Transcript SEXUALITY AND A TRULY HUMAN CIVILISATION

SEXUALITY AND A
TRULY HUMAN
CIVILISATION
Sexuality in Global
Perspective
Introduction
 Catholic sexual ethics as greatest challenge
to Catholic youth
 their parents’ struggle to observe such
norms
 reservations about John Paul II
 can Catholic sexual mores be presented
credibly in our age?
1. A CATHOLIC
CUL-DE-SAC?
 McIntyre: no dialogue without a
common story
 today’s dominant norm: personal
pleasure and fulfilment
 Catholic natural law approach: God’s
plan written in nature’s design
 Human sexuality unique ontologically not
functionally
 functionally for continuation of species
 ontologically: a meeting place of body and
spirit, common biology and individualised
persons
 individual genetic differences very small
but critical
 challenge: to hold together biological and
personal values
 Loss of vision over last 30-40 years
 bitter dispute between proportionalism and
intrinsic goods approach
 proportionalism: a balance of premoral
goods and evils
 intrinsic goods: some goods can never be
acted against directly
 Problems with scope of this debate
 anthropology shaped by modernity
 individualistic and consumeristic
 blurs categories of good/bad and
right/wrong
 In Genesis account humanity is bipolar
 sin is loss of harmony within couple then
between couple and God, couple and nature
 but human preservation dependent upon
harmony and cooperation
 morality not a refinement but a precondition for human survival and
flourishing
 Immorality not violation of code or
command but threat to human
solidarity
 parallel to epidemiology
 a search for ailments that cumulatively
undermine human solidarity and
survival
2. PROPORTIONALISM
AND SEXUAL DILEMMAS
 Advantages of proportionalism
 a way through difficult cases in a
rapidly changing world
 example of pregnant 14 year old
 Shortcomings of proportionalism
 tendency to view goods in rational balances
 moral character mainly formed by
solidarity, bonding and modelling
 the powerful impact of the reflexive
character of moral acts
 example of Vietnam veterans
3. EPIDEMIOLOGY
AND SEXUAL HEALTH
 Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like
Water
 linking individual deaths statistically to
unhealthy practices and environments
 difficulty of linking individual moral
acts with bad outcomes
 Signs of moral morbidity in our
world
 statistics on global fertility, STD’s
and pornography
CONCLUSION
 Trying to endorse Catholic sexual
mores by debate over individual acts
not fruitful
 goodness/badness of individual acts
well covered by correct understanding
of conscience
 Seeing sexual acts as primarily
individual choice and fulfilment
leading to global problems
 more productive to stress Catholic
vision of sexuality as a share in God’s
self-giving and invitation to selftranscendence