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MARCUS J.

ROBBINS
Kinds of loving
Catholic marriages are at their highest level for three years but church teaching on sex remains a
vexed issue. Here, a lay Catholic involved in marriage-preparation classes argues for a pastoral
theology within which such teaching makes sense
P
eople are all alive in this world
because of acts of making love
but the very urge to have sex is full
of paradox. It can be a cause of abuse,
violence, disease and death as well as life. It
is a subject we dont like to talk about with
our children and we leave our schools to
explain it, often in ways with which we dis-
agree. As a consumer society, we allow sex to
sell just about anything. The internet, televi-
sion and movies which our children see are
nothing if not explicit. It is dramatised so sim-
plistically easy instant gratification and
everyone is expected to do it all the time.
As a layman, Ive lived and worked abroad
with my wife for many years, helping to raise
a family of four children. Retired back in
Oxford, I recently became a Catholic from
Anglicanism. Now, my wife and I help to run
Catholic marriage-preparation days, giving
many sessions on sex (the least favourite topic
for the presenters). As we have done this, I
have started to think about these issues.
The Church states that sex should be open
both to producing life and to helping
strengthen a couples relationship. But there
is also a third dimension helping to fulfil
the natural sensual urge of both partners. Put
more pithily, making love should address our
natural instincts for life, love and lust (used
in its non-pejorative meaning). These dimen-
sions converge in marriage and it can be
difficult to separate them. The Catholic Church
would say that they should not be separated.
But as we have grown up, whether we like it
or not, they have been separate, always present
in one form or another, and only coming
together in that wonderful cocktail we call
falling in love.
I wonder whether falling in love is actually
a flowing together of what C.S. Lewis calls
the three natural need loves storge (familial
love), philia (friendship) and eros (physical
love) which are all, if we allow them, per-
fected and cemented by the one supernatural,
divine gift love (agape or caritas). Storge
underlies our desire to form and be part of a
family; philia underlies our wish to have the
deepest of friendships; and eros fuels the need
for the closest of physical contact. All are
divinised and made unconditional and
unselfish by agape.
Not only do we have to consider three
dimensions of making love, but also, it seems,
three levels of living it. Besides considering
individual acts, we must also consider their
expression over the lifetime of a relationship;
and also their expression as part of the com-
munity within which the relationships are
formed the corporate level. For a Christian,
this would be equivalent to understanding
the place of making love in the body of Christ.
The Catholic Church appears to focus on
the individual acts, stating that each one
should be potentially creative and unitive
taking it for granted that it will also fulfil the
needs of the sensual faculty. However, this
ideal can also be understood as an attitude
over the life of the couples relationship (some-
thing we emphasise in the marriage-
preparation classes). That is, the openness to
new life and the development of unity can
also be met over a lifetime of making love.
What is key is to avoid a contraceptive men-
tality, which is neither life generating nor
life enhancing to the couple or the community
in which they live. Natural Family Planning
(NFP), although sanctioned by the Church,
can be used that way.
If we consider a lifetime, contraception
becomes less of an issue when one considers
the final outcome of raising a family. What
will be important is the process of family plan-
ning, which can, in this approach, be either
natural or artificial depending on what is most
appropriate. Of course, couples will still have
to consider the issue of when a new human
life, body and soul, actually begins when
choosing a type of contraception.
What of the corporate level? The Catholic
Church considers both corporate and indi-
vidual levels in many teachings. There seem
to be many good reasons why we should con-
sider this level in making love. If we want to
maintain our population, on average each
couple must have two to three children, or
more. Some may have none (by choice or biol-
ogy), while others may choose to have large
families. All these degrees of fecundity will be
fine, provided there is some form of corporate
agreement or acceptance of where, when
and how the procreative element is expressed.
Such agreement also provides a way in
which any relationship that is not open to life
may be accepted, provided as a body (corpor -
ately) we are open to life. Such relationships
could include homosexual ones, where there
is no natural possibility of procreation, but
where there is nevertheless a committed, life-
long, loving relationship, in which all the three
natural loves are expressed and fulfilled in
one form or another.
A further aspect of this pastoral theology
of making love is the different ways we
express and satisfy our sexuality as we grow
up. We start out life discovering our own sexu -
ality, going through a time that may include
discovering it with the help of others of our
own sex, and then exploring it with members
of the opposite sex. These could be termed
solo, homo, and hetero phases. Although
there appears to be a natural progression,
depending on our biological make-up we may
continue to embrace one or more phases as
we develop.
Take the solo phase. In the process of dis-
covering our sexuality, most of us will make
love to ourselves, i.e. masturbation. Rather
than being described as gravely disordered
(as the Catholic catechism does), when viewed
as one of the elements of making love, this
can be considered a provision by a wise creator
for releasing sexual tension with a place
even in married life. But it certainly can
become disordered if allowed to upset the
balance and natural expression of the higher
outward-looking need loves, and becomes
a selfish obsession.
With regard to the homo phase, this can
find expression at school when we have
crushes on others of the same sex. It may be
strengthened or weakened by events in our
upbringing, but will usually make way for the
hetero phase when the opposite sex catches
Catholic teaching on marital relationships
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8 January 2011
the eye and interest. For some, we now know
that homosexuality is not a passing phase and
will naturally continue.
If homosexuals want to form a lifelong part-
nership, can they really be expected to forgo
the sensual dimension and remain celibate
when they fall in love? A literal interpretation
of the Bible would seem to say so, though read
in context, the passages may be more impor-
tantly condemning promiscuity, rape or simple
inhospitality, i.e. having sex, rather than mak-
ing love.
I once heard a priest answer the question
Why are homosexual acts wrong? by saying
Because they are not open to life. Presumably
this is also the argument against masturbation.
Is it therefore, too, an argument against mak-
ing love in lifelong heterosexual relationships
for post-menopausal women, or when sex
drives become unequal, or when younger cou-
ples are found incapable of conceiving?
Here again the focus is on an individual
act. Agreed, over the duration of a permanent
homosexual relationship, the life argument
still holds true. But at the corporate level, if
as a Christian community we agree to it, open-
ness to life can still be there, and of course,
at all levels, the other elements of love, natural
and divine, can have full expression in the
partnership.
N
one of what I am suggesting as a
pastoral theology of making love
is in any way promoting immoral-
ity or condoning promiscuity, or
the make love, not war philosophy of the
1960s. It does not negate the role of celibacy
or the exercise of chastity and lifelong com-
mitment. It is not saying that all forms of
sexual intercourse are good and healthy. Nor
does it suggest that the concept of marriage
be extended to same-sex civil partnerships.
We cannot escape the wonderful fact that we
all have a biological mother and father and
that we should all have the opportunity to
grow up nurtured in love by such parents. It
is a theology that does not undermine our
moral values; it supports our virtues, and does
not relativise our vices.
As in any subject, correct choice and use
of words help avoid misunderstanding and
making unjustified value judgements. Terms
such as normal, regular, ordered, natural, bal-
anced and proper when expressed in the
negative (e.g. disordered, unnatural etc.)
are not constructive when talking about
making love. If we first differentiate the
elements, levels and phases of making love,
we can then integrate them into a both/and
way of looking at it, rather than the either/or
way of thinking, which avoids the need to use
such terms.
Such a pastoral theology could help intro-
duce the divine element into the way we
understand making love and help us to help
others, young or old, single, married or part-
nered, of whatever orientation, to come nearer
to God, who is love, and made love in the
first place.
Marcus J. Robbins is a retired
development consultant.
8 January 2011
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