 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? |
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Bernini's great Baroque sculpture of the swooning St. Teresa of Avila her nun's robes aflutter as her heart is pierced by the angel's dart is the prototypical example of the fusion of spiritual and erotic ecstasy, which has antecedents in the Old Testament Song of Songs. Some medieval ascetics may have sought sensual gratification, but it's vulgar for modern cynics to reduce all ascetism to cheap thrills. I'd turn the tables instead and see today's collegiate anorectics and bulimics whom feminism has declared martyrs of patriarchyas sexual hysterics looking for God. Mutilation or modification of the body seems to be a cruel but universal human principle. Moore responds |
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