The Rupture between
Sexuality and Marriage
Reflections on unnatural liberation
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
The issue is the rupture between sexuality and marriage.
Separated from motherhood, sex has remained without a locus and
has lost its point of reference: it is a kind of drifting mine,
a problem and at the same time an omnipresent power.
After the separation between sexuality and motherhood was
effected, sexuality was also separated from procreation. The
movement, however, ended up going in an opposite direction:
procreation without sexuality. Out of this follow the
increasingly shocking medical-technical experiments so prevalent
in our day where, precisely, procreation is independent of
sexuality. Biological manipulation is striving to uncouple man
from nature (the very existence of which is being disputed).
There is an attempt to transform man, to manipulate him as one
does every other "thing": he is nothing but a product planned
according to one's pleasure.
At the end of this march to shatter fundamental, natural
linkages (and not, as is said, only those that are cultural),
there are unimaginable consequences which, however, derive from
the very logic that lies at the base of a venture of this kind.
It logically follows from the consequences of a sexuality which
is no longer linked to motherhood and to procreation that every
form of sexuality is equivalent and therefore of equal worth. It
is certainly not a matter of establishing or recommending a
retrograde moralism, but one of lucidly drawing the consequences
from the premises: it is, in fact, logical that pleasure, the
libido of the individual, become the only possible point of
reference of sex. No longer having an objective reason to
justify it, sex seeks the subjective reason in the gratification
of the desire, in the most "satisfying" answer for the
individual, to the instincts no longer subject to rational
restraints. Everyone is free to give to his personal libido the
content considered suitable for himself.
Hence, it naturally follows that all forms of sexual
gratification are transformed into the "rights" of the
individual. Thus, to cite an especially current example,
homosexuality becomes an inalienable right. (Given the
aforementioned premises, how can one deny it?) On the contrary,
its full recognition appears to be an aspect of human
liberation.
There are, however, other consequences of this uprooting of the
human person in the depth of his nature. Fecundity separated
from marriage based on a lifelong fidelity turns from being a
blessing (as it was understood in every culture) into its
opposite: that is to say a threat to the free development of the
"individual's right to happiness." Thus abortion,
institutionalized, free and socially guaranteed, becomes another
"right," another form of "liberation."
The now dominant mentality attacks the very foundations of the
morality of the Church, which, as I have already said, if she
remains true to herself, risks appearing like an anachronistic
construct, a bothersome, alien body. Thus the moral theologians
of the Western Hemisphere, in their efforts to still remain
"credible" in our society, find themselves facing a difficult
alternative: it seems to them that they must choose between
opposing modern society and opposing the Magisterium. The number
of those who prefer the latter type of opposition is larger or
smaller depending on how the question is posed: consequently
they set out on a search for theories and systems that allow
compromises between Catholicism and current conceptions. But
this growing difference between the Magisterium and the "new"
moral theologies leads to unforeseeable consequences, also
precisely for the reason that the Church with her schools and
her hospitals still occupies an important social role
(especially in America). Thus we stand before the difficult
alternative: either the Church finds an understanding, a
compromise with the values propounded by society which she wants
to continue to serve, or she decides to remain faithful to her
own values (and in the Church's view these are the values that
protect man in his deepest needs) as the result of which she
finds herself on the margin of society.
Thus today the sphere of moral theology has become the main
locus of the tensions between Magisterium and theologians,
especially because here the consequences are most immediately
perceptible. I should like to cite some trends: at times
premarital relations, at least under certain conditions, are
justified. Masturbation is presented as a normal phenomenon of
adolescence. Admission of remarried divorced couples to the
sacraments is constantly demanded. Radical feminism — especially
in some women's religious orders — also seems to be gaining
ground noticeably in the Church (but we will speak about that
later). Even as regards the question of homosexuality, attempts
at its justification are in the making. Indeed, it has come to
pass that bishops — on the basis of insufficient information or
also because of a sense of guilt among Catholics toward an
"oppressed minority" — have placed churches at the disposal of
"gays" for their gatherings. Then there is the case of Humanae
vitae, the encyclical of Paul VI, which reaffirmed the 'no' to
contraceptives and which has not been understood. Instead it has
been more or less openly rejected in broad ecclesial circles.
At first sight it seems that the demands of radical feminism in
favor of a total equality between man and woman are extremely
noble and, at any rate, perfectly reasonable. It also seems
logical that the demand that women be allowed to enter all
professions, excluding none, should transform itself within the
Church into a demand for access also to the priesthood. To many,
this demand for the ordination of women, this possibility of
having Catholic priestesses, appears not only justified but
obvious: a simple and inevitable adaptation of the Church to a
new social situation that has come into being.
In reality this kind of "emancipation" of woman is in no way
new. One forgets that in the ancient world all the religions
also had priestesses. All except one: the Jewish. Christianity,
here too following the "scandalous" original example of Jesus,
opens a new situation to women; it accords them a position that
represents a novelty with respect to Judaism. But of the latter
he preserves the exclusively male priesthood. Evidently,
Christian intuition understood that the question was not
secondary, that to defend Scripture (which in neither the Old
nor the New Testament knows women priests) signified once more
to defend the human person, especially those of the female sex.
Against "trivialized" sex
But it is further necessary to get to the bottom of the demand
that radical feminism draws from the widespread modern culture,
namely, the "trivialization" of sexual specificity that makes
every role interchangeable between man and woman. When we were
speaking of the crisis of traditional morality, I indicated a
series of fatal ruptures: that, for example, between sexuality
and procreation. Detached from the bond with fecundity, sex no
longer appears to be a determined characteristic, as a radical
and pristine orientation of the person. Male? Female? They are
questions that for some are now viewed as obsolete, senseless,
if not racist. The answer of current conformism is foreseeable:
"whether one is male or female has little interest for us, we
are all simply humans." This, in reality, has grave consequences
even if at first it appears very beautiful and generous. It
signifies, in fact, that sexuality is no longer rooted in
anthropology; it means that sex is viewed as a simple role,
interchangeable at one's pleasure.
What follows with logical necessity is that the whole being and
the whole activity of the human person are reduced to pure
functionality, to the pure role: depending on the social
context, for example, to the role of "consumer" or the role of
"worker"; at any rate to something that does not directly regard
the respective sex. It is not by chance that among the battles
of "liberation" of our time there has also been that of escaping
from the "slavery of nature," demanding the right to be male or
female at one's will or pleasure, for example, through surgery,
and demanding that the State record this autonomous will of the
individual in its registry offices. Incidentally, one must
realize that this so-called sex change alters nothing in the
genetic constitution of the person involved. It is only an
external artifact which resolves no problems but only constructs
fictitious realities. Nor is it by chance that the laws
immediately adapted themselves to such a demand. If everything
is only a culturally and historically conditioned "role," and
not a natural specificity inscribed in the depth of being, even
motherhood is a mere accidental function. In fact, certain
feminist circles consider it "unjust" that only the woman is
forced to give birth and to suckle. And not only the law but
science, too, offers a helping hand: by transforming a male into
a female and vice-versa, as we have already seen, or by
separating fecundity from sexuality with the purpose of making
it possible to procreate at will, with the help of technical
manipulations. Are we not, after all, all alike? So, if need be
one also fights against nature's "inequity." But one cannot
struggle against nature without undergoing the most devastating
consequences. The sacrosanct equality between man and woman does
not exclude, indeed it requires, diversity.
In defense of nature
The interchangeableness of the sexes, viewed as simple "roles"
determined more by history than by nature, and the
trivialization of male and female extend to the very idea of God
and from there spread out to the whole religious reality.
Christianity is not "our" work; it is a Revelation; it is a
message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to
reconstruct it as we like or choose. Consequently, we are not
authorized to change the Our Father into an Our Mother: the
symbolism employed by Jesus is irreversible; it is based on the
same Man-God relationship that he came to reveal to us. Even
less is it permissible to replace Christ with another figure.
But what radical feminism — at times even that which asserts
that it is based on Christianity — is not prepared to accept is
precisely this: the exemplary, universal, unchangeable
relationship between Christ and the Father.
I am, in fact, convinced that what feminism promotes in its
radical form is no longer the Christianity that we know; it is
another religion. But I am also convinced (we are beginning to
see the deep reasons of the biblical position) that the Catholic
Church and the Eastern Churches will defend their faith and
their concept of the priesthood, thereby defending in reality
both men and women in their totality as well as in their
irreversible differentiation into male and female, hence in
their irreducibility to simple function or role.
Besides what I shall never tire of repeating also applies here:
for the Church the language of nature (in our case, two sexes
complementary to each other yet quite distinct) is also the
language of morality (man and woman called to equally noble
destinies, both eternal, but different). It is precisely in the
name of nature — it is known that Protestant tradition and, in
its wake, that of the Enlightenment mistrust this concept — that
the Church raises her voice against the temptation to project
persons and their destiny according to mere human plans, to
strip them of individuality and, in consequence, of dignity. To
respect biology is to respect God himself, hence to safeguard
his creatures.
Feminine radicalism announces a liberation that is a salvation
different from, if not opposed to, the Christian conception. The
men and above all the women who are experiencing the fruits of
this presumed post-Christian salvation must realistically ask
themselves if this really signifies an increase of happiness, a
greater balance, a vital synthesis, richer than the one
discarded because it was deemed to be obsolete.
It is precisely woman who is paying the greatest price.
Motherhood and virginity (the two loftiest values in which she
realizes her profoundest vocation) have become values that are
in opposition to the dominant ones. Woman, who is creative in
the truest sense of the word by giving life, does not "produce,"
however, in that technical sense which is the only one that is
valued by a society more masculine than ever in its cult of
efficiency. She is being convinced that the aim is to "liberate"
her, "emancipate" her, by encouraging her to masculinize
herself, thus bringing her into conformity with the culture of
production and subjecting her to the control of the masculine
society of technicians, of salesmen, of politicians who seek
profit and power, organizing everything, marketing everything,
instrumentalizing everything for their own ends. While asserting
that sexual differentiation is in reality secondary (and,
accordingly, denying the body itself as an incarnation of the
spirit in a sexual being), woman is robbed not only of
motherhood but also of the free choice of virginity. Yet, just
as man cannot procreate without her, likewise he cannot be
virgin save by "imitating" woman who, also in this way, has a
surpassing value as "sign," as "example" for the other part of
humanity.
-- Excerpted from The Ratzinger Report
