FRIENDSHIP & DESIRE 'Will & Grace' & Augustine

...men and women socialize in groups before pairing off...

...It involves knowing and loving people as they are without glamour and even with the flu or chicken pox...

...Right doesn't always fall in love with us...

...As Catholics of a certain age and education will also know, "will" and "grace" are also the main categories used by Augustine to map the complicated terrain of the human psyche...

...In fact, rumor has it that they will soon have a baby together...

...Despite its superficially buoyant and laissez-faire attitude, Will & Grace actually presents us with a dark depiction of human sexuality that has much in common with Augustine's own...

...Giving our whole selves to each other intensified the sensations of pleasure and the feeling of unity in this expression of our love...

...What should our priorities be...

...Is it fulfilling or dehumanizing to have sex with people whom one has no intention of being friends with later on...

...So he turned to a higher power, begging God for release...

...Finally, his prayers were answered...

...they demonstrate the attitude that someone in recovery frequently takes toward the substance that nearly destroyed him: If you can, avoid sex entirely...

...His friends, and the projects he concocted with them, were his clear priority...

...At the risk of sounding entirely sacrilegious, I would guess that after the initial delirium of his encounter with the joys of sex, the young Augustine's attempt to balance relationships was not considerably different from that depicted on Will & Grace...

...In a way, we cannot help ourselves, but we cannot deny that the choice is our own...

...It is will (understood in secular terms...

...Augustine knew that Saint Paul's sins of the flesh encompass more than sins of the body: they are sins of whole persons, who are integrated unities of body and soul...

...Yet we may find one beacon of hope in the storyline of Friends, which follows the lives of six young New Yorkers who remain each other's constant support as their lovers come and go...

...It cannot remain true to itself and be folded into a stable relationship...

...Would-be Catholic moralists need to remember two key points...

...If he took seriously the show's depiction of the delights and despairs bound up with human sexual desire, I believe he would say that Will & Grace gets things half-right: the sitcom provides an accurate diagnosis of the problem, but offers the wrong cure...

...Just as desire can sweep in when it is not welcome, so it can also leave us high and dry when we want nothing more...

...And even if we do fall in love, it may not last forever...

...This generation has seen the harm caused by following one's own passion at all costs, wherever it may lead...

...Some people, like the scholars Leon and Amy Kass, are doubtful that this reversal will nurture stable heterosexual partnerships...

...Friends are more or less patient with each other's neuroses...

...In the lives of actual addicts, however, the difference is minimal...

...We might say that he viewed the cycle of sexual desire, satisfaction, and renewed desire rather in the way we now view dependence on addictive substances...

...In his time, as in our own, the most influential moralists were the creators of broadly appealing forms of entertainment...

...Will and Grace are soul mates, best friends who live together and are there for one another, for better or worse...

...Just as we should devote only our discretionary financial capital to the pastime of gambling, so we should expend only our discretionary emotional capital on fleeting affairs, while devoting the bulk of our emotional resources to the friendships that will sustain us throughout our lives...

...Moreover, the one-sidedly romantic approach discounts the degree to which stability and support through the mundane challenges of life can be existentially attractive...

...The second reason for Augustine's surprise, however, would likely prove more intractable: his acute sense of the disruptive nature of the sexual drive itself...

...it would be better all around if Grace could let go of Will, to find someone who could be a complete partner in her life...

...Today, we face the opposite challenge: integrating sexual desire into solid peer relationships-friendships between men and women, who receive the same education and aspire to many of the same goals...

...the ghosts of sexual repression do not haunt them...

...In the midst of my joy I was caught up in the coils of trouble, for I was lashed with the cruel, fiery rods of jealousy and suspicion, fear, anger, and quarrels...

...Sometimes from distorted perception: we mistakenly believe the lesser good to be the greater...

...He would tell Will to stop sleeping with men forever, and tell Grace to stop sleeping with men until she marries one...

...Sexual relationships fitted in on the side...

...So in their vision of the disruptive nature of human sexuality, the sitcom and the saint are on the same page...

...Until recently, the basic existential problem had been integrating friendship, or at least domestic peace, into a relationship based on sexual attraction, since boys and girls were brought up to assume very different roles in the home and society...

...their dilemma is tragic...

...In the beginning of Book III of Confessions, we find his famous passage: "I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust...

...How do wrong choices come about...

...Right: College Women and Dating Today," confirms what anyone who spends time on college campuses already knows: There is virtually no dating...

...Their experience is significantly different from that of the boomers...

...Still it is important to remember that another generation has come of age now, a generation whose experience animates sitcoms like Will & Grace and Friends...

...But what about the obvious follow-up questions: How should we act in a less-than-perfect world...

...I began to look around for some object of love, since I badly wanted to love something...

...Can one find a friend who is also a lifetime sexual partner...

...If the partnership of marriage and child rearing is best viewed as involving a certain type of friendship, then the best way to practice may be learning how to be friends with members of the opposite sex...

...First, unbridled romanticism, emphasis on the uni-tive power of sexual passion by itself, is not likely to be effective rhetoric in addressing this generation...

...at worst it will be deemed an outright lie...

...They saw firsthand the seamier side of freedom...

...Baby boomers (and those just a little older) have dominated the intellectual and cultural scene for over thirty years now...

...Garry Wills has recently suggested that Augustine was not promiscuous, but clearly he knew the desires that lead to promiscuity...

...It is serendipitous and ecstatic, a bolt of lightning...

...They were still children, or not yet born, when their parents and older siblings implemented the sexual revolution...

...Nor do we always fall in love with Mr...

...FRIENDSHIP & DESIRE Augustine reviews 'Will & Grace' Cathleen Kaveny Will and Grace are the main characters in NBC's wildly successful sitcom about the relationship between a gay man of deliberate sensibility (he's a lawyer) and a free-spirited straight woman (she's an interior designer) who share a New York City apartment...

...But they have their own ghosts...

...You will no doubt ask, How can Will & Grace have an Au-gustinian attitude toward sex when the sitcom considers homosexual desire to be the moral equivalent of heterosexual desire...

...Thomas Aquinas, a celibate male renowned for his chastity, gave systematic consideration to the possibility of real friendship between a husband and a wife...

...This isn't easy, but it is not impossible either...

...It would be better all around if Will could refo-cus his sexual energies on Grace...

...A study by the Independent Women's Forum called "Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr...

...Anyone who is concerned with contemporary sexual mores had better take seriously another aspect of human existence that fascinated Augustine: Time marches on...

...Augustine's cruel, fiery rods of jealousy and suspicion fuel the comic plots of Will & Grace...

...But there is a counterargument that the new integration of the lives of men and women will finally prove positive...

...My sense is that, true as this may be, Augustine's response would be more complicated...

...Like Augustine, Will and Grace believe that desire is reliably fickle...

...Martin Luther, a former monk, loved his wife Katie in a way that was deep, earthy, and entirely unsentimental...

...For Augustine, human sexuality provides the paradigmatic example of the unruly nature of the human will...

...They "hook up" in transient sexual encounters, or they are hitched at the hip in a committed relationship...

...But always remember you're playing with fire...

...One reason for his surprise, of course, would be his skepticism about the show's assumption that a man could truly be friends with a woman...

...Friendship is not like that...

...Augustine is commonly perceived as teaching that the human body is evil...

...Lovers come and go, providing emotional distraction and physical release, but they are not the whole of one's life...

...the divorce rate exploded around them while the wider society, even their churches and synagogues, seemed to lack stability and direction...

...Finally, we reach the point where Will & Grace parts company with Augustine...

...I like to think, however, that had he lived in an era such as our own, which takes for granted the full equality of men and women, he would reconsider his view...

...But a nagging question remains: What happens in five or ten years, if the ideal doesn't work out, or if the Manhattan dating scene begins to get old, and they begin to get tired...

...As it turns out, ancient Carthage is not much different from contemporary New York...

...We do wrong not by choosing evil itself (that, for Augustine, is impossible) but by preferring a lesser good to a greater good...

...His self-description continues, "My love was returned and finally shackled me in the bonds of its consummation...

...Will & Grace is obviously driven, at least in part, by this dynamic...

...For him, sexual desire can be consuming, and its satisfaction intoxicating, but the ultimate consequences for human well-being are frequently destructive, no matter what the object...

...Here again, we can find a surprising similarity...

...In recent months, of course, the destructive paths that human sexual desire can take have been epitomized by the crisis deep in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church itself...

...it knows that desire can burn fast and burn out...

...I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need...

...That perception is wrong...

...Augustine might have said no, but some of his followers are cautiously optimistic...

...Although Will and Grace hope for a long-term relationship in which passionate sex and mutual support seamlessly coexist, the sitcom's storylines continually undermine that possibility...

...Or maybe he's gay...

...Some of these writers believe the best way to defend the church's traditional teaching about marriage and contraception is to maintain that Catholic sexual discipline offers the surest path to great sensual delights...

...Neither, however, is going to happen...

...For example, one writer says, "A woman who gave up barrier methods [of contraception] described their sexual experience now as fantastic...

...The emphasis by baby boomers on the goodness of sex was essential and understandable given the circumstances that forged their identities...

...Ironically, our own supposedly liberal era, which frequently places a one-sided emphasis upon the goodness of heterosexual desire, may end up generating a larger moral chasm between heterosexuals and homosexuals than earlier, supposedly more conservative eras, which viewed all human sexuality as tainted by the Fall and therefore as potentially dangerous...

...Will & Grace exemplifies Augustine's view that sexual desire can escape from human control in a way that causes great anguish all around...

...Their lives were not and are not segregated from one another...

...Significantly, Augustine does not claim that the power to master his sexual desires came through his own will...

...It's not just that we can't control the circumstances in which desire overtakes us, or block desire from going in disastrous directions-the problem is even stranger...

...The Catholic Church, or so it is popularly thought, has been one of the few forces in contemporary society not to embrace this optimistic view of human sexual relations...

...In addressing this generation, the main focus should be not on when sex will generate transient feelings of unity between the parties, but on when sex will contribute to a real friendship...

...Ironically, however, some conservative Catholic literature has in fact adopted one of the rosiest views of human sexuality in circulation, although it restricts the channels available for expressing it (no sex outside marriage, no contraception...

...Is a "friendship with benefits" (a friendship in which the friends look to each other for sexual release when they are between romantic relationships) really likely to remain stable over time...

...They will continue balancing their pursuit of romance with the obligations of friendship, seeking what physical comfort they can from various sexual partners even as they strive to find that elusive ideal combination of lover and best friend...

...At best, an approach to sexual ethics permeated with romanticism will be dismissed as naive...

...Sexual passion is grace (understood in secular terms...

...In the end, of course, Augustine found the division of his loyalties destabilizing and unsettling...

...What about the elusive ideal...

...Candles and chilled wine on the table, rose petals on the bed, these do not always work...

...they quenched his physical appetites, but they did not feed his soul...

...For Augustine, restlessness and instability are inseparable from uncontrolled sexual desire...

...According to Augustine, the springboard of human evil is not the body but the will...

...In this perspective, except in the rare case, the miracle case, one cannot expect both friendship and long-lasting sexual passion with the same person in the world of Will & Grace...

...And Mr...

...Second, we have witnessed a Copernican revolution in the relationship of men and women...

...If we are wise, we will treat our lovers the way a prudent person treats an excursion to Las Vegas...

...Maybe, then, the most helpful counterpoint to Will, Grace, and Augustine will be Aquinas, Luther, and Friends...

...Such speculation is not quite as crazy as it sounds...

...That generation can be characterized by its attitudes toward sex: they were determined to throw off the negative views of human sexuality that shackled their parents and grandparents...

...In a certain respect, so did Augustine...

...It is impossible to imagine Will or Grace relinquishing, or restricting, the pursuit of sexual satisfaction...

...The saga of their relationship proceeds with a raucous humor undi-minished by the sad dilemma that lies at its heart...

...Right...

...if you can't, limit it to begetting children within marriage...

...Augustine was not only a moralist, but also an accomplished rhetorician...

...For Augustine, the inability of Will and Grace to direct their sexual desires in ways that will lead to their own happiness would not be surprising...

...They value loyalty, and seek the treasure of unconditional acceptance...

...This younger generation takes sexuality for granted as a valuable aspect of human life...

...What would surprise him is the content of their expectations, which he would find breathtakingly unrealistic: a passionate sexual relationship that is also the best and most fulfilling of friendships...

...Their influence stems from their power to turn an appealing phrase...

...Being addicted to heterosexual sex might be better than being addicted to homosexual sex in an abstract sense, just as it might be better to be addicted to prescription medications than to illegal substances...

...In every respect but one, they look and act like a married couple...

...Separated by millennia as well as by moral sensibilities, Aristophanes and legendary sitcom producer Norman Lear (All in the Family) both count as passionate social critics about the place of women and the oppressed classes in their respective societies...

...Friendship requires seeing the other's soul, not in an idealized form but as a bundle of noble aspirations and base fears...

...Like Will and Grace, they want to find a sexual partner who is also a best friend, and they are fearful that this is an unrealistic dream, since they have seen firsthand the destabilizing effects of sexual restlessness on their parents and on themselves...

...In the land of Will & Grace, the demands of friendship are paramount...

...The characters are restless, persistent only in their search for a better relationship, a more powerful sexual connection...

...Last year, viewers witnessed a television miracle: the wedding of longtime Friends characters Monica Gellar and Chandler Bing, who finally found in each other the sexual partners and life partners they were seeking all along...

...Some probably think the answer is obvious...

...After catching a few episodes of Will & Grace over the past couple of years, I wondered what Augustine would say about the lives and loves of the two main characters...

...At other times it is from weakness of will: we know the right thing to do, but we choose the wrong thing...

...Thinking of Augustine as having the psychology of an addict helps put the dark sexual ethics of his later writings in perspective...

...they advocate a return to older ways of romance, courtship, and marriage...

...he attributes it to divine grace...

...Will & Grace may not be salvageable...

...So what would Augustine say about Will & Grace...