Todd A. Salzman - Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction

SEXUAL ETHICS

A Theological Introduction

TODD A. SALZMAN
AND
MICHAEL G. LAWLER

2012 Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salzman, Todd A.

Sexual ethics : a theological introduction / Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58901-913-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. SexReligious aspectsCatholic Church. 2. Catholic ChurchDoctrines. 3. Sexual ethics. I. Lawler, Michael G. II. Title.

BX1795.S48S249 2012

241.66088282dc23

2011037930

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

15 14 13 12 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing

This book is dedicated to our students, past and present, from whom we have learned so much.

CHAPTER 1
Sexual Morality in the Catholic Tradition

CHAPTER 2
Unitive Sexual Morality

CHAPTER 3
Marital Morality

CHAPTER 4
Cohabitation and the Process of Marrying

CHAPTER 5
Homosexuality

CHAPTER 6
Artificial Reproductive Technologies

All translations from languages other than English are the authors.

Our earlier book, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology, was highly acclaimed by its academic critics and was selected by the Catholic Press Association as the best theological book of 2009. That book, however, was written primarily for our fellow theologians, and that, countless readers told us, made it a difficult read for those who were not theologically trained. That complaint, allied to a fairly common request for a Catholic book on sexual morality that people in the pews and my students can understand, is the origin of this book. It is offered to the general educated Catholic population in the hope that it will be more readable and therefore more enlightening on common questions about sexual morality as they arise for Catholics in the contemporary world. Twenty-first-century sexual science, perhaps especially the critiques offered by feminist scholars, have made clear to us that ancient assumptions about sexuality and sexual intercourse are not entirely accurate. The advice of Pythagoras, to keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; sexual pleasures are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health, will surely make twenty-first-century adults smile, but the pain and disaster daily experienced in the sexual area, especially by the young, indicates that we have more to do than smile. We must understand more about our sexuality and the principles that direct it morally and make it truly human than did Holden Caulfield, J. D. Salingers tortured protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye. It is to facilitate that dual understanding that this book is offered.

Two magisterial principles capture the essence of the Catholic moral, sexual tradition. The first principle received its modern articulation in In the Catholic tradition, moral sexual activity is institutionalized within the confines of marriage and procreation, and sexual morality is marital morality.

These two principles do not have the same theoretical underpinning. The first is founded in what is called nature or natural order: the structure of sexual acts reveals to the attentive and rational person the form that each and every sexual act must take to be in accord with nature and the will of natures Creator. The second is founded in human reason: attention to and understanding, evaluation, and rational judgment of the various aspects of an issue reveal to attentive, rational, and responsible human beings what right sexual conduct ought to be. These two different ways of arriving at moral principles have a long history in the Catholic moral tradition. Thomas Aquinas argued, for example, that there are two ways in which a sexual act is rendered unbecoming. First, through being contrary to right