations and experiments. Augustine, and later the medieval biologist-theologian Albert the Great, and his star student, Thomas Aquinas, adopted this world view, adding to it a literal interpretation of a fixed, unchanging world-view rooted in the Genesis story of creation, which agreed with what they knew about their world at the time.
All the biological evidence cited by ancient Greek and medieval theologians for what is natural in animal and human sexual behavior has been blown into the realm of curious mythologies. Who today believes Thomas Aquinas' statement in the Summa Theologica, "As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten for the active power in the male seed tends to production in a perfect likeness in the masculine sex, while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active power, or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist as the Philosopher [Aristotle] affirms." It's just as ridiculous today to suggest that intercourse between a husband and his postmenopausal wife is "unnatural" because it cannot be procreative.
Medieval theologians had some weird ideas about animal sexuality, claiming that animals only mated in male/female couplings, with no hint of any same-sex couplings in their observations of nature. Today naturalists tell us same-sex behavior occurs in almost every animal species, from pigeons and seagulls to porpoises, chimpanzees, bonobos. Likewise, anthropologists report incidences of homosexual relations in most cultures, both past and present around the world.
How can sexual self-stimulation be "unnatural" when it occurs in all animal species? Human male fetuses have been observed with erections in the womb and masturbating by rubbing against the sheets in their crib days after birth. If that isn't natural, what is? Who taught them? Alfred Kinsey once noted that "ninety-eight percent of married men masturbate, and the other two percent lie about it."
Do I think the Catholic theologians and American bishops will ever give up their medieval distinctions between what is "natural" and "unnatural" sex? Not a chance! Will this refusal to accept modern evidence about the complexity of animal and human sexual behavior lead to widespread rebellion among Catholics? I doubt it. Most Catholics are already ignoring the Vatican's outdated sexual morality, and following their own educated consciences. Most Catholics think the bishops and Pope are still back in the medieval world when it comes to sex. "In two different worlds, talking two different languages."
At present, it's a standoff. Eventually, like it or not, the Vatican will have to move into twenty-first century thinking on women priests, celibacy, homosexuality, transgendered persons, masturbation, contraception, even abortion and alternatives to exclusive monogamy. If the church leaders do not reject the science the medieval theologians used to support their conclusions about sex and base their sexual teachings on modern psychology and sexology, they will become increasingly irrelevant to all but a few arch-conservative Catholics. Today's educated Catholics are not likely to wait the 500 years they did for the Vatican to admit Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun, or even the 100 years it took the Vatican to accept the idea of evolution.
Kissling responds
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