Verse
Smith, Le Roy Jr.
their religious convictions and what he saw in their efforts. Most fascinating were the instances when students figured someone was operating at a higher level than they could account for. A...
...Here again was the fracture in the tradition: an older generation validating the tradition but unprepared to vouch for it to their juniors, lest they seem to be judging...
...The parents also believed that premarital sex was wrong, but they were inarticulate about it...
...Symbolically, the act says, 'We're totally for each other.' But there is no real intention of this because two unmarried people are not sure of their lives...
...The priests, she found, were profound and nuanced in their explanations of why sex should mean what marriage should mean...
...One of the mothers was adamant in her position against premarital sex, yet she commented that it would be licit for those "who have no morals...
...Yes, for misuse of sex could be seriously destructive...
...She spoke with members of campus ministry, counselors at a Catholic Family Services center, and teams of religious professionals who helped produce programs for couples approaching marriage...
...Did they have views on sex outside of marriage...
...Another student discovered a comparable diffidence among religious counselors...
...Did their daughters share their judgment on this...
...The mother: " I don't know...
...Yes, they surely did...
...The priests, however, had not been very articulate in conveying their vision to the laity...
...My students, who were of that younger generation, were perplexed...
...Yet they were unready to share this view with the young adults who depended on their prior experience as their cue and guide...
...They are not committed...
...The student, somewhat puzzled:" Well, does she live by it...
...Here was a cloud of witnesses, all looking into their own experience and asserting that it confirmed the tradition of the church that extramarital sex was unfulfilling, inappropriate, incomplete...
...Sex without marriage is an act that promises more than it is prepared to deliver, being a physical union without intention for a complete psychological and spiritual union...
...In every case, when the enquirer asked whether religious faith was a matter they covered in their counseling, the respondents demurred...
...Was this an important concern...
...It would, they said, "turn their clients off" if they turned the conversation explicitly towards the religious aspects of marriage...
...Several student enquirers were disquieted by a massive fracture they found in the tradition in the church's moral wisdom about sex...
...But as counselors they felt bound not to impose, not even to lay out, their own values...
...A group of very elderly people gave an account of their churchmanship that was quite submissive: they said they took their beliefs, with no questions asked, from church authorities...
...It was wrong because it was wrong...
...Said one: "The sexual act is total fusion into one...
...And, frankly, I would just as soon not know...
...The younger generation, meanwhile, is forming its own mind in profound ignorance of what their elders have learned either from their own elders or from their own Commonweal: 46...
...The college students were highly sympathetic towards sexual exploration, whenever legitimated by "love...
...Did they see faith as a powerful component in Christian family life...
...But upon further inquiry they showed that they were quite prepared to think and act after considerable reflection of their own...
...The fault line seemed to run right between the generation who are just coming into adulthood and those their parents' age...
...One student interviewed a group of women, all mothers of adolescent girls...
...Here were people, all professional and all explicitly identified as religiously committed, who were offering themselves as counselors for those moving into marriage and those who might be experiencing difficulties in their marriage...
...The values thereby became inoperative...
...The high school students were mostly virgins, but mostly not sure they would wish to continue so...
...One last student, a woman, interrogated a number of priests, a group of parents, a cohort of college undergraduates, and a classroom of male high school seniors...
...Was it, in their opinion, harmful...
...Here the answer tended to be,"Well, she knows how I feel...
...And a young woman was astonished, in the midst of her intended expos~ of church fund-raisers, to find some people whose explanations of their work were pretty loose, nevertheless holding themselves to a rigorously high standard of candor and honesty when approaching their clientele for contributions...
...Yes, they believed it was...
...Yes, they did...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 2
