Catholic Common Ground Initiative Lecture Papers

Roman Catholic Resources for an Ethic of Sexuality

Common Ground
March 5-7, 2004
Cristina L.H. Traina
Northwestern University

I teach in what is known as a secular university, the sort of place where the announcement, “I’m going to Washington to give a talk on positive resources in Roman Catholicism for sexual ethics” might well be greeted with the rejoinder, “Well, that will be a short paper!” But nothing could be further from the truth; there are so many useful points that the problem is rather how to discuss them concisely enough that anyone will want to read them before the meeting. My first project is to highlight points that can unite people from across the Roman Catholic spectrum in sexual ethics. I will not fully succeed–I will have said too much for some tastes and too little for others–but if that were not so, there would be no discussion. In the second section of the paper, I will highlight some traditional, fruitful Catholic approaches to sexual ethics that are not being exploited to their fullest and will make some suggestions for their use in the current century.

I wish to express appreciation of the tradition against the background of five related cautions, which I submit for possible further discussion.

Roman Catholics often short-circuits discussions of the full character of sexuality by moving immediately to theology of marriage. This is something like reducing theological discussion of eating to theology of Eucharist. In each case we run the risk of missing something profoundly important about the human reality on which the sacrament depends. So I argue that while Roman Catholicism has used this strategy to say much that is good, true, and essential about sexuality, it has not yet said everything that is good, true, and essential about it. In particular, there is much to learn about appropriate and holy uses of sensuality and non-coital sexuality from sources beyond theology of marriage: the psychology of touch, non-Christian cultures, and gay and lesbian Christians. ¹
Recent arguments that combine the procreative finality of sexuality with assumptions about the natural desire for coitus are more adequate to the sexual experience of faithful heterosexual men than of faithful heterosexual women. In particular the ethic of male orgasm–definitive for the outlines of the official current Roman Catholic ethic of sexuality–leaves female orgasm without equivalent moral or theological meaning. ² The same set of assumptions that misrepresents women’s sexuality implies a feminine passivity and connection to the home–along with a masculine activity or aggressiveness and connection to the public sphere–that may more strongly reflect modern western cultural patterns than either historical models or divine intentions.
The theological strengths affirmed in this paper are not all embraced with equal vigor and consistency in current teaching. One of our tasks in this century may be to make the connections and mutual implications more explicit.
All the points I will mention are at least double-edged: they have different and even opposite implications for Western cultures on one hand and for some more patriarchally organized Southern and Eastern cultures on the other. I will not be drawing all of these differences out here, but since our concern is the universal church, it is important to address their implications in discussion. For example, in very patriarchal cultures admonitions to be both self-giving and open to procreation can seem to ratify exploitation of women. More needs to be said.
In all areas of Roman Catholic social ethics, the question is not how to create perfection, but how to behave faithfully in situations that, either because of other people’s sinfulness or because of bad luck, are imperfect. War is an obvious example. Insofar as sexual ethics is relational it is social ethics, and it too needs to take account of the fact that our partners and contexts will rarely fulfill the ideals for relationship.

Traditional Anthropological Contentions

Looking at our Church’s teachings against the background of secular culture may help us to highlight points of agreement. It is not clear that contemporary trends in popular sexual behavior and attitudes are really any worse than at any other stage of history. ³ But they are problematic in the following ways. In western affluent countries, in which desire no longer focuses on basic needs, an individualist ethic of self-development easily combines with a focus on pleasure to become a tendency toward self-gratification. High school and college students even have sex out of boredom. In less affluent, more patriarchal cultures, men of means can take advantage of women’s and younger men’s poverty to exploit them sexually. In all dysfunctional situations–military occupation, prison, addiction–sex becomes currency. Depending upon where one lives or who one is, sex may be reduced to thrills, exercise of power, a means of survival, or an amusing pastime. I take it that we all believe that Roman Catholicism has some prophetic words to speak in this world, a world that also subtly colors popular Christian views of view sex.

One of the foundational claims of Roman Catholic ethics of sexuality is its double claim about embodiment. First, the person is a unity of body and soul. ⁴ The social justice tradition of the last century weighs in heavily here, announcing that people’s bodily integrity must be respected and their bodily needs, met. In addition, God constructs us so that the meeting of basic bodily needs is by and large pleasurable. ⁵ Moreover, community is fleshly; most of what justice entails is the negotiation of concrete goods.

But, second, bodily goods are not ultimate goods. Our good in God transcends a good meal, a comforting hug, warm clothes, and all those other physical things that we both need and enjoy. This care to protect, delight in, and celebrate the body without idolizing its goods is one of the keys to Christian ethics of sexuality. ⁶ Creation, incarnation, and resurrection all say that it is unfaithful either to condemn bodily pleasure or to pursue it single-mindedly. The developed tradition in ethics adds an additional caution: true psycho/bio/spiritual health is in any case a matter of moderation. Both rejection and relentless pursuit of bodily pleasure are not just inadvisable but sinful. ⁷

In addition, if we are body and soul, it is only in and through the body that we experience grace; therefore the body also has sacramental significance. ⁸ We wash, and we are baptized; we eat, and we partake of Eucharist; we touch to heal, transfer power, and comfort, and we absolve, confirm, ordain, anoint the sick. In each of these six sacraments the body is sign and symbol of a sacred reality, a mystery. Our tradition teaches that in marriage the union of bodies is also a sign and symbol of grace that is really present. Recent teaching has emphasized that the self-giving love of each partner for the other, epitomized in the spiritual, emotional, and physical act of intercourse, ⁹ is an “efficacious sign”of Christ’s love for the church. ¹⁰ Recent teachings on social justice and the environment have also reminded us how to run sacramental symbolism backwards: use water reverently, eat reverently; fast, but also feast. ¹¹ As in other sacraments the elements–here our bodies themselves–must be revered and honored as the icons of transforming grace. Likewise, the desire for touch and its satisfaction must be reverent, both inside and outside the sacrament of marriage. ¹²

In addition, for Roman Catholic Christians the decision about how to live one’s good sexuality has always been one of vocation or calling,, not mere lifestyle choice. Although sexually active marriage has not always been revered as highly as vowed celibacy, both have been valued as callings that involve particular social and ecclesial roles; the development of very similar virtues, including chastity; and carefully structured, targeted social and ecclesial support and encouragement. This vision contrasts starkly to a contemporary Western secular culture in which one’s decisions about one’s sexual life are seen as lifestyle choices which, though almost unlimited, do not involve any responsibilities beyond those one chooses to embrace–nor, sadly, are they seen as deserving or needing any institutional support. ¹³ In sum, a theology of vocation sees the self before God and in community–“What is God, through others, inviting and enabling me to be and to do?” rather than in isolation–“What do I want to be? How do I organize my life in order to make myself happy?” ¹⁴

Traditionally, in Roman Catholicism, the vocation of active sexuality is the vocation of married procreativity. The point I want to lift up here is that coitus is appropriate only when intentional, loving procreation is appropriate, and procreation is appropriate only when a couple is vowed to each other and is (at least implicitly) open to cooperating with God’s creative power. Ideally, they are also supported by church and community in these commitments, not to mention aided by the sanctifying grace of the sacrament. ¹⁵ This is not just a matter of honoring the awesome and holy power of procreation. It is also a matter of justice on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. Children created carelessly by parents who are not committed to a household or–even more to the point–do not see their children as divine gifts or see the raising of them as a divine task will suffer. ¹⁶ For the same reason, narcissistic procreation is also condemned. ¹⁷ On the societal level, children without the social and legal protections that most societies give to marriages will suffer–depending on the culture–economic, social, and/or political marginalization, as will their mothers.

An additional, recent argument for the link among marriage, procreation, and intercourse has developed since the Vatican’s recognition of the romantic, companionate marriage in mid-century: that love married love that does not turn outward in mutual vulnerability to nurture, and possibly also create, life is fundamentally selfish. Married love must expand to support the community (by bearing and raising new members of church and society, by practicing hospitality in the community, or both) or it becomes insular and festers. ¹⁸ It ceases to be a vocation and is reduced to a lifestyle.

This profound respect for the holiness of procreation and parenthood as a vocation lies behind Roman Catholicism’s condemnation of a contraceptive mentality: an attitude that, by removing parenthood completely from the meaning of marital heterosexual intercourse, sees sex purely as power, play, or pleasure (even mutual pleasure), without any transcending dimension. This attitude is what theologians call purely horizontal; it is missing a vertical–divine–referent. Pope Paul VI was at least partly right when he said that wide availability of contraceptives could lead us–especially men–to exploit our partners and could lead governments to intercede in the process of couples’ vocational decisions about parenthood. ¹⁹

Finally, despite Thomas Aquinas’s classification of sexuality, reproduction, and education of children as characteristics we share with animals, twentieth-century Church teaching has been very clear that sex does not have the inevitability of blind instinct. Like all passions, sexual desire is good in itself, because it directs us to a genuine good, but it is not yet moral; we can easily fasten it on an object or in a situation that would pervert its purposes. It must be humanized by being made subject to reason, reflected upon, channeled, and controlled, directed to a purpose. ²⁰ This makes sex an appropriate subject matter for ethics and for spiritual growth rather than something that “happens” to us. This is a prophetic reminder in a culture that often encourages abdication of responsibility by suggesting that romantic urges are irresistible.

To summarize: the body, its desires, and its pleasures are good; embodied relations honor their sacramental significance as long as they point beyond themselves to transcendence rather than being caught up merely in the physical, and as long as they open generously on the communal rather than being caught up only in the self. Desires must be pursued rationally, with an eye to the holistic good and to transcendence. Of all dimensions of sensuality and sexuality, vaginal intercourse must be especially carefully protected, supported, and revered, because it participates in God’s creative power and can entail a life-long vocation of parenting, recognized and supported in the sacrament of matrimony.

Suggestions on Method

Roman Catholic discourse on sexuality is rich and complex because it contains at least three distinct but presumably coherent conversations: discussions of individual virtue, or chastity; discussions of dyads, or couple relationships; and discussions of communal relations, or justice. It also entails negotiations about the power of new insights to alter specific moral conclusions reached in earlier times. I believe that the way forward is to continue to unfold and relate these overlapping conversations, although they are not currently equally highly developed or completely consistent. I also believe that they must be expanded to include sensuality generally, the invisibility of which in traditional moral theology led it to be classified eventually under sexuality (and therefore feared) or ignored (and thus treated as morally irrelevant). Disagreement will likely occur not over the categories developed below but over the proper relationships among them.

Individual On one level, Roman Catholic ethics of sexuality is about the moral and spiritual growth of the individual. Two kinds of questions traditionally arise for individual sexual virtue: vocation (discussed above) and chastity. Chastity is one of two sexual virtues that are special cases of temperance, which has to do with the pleasures of touch. ²¹ In the past, it has been underdeveloped: its connection to its root virtue was often incompletely explored, and it focused almost exclusively on intercourse. ²² Yet in recent writings chastity and sexuality seem to be undergoing an expansion of meaning that could increase their usefulness not only for sexual ethics but also for an ethic of sensuality generally, emphasizing sex, from the perspective of individual experience, as a special case of touch.

We must begin with chastity’s root in temperance, the habit that moderates desires and pleasures of touch: traditionally, food, drink, and sex. ²³ Hagiography, manuals of moral theology, and even The Da Vinci Code create the impression that temperance is about self-denial taken to the extreme of cultivating hatred for these desires and pleasures. Contemporary American experience with food, alcohol, and sexuality suggests that this sort of self-denial and hatred is destructive, leading either to illness and death (as in anorexia) or to obsession or bingeing. True temperance, on the other hand, entails learning rational enjoyment of food, drink, and sex, things God has created for our good. ²⁴ The point is to calm and channel the impulses of the passions in a way that promotes physical and spiritual flourishing. Temperate desires and pleasures preserve the body’s health, are appropriate to the social and cultural situation, and do not deflect time, attention, or resources from pressing obligations to self, family, or community. ²⁵

However, Thomas and the subsequent tradition do not treat touch in precisely the same way as eating and drinking. For example, the temperate person avoids not only overeating and obsession over food, but also undernourishment and revulsion toward food. ²⁶ This suggests that a discussion of chastity would begin with touch, discuss the dangers of excessive and inadequate touch, and then treat intercourse as a special case. Rather, in the tradition, chastity by definition is about intercourse, which in turn entails observing the absolute limits set by theology of marriage. As a result, Thomas’s schema reduces the ethics of touch to the ethics of intercourse, including a perfunctory treatment of looking, kissing, and erotic touching under purity and lust (ST II-II qq. 151.4 and 154.4) and ignoring general touching altogether. ²⁷ Unlike food and drink, sexual touch is not traditionally seen as essential to every individual’s health; its purpose is to serve humanity generally through procreation in the vocation of marriage. Virginity is not a frustration of sexuality but a choice not to use it. Therefore excessive sex is any use of intercourse that does not at least potentially benefit humanity through marital procreation. Deficiency exists only in marriage: refusal to pay the marital debt, or total avoidance of procreation.

There is no indication that Thomas considered touch one of the necessities of human flourishing. However, this lacuna, repeated in subsequent systems of moral theology, has led to a culture that has sometimes simultaneously treated touching as at least incipiently sexual and therefore as forbidden outside marriage on the one hand, and as irrelevant to chastity and purity and therefore as morally uninteresting on the other. This seems inadequate to all we know about the necessity of touch for human flourishing and about the potential abusiveness of “friendly” touch. It is as possible and as wrong to touch too little as too much. Reading chastity against temperance, it seems appropriate to extend the traditional formulation a bit, using the plans created for food and drink to build an addition on the house dealing with sensuality.

Such an expansion of sexuality and chastity may be in the offing. The Catechism now contains language that seems to extend sexuality to encompass sensuality. Although its finality is still said to lie in procreation, ²⁸ sexuality permeates our whole existence and grounds all our relationships: “sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.” ²⁹ The artificially heavy lines between love, sex, and touch seem to be blurring a bit. Second, the Catechism, affirms the social character of chastity, taking it far beyond the “delectations of touch” and into conversations about justice and community; the point of chastity is love, the capacity to give our whole selves, generously and undistractedly, in loving friendship and spiritual communion. ³⁰ Combining these two developments, we begin to piece together a vision of touch, and perhaps of sexuality, that has a “finality” that is not exhausted by procreative marital unity. ³¹ Such a development can connect temperance (my virtue with respect to what is good for me, physically and spiritually) with justice and hospitality (my virtue with respect to what is due others). This expansion of vision makes temperance an ideal and welcome resource for dealing with the whole range of physical affection.

In harmony with contemporary developmental psychology, recent Vatican statements have also reemphasized that although everyone is called to chastity, ³² chastity–like all virtues–is not a habit that we should expect anyone to possess instantaneously. ³³ It takes practice to develop healthy, balanced desires and a reliable habit of appropriate responses to them. We should expect to develop chastity with great effort, over a lifetime, with some slips and mistakes, and we should never consider chastity to have been acquired once and for all. Yet a language of absolute sexual norms is not adequate to this wisdom. The gap that we must still fill is this: what shape does a good life take on the way to chastity?

Finally, the church teaches that chastity’s acts are shaped by cultural and relational circumstances: chastity requires the “practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront [us].” ³⁴ For instance, Paul’s nuanced instructions about eating meat offered to idols indicate that what temperance requires in a given setting must be governed partly by what witnessing to Christ demands, then and there. We still lack similar concrete applications of chastity for situations in which, for example, little or no “cultural effort” ³⁵ is being made to support it, or in which customs for betrothal and marriage do not follow the western model.

The Couple

Perhaps the most heralded recent change in Church teaching was Casti connubii’s, recognition of the unitive meaning of procreative intercourse, followed closely by Humanae vitae’s declaration of its equal status with procreativity. It may be impossible to exaggerate the enormous significance of this change for a tradition that not long ago considered intercourse so destructive to human rationality that it tolerated sex only for the sake of procreation. ³⁶ We should pause and appreciate the enormity of the change. ³⁷ In addition, Humanae vitae, subsequent documents on sexuality, and all of John Paul II’s writings on sexuality celebrate the depth and complexity of marital commitment. They recognize the profundity of a couple’s vow not merely to be constant to each other but actually to embody Christ for each other; to open their love generously to the huge and unknowable task of child-rearing; to enact these promises lovingly in the concrete yet mysterious act of sex. Here the Church recognizes that intercourse confirms and strengthens a couple’s mutual commitment of self-gift, reinforces their emotional bond, bestows joy and pleasure through generous sensitivity, and recalls or maybe even bestows sacramental grace. Clearly, this new vision is a gain: it better comprehends the experience of healthy marital sexuality and more faithfully reflects our understanding of the body’s goodness and of the integrity of body and spirit. It also sees a couple’s continuing emotional and spiritual bond as part of the fabric of the marriage, not merely as fruits of it.

This message is perhaps most prophetic not in the West, where at least romantic and spiritual visions of union are commonplace, but in places like sub-Saharan Africa, in which young women in desperate economic situations gain some financial stability and social status by accepting support from men who have no intention of marrying them. In these and other exploitive situations, sex loses all of its unifying and symbolic value.

The growing edge of this new message is official teaching on individual agency and married sexuality. Many recent writings treat the couple as if they possessed a single will. ³⁸ This is neither an orthodox belief nor a realistic foundation on which to build either sacramental marriage or an ethic of sexuality. It is not true to the Church’s egalitarian vision of marriage, which in turn depends upon the traditional vision of moral agency, in which–although a couple can and must support each other in virtue and should strive to be partners–morally each spouse is and must remain an individual actor whose behavior and attitudes are separate from the other’s. My own virtue cannot depend on what my spouse does. Further, marriage is a social institution, in which I have obligations to God, self, world, children that must be exercised whether or not my partner is willing to assist or to act virtuously. In a very real sense my spouse is part of the situation in which I must behave ethically rather than a co-actor indistinguishable from me. Regulating their fertility through planned abstinence may help couples “to drive out selfishness,” making them better role models and partners. ³⁹ But admonitions to couples to practice planned abstinence do not answer the question of what, for example, virtuous women are to do when either husbands ignore the admonition or when the situation implies that refusing sex will bring desertion, exposure to disease contracted through subsequent use of prostitution, beating, or other forms of violence. ⁴⁰ The Catholic moral tradition has ample resources to develop this dimension of individual moral agency in marriage, and it must employ them if the new vision of married sexuality is to be faithful to the moral tradition.

In addition (and this is more evident in John Paul II’s writings and homilies than in Vatican documents) there is an assumption that a couple’s mutual desire is, or ought properly be, not just for mutual sexual pleasure but actually for intercourse. This seems to me to repeat Freud’s erroneous idea that mature female sexuality ought to be satisfied by vaginal stimulation. Neither Freud nor the Vatican takes full account of the fact that, while women might intellectually desire intercourse when they wish to conceive, many women do not find satisfaction in it otherwise. Are women’s desires for pleasure disordered, or has the Church–under the sway of a nearly hegemonic Freudian tradition–misunderstood the character and purpose of even heterosexual women’s desire? It is inconsistent for the Vatican to begin to recognize mutual pleasure and bonding as a value and then to promote an unrealistic ideal of mutual physical pleasure in intercourse. This leaves one wondering whether women do after all have a right to pleasure in sexual relations. ⁴¹

Finally, the developing tradition’s emphasis on marital union in sexuality, the Song of Songs, and the mystical tradition all celebrate mutual desire and its generous, loving, playful fulfillment as a good in itself. It is appropriate to continue to ask whether non-procreative forms of sexual delight are not perfectly appropriate within committed unions, which–given our growing longevity–now often need to weather the changes and challenges of 50 or more years together rather than the average of ten to 20 that even very recent ancestors could expect. Longer unions may require larger, more sophisticated tool sets. ⁴²

Justice

Traditionally sexuality was primarily a matter of personal virtue, not social justice. Yet the tradition contains overtures to justice. Among its strengths, for example, is its condemnation of fornication on the basis of the injustice it does to the child conceived out of wedlock; ⁴³ its irritating but tacit recognition that the person wielding greater power in a potentially sexual relationship is the one to be addressed morally; ⁴⁴ its more recent concern that couples strive for mutuality and equality; and above all, its current insistence that society provide political, economic, and social conditions that encourage healthy sexuality and family life to flourish. Recent commentators who identify consumerism, narcissism, poverty, low wages, illiteracy, unemployment, and poor health care as the real enemies of families and healthy sexuality can find ample support in Vatican documents. ⁴⁵

Yet to date Church teaching on sexual justice has been limited to prophetic denunciation of unhealthy social conditions. Typically, official teaching expresses sympathy for the pressures married couples face but recommends that they persevere prayerfully in fulfilling the absolute norms of non-contraceptive marital sexuality. ⁴⁶ For example, under China’s one-child policy, is it wrong to use contraceptives to avoid penalties and pressures for abortion, or must a couple practice total abstinence to guarantee against conception? Official teaching counsels the latter, which might just be possible for a chaste, mutually giving, prayerful married couple; greater difficulties arise for a couple that does not meet these conditions. However, it is possible to argue that the circumstances in which the sacramental meanings of sexuality are most profoundly transgressed are primarily defined not by external pressures or uncontrolled lust but by unjust use of power inside the sexual relationship. Traditionally, social justice is the rubric for power questions, but the Church has not developed this thinking fully yet. For example, in countries where child sex workers are common, the Church would obviously counsel men to stop visiting child prostitutes. But until the day when they utterly cease to do so, is it worse for a girl to risk her life by fleeing or refusing to perform, or is it better for her to acquiesce regretfully, biding her time until she can plan an intelligent escape? The question here is not about self-control, but about survival. And, as has already been mentioned, the relatively less-powerful position of millions of women in comparison to their husbands creates a situation in which refusal of sex risks loss of livelihood for themselves and their existing children. The Church would, of course, castigate the husbands for allowing social inequalities to permeate their intimate relations. But in the meantime, what are their wives to do?

The moral tradition has the tools to develop answers to these questions. When the issue is self- and other-defense in the face of abuse of power–circumstances we can expect to continue until the kingdom of God is realized fully– the rules that apply are normally not moral absolutes; for instance, just war theory counsels us not to refrain from coercion and deadly violence (do not kill) but to use them in a measured way to preserve life and order (do not kill unjustly). Radical non-violence is permitted, but–as it is potentially self-sacrificial–it is not required. Similarly, when sex becomes the field on which power is played out unjustly, the point may no longer be sexual purity but, as in war, legitimate self-preservation. It can be argued that we need a just sex theory for cases of subtly or overtly coercive sex and that we will need it until the parousia. ⁴⁷ If we cannot reach consensus on the need for “just sex theory” it seems appropriate, at the very least, to agree that we must both create justice in societies in which political, social, and economic conditions impede the development of a sacramental understanding of sexuality and exercise systematic (rather than case-by-case) compassion toward persons who for the foreseeable future must live out their sexuality under these difficult conditions. Sin is no more easily uprooted from sexual relations than from international politics.

Reason

Reason is central to our moral tradition. As we have seen, we believe that creation is rationally organized; reason discovers ends and develops norms; reason calms and directs the passions. Reason makes three important new contributions to the ethic of sexuality.

First, the lack of development noted under justice above points out not just an injustice but also a logical inconsistency: In every other area of life, circumstances of coercion matter. They do not simply lessen one’s guilt; reasoning is developed that preserves one’s virtue even when one is regretfully using coercive violence to defend oneself. This is thought to be not dishonest, but realistic. In sexuality, however, coercive circumstances do lead not to the general refinement of rules but to permission for priests to excuse individuals from rules on a case-by-case basis–usually on the basis of incompletely formed intentions, which implies that the actor is thoughtless and immature rather than carefully and faithfully reflective. This inconsistency is troubling.

Second, one basic premise of the natural law moral thought on which the Roman Catholic tradition depends is that grace completes nature rather than contradicting it. One consequence of this belief is that true virtue tends to integrate, support, and nurture our development on all levels from individual to global and from spiritual through emotional and intellectual to physical. A corollary is the belief that one sign of vice is the disintegration of this unity. In other words, wisdom about holistic flourishing from medical, historical, philosophical, and other scientific sources is relevant to general judgments about ethical fittingness. It is possible to argue on the basis of theological and methodological consistency that medieval assumptions about sexuality’s purposes that are rooted in then-radical wisdom from Aristotelian biology should be tested against contemporary insights from sociology and psychology and, if necessary, expanded or replaced. ⁴⁸

In that case, for instance, evidence about wholesomeness, balance, and longevity in committed homosexual relationships must be attended to. Much has been made recently of the destructiveness of homosexual unions to the stability of heterosexual marriage and family. The argument is that acceptance of sexual relationships that are not ordered to procreation is acceptance of a disordered vision of sexuality and of matrimony, which will in turn infect and destroy heterosexual marriage. ⁴⁹ But honesty requires us to ask what it is about committed homosexual relationships and sterile marriages that permits them to be stable and fruitful, even without procreativity. Humanae vitae already affirms coitus’s “natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife” in infertile couples. ⁵⁰ Is the traditional vision of sex’s meaning too narrow?

Less radically, I have already noted the new evidence about the necessity of touch for human health, and about the importance of sensuality for human bonding, that suggests procreation may not be the only end of physical affection and that we therefore need to develop a positive ethic of touch in addition to, and as a ground for, the developing negative ethic on abuse. It may be truer to our current best understanding of ourselves to view intercourse as a special case of the ethics of touch rather than as the paradigm by which all touch is interpreted.

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