Your Sexual Freedom/And They Felt No Shame:
Zeik, Michael
Convergence, loneliness, & sex YOUR SEXUAL FREEDOM LETTERS TO STUDENTS Richard Hettlinger Continuum, $7.95,127 pp. AND THEY FELT NO SHANE CHRISTIANS RECLAIM THEIR SEXUALITY Joan...
...On matters of sex, the ungraceful human race is like the drunk who, after he falls off one side of his horse, gets up and falls off the other side...
...If two people, already totally committed to one another, are compelled through force of circumstance (finances, prolonged schooling, etc...
...AND THEY FELT NO SHANE CHRISTIANS RECLAIM THEIR SEXUALITY Joan Ohanneson Winston Press, $11.95, 318 pp...
...They seek middle ground between the traditional "global no" of moral theology, and the chaotic relativism of contemporary paganism...
...to postpone the actual ceremony of matrimony, their sexual relations might very well be justified...
...For the unmarried, they too prescribe the "global no...
...I cannot, in the allotted space, point out the similarly converging lines of thought on such topics as homosexuality, lesbianism, etc...
...Even on the difficult problem of premarital sex, there is a degree of convergence between the rationalist approach of a Hettlinger, and the "faith-seeking-understanding" approach of the authors of Human Sexuality...
...As a matter of fact, from what I know about these sects, their sexual rules and regulations would have delighted the hearts of all the 1930 Irish Monsignori in America...
...and Hettlinger, writing out of what appears to be a rationalist, humanist position, warning college students not to confuse sexual gyrations with psychological freedom...
...The study, Human Sexuality, commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1977, objected to the traditional moral teaching on the problem of masturbation...
...Coming back to Ohanneson's book, I have to agree with her that the church is presently in the position of dealing with the age-group from fifteen to thirty as virtually a Foreign Mission...
...Thus we find Ohanneson making her impassioned plea to the church to pay more mind to young adults and their sexual problem...
...and that even problems like masturbation and homosexuality have to be morally evaluated in their own complicated contexts...
...and some revisionist moral theology similarly antedated The Pill...
...Esquire features an article by George Leonard noting "The End of Sex...
...Such relations are pre-ceremonial rather than pre-marital...
...Americans move from one neighborhood to another on an average of about once every five years...
...As someone who joined the church in his twenty-fourth year, I have to say that I was surprised, upon first meeting priests and sisters, to learn that anyone took God that seriously...
...Thus, on a scale of one to ten, I give masturbation an esthetic and psychological minus three...
...The typical parish does not offer any solution...
...As a liberal on my way to the great synthesis, I have to be grateful for all the conservative confrontation I can get...
...Coming from the other direction, Hettlinger, Director of Humane Studies at Kenyon College, after first assuring the reader that masturbation is "a regular phase of human development," goes on to warn us, in the words of Morton Hunt: It is not truly liberated...
...And the principal reason for this estrangement, she feels, is the church's inauthenticity on sexual questions...
...Abstaining from sex, however, "may be a sign of real personal strength and integrity" if you wait "because you think the special intimacy and closeness of intercourse is best kept for the special commitment of marriage...
...Not only, say these writers, do some forms of sexual expression become appropriate for people who are well along the path to permanent commitment, but a distinction may be drawn between premarital and pre-ceremonial sexual relations...
...Here, a caveat...
...I doubt that Catholic young adults have joined these sects because of their teachings on sex...
...Either "to condemn every act of masturbation as mortal sin, or to dismiss it lightly as of no moral consequence, fails to do justice to the symptomatic nature of masturbation capable of many meanings," the book argued...
...Again, although I agree with the author on the desirability of optional celibacy for the priesthood, celibacy itself has more meaning for me than for her...
...Provided the people involved are honest with each other and no unwanted pregnancy or infection results, they can certainly be very satisfying...
...Young adults feel it even more than other age-groups...
...Talk about your thesis, antithesis, and synthesis...
...Marriage, they argue, like most of life's serious decisions, does not actually take place at a moment...
...and I am given these two asymptotic books to review for Commonweal...
...But, points out Ohanneson, a budget is "a theological statement," and our young adults hear it...
...But note that I do not use the adjective "identical," only "converging...
...Surely it is more out of loneliness and the attraction of community that Catholic young adults join these cults...
...to use masturbation as a continuing substitute for heterosexual relationships that are available but anxiety-producing . . Some young people who are particularly troubled by feelings of personal inadequacy and inferiority find it exceedingly difficult to take those steps to establish relationships with the opposite sex, and for them masturbation may be supportive as a crutch is, weakening rather than strengthening...
...I know that sex is o.k...
...New York magazine joins in the refrain, with Fran Schumer asking, "Is Sex Dead...
...And Ohan-neson deals very well with the problem of their loneliness...
...budgets do not allow...
...Thus, the former, who does believe that premarital sex is justified under certain conditions, nevertheless goes on to caution students (women in particular) that "Because of the 'tyranny of statistics' you will be under great pressure to conform to majority behavior...
...Fifty percent of the Moonies, she warns us, and forty-two percent of the Hare Krishnas, are young, alienated ex-Catholics...
...Hettlinger's Your Sexual Freedom, and Ohanneson's And They Felt No Shame bear witness to the ongoing dialectic, as the poor human race wobbles its erratic way toward a more balanced sexuality...
...Human Sexuality distinguished between adolescent, compensatory, hedonist, and pathological masturbation, and warned that the problem was subtle and complex...
...Just at the time that Catholic theologians are recognizing that, procreation aside, sexuality has still other human meanings...
...Liberal Catholic theologians, and writers like Ohanneson, on the other hand, renounce the older view that "every willful enjoyment of (sexual) pleasure before marrige is a serious deordina-tion of one's relational life and consequently mortal sin...
...It is worth noting, by the way, that some of the secular humanists' second thoughts about the sexual revolution actually antedated the onslaughts of herpes and AIDS...
...I suspect the tension between the conservative and liberal positions is absolutely necessary...
...After all this sexual dialectic, it is not surprising that I should come to a very Hegelian conclusion...
...Hettlinger frequently goes far beyond the views of Catholic liberals, as he does when he admits that he is "unsure how often chance sexual interludes" are truly fulfilling...
...A few concrete examples of the dramatic convergence of these diverse schools of thought may make the matter clearer...
...it remains, however, sociologically superior to rape...
...when it is "self-liberating, other-enriching, honest, faithful, socially responsible, life-serving, and joyous,'' but will I make the right evaluation in the back seat of a car...
...just at that time, the New York Times runs front-page articles about the more conservative trend of American sexual practice...
...Michael Zeik HEGEL lives...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 19
