David Quinn
Few things cause Christianity more trouble in the Western world than what it has to say about sexual morality, writes David Quinn
Pope Francis knows that the gulf between the Church and secular society when it comes to sex is massive and is trying to address it by softening the edges and presentation of that teaching. This partly explains why he supports civil unions for same-sex couples (and anyone else in a caring, dependent relationship), and also why he supports giving Holy Communion in limited circumstances to divorced and remarried Catholics.
We now live in extremely liberal societies, meaning ones that place enormous emphasis on the idea of personal autonomy and choice, including in the sexual arena.
Clash
Many of the clashes between the Church and liberalism have involved laws intended to curb sexual and personal freedom, whether it be the right to divorce, use contraception or have an abortion.
When the Church is accused of being against personal autonomy in these specific areas, it is true. It is also accused of being cruel to those who may find themselves trapped in an extremely unhappy marriage, or to a woman who wants to have an abortion because she feels now is not the right time to have a baby.
The Church has lost all these debates because personal freedom is so valued today and because people want to be compassionate, as they see it.
The Church also stands accused of being unchristian. Jesus told us to love our neighbours as ourselves but repeatedly the Church has appeared to be on the side of cruelty and oppression.
These are heavy charges and, unfortunately, they have sometimes been true, because the Church became the enforcer of moral rules, harshly applied.
But does this mean we must give up on the Christian view of sexual morality and simply concede the argument to liberalism, to admit that they have been right all along? Not so fast, because we must first understand what Christian sexual morality is all about, and how liberalism’s extreme individualism can have extremely harmful and often cruel effects of its own which must be rigorously scrutinised and critiqued.
Liberalism
Liberalism as applied to sexual morality seeks to maximise personal freedom. That is why it is pro-divorce, pro-contraception, pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage. In fact, the only rule liberalism really applies to sex is that it must take place between consenting adults.
What is at the heart of Christian sexual morality isn’t really sex at all, but the family, and especially the welfare of children.
When Jesus says we must love our neighbour as ourselves, that means we must sometimes be willing to sacrifice our own immediate interests and desires and freedoms for them. At all times we must never use others as a means to our own ends.
In the sphere of sexual relations that means never using another person, ever, even if they consent to that. We must never objectify another person, or ourselves.
That way, someone is much less likely to feel used or devalued after a sexual encounter. They are far more likely to feel valued.
Enormous female anger at men emerged in the ‘Me Too’ movement as countless women came forward to speak of being sexually harassed, and worse, by men, who saw them only as objects.
But even when a man does not engage in sexual harassment and does not put a woman under any pressure at all to have sex, how valued is she going to feel the next day if he ‘ghosts’ her, which is the term for ignoring all attempts to contact someone?
Liberal sexual morality has little to say in response when it teaches that anything goes between consenting adults. It says nothing about the necessity of making the other person feel valued, never mind loving, much less marrying them.
Unfortunately, most people fail to see the deep connection between liberal sexual morality and the way it can makes lots of people, especially women, feel devalued.
It is also self-evident that even in an age of contraception, sex will still often lead to pregnancy. What happens when the pregnancy is unplanned?
If the man doesn’t want the baby, he can easily take off. He can ‘ghost’ the woman. This happens constantly. She then feels unsupported and, in many cases, will opt for abortion. In other cases, she will have the baby, but raising a child on your own is much more challenging than doing so with someone else.
So, once again we see the cruel effects of liberal sexual morality. Freedom and autonomy often lead to many people, women especially, being abandoned when they most need support.
It can also be very cruel towards children. Huge numbers are aborted. Huge numbers never get to know their fathers. Huge numbers experience divorce. Liberalism seems to look at all this as the acceptable price of personal autonomy.
But Christianity knows the costs. It knows what happens when sex is detached from a relational context, and it knows the price is paid chiefly by women and children because men can easily walk away from both.
Therefore, Christianity has always placed marriage at the centre of its sexual morality. It wants men and women in sexual relationships to marry, because this greatly increases the odds of them staying together, even today with high divorce rates, and it also greatly increases the odds of a chid being raised by their mother and father under the same roof.
Christianity often imposed its view of sexual morality too harshly, but liberal sexual morality has very cruel effects which are all around us.
We should not lose confidence in the Christian view of sexual morality because it is needed as much as ever. What we need to do instead is understand it much better and become more expert at communicating it. Giving up on our view of sexual morality would, in fact, be a terrible dereliction of duty, and true compassion.