Our perception of meaning in the human person is manifold, for the entire fabric of our nature, extending through all its dimensions, chants to us of inbuilt purposes.  Sexuality is no exception.  Our bodies sing of the complementarity of the male and the female, and our spirits sing along in polyphony.

The psalmist says that in consideration of the heavens, he is moved to ask “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?”   In consideration of the yeast and the amoebas, we might also ask “What is man, that Thou hast made him different?”  For yeast do not long for union with other yeast, nor amoebas for communion with amoebas.  Yet among us there are two polaric kinds, each of them unbalanced and incomplete.

The male is created with a potentiality for biological or spiritual fatherhood, the woman with a potentiality for biological or spiritual motherhood.  Certain soft chords in her nature resonate more powerfully in his nature; certain pale hues in his nature glow more luminously in hers.  Paradoxically, we are not less because of this incompleteness.  We are more.  There is more melody, more color, more laughter in the world because there are two kinds of us.

A husband and wife uniting in love in the hope of having children is a more splendid thing than meiosis or parthogenesis or budding, for it makes possible a kind of love that would otherwise not exist:  A life which gives rise to new life.

We do not all need to marry and enjoy sexual love, but we do all need to recognize that the pattern of sexual love is shaped by the polarity of the sexes and designed for that life-giving partnership.  A man and a woman are necessary not only to conceive the child but to bring him to birth, because the woman incubates him and the man protects both of them.  A man and a woman are necessary not only to bring him to birth but to raise him, because he needs a mom and a dad.  The procreative vocation of the two spouses continues even after they have passed the age of childbearing and their children are grown, for then they are needed as grandparents.

Same-sex intercourse misses the point of all this.  Not only is it intrinsically non-procreative, incapable of forming new life, but for all the talk of activists about fulfilling relationships, it is also intrinsically non-unitive.  Two men, or two women, cannot balance each other in the utterly distinctive way that a woman and a man do.

Friendship between two persons of the same sex is a gift -- but sexualizing such friendship subverts it.  The joining of a man’s and a woman’s sexuality can bring them into equilibrium; the joining of the sexuality of two men or two women pushes them out of equilibrium.  This explains many things.  Consider for example the explosive promiscuity of the male homosexual world, and the fact that in general, males in stable male partnerships don’t stop cruising but only cruise less.

We see then that to sing against the harmonies of our creational design is to produce discord in ourselves.  Even if our aim is to reduce interior discord by warbling in the key of our desires, we cannot succeed, because we are still out of key with our design; the reality of being male and female is something that we are, not just something that we want.  A man who is sexually attracted to other men is a man who suffers appetites that cut across the grain of what he truly is.  A woman who is sexually attracted to other women is a woman whose longings are out of alignment with what she truly is.

These facts subsist at a level deeper than ideology, deeper than choice, deeper than desire.  Our desires may overwrite them, but they can never be erased.

Tomorrow:  Part 4.  This seven-part series is adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press.

Natural law inescapably concerns human nature.  Not only do the heavens proclaim the glory of God; so do our own minds and bodies.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made, creatures of pattern, design, and inbuilt meaning.

A corollary of the designedness of things is that every desire in us is for something.  Thirst is directed toward drink; hunger is directed toward nourishment; sexual attraction is directed toward turning the wheel of the generations.  Of course these things are also pleasurable, but there is a proper context for every pleasure, otherwise we would all think it good to be gluttons.  The proper context for sexual pleasure is the union of the procreative partners.

We will return to specifically sexual longing tomorrow.  For now, let me consider something odd about longing in general.

Each of the desires I have mentioned is satisfied by something in the created order.  Drink satisfies the desire for drink, food satisfies the desire for food, intercourse satisfies the desire for intercourse.  Yet we have one longing – it has no name, but most people feel it obscurely – which cannot be satisfied by anything in the created order whatsoever.  C.S. Lewis calls it “That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of ‘Kubla Khan,’ the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

If it is really true that “nature makes nothing in vain,” then this longing too must be for something.  But if it is not directed to anything in the created order, then its purpose must be to direct us beyond, to the Creator.  Nature points beyond herself.  She has a face, and it looks up.

If we refuse to look where she is pointing, then we may lavish on her all the loving looks that she wants us to bestow somewhere else.  We give to created things the worship that is due to the Creator.  Created things like what?  Like sexuality.  Perhaps this is because erotic longing stirs up that other wild-ducks longing more strongly than most longings do.

One would think that at least the idolatry of sex would always be an idolatry of love in sex.  Amazingly, no.  It is even possible to make an idol of the absence of love in sex.  David Loovis’s description of anonymous intercourse is unmistakably religious:  "an irresistible experience of beauty in the person of the stranger ...  one of the most mysterious and awe-inspiring in the entire homosexual galaxy of experience."

Idolatry is so tiring.  Even the idolater must sometimes rest from the toil of denial.  His friends must stand ready for the moment when he relaxes the awful tension of his mental censors.

Tomorrow:  Part 3.  This seven-part series is adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press.

For new readers:

Introduction to the blog (2013)

I would rather write about what sexuality is meant to be than about what can go wrong with it.  But it isn’t always possible to make resolutions of one’s preferences.  Sometimes one has to pause to blow away the smoke, or no one can see anything at all.

Perhaps this is one of those times.  Important questions about law and disordered sexuality are about to come before the Supreme Court.  Not coincidentally, editorialists and bloggers are getting into the act.  An item in one of the New York newspaper blogs even asserts the paradoxical opinion that properly understood, natural law supports unnatural sexual acts.

Reduced to a near-syllogism, the argument runs like this:

1.  Some homosexual writers say homosexual behavior fulfills them.

2.  Therefore homosexual behavior fulfills them.

3.  Natural law supports fulfillment.

4.  Therefore natural law supports homosexual behavior.

Some people who suffer same-sex attractions disagree with what the activists say in their name, but let us not turn this into a you-say, I-say brawl.  The greater problem is that fulfillment is not whatever someone says it is.

Some heterosexual men claim infidelity fulfills them; some even say bringing a third person into the bedroom deepens their intimacy with their wives.  Would the author agree with them too?

Like everything else about us, genuine fulfillment has a pattern, one we defy at our peril.  This pattern is embedded in our nature, in the kind of being that humans are.  Yet the author -- a philosopher who ought to know better -- has nothing to say about our nature. 

Let us leave his essay aside.  Beginning tomorrow I will offer a few reflections about the broader topic.

This seven-part series is adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press.

Mondays are reserved for letters from students and other young people – some scholars, some not -- and I say again, since people keep asking me, that the letters are all real.

Question:

I am a Witch and I follow the Wiccan path.  It always amazes me when I read sites like yours.  You Christians pretend that your religion is correct.  You show your intolerance for others by attacking other religions.  You cannot conceive that people would be happy without your Jesus.  You feel that unless people convert to your religion they are quite unhappy.  Happiness is only what people make it to be not how some religion dictates.  Spiritually Blind?  I think not.  That is just your perception from your twisted views.  And now that I have said that, I will tell you a little about myself.  I used to be a Christian.  I was a good Christian.  I went to Sunday school and everything.  But emptiness is what I felt.  Deep dark emptiness.  I could not even understand "Why?"  I am now a Witch.  I enjoy it very much.  I am no longer sad or lonely.  I have a clear purpose and I am free.  Please write back.

Reply:

I appreciate your letter, but I think you misunderstand what Christianity is about.  You see, your words are all about how much happier you are now than you used to be.  I take your former unhappiness seriously, and I'm sorry that you never got to the bottom of it.  However, Christians worship Christ because we believe He is the Way, the Life, and the Truth, not because He always makes us happy in this life.  It is certainly possible to delight in what is false and to sorrow in what is true; that is why false religions exist.

The other issue in your dispatch is condemnation.  I think this is a red herring.  If you really believed it were wrong to condemn another person's religion, you wouldn't have written a letter in condemnation of mine.  God is always to be praised; that which leads us away from God is always to be rejected; and the human beings whom God has made are always to be loved, as I, in His name, love you.

Thomas Aquinas remarks that devotion is spurred mainly by considering God's goodness.  Directly, such consideration causes joy because the remembrance of God is so delightful, but it also causes sorrow because we do not yet enjoy God fully.

But devotion is also spurred by considering our own failings, and now the picture reverses.  Directly, such consideration causes sorrow because the remembrance of sin is so dreadful, but it also causes joy because we hope for God’s assistance.

St. Thomas concludes, “It is accordingly evident that the first and direct effect of devotion is joy, while the secondary and accidental effect is that ‘sorrow which is according to God.’”

-- Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 82, Art. 4

Tomorrow:  Emptiness in Christ?