The Sexual Person
Description
Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics.
While some documents from Vatican II, like Gaudium et spes ("the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other"), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church has not carried out the full implications of this approach. In short, say Salzman and Lawler: emphasize relationships, not acts, and recognize Christianity's historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality. The Sexual Person draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition and provides a context for current theological debates between traditionalists and revisionists regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human. This daring and potentially revolutionary book will be sure to provoke constructive dialogue among theologians, and between theologians and the Magisterium.
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Persons
Todd A. Salzman is a professor of Catholic theology and chair of the Department of Theology at Creighton University. He is the coeditor of Marriage in the Catholic Tradition: Scripture, Tradition, and Experience and author of What Are They Saying about Roman Catholic Ethical Method?
Michael G. Lawler is professor emeritus of Catholic theology at Creighton University. He is the author of What Is and What Ought to Be: The Dialectic of Experience, Theology, and Church and Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions.
Content
Foreword
Charles E. Curran
Prologue
1. Sexual Morality in the Catholic Tradition: A Brief History
Historicity
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in the Catholic Tradition
Reading Sacred Scripture
The Fathers of the Church
The Penitentials
Scholastic Doctrine
The Modern Period
Conclusion
2. Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Traditionalists
?Nature? Defined
The Revision of Catholic Moral Theology
Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology
Traditionalists and Sexual Anthropology
Conclusion
3. Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Revisionists
Revisionist Critiques of Traditionalist Anthropologies
Karl Rahner: Transcendental Freedom
Revisionists and Sexual Anthropology
Conclusion
4. Unitive Sexual Morality: A Revised Foundational Principle and Anthropology
Gaudium et Spes and a Foundational Sexual Principle
The Relationship between Conjugal Love and Sexual Intercourse
Multiple Dimensions of Human Sexuality
Truly Human and Complementarity
Conclusion
5. Marital Morality
Marital Intercourse and Morality
NNLT and Marital Morality
Modern Catholic Thought And Marital Morality
Marital Morality and Contraception
A Renewed Principle of Human Sexuality and Contraception
Conclusion
6. Cohabitation and the Process of Marrying
Cohabitation in the Contemporary West
Betrothal and the Christian Tradition
Complementarity and Nuptial Cohabitation
Conclusion
7. Homosexuality
The Bible and Homosexuality
Magisterial Teaching on Homosexual Acts and Relationships
The Moral Sense of the Christian People and Homosexual Acts
The Morality of Homosexual Acts Reconsidered
Conclusion
8. Artificial Reproductive Technologies
Defining Artificial Reproductive Technologies
The CDF Instruction and Artificial Reproductive Technologies
Parental Complementarity, Relational Considerations, and Social Ethics
Conclusion
Epilogue
