There is no sex crisis within the Catholic Church, just a crisis of sin and its correlative, disobedience. God's revelation has been beautifully unfurled and is for all to see....

Virginity, chastity and self control.

Monogamy,

Marriage raised to a sacrament. Indissoluble, except by death.

The family

The higher calling of consecrated celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God, with the hundredfold promise.

An openness to God's blessing of life.

By contrast the tragedy of the Anglican Communion having opened the door to contraception in 1930, has completely subverted the moral order.

Sarah Coakley's article is thought provoking. Two quick points. (1) She touches on the issue of "counter-cultural ism." The dilemma for Christian communities, when to take a counter cultural position and when not to do so, is a daunting question in and of itself. It gives rise to further questions about just whose culture a faithful community is called to "counter" as it were,and what is the cultural base of said counter measures? New Testament documents suggest that the "kingdom of God" preached by Jesus was counter cultural to both the "kingdom of the Herods" and the religious leadership aligned with it. Yet, the message of the kingdom of God seems to be the same time a form of Israelite covenant renewal, grounded in a reading of the Torah, inspired by the prophetic tradition of Israel, and regards to both of the latter, a conservative re-appropriation of the same. What is, or is there, a common ground of counter cultural opposition by churches to consumerism on the one hand, but an openness to the legacy of the sexual revolution on the other? (2) We live in inter-disciplinary world. Wouldn't it be interesting to be a fly on the wall during a conversation between Sarah Coakley and the likes of either Jean Vanier or the late Henri Nouwen?

Robert Ian Williams certainly makes no bones about what is ideal, not merely what is preferred or hope for, but what is absolute. Yet, these absolutes fail to deal with the realities of human life as God made us and the fact that they either don't apply to many people or don't work for many more. For example, "the family" is yet again trotted out as part of the whole picture of God's plan or expectation. Yet, in scripture, the Old Testament has no such model of family, and with the exception of "The Holy Family" and perhaps Zacharias, Elizabeth, and John, neither does the new. In fact, Jesus in saying "who are my family" actually makes everyone who does God's will His family. The modern model of a "Christian" family is impossible for many, snce it is simply unattainable or unavailable, not to mention the dysfunction of much of family life. Where do so
single people, especially those without parents or siblings, find this family? One assumes they are consigned to interminable loneliness, since this is God's will for them. Many of these single people may also be gay, through no choice of their own, and may have been rejected by their earthly family, ironically because of so-called "Christian" values. Even if it is acknowledged that their homosexuality is innate, how can God's creation and even purpose for that person be seen as God's mistake or as sinful? Did God make them gay so od and the Church could hate them? Since the Roman Church is held up a model and the Anglican Church disparaged, how has this been working out? A Church may well espouse certain ideals, but without compassion or even humanity, along with a pathological fear of sexuality of any kind, people have suffered grievously for its sake. As a model of the generosity, acceptance, and love of Jesus, such pathological avoidance of issues basic to our God-given nature is a poor witness to the Gospel.

Prof Coakley's three-part essay is most welcome, and at least we are treated to a more open mind at work on behalf of Anglican traditions, than not. Yet by the end of part three, we are still caught tragically in the fundamentalist traps which her thinking and redacting would otherwise seek to unlock for us, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

Sex expressed is sex directed, every bit as much as in any health or unhealthy celibate iteration. Or vice versa. Morally, it is difficult to get caught in the spiny thornbush branches which presume that celibacy is some innately, given, higher manifestation of lived desire, than this or that or the other path of eros and orgasms. Even the relentless channeling of sex and desire pertains to autonomic phenomena like wet dreams and erotic dreams. Traditionalistic moral theology rules them irrelevant simply because an improverished idea of moral choice is being brought to bear.

Surely some forms of desire all across the human boards of embodiment are always being channeled, equated with being embodied - usually so that civilization in some form, some meme or other ... has a chance to continue, to rise, and to illuminate. One of our commonest senses of persistent unease with - say, modern marketing? - is that it cheapens human embodiment and desire and right channeling by manipulating it, arousing for the sake of a channeling into a revved up and demeaning consumerism instead of perhaps, relationships, encounters, whatever else for goods. Somebody said once, In getting and spending we lay waste all our human powers.

Anybody who has tried his or her way out of a phase of life crisis by sleeping around will know that sometimes you end up getting nourished by getting out of yourself (cognitively, emotiionally, and even spiritually) with a new perspective on the troubles that are carrying you along; and sometimes you sleep around in ways which confirm the very closed-binding-life-crisis you can feel you are sustaining.

The call to rethink is pertinent. When do Anglican thinkers, not, rethink? Careful watch on old (and new?) opposites, categories, and such will be indispensable to any discerning Anglican believer.

Excellent lecture series -- thank you for this. Among other things, Sarah Coakley gets Freud right, which is hard to do.

Is it so unusual for a married man or woman to write an encomium of celibacy? A tour of Christian blogs might show that this is actually the norm.

Pray tell, what is a "Christian" blog?

Rod Gillis - I guess that sums up everything about Christianity, really - the dichotomy between as DH Lawrence put it, 'The Eagle and The Dove'. I think what we may be seeing though is an increasingly conservative revolution, which is essentially cultural pessimism writ large; the left is now part of the Establishment, and so the only ground that is counter-cultural is the conservative - it happened in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s, and it's happening, or might happen, now.

I say 'might', since the conservative revolutionary has no desire for the status quo ante, exactly.

The trouble is (for them), today's 'conservatives' in the Christian fold mistake themselves as the new countercultural, revolutionary force, when in fact they are merely reactionaries, glued to an unyielding, unbending, eternal vision. Nothing rotates.

Even more troubling is that by this definition, Jesus himself was in effect a conservative revolutionary: as you say, his views were in fact "a form of Israelite covenant renewal".

The only thing that unites conservative revolutionaries and reactionaries here is the fundamental role played in both camps by conflict: conflict of, for, and in itself.

Thankfully, what takes Jesus out of the category of the conservative revolutionary is the exact opposite - love.

However, this leaves those identifying with the modern, secular, liberal left (and you can have rightists who are socially liberal, too, before anyone nitpicks) in a bit of a muddle, since they themselves automatically conflate the operative element of love here with their own political outlook.

Neither left nor right will fit, neither Liberal or Orthodox.

Jesus was a conservative revolutionary who (was) redeemed through love. On the whole, this is not a combination we are terribly used to dealing with, let alone understanding.

Not exactly an "eternal" vision, whatever that means. This word elevates the other words, but is itself inappropriate.

Isn't the ultimate expression of love, obedience?.Did not our Blessed Lord, say , " if you love me you will keep my commandments."

Obedience to the two great commandments yes, but hopefully not obediance to the modern heresy of biblical literalism.

"Isn't the ultimate expression of love, obedience?"

No.

Any number of things make one obedient so obedience is in no way incontrovertibly connected to love. Animals can be conditioned to obedience - so does that indicate love? Slaves beaten into obedience. Love?

If that is your understanding of what Christ came for, why bother being Christian?

"By contrast the tragedy of the Anglican Communion having opened the door to contraception in 1930, has completely subverted the moral order."

[1] That's pretty sweeping given the history of Europe and the rest of the world since 1930: the Great depressin, WWII,the Holocaust, the dissolution of the British Empire, fall and collapse of the Iron Curtain, Viet Nam ....etc. etc. etc..

[2] If both men and women could get pregnant, there would have been no controversy about birth control

There are plenty of religious batterers out there who insist that their wives obey them, or else be beaten--and they call that love.

Achilles, interesting comment. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, but it is engaging.How to resolve the problem of left and right, liberal and conservative? I keep coming back to a comment I heard Malcolm Boyd make a verylong time ago, during equally difficult times, which goes something like this, "There is only me and you, and what we have to do." That, it seems to me, captures the core of the praxis of Jesus.

The point Cynthia, is that the Anglican Communion was the first major denomination to give respectability to contraception.

If procreation can be an optional extra, then the door is open to homosexuality etc. Which would have be unthinkable prior to 1930. It's very interesting to read the debate that raged in the Church Times a the time. It's sad that it is all forgotten. It would make excellent material for a doctorate. Indeed I came across Bishop Gore
( who was regarded as a modernist by some Anglo-Catholics) state that if we accept contraception, how do we answer the homosexual?

"If procreation can be an optional extra, then the door is open to homosexuality etc"

I don't understand the logic of this, especially what might be included in "etc." What do you mean?

This is not a smartass question [although I admit snarkiness in #2 of my post].

Robert Ian Williams,

As an Anglo-Catholic I think that Bishop Charles Gore was a brilliant scholar and churchman (and I pretty much accept both his kenotic theory of the incarnation and the conclusions of his masterful essay on divorce, which is why I oppose the recent move by the Church of England to ordain remarried priests). He wasn't, however, infallible, any more then the Bishop of Rome is infallible. He was wrong about some things, including about contraception.

To notice the fact that changing hormone levels in the female body suppress ovulation, and to use that fact to help people avoid unwanted pregnancies and regulate the size of their families, isn't unnatural, on the contrary it's working _with_ nature, and with the hormonal cycles and physiological processes that nature has set up. You could make a case, perhaps, that condoms are unnatural, but certainly not the Pill. Also, the very fact that we have concealed ovulation and are sexually receptive at all times is an indication that sexuality serves relational and social bonding purposes in our species, and that procreation isn't its only (or indeed, its primary) end.

The Pill is no more unnatural than aspirin, and using the Pill to control fertility is no more unnatural then using lactation to control fertility. And I don't object to homosexuality either, so that's a nonstarter.

Cynthia, the logic is fairly straightforward. If procreation is optional, then sex is about more than making babies. If sex is about maore than making babies, if sex is about emotional and physical intimacy and perhaps even enjoyment, then why not homosexuals? Which, rhetorically, was an argument against separating sex from procreation.

I am told that the addition of sex to American civil rights legislation in the 1960s was about trying to persuade northern legislators that equality for "negroes" would eventually lead to the ridiculous idea of equality for women . . . can you imagine?

"If procreation is optional, then sex is about more than making babies" Oh dear! Pleasure may ensue! Reminds me of the old joke about Southern Baptists:

Q: Why do the Southern Baptists oppose gay marriage?

A: They are afraid it will encourage dancing.

"I am told that the addition of sex to American civil rights legislation in the 1960s was about trying to persuade northern legislators that equality for "negroes" would eventually lead to the ridiculous idea of equality for women . . . can you imagine?"

I thought the story was that those who added gender to the civil rights bill thought that might sink it in the south. Not sure of all my urban legends.

I think civil rights legislation was pretty much sunk in the south anyway. Those that weren't actually afraid of civil rights for "negroes" were afraid of their voters.

But those northern legislators had all sorts of funny ideas about blacks being equal (can you imagine?). There was apparently some thought that adding sex would make those northern liberals realize what silly ideas equality and human rights really were.

Ah yes, how we try to simplify so that we find a single, categorical way through in loving - as we hear God's commanding call to love? Let's ponder that lovely guide word, Obedience - capitalized for trenchant reasons? Others might like, Submission?

But scripture obviously spreads outwards in its applicable vocabularies of love, not narrowing down to nice, simple, categorical pin points; nor for that matter, encouraging us all to use a pin point to pierce the unconformed plethora of human selves in society which probably in most modern global instances, surround us as Anglican believers. Inside, outside church life.

If your keen-edged urgently obedient love is going to sword through anybody, really, you have to start with yourself. But excesses of self-mutilation and similar asceticisms flying high banners of Strict Obedience are not finale either, not the gold key to heaven's gates?

As it turns out, historically, at least, among believers.

Torment yourself all you like, your love is no more automatically pure and holy than the simple, free service that the traveling Samaritan (a categorically really dirty figure in ancient near eastern Jewish lore, if ever there was one?) offers without hesitation to the wounded person left in the ditch by thieves in Jesus parable.

As the OT prophets tend to say, love which is (strenuous? prideful? liturgically-behaviorally most correct?) obedience is in fact, only a possible transient stepping stone on our ways toward a much more spiritually effective human state in which love is written in our hearts and flows (overflows?) outwards.

Despairing of the inward to outward flow, because of categorical ideas of utter depravity in human nature (contrasts nicely with the most customary Anglican emphasis on an Imago Dei sort of notion?), or because of painted into a corner inner spiritual struggles (St. Paul?), or because of other factors? - the obedient and ascetic prefers to try to work from the outsides of obedience, in. That goes a distance; not the whole distance, truly.

Often leaving in its wake, another sad sort of brittle destruction - often managed by a steady outwards targeting of those perceived as dis-obedient? So we're not categorically free of the pilgimage, just yet, maybe.

Drdanfee

But Jesus taught us to pray "Your will be done on earth as well as in heaven", and this not under our own power but through the Holy Spirit. Your will be done on earth, also means in our own lives. Because His foolishness is greater than our wisdom. The Holy Spirit is sanctifying us to follow all His ways.

"If procreation can be an optional extra, then the door is open to homosexuality etc."

- Robert Ian Williams -

This is just one more of Robert's bon mots that convinces me why there is no such web-site as 'Thinking Roman Catholics'

"The Holy Spirit is sanctifying us to follow all His ways."

Which does not, in any way, preclude the progressive/liberal/non-RC view of sexuality from being correct. Indeed, the more you claim rigid dogma passed down as Tradition, the less apt it is to be guiding of the Holy Spirit.

"Thy Will be done" is not the same as "strict obedience." That is mere submission to ideas given us from someone else. There is, in fact, an Arabic word for just that - Islam.

David W

that's what we are fervently hoping, that the Holy Spirit will be listened to and God's will be done on earth.
We just don't happen to agree with you about what that means.

Since procreation is not a universal consequence even of sexual relations geared to that end and with that intention, it would seem that it is "by nature" an "extra." Consequently, the "door is open" by divine design, to sexuality not geared to procreation, if you think God is the designer. The traditional argument against birth control is based on a false premise and a non-sequitur.

Then again, the whole idea that "nature" shows us what is moral (or divine) is highly questionable, especially in detail; and as noted above, adopting Jesus' teaching about loving the other as one would be loved is of a more clearly moral pedigree. It is in obedience to this commandment that many gay and lesbian persons believe themselves to be acting in accord with God's will.

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