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How can the Church expect teenagers to be "celibate" until marriage! The media bombards them with sex stimulation every day--not to mention the tremendous peer pressure. And what about their parents who contracept? Aren't they sending teens a message that sex is a necessity. If the parents cannot practice "sex control" with the support of marital love, how can they expect their teens to be chaste when their adolescent drive is so strong and the bonding love largely missing? You raise excellent questions. Married and unmarried persons need an understanding of sex and sexuality that is much deeper than is offered by the culture and even by many in the Church. We think that a genuine sexual revolution is sorely needed. And Jesus is the Real Sexual Revolution. Jesus once said that there were many things the Spirit would have to teach after He left. We think that the meaning of human sexuality and love is right at the heart of what Jesus saw the people of His time "could not hear." In fact, if Jesus had really told them what he thought about sexuality and love in man-woman relations, he would have been crucified even sooner. Teens need to be educated by parents and teachers who are secure in their sexuality. Sexuality is rooted in meaning. Emotions and erotic love can come and go, but the meaning for sexual love is quite stable and deep. In effect, the worst time to marry is when one has fallen in love. Love is a commitment, not a fall. We have always advised to "wait until you have recovered from the erotic fixation and fall--after you have picked yourselves up from the fall and had time for reflection and realism--before deciding whether to marry." Teens need education by people who are themselves sexually free: able to receive and affirm within themselves all of their feelings, emotions, drives, and desires without having to act them out. They need to be able to "act in," not "act out." Only when they understand how to do this and why, is there an opportunity for genuinely free expression--genitally in marriage and non-genitally in other man-woman relationships. "Act in" is a counter expression to the trend to act on one's feelings and desires without regard for the devastating consequences and perverted meanings such actions could entail. "Acting in" means recognizing the goodness of all of one's feelings and emotions--without doing anything about them--especially when their tendencies are directed in a way contrary to sound living. All feelings are good. It's the meanings that can be good or bad. Temptation, for instance, needs to be acknowledged for what it is and firmly rejected. A sound exercise of mind and heart makes it possible to offer one's every inclination to the God who created us out of nothing and for the sake of loving everyone, including ourselves. Caring prayer--caring for God and also caring for oneself, for one's companions, and for the the energetic, inner promise of friendship that can be sought through some of one's feelings--prevents abuse of the gift of self. Abusive activity is the prime form of self-hate and of indifference to who we are and who we are not. Abusive thoughts about who we are--playthings of passion and captives of desire, for instance--are prime acts of failing to be really free. There is hardly anything more pathetic than the popular, totally false notion of sexual freedom. Acting on impulse or on compulsion is a "free" abuse of freedom. Freedom, sexual and otherwise, comes in and through a developed ability to act or not act as the meaning of an occasion warrants. We are free to do something only to the extent that we are free not to do it. If I must make love to someone, I am not free to love him or her. And the making is just that a make and a take, not a gift and a sharing. The making might be mutual...but it is still taking from each other, not really gifting and receiving. Love is always based on freedom, including the freedom of restraint. And the basis of freedom is truth. "The truth will make you free." What is the truth about love and sexuality? What is the truth about the sexual maturity needed before decisions on close personal relationships are made? .......... just getting started here. More later. Robert |
