By?Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, authors of Sexual Ethics
Part Two of a Two-Part Series
Sister Farrell?s comment and questions cited in Part One of this series highlight the need for a renewed definition of the sexual person that adequately considers the sexual person in light of ?the signs of the times.? Drawing insights from scripture, tradition, the sciences, and experience, Catholic theologians are proposing a renewed understanding of the sexual person that challenges the historical suspicion surrounding human sexuality in the Catholic Church. This renewed understanding builds on many of the Catholic Church?s positive messages about human sexuality, especially about the unitive end of marriage or meaning of the sexual act, and can provide sound principles to educate the faithful about the God-given gift of sexuality.
In The Sexual Person (2008) and Sexual Ethics (2012) we propose six fundamental dimensions of a renewed understanding of the sexual person. These include:
- Move from?the sexual person considered as a procreative person to the sexual person considered as a relational person, one who focuses, not simply on sexual acts, but on the interpersonal meaning?of sexual acts for interpersonal relationships and asks whether or not these sexual acts facilitate growth in just and loving relationship with one?s intimate partner, oneself, and one?s God.
- Move from? viewing heterosexual orientation as normative and homosexual and bisexual orientation as ?objectively disordered? to viewing sexual orientation, heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, as an intrinsic dimension of the sexual person and, therefore, ?objectively ordered? for persons with such orientations.
- Move to?a more holistic and integrated understanding of the sexual person, physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually considered.
- Acknowledge?the fundamental desire in persons to be in relationship, including sexual relationship, with another person. This desire is realized in a complex of relationships that the magisterium refers to as complementarity, which intends that certain realities belong together and produce a whole that neither produces alone. The magisterium prioritizes physical complementarity and argues that it demands heterosexual marriage as the exclusive stable sexual relationship between a man and a woman.
- Move from?the magisterium?s description of sexual complementarity, limited to physical complementarity and heterosexual marriage, to?a holistic complementarity which integrates sexual orientation as an intrinsic dimension of the sexual person.
- Move from an understanding of ?truly human sexual acts? (Gaudium et spes, n. 49) limited to reproductive-type sexual acts within a heterosexual marital relationship as fulfilling of sexual persons to an understanding of ?truly human sexual acts? as either reproductive-type or non-reproductive-type sexual acts in accord with a person?s sexual orientation that facilitate the sharing of a person?s embodied self with another embodied self in just love that fulfill sexual persons.
This renewed understanding focuses on persons rather than their acts, interpersonal relationships rather than biology, real and experienced rather than abstract and ideal sexuality, principles and virtues (such as justice and love) rather than absolute norms. The normative conclusion that follows from these six renewed dimensions of the sexual person changes the approach to sexual morality: some heterosexual and some homosexual acts, those that meet the requirements for holistic complementarity and just love, are truly human and therefore moral; some heterosexual and some homosexual acts, those that do not meet the requirements for holistic complementarity and just love, are not truly human and therefore immoral.
reggie wayne taylor allderdice vincent jackson vicki gunvalson pierre garcon brown recluse spider wiz khalifa taylor allderdice
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন