AMDG.

Notes / a summary of...

Amerai! Un viaggio alla ricerca del senso

della sessualit per una fondazione del
legame di coppia
Paolo Benanti
Oct 2014

The theme of this book is journeying towards the Promised Land:

la met affidata al lettore, perch alla fine del viaggio possa, come il popolo di Israele, entrare e
abitare la Terra che gli promessa: la sessualit si svela come luogo dell'alleanza per eccellenza,
l'amore coniugale

Table of Contents
Introduction Sexuality as a journey...2
Ch1. La natura sessuata della persona. 3
1. From genetic sex to psychological
sex.....................................................4
2. Puberty..........................................4
3. The Menstrual cycle.....................4
4. Linee prospettiche (i.e.
'overview'?).......................................7
Ch2. La cultura sessuata della persona. 9
1. Primitive femminism and
maschilismo (masculism).................9
2. Monogamy and family................10
3. The Role of Women....................10
4. The influence of Christianity and
the synthesis of St Thomas.............12
5. The Sexual Revolution and the

contemporary panorama.................13
6. Corteggiamento (courting) e la
cultura.............................................18
7. Linee prospettiche.......................19
Ch3. Sexuality among the dimensions
of the human person............................20
1. The dimensions of sexuality.......21
2. Sex education..............................29
Ch4. Sexuality as a vocation to love...33
1. The meaning of sexuality in the
theology of love..............................34
2. A digression: sexual pleasure......38
3. Modesty and chastity: ways to a
mature sexuality..............................39
4. Linee prospettiche.......................42
Conclusions.........................................43

Introduction Sexuality as a journey

Lyrics from Irene Grandi (b.1969), Prima di partire per un lungo viaggio.
Before going on a long journey, take with you with desire not to return again,
before not agreeing, try to listen a little more, before being alone, try to think if you
are well, before asking for something, try to think about what you give, it is not
easy but all is here, it is not easy but all is here...

Today's society:
We have lost the sense of morality: after the sexual revolution, to speaks of
morals of sexuality seems old-fashioned.
There is now a new pansexuality,
there has emerged a new problem the sex addiction epidemic
Our free sexual society has become a sick sexual society.
Affects 9 million Americans, 5% of the population.
Affects 40 million Internet users who daily access hardcore pornography.
Zygmunt Bauman:
the Postmodern erotism is separated from reproduction as well as from love
one of the effects is depression, according to numerous studies.
Sex is the one and true obsession of our society: Relationships without sex
seem absurd to many today.
Today's reductionism:
The study of Sexuality has been reduced to the investigation of pleasure.
There is a need to rediscover its rich anthropology.
This book's methodology:
we use a different method: this is not a manual, but a journey.
Aim is to find the fundamentals of Christian ethics of sexuality.
Analogy = Moses who contemplates the Promised land from Mount Nebo without
entering it.
We explore the discoveries of biology, cultural anthropology, philosophy and
theology.
We then arrive at the peak, and we will contemplate the promised land.
We will see that sexuality is not a mish-mash of systems (biooogcial,
psychologial, spiritual) in conflict, but a harmony of different levels, orientated
towards a promise written in our being the possibility of loving.
The title of this book taken from Deut 6,5., the start of the famous prayer, the
shema'
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 Amerai is a gift and task (Gabe and Ausgabe) that Israel learnt to recognize
as part of God's salvific action.
Gift and task:
Gabe and Aufgabe: characterises all creation.
Need to live sexuality as love, as it was intended, created that is natural love,
a gift and a challenge to live it in its fullness.
God has given us the dignity of being able to be instruments of his love.
The task of each of us is to live a sexuality that is at the service of love.
This text is against every reductionist vision of sexuality.
It is not only biological, cultural, philosophical or theological.
Sexuality is spiritual and bodily. Both. Hence it is part of moral theology, which
deals with the science that best deals with the senses.
There will be lyrics from songs as the beginning of each chapter, to help us
realise that we are talking about a reality that not is not abstract or theoretical,
but lived. This includes the beauty of its expression in music (or other arts), and
helps us to be open to the emotional reality . We can remain only at the
intellectual level, but this would not allow a complete investigation of sexuality.

Ch1. La natura sessuata della persona.

The sexual nature of the person.
Lyrics from Negrita [Italian rock band from Arezzo, Tuscany. Formed in 1991], Sex.
To have sex hidden in a toilet, to smoke a Marlboro after sex or to do it in a car at
the side of a street, to find a bad cold which makes you feel a bit animal, a bit
primitive, to feel that you breathe, to feel alive...

The human person is ontologically 'sexed'. Sex (male or female) is an essential part of
our nature.
Human sexuality has two sources natural and cultural.
Need to consider biological, psychological and cultural factors. These should be
considered together and never separated.

1. From genetic sex to psychological sex.

Natural factors biology

sexuality is not only expressed in our genital differentiation, but in the whole of
our body.
e.g. men are more muscular, hairy, taller etc.

(a) chromosomal sex and genetics

men are XY, women are XX.
We do not determine our own sex. It is a gift given to us.
This sexual differentiation is present in every cell of our bodies.
(b) gonadal sex. - testicles or ovaries.
(c) morphological or phenotypical sex.
Male characteristics determined mostly by testosterone and DHT
(dihydrotestosterone).
Absence of these male hormones leads to female characteristics.
i.e. the 'default' is female!
(d) psychological sex.
As the bodies of males and females is different, so too with the mind.
Esp through the effect of the sex hormones on the hypothalamus.
There is an environmental factor too: hence the necessity of a mother and
father to adequately and fully acquire a male / female personality.

2. Puberty.

Involves hormonal, psychological and physical changes.

Thus there is a change in identity, hence the doubts and anxieties that
accompany this period.
There is a tension between leaving childhood and reaching adulthood.
Important is the first menstruation and the first ejaculation. They represent the
beginning of reproductive capacity.
Girls feel the need to be loved, boys feel the need to have sexual experience to
confirm their identity among their peers.

3. The Menstrual cycle.

There is a constant production of spermatozoi in men

but it is only cyclical in women, starting with menarche, ending with
menstruation.
Menstrual cycles vary from 23-35 days, this 'irregularity' is quite normal.
Cycles are marked by ovulation, and not by menstruation.
4

There are about 400 ovulations in a woman's life (over 35yrs)

Two phases
6

follicular (proliferative) and secretory

ovulation occurs in between the two phases, at day 14.

Ovarian hormones = oestrogen (estradiol) and progesterone.

Anterior pituitary hormones = LH and FSH.
Estrogen gradually increases, which causes LH to increase,
estrogen peak causes LH peak, which causes ovulation.
Endometrium thickening caused by oestrogen and progesterone.
From http://www.pcosjournal.com/hormones-normal-menstrual-cycle/
if you get pregnant:
the hCG hormone is produced by the developing embryo.
This hormone signals the Corpus Luteum to keep making Progesterone and
Estrogen.
If you dont get pregnant:
the corpus luteum disintegrates (called as Corpus Albican) and stops
producing Progesterone and Estrogen.
The low levels of Progesterone and Estrogen causes menstruation to
occur. -

4. Linee prospettiche (i.e. 'overview'?)

We are Mammals
we belong to 'mammals'
the other 5000 species of mammals also share in
endothermy,
viviparity (giving birth to live young),
parental care,
giving the young milk from specialised mammary glands.
Mammals also share sexual dimorphism, with males being bigger and
stronger, females being more adapted for giving birth.
Most mammals practice polygyny and promiscuity.
Coupling is usually only during the fertile period of the female.
Only 3% of mammals are monogamous.

Differences between Humans and other mammals:

For us, sexuality comprises more than the mere biological.
7

It involves religion, myth, ethics, morals, medicine, hygiene, laws, education

and social norms,
this is true in almost every culture,
it also determines inheritance.

Animals on the other hand only have sexual relations during the female's fertile
period, this is not the same for males.
Thus sexual relations in animals are determined merely by hormonal changes in
us, it is subject to the human will: we have liberty.
Mammals typically show external signs of their fertile periods, not so in humans.
Hence our biology encourages us to have stable relationships with partners in
order to be fertile.
In humans, the female breast is also more evident than in other female mammals. It
plays a more important sexual role than it does in males, independently of its role in
lactation.
Most mammals are diurnal (active in the daytime):
mammals have sexual relations in the day and 'publicly' without any
'embarrassment',
nocturnal mammals at night.
We on the other hand, usually have sexual relations during the night, and it is
an extremely private and intimate affair.
Another peculiarity is 'parenting'.
In mammals, it typically finishes when the offspring are autonomous and
sexually mature.
In humans, the parent-child relationship remains throughout life.
In summary, sexuality is more linked to liberty in humans, and less mechanically
linked to fertility as it is in other mammals.
In this area of maximum liberty, we find maximum bonding (between couples
and in parenting).
In mammals it is only a question of biology and behaviour.
In humans, it includes liberty and responsibility, and hence there is a need of
an ethics, to guide the correct use of one's liberty.
Human sexuality is intrinsically ethical, that is of the good understood and
willed,
It involves ethical criteria and life choices.
From these observations we realise that the biolgoical dimension of sex does not
sufficiently explain human sexuality in all its complexity.
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What is required is a sexual anthropology, and a sexual morality to orientate one's

liberty to the good, understood and desired, i.e. a sexuality at the service of love.

Ch2. La cultura sessuata della persona

The sexual culture of the person.
Lyrics from Caparezza [the pseudonym of Michele Salvemini (b.1973), an Italian
rapper], La rivoluzione del Sessintutto.
In '68 getting covered in mud at Woodstock, in 2008 you get covered in mud at
Woodcock. There is a new sign at the sex shop: you will pay much, you will pay all!
prostitution online chatting...internet. How many believe in '68? how many
see sex in all?

How culture understands sexuality has an impact on every aspect of culture.

We examine here
feminism and 'masculism',
monogamy, family,
the role of women,
the influence of Christianity on our understanding of sexuality,
the so-called 'sexual revolution',
and the link btw (between) courting and culture.

1. Primitive femminism and maschilismo (masculism)

We have some 'sex symbols' from the paleolithic age, 50,000 BC.
Sex seems to have always been a deep element of the human experience.
'veneri paleolitica', aka 'steatopige' and 'callipige'.
First representations of the human body they have pronounced sexual
attributes.
We discover that because women were seen as the origin of life, this may have
caused the cult of the Mother God.
Perhaps paleolithic cultures were thus matriarchal and feminist.
9

From 9750 BC, men began to cultivate the land breed animals.
They realised that one male could fertilise many females.
Hence the discovery that the male has greater fecundity than the female.
This may have caused the birth of 'maschilismo'.

2. Monogamy and family

From neolithic times, we see the start of a competition for the tutela (tutelage /
wardship) of women.
The 'mainstream' culture is towards monogamy, a union which is official, public,
socially recognised.
There are concubines, but they have a lower role in society.
Monogamy is unique to man, but is also present in some primates.
There are 3 evolutionary reasons given for monogamy:
1. the attention of two parents gives a better survival rate of the progeny.
2. it prevents sexual relationships of females with other males.
3. protects infanticide from rival males.
Here, biology meets culture: our biology favours monogamy, but we tend to have
monogamous relationships beyond the childhood of the offspring (unlike mammals);
our relationships are lifelong.
The idea of an indissoluble relationship between mother and father thus seems to go
back a long time and to be an essential part of what it means to be human.

3. The Role of Women

From the primitive feminism we saw, there came a gradual subordination of women.
With the agricultural developments, men gain authority over women. Women are
confined to domestic life, and become the property of men.
P re-Hellenistic societies were strictly 'maschiliste'.
Sumer, the first written language, was all masculine, feminine words required a
suffix.
Ancient Greece
In Homeric Greek, women were an economic good. A resource for the
10

maintenance of the house and to cultivate the fields. To marry a woman, one
had to pay the family: the man 'bought' the bride from the parents, the father
of the bride had to pay a dowry, which was given back should separation
occur.
In mythology, all evil was imputed to a woman Pandora.
In the Greek Golden Age, women were also seen as inferior.
In Athens, women had the same rights as slaves. Women were completely
subject to relatives or to the husband. She had no regular education and was
destined to live in segregated dedicated to her.
Women were seen as a material property at whoever's disposal. Women were
seen as irrational, lacking in morality, and addicted to sexual pleasure.

Roman Empire
In the Roman world, women and wives were totally subject to men or
husbands, who could control all their actions.
However she had more rights in her house compared to other cultures.
e.g. she could have an input in family questions, she could be seen by nonfamily members and she could attend theatrical works.
She gained greater family value with the increase in the power of the Roman
empire. The man was more absorbed in political and administrative problems
of the empire.
In the first two Punic Wars, women had an influence on the Senate.
Christianity
With the advent of Christianity, there was a restitution of the female condition.
In Christianity, women are seen as complete human beings, equal with men.
Holiness was possible for both, and both were martyrs in the start of
Christianity.
In all the religious renewals that have taken part in the church, there has been a
flourishing of both male and female sanctity.
This was lost in the 19th cent. with the bourgeois attitudes that infiltrated Christian
society.
This an important topic for the church today.
Paul VI was the first to declare a woman as a doctor of the church. , 1970
Teresea of Avila and Catherine of Siena.
In 2000, John Paul II made a public apology for the past sins of ecclesiastics,
among the 7 categories of sins named, one was sins against the dignity of
women and minority groups.

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4. The influence of Christianity and the synthesis of St

Thomas
Sometimes there is the suspicion that Christianity was the cause of a negative view
towards sexuality and its pleasure.
The historican Le Goff and the philosopher Foucault both argue that sexual ethics
was already present in the Greek-Roman world before Christianity.
Christianity placed the greatest stress on the dignity of the human body, because:
1. The Incarnation, in which God assumed human flesh,
2. The possibility of the human body to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.
In medieval times, the words sport and theatre fade out of use, and the fathers of the
church propose an overturning of cultural norms helped by the monastics of
seeing the ascetic life as the model of ideal Christian living.
There is a gradual tendency to the repression of pleasure, especially corporeal
pleasure, a depreciation of the world was first manifested as a depreciation of the
body.
This process cannot be attributed entirely to Christianity however.
Renunciation of the flesh was initially a product of the Roman empire and paganism.
In the last years of the 2nd cent AD, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, AD 180 200,
according to the historian Paul Veyne, sexual repression came first from the Stoics.
Acc. to Michael Foucault, btw the time of Cicero and the century of the Antonini, there
is an important event often ignored the metamorphosis of sexual and conjugal
relations.
Medieval writers were then shaped by the the writings of the Fathers and the lives of
monastics.
This applied more to 'gula' than to sexuality i.e. abstinence from food, fasting,
The medieval times were thus the product of various tensions between God and
man, man and woman, city and countryside etc. but one of the most important is the
tension between body and soul. On the one hand, the body is depreciated,
condemned and humiliated, on the other hand it is glorified in medieval times by the
theological focus on the Incarnation of Christ.
In the medieval times there starts a repugnance of corporeal liquids blood and
12

those pertaining to sex.

The radical separation between body and soul does not pertain to medieval times
however, but in the 600s with classicist rationalism. For medieval man , body and
soul are inseparable.
One is external (foris), the other internal (intus), but both are two aspects of one
reality (the human person)
There is an organic systemization in the Summa by St Thomas:
he does not see marriage as a mere remedy for concupiscence as others had
seen it, but for him, marriage is a reality in which the Creator inscribed his own
values.
For Thomas, the natural tendencies and appetites are good, and the pleasure
linked to these appetites is also good.
St Thomas does not hesitate to propose sexuality as a good. Even the pleasure
associated with sexuality is good, he writes, provided it is not associated with a
moral disorder.
Spouses are called toe exercise sexuality according to a moral Christianity, that
is, in a way that is ordered to ends which are objectively good.
Hence chastity also has a new role in Thomas' thought
in which passions are not quelled, but orientated towards objective values.
Chastity is not a virtue that eliminates the use of sex, but which orders it
according to reason so that it can achieve its final end, i.e. be fulfilled!
The restoration of moral order for Thomas is made possible by grazia sanante,
'healing grace'.
Hence St Thomas manages to place conjugal life firmly within a salvific context
The salvation of Christ not only rescues sexual realities from degeneration, but
also promotes sexuality to a higher level natural values acquire a
supernatural dimension.
For this to occur, conjugal relations need to be ordered to children, which are a
'bene del sacramento', a good of the sacrament.

5. The Sexual Revolution and the contemporary panorama.

After the industrial revolution, there started a series of social, scientific and cultural
transformations which had repercussions on sexual customs.
In the 1800s and 1900s, with the large productions from factories, the power a man
13

or of a social group comes to be measured by its number of workers, artisans and

soldiers. This reinforces the procreative family politic.
In 1677, Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek discovers spermatozoi, and proposes the
animalculista theory
the embryo was though to be held in the round head of these corpuscules and
to enter into the uterus, where the sperm would receive nutrition from the
women to give life to the future man.
These scientific visions of the 17th century reinforced the idea that the woman
was passive in the generation of new life, and that her function was little more
than that of an incubator.
These ideas strengthened the idea of a male superiority.
It is only in 1875 that Wilhelm Hertwig finally speaks of fecundation as a fusion of the
nucleus of the spermatozoo and of that of the ovulo, giving a greater role to the
woman in reproduction.
Experiments then confirmed this theory
this did not translate into a greater equality for women, but it did for mothers.
Between the 1800s and 1900s, there is a reduction of sensuality that takes place
outside of the reproductive field.
Christian morals both among Protestants and Catholics, returns to St
Augustine and the idea that sex is ordered uniquely and directly to
procreation.
In Victorian england, the bourgeois morals spread the general conviction that
men should not impose their animal desire on their wives unless it was
absolutely necessary.
In this period there is also a rise in studies of sexual pathologies and
psychopathologies.
Alexandre Lacassagne (d. 19234), Emmanuel Regis (d. 1918), Jean-Baptiste
Charcot (d. 1936) and Magnus Hirschfeld (d. 1937) all started systematic
studies of sexual customs, giving rise to the new discipline of sexology, studied
with scientific rigorism.
The views of the 1800s are then changed quite radically by the influence of
Sigmund Freud.

(a) Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

considered Father of psychology, though his thought involves much philosophy and
ethics.
Psychoanalysis the Freudian analysis of man and society, shook all that was
14

considered 'natural' about man, and questioned every philosophical conception of

man threatening its anthropological foundations that were previously held solidly.
Sexuality and its pleasure, viewed suspiciously by Victorian morals, becomes the
fulcrum of the thought of Freud and he makes is the essence of human nature.
For Freud, man is essentially his libido, man is his sexuality.
For Freud, man is only his sexuality, at the basis of the mechanisms of all his relations
with himself, others and the whole world.
All is linked to sexual instinct, which is the 'pulsione' (impulse) that pushes man to
meet with all that his around him.
The Freudian analysis shows how sexuality involves all life in all its stages, from first
infancy to the third age. Freud underlines how sexuality cannot be understood as
mere genitality, that is as the need of an erotic expression, rather, libido produces
'spinte' (impulses) which are divergent and contradictory, which by nature are
irrational and amoral, that is irreducible to the logic of reason, obeying only what
Freud calls the 'principio di piacere' (Lustprinzip), principle of lust / pleasure.
Faced with the restrictions posited by society and its rules, these impulses, although
remaining connected to the principle of pleasure, clash with reality and find a way to
defer their gratification in the measure in which the interests of the subject and the
society demand them that occurs though a modality which Freud calls sublimazione,
a process which channels the energies of the libido, putting them at the disposition
of collective goals of society.
Hence for Freud, human personality is the results of the conflict between three
components which Freud calls Es, Io, and Super-Io (the Id, Ego and Super-Ego):
The Id, which takes is name from the neutral German pronoun, is the
unconscious sexual impulse, a physiological fact and instinct.
The Ego is the conscious and organised part of the human personality and is
manifested as the facade of the Id.
The moral conscious is reduced to the Super-Ego which is the result of the
interiorisation of the moral norms and of societal prohibitions.
The sense of guilt arises from the awareness of the 'venir meno' of what is
socially held as a duty.
The Super-Ego is formed in each individual through a phased development
of sexuality, through the theory of the Oedipus Complex.
Freud's thought is thus a revolution in the understanding of human sexuality and is
the basis of the social phenomenon that in the in the mid-20 th century that becomes
the Sexual revolution.

15

(b) the Sexual revolution.

The term 'sexual revolution' refers to a movement of the second half of the 1900s
which was inspired by the texts of Wilhelm Reich, a social Marxist psychologist who
was critical of his teacher Freud.
He held that neither Freud nor Marx alone could offer the complete therapy of
which the world had need, a revolution that should me more radical that the
Marxist and Freudian revolutions.
Reich combined Freudian thought with Marxism to provide the only solution
which could liberate the individual from his repressions, and society from its
cultural inhibitions.
It was a reaction to the conformism in the West of the 30s and 50s cuased by
the tensions of the Cold War.
Some historians think that the Sexual revolution did not constitute a real change in
sexual behaviour, either in type or frequency, but rather that it involved more open
platform about practices such as pre-matrimonial relations, masturbation, erotic
fantasies, the use of pornography and homosexuality
David Allyn a historian calls this a period of 'coming out'.
Reich wanted to liberate his contemporaries from every sexual repression which he
thought was the cause of all the miseries of society.
But his vision of sexuality was mutilated, and he cut off sexuality from every
connection with love. The result was a 'tyranny of flesh', tirannia della carne, which
instead of being a liberation and promotion of man, instead repressed man's
spiritual potentialities.
The liberation was seen as a dismantling of all sexual prohibitions. But sexuality was
stripped of what is essentially human, sexuality lived in the context of the good and
true, of ethics.
Reich's view can be summarised in a series of propositions
the healthy man is the courageous and instinctual individual who has satisfied
his strong libidinous passions and overcome social ostracism;
the family, with its inevitable patriarchal authority, was the principle source of
repression and should be dismantled;
the young should be helped to liberate themselves from the ideas of their
parents;
sexual relationships between adolescents should be supported and
encouraged.

16

(c) The contemporary cultural panorama.

is characterised by uncertainty, instability, disorientation.
Many theories today represent a discontinuity with the culture of the past.
Some see it as a time for the start of post-modernity, others as the end of modernity.
There are various terms for our current state
post-modernism, Risikogesellshaft, Individualized Society, empty society, society
without solidity, society without passions, society without work, society of the
decline of the public man.
Post-modern society obsessively exalts individualism which ignores all precedents.
There is a loss of the sense of historical continuity, emphasizing the personal
experiences of the moment, the ephemeral, the temporary.
There is a de-legitimisation of traditional institutions such as marriage and family,
and the affirmation of new modi di vita (lifestyles)
Today's society promotes individualism and discontinuity, continually changing and
reformed, change for change's sake.
Western society is characterised by
'entropia esistenziale', existential entropy, a loss of moral energy and creativity.
Narcissism.
Impoverishment of personality.
There is a sense of 'possibility without limits', and the banality of social order.
Liberated from a code of moral conduct, pushing man to a 'deriva minimalista'
Today's cultural and economic systems are characterised by that of the
'supermarket', based around pleasure, hedonism, consumerism , driven by the
winds of cupidity.
Culture once favoured work and self discipline
now it is no longer seen as a work machine, tired and making sacrifices,
but rather as a sex-machine to listen to and seduce.
Media pushes our bodies towards sex and the 'spoliazione del sentimento del
pudore' , the destruction of modesty / decency.
Every historical period proposes its ideal man:
Ours is an age of extreme individualism,
its model is the homo sentiens, the emotional man, that gives reign to his
passions (especially lust), as underlined by Xavier Lacroix.
Characterised also by existentialism the self determination of one's nature,
17

the liberalisation of oneself from human nature.

The idea is that abandoning oneself to one's emotions, one learns again to be
one's body,
today, culture undermines human nature.
A time of the 'revenge of the emotions', as the zona franca, the open zone
where one finds the depth and meaning of living.
Emotions are now seen as the 'profondita dell'anima'.

6. Corteggiamento (courting) e la cultura.

Courtship is the innate way in which animals display their availability to
'accopiamento', coupling, sexual relations.
Humans do it in many different ways, through poems, serenades, dancing, any
manner in which the attention of the potential partner can be captured. It is done
with gestures, signs, or words which the other understands to pertain to courtship.
These modes / ways are not determined by nature, and thus vary with culture.
Courtship is not geared solely to sexual union however. Its aim is beyond mere
procreation.
The aims is rather to create an affective and stable base with the other person,
toward forming a relationship.
Sexuality is usually expressed within a stable relationship which is first established by
the public courting of a partner.
Unlike animals, human courting is strongly shaped by culture.
In times past, these patterns of courtship have been more rigidly determined. The
roles of men and women were more precisely determined e.g. the taking of a lady's
hand, dancing with her, etc. had greater import in courtship ritual.
Courting is a social practice, because it is learnt from society and practiced publicly.
The interpretation of the courting signs is determined by society.
It also varies within a culture, e.g. between different social classes.
Nowadays, especially since the 20th century, courtship has become less codified. It is
subject to greater individual creativity.
There is also a reduced differentiation between the roles of men and women.
Typically men take the initiative. This is less so nowadays, but when asked, girls still
prefer boys to make the initiative in asking them out. This reveals something innate
18

and natural to the differences between males and females.

The reduction in codification of courtship has rendered this process more complex
and less clear however.
The important point here is that sexuality, not being reducible to the biological, needs
these ethical and cultural codes. They are not universal codes, in that they differ
between cultures and times, but they are universally present.
The sexual revolution has caused us to seek a new meaning and authenticity in our
sexual relationships. Hence the instability, brevity, and dissatisfaction of modern day
relationships.
The further sexual relationships drift from marriage, the less meaning and
satisfaction they provide.
Sexuality is required to transmit values and goods. It allows authentic self-realisation
of the person, and the possibility of living a life of true love.
The cultural analysis of sexuality has revealed that it pertains to one of the most
distinctively human aspects of the person that we know, namely that of language.
We should not allow sexuality to be reduced to the mere expression of instincts, but
to remain the height of a rich language of love.

7. Linee prospettiche.
Although sexuality from a biological perspective admits a certain plasticity / flexibility,
there are common features among different cultures that pertain to sexuality.
Sexuality, as part of human nature, has norms which orient sexuality towards a bene
capito, a good understood (e.g. sex within a monogamous pairing, between a man
and woman, etc.)
These norms are not subject to the arbitrary decisions of the individual person, but
correspond to his nature, and thus to a certain ethos (i.e. customs of a people).
We have seen that though the centuries there has been a certain deepening of our
understanding of sexuality, and the faith has helped this process (GS 22 Christ fully
reveals man to himself).
From an anthropological perspective, it is a useful analogy to think of sexuality as a
19

language it varies between cultures, but there are common features. It can be rich
or poor, used well or badly.
Sexuality needs to be understood from an anthropological perspective, which can
then be illuminated by the truths of faith.
It is important to note that sexual morality is not something extraneous to sexuality,
a superstructure that is imposed on sex. Rather it emerges from the very nature of sex
itself, which pertains to human nature, what it is to be human. It does not come from
a 'social neurosis' as Reich sustained.
Rather, morality enables sexuality to be fully expressed, fully actualised towards the
good.

Ch3. Sexuality among the dimensions of the human

person
Lyrics from Ivano Fossati (b. 1951), La costruzione di un amore.
The construction of a love does not repay the pain, it is like an altar of sand on the
shore of the sea. The construction of love, I like to see it grow like a skyscraper of
100 floors or like a sunflower. And I put up the experience like a Christmas tree, like
a present to a spouse, something that is there and does not hurt.

So far our investigation has used a modality or method that could be described as
phenomenological, that is describing how human sexuality has been lived, from the
past to the present.
These phenomenological data are indispensable for understanding sexuality, but
alone they are not enough. The data need to be interpreted. The data need a theory
to explain it.
Paraphrasing what Romano Guardini said about life, we can say that sexuality is
refracted into various levels and dimensions, expressed in different ways in different
cultures & times. In this way we see expressed the different meanings of sexuality.
It is a mystery which we cannot understand fully. This multiplicity needs to be
systemised however. What are the essential (natural) characteristics of sexuality?

20

We have to pass from the phenomenological data to the phenomenological

understanding (theory, interpretation).
GS 46 to understand the complexity of the human person [who is a mystery], we
need to find a synthesis alla luce del vangelo e dell'experienza umana, in the light of
the Gospel and the human experience. We do this first in light of human experience,
in the next chapter in the light of the Gospel.

1. The dimensions of sexuality

In the first half of the 20 th century, sexuality was seen predominantly, though not
exclusively, from the biological and procreative perspective. Today, sexual
anthropology, thanks to the human sciences, has discovered the plurality of
dimensions to sexuality that involve the whole person. Sexuality is intrinsically linked
to procreation, but that is not its only function or effect.
The person is not a static reality, but an open and dynamic reality who lives in
relation with others.
Here we present a schema of the different dimensions.

(a) The dimension of height.

Sexuality embraces the whole human person. We could say that we are sexual beings
at all our levels of being, from the bottom to the top. At the physical-biological level,
psychic-psychological level, and at the spiritual level.
Sexual differentiation as male or female, present in every cell of the human body,
affects the whole person. One moves, thinks, loves, prays as a man or as a woman, in
differentiated ways.
Animal sexuality is governed primarily by hormones and is determined;
human sexuality however, is linked with the free will and admits plasticity.
Sexuality is influenced by hormones, but mostly by reason (that is intellect and will)
and emotions / feelings. Because of this it is better to say that animals have sexual
instincts, but we have sexual tendencies, for we are less determined by our nature
than animals, as we have free will. There are some useful slogans which may help us,
such as 'sex is more in the brain than in the genitals', or 'the main sexual organ of
man is the brain'. [Note however, there is still a materialistic philosophy present in
these statements our mind is more than our brain].
21

When we say there is a male and female spirituality too, we use spirituality in its
wider Anglosaxon meaning since the 19 th cent, spirituality has been disconnected
from religion, to mean any subjective experience or psychological phenomenon that
is meaningful or blissful, though there is no universally accepted definition.
This includes the search in each man regarding the radical questions of human
existence, ranging from love to work, from sharing to political duties, from religious
experience to suffering.
There seems to be a male and female spirituality, think for example, of the
experience of childbirth, an exclusively female experience that is shapes a woman's
understanding of love, life and suffering.
This differentiation in spirituality is also witnessed to by the saints, in whom,
masculinity and femininity is wonderfully expressed.
While God and angels are purely spiritual, and thus strictly speaking have no sexual
differentiation, this is not so with man. He is properly body and soul, as Gaudium et
spes says, 'incarnate spirit', 'one in body and soul', and hence is sexuality
differentiated in body as well as soul.

(b) the dimension of length.

Sexuality has a sort of length, in that it is not given to us whole in life, but develops
over time. Sexuality develops biologically, psychologically and spiritually. This
development is never complete, we can continually become more male and female.
We will reach our full masculinity or femininity in heaven.
This is one good insight from Freud and psychoanalysis that one can be an adult
and yet sexually infantile. We will briefly outline sexual development here.
In children, aged 0-3yrs, we find that sexuality is anarchic, unfinished, disorganised,
polymorphic. The child seeks merely the satisfaction of biological needs e.g. feeding
and defecation.
Freud speaks of various phases oral, anal and phallic.
Aged 4-5yrs, the child is less concerned with self, and the so-called Oedipus or Electra
complex emerges, according to Freud.
Sexuality is mostly latent, sensed with a general attraction to the opposite sex
perhaps, but not expressed outwardly until adolescence, one of the major milestones
in sexual development.
22

There is a 'genitalisation' that takes place, and a greater openness to 'love', to

relationships. Sexuality becomes more structured, organised, finalised. This does not
occur without uncertainties, disequilibria, and possibly with 'crises'.
Physically, sexual maturity ends with puberty, after which one is fully capable of
reproduction. But psychological and spiritual maturity is yet to take place. It is
marked by the integration of sexuality in the whole of one's person, a liberation from
the physical need to satisfy sexual urges, a greater sense of responsibility towards
the great dignity of sexual relationships. Sexuality is seen as part of a deep
interpersonal communication, an instrument at the service of authentic love which is
total, oblative, self-sacrificing.
If one arrives at maturation, one is comfortable with one's sexual identity, feeling
interiorly integrated and capable of ordering sexuality to authentically human
interpersonal relationships [in which the physical aspect of one's sexuality is ordered
by the spiritual dimension of one's person].
Also relevant here is the psychological consideration of attachment, defined as a
'dynamic system of attitudes and behaviours which contribute to the formation of a
specific bond between two persons and whose roots can be retraced to the primary
relations which are established between a child and an adult'. Proposed by John
Bowlby.
Early attachments seem to influence long-term attachments, including relationships
of 'romantic love', understood as the sentiments and deep, strong emotional desires
that move a subject to connect himself with another in an intimate and romantic
relationship.
In such relationships, sexual attraction plays an important part to begin with, but
with time it loses its importance and replaced by a deep bonding manifested as care,
concern and familiarity with the other (features of attachment).
Sexuality and attachment are both part of 'intimacy', with attachment being more
importance to intimacy in the long-term.
Such views are in contrast to psychologists such as Stephen Mitchell, who in his book
'Can love last?' posits that love and desire were difficult to sustain within the same
relationship, i.e. that love and desire had different objects. Love seeks control,
stability, continuity, certainty, whilst desire seeks abandon, adventure, novelty, the
unknown.
As sexuality and attachment can be integrated (sexuality flourishes into long-term
23

attachment) we see that love and desire are not in conflict, especially if one has had
secure attachments as an infant, which enables one to give sexuality its authentic
meaning in long-term relationships. Sexuality and attachment, though they can exist
without each other, cooperate in the finality of love.
It is usual that in a relationship, sexual attraction is strong over two years and then
develops into attachment:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35535424
the passionate and companionate phases of romantic relationships.

24

it is erroneous to think that sex only involves the body and not the soul. There are
deep bonds formed in the sexual act that surpass the duration of the sexual
encounter.
Hence the dimension of 'lunghezza', length, is important.
Sexual attraction, the sexual act and all dynamics connected with sexuality are not
'existentially neutral' but are forces that tend towards attachment, long-term
relationships. Sexuality is at the service of attachment, and sex enables deep
personal relations that build up authentic love.

(c) the dimension of 'profondita', depth.

Sexuality touches the depths of a person, his core. It is not a superficial act, however
much we try to reduce it or degrade it to such. It is never an 'automatism'.
Because sex is a full-giving, it requires a full responsibility.
As a person expresses himself at many different levels, so too with sexuality.
Sexuality lived only at the genital level is superficial; the physical-sentimental
attraction is fulfilled / perfected in agape, placing sexuality at the service of a love
which oblative, self-sacrificing.
Man is essentially a being of language he communicates with other persons with
25

whom he enters into relationships.

This communication is at the level of language, or supra-language, or infra-language.
This linguistic structure of the person derives from him being a 'spirit-in-the-world'
(more precisely, a 'soul-body-unity -in-the-world'.
For man is fundamentally a being open to others, man exists to coexist. Man is not
fulfilled by himself, he needs another (Gen 2:18).
Sexuality is a 'real symbol' of the person.
The term 'Symbol' is used in different ways, and we have to be clear. It is sometimes
used in opposition to 'real'.
in Jung it is used to speak of archetypes;
in Freud it is used to indicate the 'imaginary individual' and the figures that are
common in the unconscious human mind;
in sociology, it is used as a sign;
in the history of religions, according to the Marxist interpretation, it is the
mythical 'form of alienation' of man by himself .
Here, symbol is used to mean that all of reality can be contained within a symbolic
modality / process.
In a metaphysical sense, the idea of symbol expresses that there is more to the world
than its mere physical reality; material objects have meanings that go beyond
materiality, and beyond what we know about it.
Symbol here has a triple semantic function
mediation of identity and mutual recognition,
mediation of meeting / communication,
and active mediation of a task, such as in a pact or testament.
Here symbol is used to mean a visible manifestation of an interior experience that
requires a living response. A symbol can capture the deepest experiences of the
human person, e.g the experience of love.
Symbol is both the 'testimony of communion' and 'operator of communion', (it is
operative, effective).
Symbols both communicate and perform.
We see therefore the richness of the 'sexuality-symbol'; e.g. within a marriage, sexual
relations express symbolically (that is really contain) the reciprocal giving that occurs
in the love of the spouses,
i.e. there is both communication AND mediation (which actualises a covenant).

26

(d) the dimension of 'larghezza', width

Sexuality is a force that builds up the person and opens him up to the external, opens
him out of his self-focused attention, selfishness; it opens himself up to another.
Sex for self-gratification alone is the opposite to what it is designed for selflessness. Sex is intrinsically opposed to selfishness.
It plays a part in growth, formation of one's identity, and personal integration, and
interpersonal relationships. Personal maturation involves becoming more
authentically sexual.
Xavier Lacroix's study, Corpo di carne, has useful observations. He shows what it
means for sexuality to be a language of love.
Sexual union is not merely a series of sensations, but also gestures, these gestures
are not just a means to arrive at an objective (e.g. the orgasm), but are acts that have
meaning in themselves. Gestures form part of who we really are. Gestures have their
own semantic, and are a part of the language of love.
1. la carezza. the caress, touch. This is not only about contact, but about the
celebration of the body of the other (if done in the context of authentic love). It is an
experience of losing possession of oneself to another. It is part of the language of
desire. It is the reciprocal domestication of oneself. The other's body is not an
instrument / means of pleasure, but an intimate alliance / covenant.
2. the embrace / hug. It means to wrap with one's arms. It is to bring another into
one's personal space, into oneself, in acceptance of who they are as persons. To
reserve a place for the other in my 'intimita'.
3. the kiss. It is an act of veneration of the other. Adoration = ad + orare. Adoration is
the spiritual kissing of the other. Kissing is a form of adoration. It is another gesture
of proximity.
4. penetration. An act of hospitality, which corresponds to our profound desire to
essere incluso, to be included.
It is necessary however to think beyond the orgasm. The height of sex is not the
orgasm, but the complete giving of oneself to the other, including the giving of one's
fertility to the other, the profound ability to pass on a bit of oneself into the creation
of another person. Procreation is not added on to sex, but is an integral part of it,
27

one of its ends.

Bear in mind that gestures are not always clear, but sometimes vague, ambiguous.
They need to be interpreted. They are part of a language that changes with time and
culture. They can be used for good and for evil too, just like language.
To Recap:
lunghezza shows how sexuality and attachment are connected in an inseparable
dynamic.
Larghezza sexuality to be a language devoid of ambiguity, needs to be integrated in
time.

(e) the socio-cultural dimension.

Sexuality is about being completely open to the other, to a genuine relationship.
It is not an individual reality, nor is it private, it is the opposite opposed to any
selfishness.
Sexuality does not just pertain to the couple either, but it is a socio-cultural reality.
We need to overcome the 'intimistic-privatistic' vision of sexuality. Sexuality is and has
always been regulated to some extent by social / cultural norms.
Why is this? Because unlike other mammals, sexuality is not the mere product of a
neuro-hormonal process, but is affected by the soul, i.e. the intellect and will, which is
partly affected by the cerebral cortex. Hence humans are the only animals to suffer
from 'sexual perversions'.
Beware here of relativism seeing sexuality as relative only to culture. e.g. slavery it
was accepted in the past, that did not make it moral. Similarly today just because
certain sexual behaviours are widely favoured (e.g. homosexuality), this does not
make the acts morally good.

(f) the 'misterica' or religious dimension.

The mystical dimension of sexuality does not mean that it is irrational or
unintelligible, but rather that it is a phenomenon that goes beyond reason and which
we cannot fully understand in this life.
Sexuality is mystical because it is phenomenon that in its nature points to the
28

transcendent, to the absolute Other (God).

In every culture, the sexual experience is in someway linked to the religious
experience and with the divine. It is often associated with rituals for example, and is
seen to have a great capacity for symbolisation and celebration, through the use of
myths and rites.
Thus, as well as a psychological, existential and socio-cultural hermeneutic, a
religious hermeneutic is also necessary to fully understand sexuality.

2. Sex education.
We have seen how sexuality has undergone an evolution, which has not just been
biological, but also psychic, psychological and spiritual. Hence sexuality pertains to
that cultural process called education, which involves the perfection of the person.
The full education and development of sexual maturity involves arriving at a capacity
to know how to live sexuality at the service of love and which is entrusted to human
responsibility.
Sexual development is a dynamic that moves from genitality to love, from
disorganisation to organisation, from anarchy to finalisation, from multiplicity to
unity.
Sexuality is mature when it has arrived at the integration and the finalisation of all its
components, and when it is fused with love.
There is thus a finality, or telos to sexuality, linked to the truth of sexuality logos.
Sexuality is not to be repressed, but fully actualised. We remember the expression of
Freud that which is repressed has to expressed in some way.
Thus, sexual impulses and drives have to channeled in the right way, in harmony with
reason. This is possible because the sexual drive has plasticity. They are not like
animal drives which are rigidly determined, but they can evolve in many different
ways, for the good or the bad of the person, for personal degradation and
psychological wounding, or as an energy for moral elevation, an agent of cultural
transformation, the strength and force to sustain a life project.
Thus sexuality needs to be educated and adequately formed, so that it may be
authentically human.
29

Thus we argue against those who say that sex education need not have any moral
component. The aim of sex education should be to enable and ennoble one to
mature to the fullness of human personhood, placing sexuality at the service of love.
To better understand the relationship btw sexuality, 'relationality' and maturity, we
express it with the following diagrams:
P2

P1

maturity

relationality

(a) immature relation:

(b) romantic / adolescent

(c) mature

(a) if both persons are immature, there is a low level of relationality. Both are
dominated by the reciprocal sexual attraction, and most of their relations are genital
only. The knowledge of the partner is low. They know little of the others desires, their
interior life. The relationship is fragile, and once sexual attraction fades, there is
rarely progression to attachment, i.e. deeper relationship.
(b) romantic / adolescent. There is a true romantic love here which is not merely
genital. The two like to pass time together, talking and discussing various topics.
They try to discover the other's opinions and preferences. They spend a lot of time /
energy on finding similar interests (e.g. music, places, friends etc). Based primarily on
the affective-sentimental component. They speak about only those things that are
external to the couple itself. They lack an insight into the depths of the other, there is
not true alliance / covenant here yet. This is thought to be a deep relationship, but
when the similarity of interests runs out, and when the relationship is tested by trials,
30

the relationship does not survive. There is great emotional investment here, and so
breaking up is painful. There is a need to reflect on the characteristics of the broken
relationship.
(c) mature (oblative). This relationship can arrive at the maximal levels of profundity
and oblative love. There is a balanced living of introversion and extraversion, in which
they manage the differences of each other, knowing how to share a life project which
is the fruit of a real sharing and a mediation between the desires and the pasts of
each partner. In the case of separation, there is a real period of grief.
At this point we need to ask ourselves what love really means.
It is not only sexual there are other types of love e.g. paternal, maternal, filial.
Theillard de Chardin defines it as a 'qualsiasi forza che spinge gli esseri gli uni verso
gli altri' any force that pushes one towards another.
We however are interested in conjugal love. The love of friendship can help us
understand it, but this is not enough. It is different, so much so that St Augustine
defines it as amicitia coniugalis.
Conjugal love is a love that is based on sexuality, this is its first and fundamental
characteristic. It is based on the fact that the lovers are a man and a woman, a love
based on sexual complementarity-reciprocity which includes genital activity that is
integrated in the whole of the person and the relationship. L'amore coniugale is
always anchored to its sexual foundation.
This amore coniugale includes and integrates the affective-sentimental component
too, which orients and fixes one's sexual tendencies on another. It is not enough, but
it is important. It personalises the sexual tendencies and focuses them on the
discovery of the other as person.
The amore coniugale includes a free and responsible spiritual decision. It recognises
the other as a person and chooses them as an end, the object of one's capacity to
love.
Love is oblative because it is founded on the reciprocal giving of self. This total giving
of self, which comes first, then uses the conjugal act as a language, as the full
expression of this total self-giving love.
Sex, outside a relationship in which there is a total giving of oneself to the other, is a
lie there is the self-giving of the body without the self-giving of the soul.

31

This self-giving love is able to generate a communion of life that is able to extend
itself to become a family, open to new life.

(d) mixed situation.

???

Here the Latin adage applies: quidquid recipitur ad modum, recipientis recipitur: what is
received in a subject is received according to the capacity of the nature of the
recipient.
i.e. the relationship is limited to the level of maturity of the least mature.
This relationship can develop in three ways:
(I) happens infrequently: the more mature partner, through a patient and
constant labour and with external assistance, helps the other to mature.
(ii) there is a status quo, in which there is an off limits zone between the two,
there are taboo subjects
(iii) tragic, in which the more mature partner regresses, adapting to the level of
the less mature. This involves suffering and tensions.
When this type of relationship breaks, there are two outcomes
the partner who is less mature leaves easily, and soon looks for a new partner;
the more mature partner experiences more discomfort, wondering why it
didn't work, and may need psychological or pastoral help to overcome the
break-up.

We return to the idea of sexuality and intimacy. Both persons in the relationship have
sentimental and sexual demands that need to be met .
What do we mean by intimacy? 'the realisation of a rapport consisting in an exchange
of sentiments', that is, a way of living sexually that satisfies an amorous relationship,
one which presupposes the deepest level of participation between the two members
32

of the couple.
An intimate relationship involves the sharing of sentiments, emotions, instincts,
thoughts, actions, and values.
Without intimacy, separation is much easier.
This level of intimacy requires that one first knows oneself, one's own instincts,
thoughts, values etc.; you have to integrate them in yourself so that you are then
able to give them over to another.
One also need the capacity to find an accord, reach agreements, to mediate, to make
compromises.
The mature person realises that a relationship needs commitment and effort for it
to work. Sentiments, just falling in love, is not enough.
A marriage should not be seen as the completion of a relationship, but as part of a
journey which continues, matures, develops, long after the wedding day; a
development towards unity, with ever greater integration between the couples.
In sum, sexuality should occur within the context of intimacy, otherwise it is false,
lacks authenticity. It becomes part of a lie, part of an ambiguous and contradictory
language.

Ch4. Sexuality as a vocation to love.

Lyrics from Giorgio Gaber, (1939 2003), Quando sar capace di amare.
When I will be capable of loving, I would like a love that does not have any
appointment with duty, a love without a sense of guilt, without any remorse,
egoistic, and natural like a river that makes its course. Without bad and good
actions, without other strange deviations, for if even the river can have them, it
goes always to the sea. That's how I would like to love
So far we have shown how it is impossible to separate sexuality from the context of
transcendence.
Love is a mystery, a relationship, in which one is open to the 'other', open to
transcendence to the absolute Other.

33

1. The meaning of sexuality in the theology of love.

We have seen how sexuality is not linked merely to animal instincts, but concerns the
highest levels of man's capacity, and involves who he is, ontologically, that is a 'beingfor'.
First we ask , what is faith? It is a reality of meeting God in Christ Jesus. An
interpersonal event which God himself initiates.
Think about the personal encounters in sacred scripture: Elijah
1 Kg 19
the first disciples Jn 1:35-51
the Samaritan
- Jn 4:1-42
Zaccheus
Lk 19:1-10
Peter
Lk 5:1-11
Once we encounter the God of love, God who is love and mercy, then we can begin to
understand sexuality more profoundly.
This saving-love which is God, we find in salvation history in general, as well as in
personal encounters.
This relationship is often described with the word 'communion', which refers to a life
of relation.
God has created us as interlocutors, capable of listening and responding to him.
Hence we understand God as guide, head, companion, pastor, shepherd, creator,
spouse.
Israel is thus his inheritance, his chosen vine, his sanctuary, his people
All these images can be synthesised in the word, 'alleanza', i.e. 'covenant'.
Covenant, as a biblical concept, involves the gratuitous initiative of God, in which he
treats us as equals. The covenant is our road to the happiness which he promises us.
This fundamental element of relationship between God and man, i.e. covenant, is
discovered in faith, and illumines all the being of man.
Thus sexuality is also enlightened by faith. Sexuality is an instrument of the covenant
and of communion. It is the culmination point of conjugal love when it is open to the
creative act of procreation.
Christ, the Light.
Once also must remember that if Christ sheds light on humanity, he also sheds
light on sexuality.
34

The person of Jesus is normative.

And it is Christ who should shape the entire life of the believer.
In Christ the true believer finds the fullness of meaning.
For the believer, only Christ can unlock the deepest meaning of sexuality.
For he is the perfect image of the love of the Father.
Scriptural references to Christ as revealer:
as the Image of God Col 1:15
radiation of his glory - Heb 1:3
full of grace and truth- Jn 1:14
the way , truth, life - Jn 14:6
His very name: jesus is the love that saves.

The Paschal Mystery and sexuality

The Paschal Mystery forms the hermeneutic for all of moral theology, and especially
for the ethical call that sexuality poses to the person.
The Christian couple, completely immersed and penetrated by the ontologicalsacramental relationship with Christ, is called to live their ethical journey towards the
holiness of love.
L'orientamento globale the attitude which recognises that faith should permeate
every aspect of our existence, harmonises the fundamental ethical principle of do
good and avoid evil bonum faciendum, malum vitandum with the Paschal Mystery.
Christ is the fullness of the law, and the perfection of all ethics. Hence we can learn
about sexuality by looking at his life of complete love-obedience and perfect
harmony of his life with the will of the Father.
Because marriage has been raised to a sacrament by Christ, it is inserted into his
Paschal Mystery and every marriage becomes part of his salvific action. The love of
married life thus flows from the Paschal Mystery, whence all sacraments take their
origin.
It also means that love for the Crucified one should be at the heart of married life,
and not extraneous to it.
(JP II, 1981)
Familiaris consortio n.13 :
In this sacrifice [of Christ on the Cross] there is entirely revealed that plan which God
has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation; the marriage
of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant
35

sanctioned in the blood of Christ.

We should remember the three types of love taught us by the ancient Greek
philosophers: eros, philia and agape.
Eros sensual love, characterized by a desire to possess the other as one's
property 'sensuality'
Philia based on a free relationship, without a desire for possession (amicizia,
friendship)
Agape love as total gift of self (carit, charity).
We are capable of all three of these loves, and we should know how to live all these
three types of relation according to the situation we are in and the persons around
us.
How to integrate these as a Christian?
Best synthesis comes in Benedict XVI's Deus caritas est (2005).
no.2 God's love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises important questions
about who God is and who we are. In considering this, we immediately find ourselves
hampered by a problem of language. Today, the term love has become one of the
most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite
different meanings.
in the OT, eros is used twice, and never in the NT.
NT mostly uses agape. This word was hardly used at the time, and did not have a
specific meaning. It's new meaning comes to us from Scripture, showing us the
newness of Christian love.
no. 3 ... In the critique of Christianity which began with the Enlightenment and grew
progressively more radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly
negative. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for
its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice. Here the
German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the Church,
with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious
thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift
offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?
Christianity is not repressive however, it is positive not negative.
Benedict instead states that the biblical understanding of love is not reductive, and
that there is a profound unity between these types of love.
Sometimes a false dichotomy is created between these two:
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EROS
secular love vs
ascending love vs
possessive love vs
concupiscent love vs

AGAPE
christian love
descending love
oblative love
benevolent

Here's is Benedict's synthesis of eros and agape.

no.7
Were this antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity would be
detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence, and would
become a world apart, admirable perhaps, but decisively cut off from the complex
fabric of human life. Yet eros and agapeascending love and descending lovecan
never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a
proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is
realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the
great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less
concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned
more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to be there for the other.
The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished
and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative,
descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who
wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one
can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to
become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source,
which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).
Love thus receives and gives (- there is responsibility in love).
This is an understanding of love that comes from our lived human experienced.
It corresponds to the sexuality attachment binomial we saw before.
Sexually as being, not having:
We also see how sexuality should be lived nella linea dell'essere e non dell'avere.
Having, possession is less important than the pure gratuitous of giving to the
other.
Sexuality is something one IS, not something one HAS.
Today, we have turned sexuality into something about possession having the
other, to gratify oneself. It is about possession, will, power over the other.
We are sexuality, for we are made male and female, made for others, to be in
relation with others i.e. we are made to love.
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Seeing sexuality as the mere exercise of genitality is a grave reduction, a poor

vision of anthropology.
This helps us to understand how one can live the fullness of sexuality without
genital activity, called to witness to a love that is transcendent and timeless in
celibacy for the kingdom.

Sexuality can be understood with the symbol of prophecy:

witnessing that one IS one's sexuality, saying to the world that one's deepest
identity is love.
Love is the original and fundamental vocation of all people.
Couples are a witness to the centrality of love to life, by being one flesh, in
faithful exclusive love.
The Christian thus has to love with generosity, , loving others for themselves, for who
they are, in communion with persons (cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, Human
sexuality: truth and significance, 9).
JP II, letter to families, 1994 year of the family, gratissimam sane
love is demanding
14. Love is true when it creates the good of persons and of communities; it
creates that good and gives it to others.

2. A digression: sexual pleasure

We have to fight against the idea that Christianity is opposed to eros.
St Thomas wrote no-one can live without some sensible and corporeal
pleasure ST I-II, q34, a1
nullus possit vivere sine aliqua sensibili et corporali delectatione
St Thomas knew that sexual pleasure was not negative in itself.
However it can also be deceptive making us think that it is total happiness,
and man's final end.
The pleasure is transitory: the pleasure stops with the cessation of the act.
Hence the need to repeat it, hence problems of addiction.
Sexual pleasure cannot be reduced to a neuro-cerebral hedonic process.
We are hard-wired to experience pleasure during sex, but this does not tell us about
the meaning, nature or essence of sex.
Sexual pleasure is complete, when it is not just corporeal, but also psycho-affective (a
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full satisfaction that matches our aspirations and desires) and spiritual (that is, it
gives us an experience of the infinite and divine through the experience of the
orgasm the indescribable experience of being lost in the absolute).
Teaching from the Catechism:
CCC 2362 "The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the
spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these
acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and
gratitude." Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure:
The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses
should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the
spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They
accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses
should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation. 145
(Pius XII, Discourse, October 29,1951.)

But also
2351 Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure.
Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its
procreative and unitive purposes.
We must also be aware of the mystical dimension of the sexual act, an experience of
the divine, a fragment of the ineffable, that makes us touch the divine infinity.

3. Modesty and chastity: ways to a mature sexuality.

These are two instruments for sexual maturation modesty and chastity.
Two ways to increase affective maturity the CEI (Italian Bishop's Conference) reminds
us important in a cultural climate marked by a diffuse 'banalisation of sexuality'.
(I) modesty.
CCC 2521 Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects
the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should
remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It
guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the
dignity of persons and their solidarity.
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The forms modesty takes varies from culture to culture.

Congregation for Catholic Education, orientamenti educativi sull'amore umano, 90. it is
'the alert conscience that defends the dignity of man and authentic love'
CCC 2522 Modesty protects the mystery of persons and their love. It encourages
patience and moderation in loving relationships; it requires that the conditions for
the definitive giving and commitment of man and woman to one another be fulfilled.
Modesty is decency. It inspires one's choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve
where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet.

It helps integrate affective-sexual life in the harmonious context of the person.

We need to teach young people about this again.
Modesty is 'a window on the mystery of the person', a reservation of privacy, of
secret, of the need to not let oneself become an object.
We veil that which is precious and mysterious.
CCC 2523 There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body. It protests, for
example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain
advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the
exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible
to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies.
Commerce is one of the main environments in which the body is reduced to an object
of our pleasure, used for the selling of mere temporal goods.
Today's permissivism is damaging to the vulnerable, esp. teenagers.
They are not always able to distinguish eroticism from love.
The practice of modesty is important to create an apt climate that favours the
maturation of chastity. , motivated by the respect of the body and the dignity of
others.
Magisterial teaching on this matter JP II, FC, 76.
CCE, Orientamenti educativi sull'amore umano, 68;
PC for Social communications Pornography and violence in the
communications
media:.
A
pastoral
response.
1989.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_
pccs_doc_07051989_pornography_en.html
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The education of modesty and friendship are important in helping us understand

corporeality.
Boys and girls today feel the need to be together, but they need to be educated in
how to live true friendships. We need a preventative pedagogy that is able to
promote modesty, helping us towards happier relationships.

(b) Chastity
A term often misunderstood.
The attitudes and beliefs of a community are reflected in their language, their myths,
legends, anecdotes and other stories. Thus language helps us understand the culture
too.
Misconceptions chastity is not the same as abstinence, nor continence, nor virginity,
nor celibacy.
CCC 2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the
person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in
which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes
personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to
another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.
The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality
of the gift.
Chastity is thus spiritual energy which knows how to defend love from the dangers of
egotism and aggression, and to guide it towards its full realisation (cf. FC 33).
Chastity protects the beauty of sexuality.
Helps one live one's sexuality with authenticity, freedom and to fullness.
Chastity is not opposed to eros.
We are all called to chastity, even those who marry.
It is a virtue, that is a stable disposition of man. It gives one daily freedom, not being
trapped and harangued by one's passions, but having self-control:
CCC 2342 Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired

once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life. 129 (Cf. Titus 2:1-6.)
The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the
personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence.

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CCC 2341 The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which
seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.
It is within the virtue of temperance, but it is not a repressive attitude, but like
the keeping of a precious and rich gift, that of love, safeguarded for the total
giving of oneself in one's vocation.
We need to learn chastity, it needs to be part of education.
Chastity grows with the other virtues, the capacity to renunciation, of sacrifice and of
waiting (patience) cf. PC for the Family, Human sexuality truth and significance, 4-5.
CCC 2343 Chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by
imperfection and too often by sin. "Man . . . day by day builds himself up through his
many free decisions; and so he knows, loves, and accomplishes moral good by stages
of growth."130 (FC 34).
This daily battle occurs because of original sin (concupiscence).
But if we don't control our sexuality, we will never be able to use it effectively. It will
constantly seek for pleasure in surrogates.
Chastity is in fact the joyful affirmation of living life in self-gift, free from egotistic
slavery.
CCC 2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training
in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions
and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes
unhappy.126 (Cf. Sir 1:22.) "Man's dignity therefore requires him to act out of
conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within,
and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains
such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses
forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and
skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end." 127 (GS 17)

interior freedom is thus marked by self-control, taking responsibility for oneself and
others.
It is also a witness to the Faith.
cf. PC for the Family, Human sexuality truth and significance, 17-18.

4. Linee prospettiche
The Christian understanding of sexuality is not opposed to biology or philosophy.
Faith guides sexuality towards authentic love.
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The believer is called to a constant discernment regarding the living out of sexuality
the fruit of this discernment is the removal of opacity and equivocation.
The language of sexuality is an instrument at the service of love, of that 'amore
coniugale' which arrives at is fullness in the light of the love of the Paschal Mystery.
The believer also has to mature in sexuality, so that one arrives at the authentic
meaning of sexuality - this is helped by two instruments: chastity and modesty.

Conclusions
Lyrics from De Gregori (b. 1951), Compagni di viaggio.
We have reached the peak of Mount Nebo, the end of our journey. Now we
contemplate the Promised land to which we have arrived.
The first thing to note is that it is not a land of conflict, the biological against the
psychological or the spiritual. Not all the levels are crystal clear, and there are still
questions to be answered, which shows that sexuality is a genuine human experience
that is mysterious.
But there is a concord and coherence btw the different levels.
We have discovered that we are all sexual beings, and that our sexuality is a gift from
God that enables us to better love, even corporeally, most especially in the heights of
spousal love. At the height of union between two persons, there is liberty and
responsibility , in which one gives one's whole sexuality (and fertility) to the other
person in a relation that is unique and oblative.
Sexuality pertains to a person's being, but also to his becoming. Sexuality is not given
to us in a completed state, but we are always in cammino, needing to mature in our
sexuality and to discover it more deeply.
Sexuality has the marks of an Exodus journey, from the slavery of passions to the
liberty of the relationship in love.
Sexuality has to be ever more greatly integrated in each person (chastity), as it affects
the whole of the person (globalit). This is especially so for a believer. Faith touches
everything, and being a disciple of the Risen Lord gives answers to some of the
questions of sexuality: for God is Love and offers himself for us in the greatest act of
love.
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To link sexuality and love, three prepositions are needed from, in and for.
(i) from our biological investigations have shown that sexuality is given to us,
and should be received as a gift. Our being male or female is the fruit of this
original gesture of love between our parents which forms the start of our
existence.
(ii) in for sexuality acquires meaning only in love. Sexuality by itself has
gestures, impulses and behaviours which can be ambiguous. Love can also be
ambiguous, for it has different dimensions as eros, filia and agape. Ambiguity
is only removed when sexuality is lived in amore coniugale that involves
constant discernment. In which case, these ambiguous components become
revelatory instruments to communicate love.
(iii) for sexuality is for love, because sexuality has to be structured according
to human nature. Only love can bear and uphold the complexity of sexuality,
orientating sexuality towards an authentic happiness. Love is the promised
land of happiness.
The command and gift (Gabe and Aufgabe) that is inherent in sexuality coincide in the
promise made to our life Amerai! (cf Deut 6:5-).
Sexuality, the Promised land that we now see as Moses did on top of Mount Nebo, is
a promise that is fulfilled to love with all one's heart and body.
Sexuality includes all of man's fragility, but it can also express all of its greatness
(love).
Sexuality is inherent to man, and includes his whole body, his fragility, his finitude
and limits but also his spirit, his call to heaven, to greatness and to love.
Like Moses we stop here and do not enter the Promised land.
There is of course a need to reflect on how to live in the promised land once there.
Living love as consecrated, as fiances or as spouses is not straightforward.
Israel lose the land because of its infidelity and the same can happen to each
of us: we can lose the capacity to love with our bodies.
But we have fulfilled our task, we have brought the reader to the frontier of the
promised land
Now there lies ahead of the reader the personal path to live one's sexuality in
love and for love.
At this point, the words of Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922) in his story In Search of Lost
Time may apply: the only true journey is not that which goes towards new lands,
but [that which gives us] different eyes, to see the universe with the eyes of another.

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We thus hope that every reader will see his own sexuality in a new way the
possibility to love in the school of the Other, the school of the Lord, who is Love and
gives life.

** End! **

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