"Positive Sexuality"

"Positive Sexuality"

If I can fault Catholic tradition in one area, it’s that there’s never been a single century in two thousand years when we have had positive teaching on our sexuality, or on our emotional and bodily selves. Despite the Song of Songs and a few enlightened saints, there’s never been general positive teaching on how to integrate our bodies, minds and feelings. So a lot of us, even the clergy, are emotional babies. We’re reacting and over-reacting, feeling, not knowing how to feel, repressing feelings, and therefore getting lots of ulcers, alcoholism and depression. We had Logic 101 in seminary; we had Metaphysics 101. Where was Emotions 101?

Affection, intellect and will: All three of these must be open to God. God can speak to us through our affections, through our emotions, through our experience of our bodiliness. We’ve allowed ourselves continuously to name our bodily functions, our passions, as humanity’s “fallen” part. Yet our emotions are no more fallen than intellect or will! Maybe we good Christians don’t sleep around, but a lot of us – priests and lay – go to bed with power, greed and superiority. That keeps us just as far from God as any sin of the flesh.

from The Price of Peoplehood