The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology

Foreword

Foreword THE AUTHORS OF THIS BOOK, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, write as Catholic theologians who both are married and are very familiar with the Catholic tradition. The book accepts the classical understanding of faith and reason, recognizing especially the importance of human reason in developing sexual marital morality. The authors ground their understanding of sexuality in a more personalistic and relational understanding of natural law theory. They enter into a dialogue almost exclusively with other Catholic authors who have been dealing with these issues. On the basis of their natural law theory, they propose a renewed Catholic anthropology that serves as the basis for their positions on marital morality dealing with contraception , cohabitation, and the process of marrying, homosexuality, and artificial reproductive technologies. There is no doubt, especially in light of extensive media coverage, that the pedophile scandal has been a traumatic experience for the Catholic Church in the United States. But another crisis that has received much less media attention might in the end have more lasting effects on the life of the Church. I refer to the fact that the vast majority of Roman Catholics do not follow the teaching of the hierarchical Magisterium of the Church with regard to aspects of marital morality. In this book Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler cite sociological statistics to show that 75 to 85 percent of Catholics approve of contraception for married couples despite the official teaching. Many Catholics also disagree with other aspects of Catholic sexual teaching with regard to marriage. This problem came to the fore with Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, which taught that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. The pope grounded his teaching in the inseparable connection willed by God and unable to be broken by human beings of the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive and the procreative. Thus, every marital act must be open to procreation and be expressive of the loving union of husband and wife. As a result of this teaching, the hierarchical Magisterium has condemned artificial contraception for spouses, artificial reproductive technologies that do away with the conjugal act, and homosexual genital relationships. Pope Paul VI referred to the ‘‘lively debate’’ set off by his encyclical, but it has truly been a crisis, with many Catholics leaving the Church because of it and others xi xii  Foreword experiencing great tension with the Church because of their disagreement with this teaching. Some of the crisis and tension has been lessened by the recognition proposed by many Catholic theologians that a Catholic can dissent from such noninfallible Church teaching and still be a good Roman Catholic. One can solve this problem in the forum of conscience. But there are other disputed areas in the Church today that cannot be resolved in the forum of conscience. Think, for example , of the ordination of married men or the ordination of women, which require the leadership of the Church to make structural changes. Thus the forum of conscience does not offer any relief for these issues. Note here that I am not saying that conscience itself makes something right but rather, in the area of noninfallible teaching , that an informed conscience may dissent from such teaching. Although the forum of conscience provides a way to deal with some of the tensions in marital morality, the continued discrepancy between the hierarchical teaching and the actions and practices of many Catholics cannot be a good thing for the life of the Church. Humanae vitae and the responses to it have also brought about serious theological tensions in the Catholic Church in the United States between revisionist theologians calling for a change in the hierarchical teaching and the hierarchical Magisterium itself. The day after the encyclical was published in 1968, theologians at Catholic University issued a statement ultimately signed by more than six hundred Catholic scholars in sacred sciences that maintained that the encyclical added nothing to the arguments that had already been presented. Because the teaching was noninfallible, the statement concluded that in theory and in practice one could disagree with the conclusion of the encyclical condemning artificial contraception for spouses and still be a loyal Roman Catholic. The trustees of Catholic University, half of whom were bishops and archbishops, mandated a faculty committee hearing to determine if by their declarations and actions the faculty members had violated their responsibilities as Catholic theologians. The faculty committee and the Academic Senate of the university...