"The Sexual Person" and Why I Became a Catholic

A couple days ago I blogged about a book purportedly about Catholic moral theology called “The Sexual Person” by two professors associated with Creighton University, and the US Bishops clear rebuke of the arguments presented therein.

Basically the authors deconstruct all Scriptural and magisterial sources of authority for moral reasoning by applying a radical historicism. In other words, “The biblical authors, the church fathers, and the popes just reflected the cultural norms of their day, plus they aren’t as smart as we are now, so we can disregard their views about sexuality.”

For me, reading the arguments from “The Sexual Person” were a blast from the past.

While I was in high school, and an ardent Dutch Calvinist, a report was made to my denomination’s synod from one of our sister denominations, concerning their committee on sexual morality. After years of study, this Calvinist denomination’s committee was unable to affirm almost any of traditional Christian moral teaching. The only principle remaining to guide one to moral sexual relations was “justice love.” Wherever “justice love” was present, sex was moral. They recommend that our denomination accept the same “principles” of “morality”—ones essential re-articulated now in “The Sexual Person.”

Looking over the reasoning our sister denomination was using, I realized their “hermeneutic” could be used to defeat any Scriptural teaching.

That was the beginning of a gradual dawning on me—which would eventually lead to Rome—of the realization that Scripture alone was not sufficient to conserve the deposit of the faith, because various hermeneutics could make Scripture say almost anything one wished.

One needs to be guided by tradition, but even tradition is not enough—there also has to be a living voice of the salvific community.

“When Scripture is disjoined from the living voice of the Church, it fall prey to the disputes of experts,” Benedict XVI says.

The living voice just spoke through the mouths of the US Bishops. I am thankful for them.

US Bishops Exercising Their Teaching Authority

Yesterday, the US Bishops committee on doctrine released a censure of a book on moral theology (really, a book of immoral theology) called "The Sexual Person." The document is worth reading in full by clicking the title of this post.

My reactions: First, the Bishops have some pretty decent things to say about interpreting Scripture. They have certainly made my life easier by saying them. I plan to use the document in future teaching, to confirm things I have been saying all along.

Second, the kind of moral theology advocated by the authors of the book in question strikes me as old and silly. Old, because twenty years ago folks like Walther Brueggemann were making these same (im)moral arguments about sexual behavior (not) based on Scripture, and even then the arguments were already dated. I remember, because I did my master's thesis on normativity in Brueggemann's biblical theology. Silly, because the the (im)morality advocated by the authors of The Sexual Person is so obviously vague and malleable that it transparently serves to support whatever self-interested self-gratification anyone may want to engage in. Such a book screams, "Apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to me! What I really am is a propaganda piece to justify the desired behaviors of my authors!" Or is it only to Scripture and the Magisterium that we can apply a hermeneutic of suspicion?

Anecdotal Confirmation of Increase in Priestly Vocations

Michael Barber had a great post below about growing numbers of religious vocations in the Catholic Church in America. I believe I've seen confirming evidence of this trend at the school where I teach, the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Franciscan has always had a strong pre-theologate program, with a fairly steady enrollment of about 50 guys at any given time. (A pre-theologate prepares men to enter a major seminary). Franciscan campus culture is heavily dominated by "households", our alternative to the Greek system. A "household" is a community of students that prays together regularly and supports one another morally, socially, etc. Three "households" on campus are entirely made up of "pre-the's" (pronounced "PRE-thees", i.e. guys in the pre-theologate, i.e. future priests.) One would think, then, that the Franciscan contribution to the priesthood of the Church would be limited to these "pre-thee" households.

I am an advisor of a different household, called the Disciples of the Word, which is not made of guys in the pre-theologate program. So they all are going to be laymen, right? Actually not! In the past three or four years, I've watched several of the Disciples graduate and then enter seminary for a diocese or religious order. Currently, a large number--one of the students estimated more than half--of the household's membership is pondering a priestly vocation.

Of course, many guys will ultimately "discern out," as we say, but in seven years at Franciscan, I have never seen so many young men in my household thinking about the priesthood at the same time and in such a serious way.

The only drawback is, this is going to make it even harder for our Franciscan U girls to find that good Catholic guy they came looking for.