JUST LOVE: A FRAMEWORK FOR CHRISTIAN SEXUAL ETHICS by Sister
Margaret Farley.
Note: just to be absolutely fair, I mentioned before that
the pope maintained the ban on wearing condoms even in African countries where
AIDS and promiscuity are rampant and wearing of condoms could save countless
thousands of lives.
Some time ago when Pope Benedict was confronted with the
devastating results of his strict adherence to Catholic rules, he bent just a
little when he said as an aside, that if the sex act was not for procreation
then maybe it would be OK to wear a condom…do you think? I have to give credit
where credit is due…???
Back to the issue at hand…without getting too pedantic I
would say that what we have here is a nun who is writing about sexual ethics
with the world as it is today, as a resource. The pope on the other hand, is
maintaining ages old dogma that has not seen the light of reality in many
centuries.
What we have here is a progressive assessment of Christian
sexual ethics in today’s world and a rock solid, never change attitude of the Vatican
which prides itself with never bending to popular opinion…or reality?
The Vatican stance goes all
the way back to St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274); died at age 49.
He was declared a Doctor of the Church and his views have
been upheld by the church to this very day. I had to study him in high school
and especially his “proofs” on the existence of God.
The one interesting thing about him that I remember to this
day was that towards the end of his life he suffered what some say was a vision
or a stroke or an epiphany or whatever but after that he told his attendant
that “All that I have written seems like straw to me” or as I like to say, his
house of cards had finally toppled.
I say that because Aquinas modeled himself after Aristotle
and tried to logically deduce and therefore prove Catholic dogma / belief
system as a fact which he obviously discovered at the end was not at all so.
But I digress…Aquinas was known for his promotion of NATURAL
LAW. As to sexuality under this law, sex is allowed only as vaginal intercourse
and only in the act of procreation and only between a married couple, every
other sexual act is verboten and a mortal sin. So you see that if everybody
would follow the law strictly, there would hardly be any sex going on in the
world.
Aquinas saw homosexual behavior as something people choose
and so is a deliberate sin and an unnatural vice whereas today, most people
realize that homosexuals are born that way and there is no choice in the matter.
Since homosexuals are born homosexuals, to them being a
homosexual is “natural” so their behavior does not go against natural law as
seen by Aquinas and the Church to this day?
But for the Church to change something that it has taught
for so many years is very, very hard but it must change…more on what Sister
Margaret and others see as necessary changes to the Church’s belief system…
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