Sex, gender, & love
Covino, Paul F. X
SEX, GENDER, & LOVE TELLING THE CATHOLIC VERSION The knock on my dormitory door came from a young woman in her sophomore year. In the year and a half that I had been living in the dormitory as one...
...The dream of the bride as "princess for a day" lives on-in both women and men...
...The wedding ritual, as it is commonly celebrated, captures in symbol the heart of my reaction to O'Brien's reflections...
...Is Anne here today...
...The Catholic campus ought to be an environment that encourages other faculty and administrators to follow their lead...
...O'Brien suggests that "male acceptance of female equal-ity often seems a bit superficial...
...Raising the topic of sex in any official capacity presents a particular dilemma to chaplains and dormitory staffs who are responsible for presenting the Catholic perspective on sex in its fullness while at the same time dealing with students who are sexually active...
...She came by the dormitory to visit frequently and was fairly well known to the students...
...From my experience, the corridor minister role, and other similar positions in student residences, provide an effective opportunity to act on O'Brien's suggestion that "students could have more dialogue with couples, especially younger couples close enough in age to avoid confusion with their own parents...
...When the student left, she looked noticeably calmer, and, in subsequent encounters, she never failed to tell me how helpful it had been to talk with Anne that evening...
...The planning of the wedding, to use just one example, ultimately still falls to the woman in most cases, even though her career may leave as little time for such planning atf'Her fiance's career...
...I also resonate with David O'Brien's assertion that Catholic colleges have often "made the strenuous effort to adapt to coeducation, oddly enough, without discussing sex...
...It was the first but not the last time that a female student came to my door, looking not for me, but for Anne...
...Yet, most brides still speak of being "given away" by one man to another man and cling to a processional form that reflects that reality...
...The frustration was most poignantly expressed for me by a dean of student affairs at Georgetown who recalled a conver-sation with a female undergraduate who had Undergone three abortions...
...The secular campus may see itself limited to "value-free" presenta-tions on sex education...
...Even though most of these men and women are successfully engaged in careers, by and large they still harbor the attitudes toward female-male relationships that O'Brien's article criticizes...
...It took me some time to appreciate that female students quietly had to seek out female role models, since the designated corridor ministers on campus were, with one exception, all male...
...This mirrors the division of labor that dominates marriage in the 1980s, where, sociologists note, most women take on a career in addition to the household work, while few husbands take on any serious share in the household work in addition to their career...
...In the year and a half that I had been living in the dormitory as one of two "corridor ministers" for a group of 450 undergraduates, I had spoken to her only briefly...
...In recent years, my work has involved less contact with undergraduates and more contact with engaged couples, almost all of whom are college graduates, preparing for marriage...
...Before the marriage has even started, the woman finds herself juggling career and family affairs...
...And Paul's instruction that wives be submissive to their husbands has certainly lost ground as a popular wedding reading...
...PAUL F.X...
...I don't use birth control," she said, "because it would be a sin every time I did...
...The theological assertion that baptism breaks down the inequality between male and female may roll easily off the tongue in an undergraduate marriage course...
...she asked...
...The faculty members mentioned in O'Brien's article who dared to speak openly about love moved Holy Cross closer to fulfilling this obligation...
...COVINO...
...My suspicion is that female acceptance of female equality still has a way to go as well...
...Look-ing back, I have to admit that my own need to feel in control of things-which, I suspect, I share with many other men-was a bit threatened by these episodes...
...Similarly, it took a good deal of openness on the part of my ordained colleagues in the dormitories to acknowledge that lay role models were also a necessary complement to ordained corridor ministers...
...The students, in turn, would benefit from the example of a young couple dealing with issues of marriage and career that will soon be facing many of the students in their own lives...
...I figure I'm sinning less often by relying on abortion for when I do get pregnant...
...Anne and the student who knocked on my door spent a good deal of time talking privately...
...This story came to mind as I read David O'Brien's insightful piece on female-male relations on the Catholic campus...
...Such confused interpretations of Catholic sexual ethics need to be addressed...
...We do students no favor by ignoring discussion of Catholic sexual ethics for whatever reason, or by ignoring the fact that some students do not live up to, or even share, these ideals...
...Living in the residence hall, such young couples could be present to the candid conversations and exchanges that often arise in a dormitory setting...
...Anne, my fiance'e, enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the second person in Georgetown's history to be engaged to a corridor minister, a post which, with only three previous exceptions, had been filled exclusively by priests or Jesuit scholastics...
...The women's movement seems to have had virtually no visible impact on the social customs surrounding the wedding cere-mony...
...The Catholic campus, on the other hand, is morally obligated to help students examine their sexual actions and attitudes against the Gospel message...
Vol. 116 • March 1989 • No. 6
