Monday, January 21, 2008

Jesuit On Co-ed Sexual Ethics

Transformative Love
A Catholic education ought to be about answering the eternal question “What is love?” Too few young adults know that the church’s teaching on sex is about wholeness and integration or, in other words, chastity. All they have heard is that the church loudly says “NO!”, while wagging a pointed finger. The truth is the church says, “Yes!” to truly transformative love and life-giving sex. Sex and all else that is holistically human and thus deeply divine ought to be for love, for true and lasting love. Love demands all of us. Sex demands true and ultimate concern for another person, thus the church teaches that sex be reserved for marriage.
Sex as an expression and logical consequence of committed love is much more like prayer than it is like a simple bodily function. When sex resembles prayer there is a worshipful silence about the encounter.
Silent and listen are spelled with the same letters. Let’s challenge and help our young people to slow down, be quiet and listen with their hearts to hear the deeper and challenging message of Jesus. Hopefully, we will all learn to discern the whisperings of God in our relationships, and then we will again discover love.
Link to Fr. Rick Malloy's full BustedHalo piece (here)
Sex mentioned 7 times, Jesus 0

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