Sexuality and Catholicism by Thomas C Fox
Kelly, James R
CATHOLICS HAVE SEX! Sexuality and Catholicism Thomas C. Fox George Braziller, $27.50, 256 pp, James R. Kelly In his preface to Sexuality and Catholicism, Thomas C. Fox writes that Catholicism,...
...Swear to God...
...I suspect that Domers will discomfit many who love Notre Dame, and further exasperate those who have already had their fill of "high Domer bliss...
...Fox is highly critical of papal tendencies toward enunciating moral absolutes and centralizing church governance, yet despite these dire trends he exhibits an almost bubbly confidence in the future of Catholicism...
...His focus never strays from the Jesus of the Gospels whom he finds constantly preaching forgiveness, who mostly tells us about his and our caring Father, and who himself rarely teaches about sex...
...We can't imagine a worthy church without such aspirations...
...Fox traces those identity problems to the church's teachings about sexuality and gender...
...You walk around the lake and look up at the Dome and you tell me the Garden of Eden is that beautiful...
...But like a lemming to the sea, Coyne is impelled to a certain nostalgic and credibility-straining portrait of the university that he considers "the nearest thing Catholic America has to a capital city...
...Given this data, one might be inclined to think that maybe moral absolutes are more fun than we postmoderns are allowed to think...
...Among those whom Coyne follows are Dana Ciacciarelli, an aspiring entomologist...
...Coyne takes the reader to a cleric-led English seminar, a nationally reputed entomology laboratory, women's intramural touch football games, and volunteer tutoring sessions with South Bend gradeschoolers...
...Or maybe not...
...John Paul II is attempting a "restorationist" project that soon will be sympathetically but firmly rejected as "a reorganizing period before the church continues with its renewal journey" begun with the Second Vatican Council...
...Coyne does not comment on the subtleties of the current debate on the state of Catholic higher education...
...He didn't miss much...
...one student asked a friend as he left...
...Claire Johnson, ardent prolife activist...
...And the journalist in him sees no reason to steer clear of contentious faculty meetings and administration building sit-ins...
...The often caustic discussions about Catholic character-discussions which were at times quite heated during his year on a campus "that attracts every stripe of Catholic, from severe traditionalists to vow-of-poverty liberals, all of whom, to some degree, expect Notre Dame to reflect their vision of Catholicism"-are recorded...
...Is there a place in the church," he asks, "for monarchical authority when Jesus himself repudiated political power and when Jesus and the earliest Christian generations needed to radically reinterpret the concept of Messiah...
...At any rate, this much is certain...
...We must, to be certain, await Greeley's or someone else's next study...
...Swear on the Dome...
...They ask how the use of a condom to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus, even within marriage, can be as morally wrong as passing the virus to another...
...Perhaps couples whose familiarity has dimmed their sexual zest should now be advised to slip into something more comfortable and read Veritatis splendor...
...The young, more frequently, simply don't want to be bothered...
...Coyne's keen and sympathetic eye is not unlike that of the master of the nonfic-tion participant-observer genre, Tracy Kidder (House, Among Schoolchildren...
...and also more likely to have sex frequently than are liberal and fundamentalist Protestants...
...Even the leaves of campus trees are not immune-they don't just fall, they fall "like sins cast off at confession, signaling the arrival of a long, penitential South Bend winter...
...Sexuality and Catholicism Thomas C. Fox George Braziller, $27.50, 256 pp, James R. Kelly In his preface to Sexuality and Catholicism, Thomas C. Fox writes that Catholicism, once notable to members and outsiders alike for its confident certainties about itself and its beliefs, is entering a third millennium unsure of its own identity...
...Fox's argument, familiar enough, is that the magisterium, counter to the judgment of most of the laity, many Catholic moral theologians, and even some bishops, reaches unpersuasive moral absolutes by discounting the relevance of experience and history and by employing an unrevised natural law approach that confuses the determina-cies of biology with the indeterminacies of personal responsibility...
...However, readers learn little of Augustine's hard-earned skepticism about things sexual or about sex's murky connections with power and control...
...It gets to be a bit much...
...Father Bill Seetch, dorm rector...
...In chapter 9 on "Population," Fox takes at face value the Clinton administration's claim that it did not intend to include more easily available abortion by promoting the much-debated term "reproductive health" at the UN's Cairo conference...
...This renewed forward journey, among other things, will include married and women priests...
...The problem, ironically, is that the papal confidence in traditional formulations and its own authority, especially as exercised by John Paul II, has undermined our confidence in the church's credibility...
...They ask how artificial birth control can be regarded as evil in all cases and natural family planning can be viewed as good if the intention not to conceive a child is the same in each instance...
...Swear on the Dome...
...A diverse cross-section of students, faculty, and staff is highlighted, and the soon-familiar names and stories allow for an appreciation of the rhythms and events of the academic year...
...Empirical data pointing more to Augustine's than to Fox's conclusions-say, studies of cohabitation and subsequent divorce or studies linking contraceptive use and abortion rates-don't find their way into these pages...
...and Jimmy Z, campus night cook and "Ultimate Fan...
...Fox traces those identity problems to the church's teachings about sexuality and gender...
...They ask how the church can teach a host of sexual absolutes that never take into consideration circumstances...
...Throughout this book, Fox's most often cited source is the National Catholic Reporter, where he serves with distinction as editor...
...In a way the book could serve as a primer for new subscribers...
...Steve Sabo, alternative rock DJ...
...Placing enormous explanatory weight on sexual issues himself, Fox argues that the divergence between lay experience, measured mostly through polls, and magisterial recalcitrance undermines church authority and lessens its presence in the world...
...The problem, ironically, is that the papal confidence in traditional formulations and its own authority, especially as exercised by John Paul II, has undermined our confidence in the church's credibility...
...Though Coyne handles the Catholicity issue-and others-well, the cotton candy mix of religiosity and hubris tends to overwhelm the palate...
...Fox writes that "Decades, even centuries, from now church historians may look back at the Second Vatican Council's stress on God's love and mercy as its most lasting legacy...
...Domers is rather like a 352-page version of the thirty-second promo spot one sees during televised football games-but with a journalistic kick...
...Readers learn that the Vatican occupies 108.7 acres, that Thomas Aquinas "wrote the book on natural law theology," that "Christians generally view Saint Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa, as the greatest teacher of Christian antiquity...
...their families "leave the Volvos to the Ivies, [because] Notre Dame is a Detroit crowd...
...A failing of a different, but still important, magnitude is Fox's omission of that devout/bemused kind of Catholic irony once frequently heard in school yards but still available in translation in neighborhood bars and at bingo games...
...Can artificial insemination, even with a husband's sperm in order to have a child, be gravely wrong...
...The list could go on...
...In his conclusion, Fox provides something of a representative summary of his charges and his tone: They [progressive Catholics] ignore a theology that fails to make distinctions in the gravity of sins...
...When Coyne runs out of unfortunate similes and metaphors, there is always night cook Jimmy Z to pick up the slack: "I'm absolutely driven with the idea that this is the only place in the world, that this is the Garden of Eden...
...Remembering the next morning, needless to say, to hide it from the teen-agers...
...Fox asserts rather than demonstrates the last part of this argument...
...Worse, he uses questions of sexual discipline and doctrine such as Humanae vitae as measures of loyalty, especially with regard to the clergy...
...Fox's argument, familiar enough, is that the magisterium, counter to the judgment of most of the laity, many Catholic moral theologians, and even some bishops, reaches unpersuasive moral absolutes by discounting the relevance of experience and history and by Coyne attended the football games whose telecasts subway alumni never miss, but he then kept his tape rolling long after the NBC cameramen had packed up theirs...
...replacing it with the prophetic character of Jesus' ministry...
...Fox's language about the church sometimes veers backward to a recognizable Reformation confidence in grasping and revitalizing an untarnished core of Christianity which can be confidently separated from its institutional deformations...
...Working his way into the nooks and crannies that make up the Notre Dame experience, Coyne acquires an insider's feel for everything from administrative conundrums to the innuendoes and in-jokes of dormitory skits...
...He stayed around to see Saturday's "Fighting Irish" become the rest of the week's "Domers" (as students call themselves, referring to the landmark golden dome that sits atop the administration building...
...Rather, he futilely seeks to make his version of sexual orthodoxy a criterion for religious orthodoxy...
...Promise me...
...It just doesn't make sense," is the common response...
...But don't Greeley's survey results run counter to Fox's principal argument...
...Promise," the friend declared, blessing himself...
...His extracurricular talks with the gadfly scientist, the priest author of a memo that sparked an outcry, and presidents past and present, are balanced, frank and, at times, quite fascinating...
...Corey Babington, rap artist and science-business major...
...They ask how a compassionate church can teach that gays and lesbians can never under any circumstances express sexual iritimacy...
...perhaps (Freud might at least help here) they are necessary to stimulate erotic desires over the long run...
...They ask how sexual intercourse with the use of a condom is always "an intrinsically evil" act...
...Geoff Slevin, her engineering boyfriend...
...and they toss out saccharine lines with all the aplomb of Father Chuck O'Malley: "Meet me for breakfast...
...Sexuality and Catholicism aspires to contribute to that deep, rich, and complex Catholic legacy...
...The back cover blurb indicates that Coyne had "unprecedented access to every corner of Notre Dame," and indeed it appears as though the only things to which he was not privy were trustees' meetings and investment decisions...
...For instance, in chapter 8 on "Carnal Love," Fox divulges the utterly baffling news that, according to Andrew Gree-ley's data, Catholics enjoy sex more than most others...
...Mary Lee Freeman is a 1991 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, a former member of its College of Arts and Letters Advisory Council, and a former Commonweal intern...
...Despite his frequent use of the term, Pope John Paul II does not "dialogue...
...Sexuality and Catholicism Thomas C. Fox George Braziller, $27.50, 256 pp, James R. Kelly In his preface to Sexuality and Catholicism, Thomas C. Fox writes that Catholicism, once notable to members and outsiders alike for its confident certainties about itself and its beliefs, is entering a third millennium unsure of its own identity...
...The data show "Catholics are significantly more likely to have sex weekly or more often than all others combined (sic...
...At Coyne's Notre Dame, students engage in "earnest, half-drunk arguments about Saint Thomas Aquinas" at Senior Bar...
...The Vatican's prohibitions are the only kind of power and control exposed by Fox...
...Many Catholics raised in the faith hang on, disregarding the teachings...
...Thomas Fox's view of the church is perennially attractive...
...Coyne attended a regular series of faculty meetings called "Conversation on the Catholic Character" and his faithful transcription of snatches of dialogue concerning hiring quotas, Catholic intellectual life, and the mission of the Catholic university are provocative without being sensational...
Vol. 123 • January 1996 • No. 1
