Thursday, March 30, 2006

Sexual morality

I see, not surprisingly, that in my dialogue with Ben Joseph it’s the issues of sexual morality that have attracted comment.

So I’ll say a little more on this subject. The Catholic objections to contraception, oral sex, and masturbation are all of a piece.

Based on an Aristotelian-Thomistic version of natural law ethics, the governing assumption is that procreation is the exclusive purpose of sex. Hence, any form of sexual expression which represents a frustration of that natural end is immoral.

But this line of argument is open to several objections. Even on its own grounds it either proves too much or too little:

i) There are various procreative arrangements in the animal kingdom. One typical arrangement is for the female to go into heat. She is only sexually receptive when she is in heat.

The male will impregnate the female, then leave her to raise the offspring on her own.

The male will impregnate any willing female.

Leopards are an example.

From this you could construct a natural law argument for male promiscuity. After all, it promotes the propagation of the species.

ii) Another variant is where the alpha-male has a harem of females. A young alpha-male will drive an aging alpha-male out of the pride, and kill off all of the cubs of the rival male.

Lions are an example.

From this you could construct a natural law argument for infanticide.

iii) Still another variant is where the female devours the male right after intercourse—or even during copulation. You find this romantic behavior among certain spiders and mantids.

No doubt there are many feminist theologians who would favor that particular model of sexual bonding.

v) Yet another variant is where the mother abandons her young right after birth. Ovoviparous snakes are an example.

vi) Then there are endoparasitic insects that plant their eggs inside a living host, which is consumed from within.

vii) In fairness to natural law ethics, it generally operates at a higher level of abstraction. Yet I don’t see why it should be so restrictive.

viii) Unlike female animals, women do not go into heat. While it varies in intensity, their sex drive is operative from puberty to menopause and well beyond menopause.

If we’re taking are cue from nature, why would reproduction be the sole purpose of sex if postmenopausal women retain their sex drive?

vii) And even during her childbearing years, the rhythm method presupposes that a woman is unfertile a certain times in the cycle, yet her sex drive does not go into abeyance at those times.

ix) It is also less than self-evident that using a natural object for a purpose other than its appointed end is intrinsically evil. The nose was not designed to be a natural platform for a pair of glasses, but Ben presumably doesn't regard corrective lenses as a grave sin against Christ.

So this appeal, while having an element of truth, needs to be considerably refined.

x) Even if the natural law argument were sound, I have no idea how, from natural law alone, Ben is able to say that contraception or masturbation or oral sex is a “grave sin against Christ.”

At best, you could only derive that category from revealed theology, not from natural theology.

i) Moving on to Scripture, I agree that birth control and oral sex outside of marriage are sinful, because sex outside of marriage is sinful.

But while procreation is one of the functions assigned to sex, it is not the only function.

ii) It’s clear from Canticles as well as passing references elsewhere (e.g. Prov 5:19) that sensuous pleasure and lifelong companionship are marital values.

iii) Another reason for marriage is the avoidance of sexual immorality outside of marriage (1 Cor 7). But that purpose is separable from procreation.

iv) Likewise, why would marriage be indissoluble, barring desertion or infidelity, once the wife passes her childbearing years, if procreation is the only licit purpose of marital intercourse?

We need to avoid two extremes: (i) the overvaluation of sex apart from childbearing, and (ii) the undervaluation of a sex apart from childbearing.

On the subject of masturbation, I’ve already discussed that issue:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2004/07/too-hot-to-handle-2.html

Scroll down to #9.

2 comments:

  1. > "Based on an Aristotelian-Thomistic version of natural law ethics, the governing assumption is that procreation is the exclusive purpose of sex..."

    You have to be careful critiquing Catholic dogma in this area; it contains so many nuances, and its rationales have shifted so far over the centuries (no longer is it "contraception is bad because even married sex is so dirty that it should be reserved for procreation" -- vide Augustine and various self-castrating Church Fathers, but "married sex is so pure that it should not be sullied by 'lusting' after one's spouse" -- see JP2, especially in his book Procreative Sex Between Wife and Husband Is Holy, But Don't Dare Slander by Mother of Jesus by Suggesting She Defiled Herself by Such Activities), that if you take aim at Version 5.0 of the Timeless Tradition, you'll be shot down as "ignorant of basic Church doctrines" by someone armed with version 8.0.

    Even I know that the most recent revision of the Unchanging Deposit of Faith holds that procreation is not seen as "the exclusive" goal or good of sex. Rather it is (my paraphrase) "one of the primary" goals or goods. Consistent with the Catholic ethical calculus, which distinguishes "risking" from "intending", one need not always prioritise that particular good; however, you are not allowed to "directly and intentionally act against it" (which is not to say that the Vatican doesn't wink at various methods of putting the blind eye to the telescope and saying truthfully "I see nothing").

    Likewise, animal kingdom counter-arguments from nature can be answered (not always convincingly) by Catholic apologists who point out that animals also rape, murder, etc. The RC Natural Law argument is normative -- based on a thing's telos or goal -- rather than descriptive in the Darwinian sense.

    For me, the clincher as a Christian is that, in a society where (as Wm Barclay notes) the rabbis of Jesus' time permitted contraception (non-abortifacient, using sponges) for married couples shortly after giving birth -- neither Jesus, nor St Paul, nor any other Apostle, managed to find time to condemn this practice in their lengthy J'accuses against the Judaism of their day. (True, the Didache can be construed as opposing birth control in all forms, but the Didache was written amidst a pagan Roman empire that also deployed abortion and infanticide).

    One could turn the "natural telos" argument on its head; because God allows humans non-artificial ways of enjoying sex without procreation, an artificial means (more reliable and convenient) to the same end is not giving us any power that nature denies us -- unlike abortion, cloning, euthanasia, and various other practices.

    Parenthetically, I do find it odd that a denomination that says "Oh, X passage of Scripture is so obscure, no one could possiby tell what it means without Pope and Council to guide you" nonetheless teaches that every intelligent adult should in principle be able, from noting the biological facts regard penis and vagina, to re-reproduce the detailed list of permissions and prohibitions found in Humanae Vitae and Evangelium Vitae.

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  2. Thanks, Tom.

    It's true that contemporary Catholicism has revised the traditional Augustinian/Thomistic argument.

    But in so doing, it looses the simplicity of the original argument against contraception, &c.

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