Of Wild Things and Women's Vocations

Earlier, in Confronting Theological and Ideological Tensions, I mused over "the unique dignity and vocation of women," a phrase used by the conservative Catholic moralist George Weigel. The phrase came up in Weigel's Catholic Review article "How a nun built global TV empire," available online here under a different title. The column was mostly about the personal strengths of Mother Angelica, founder of an improbable TV empire, but it was also about how that woman's life story upbraids (in Weigel's words) "'Catholic feminism' as it is usually defined."

Not long after, I spoke up in The New Chastity in favor of "teaching our kids not just abstinence but good old-fashioned chastity." In so saying, I felt chastity, not heterosexuality, to be the prime directive from God, when it comes to sex — that gay partners-for-life can, once married, express their sexual orientation physically in ways that satisfy the mandate of chastity.

But in those prior posts, as well as in Color Me Confused ..., I also indicated that I'm subject to a great deal of personal confusion and inner turmoil about what I, as a serious Catholic Christian, ought to believe about sex and all the aspects of life that orbit around it.

Now I'd like to begin an informal series of posts to this blog in which I try to confront my confusion.


In this and coming posts I expect to take as a point of reference a book I found at Barnes & Noble yesterday, Christopher West's Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution. The brief 2004 paperback is a simplification of the author's earlier Theology of the Body Explained, a 500-page reference work on theology that is probably way over my head.

The topic before the house in West's book is John Paul II's elaborately worked out "theology of the body," wherein "the [late] Pope's vision of sexual love" will surely (in words the author borrows from Weigel; see p. 1) "compel a dramatic development of thinking about every major theme in the Creed" — the Nicene Creed, that is, whose list of shared religious beliefs ("I believe in One God, the Father ... ," etc.) we Catholics affirm at every Mass.

"Through the lens of marriage and the 'one flesh' union of spouses, the Pope says." writes West (p. 2), "we rediscover 'the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life'." It's not just about sex, in other words, not just about marriage, or procreation. It's fully about discovering the hidden nature of cosmic history.

"The union of the sexes," West continues (p. 3), "is a 'great mystery' that takes us ... into the heart of God's plan for the cosmos." West at this point refers the reader to the New Testament, to Ephesians 5:31-32: "'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh' [writes the Apostle Paul]. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church ... ."


I take that "mystery" to encompass the whole broad range of marital symbolism carried out through both biblical Testaments, Old and New. It all culminates in the Bible's final book, Revelation, in which the returned Christ is depicted as the "bridegroom" and the restored world as his "bride." I am, as it happens, already familiar with ways in which this symbolism can be taken to unify the entire Bible, almost as if it is a single work of literature with a single subtle theme.

For example, the late literary critic Northrop Frye wrote of this theme in Words with Power, in Chapter 6, "Second Variation: The Garden" (pp. 188-228). The chapter deals with sexual imagery in the Book of Genesis and its story of the Garden of Eden, imagery extended and worked out in the subsequent books of the Bible. Frye (who was a Christian but not a Catholic) says the overarching metaphor is one of hierogamy — sacred marriage — taking place between God and what God has created and saved: "The real New Testament hierogamy," writes Frye, "... is one in which the risen Christ is the Bridegroom and his redeemed people the Bride" (p. 224).

Frye insists that such "spiritual love expands from the erotic and does not run away from it. Here the union symbolized by the one flesh of the married state (Genesis 2:24) has expanded into the interpenetration of spirit" (p. 224). The use of the expression "expanded into" is intended to chastise traditional Bible interpreters who instead displace spiritual love from the erotic center Frye insists it has.


I'm not sure John Paul II and Northrop Frye agreed about the centrality of the erotic to the bridal and marital themes twining through the whole biblical "story" of creation and redemption. I expect to get into that subject in later posts; for now, the key thing is this: both of these thinkers would have it that you can't take the Bible and Christianity seriously and at the same time assume that what religion "says" about how we ought to conduct our sex lives is of, at most, marginal relevance.

I find that to be both good news and bad news.

It's good news in that it confirms something that resonates with me, deep, deep down: sexuality is real important. Sex is not a toy.

It's bad in that that's exactly what I'll tamely call the Wild Thing within me wants sex to be: a toy.

What a source of unending pleasure it is, for instance, to flirt with this pretty woman or that one, in the supermarket or a bookstore ... to imagine what it would be like to be with her ... maybe even to find out. Or not to find out, but to relish the notion that, as she might let me know with just a glance, she might be imagining me in just the same way.

Or is that a case of "lust in my heart"? For Jesus has told us: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28).

I don't know if a bookstore flirtation constitutes adultery in my heart, for, quite frankly, I don't understand quite what Jesus is getting at by that turn of phrase. Or, let me put it this way: how is it possible not to look at a desirable woman without thoughts of, shall we say, a lustful nature? Are such thoughts adultery? How can they be when they pop up unbidden, before I even have time to censor them?

As I proceed with these posts, I hope to find out the answer to such riddles. But, riddles aside, I admit that I don't usually censor such thoughts, even after I've had time to. Instead, I toy with the entrancing idea that they might, just might, come to glorious fruition.

That is, I use such flirtations betokening mutual attraction as an instrument of pleasure, a jolt of erogenous caffeine to the sex centers of my brain.

If I then say sex ought not be a toy, that admission alone would seem to make a liar of me. For that's exactly what my flirtations (not to mention other transgressions) involve: treating sex as a toy.


But I also have an entirely different reason for questioning the Pope's teaching on sexuality: I resist the notion that women have a unique dignity and vocation.

It's not the dignity part that bothers me, nor the vocation part. It's the part which says that what imparts special dignity to women is their calling, distinct from men's own.

An apt portion (n. 2333) of the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of "physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity" that keynote the two sexes. "Difference and complementarity": that sounds to gender relations what "separate but equal" once was to race relations.

"Difference and complementarity" sounds like a reason for men to put women on a pedestal: the "you complete me" kind of thing. "Unique dignity and vocation" sounds like a way to turn back the clock on feminist gains: "Stay home, honey. Give our babies what they most need in life, a mother's nurture."


And yet, and yet ... something deep down within me says a woman's dignity is unique.

Something at the core of my being says that the interpenetrating complementarity which can make of two persons "one flesh" is the name of the game, interpersonally, culturally and cosmically.

And there's this voice that won't shut up and keeps whispering in my ear, "The Pope is right about this stuff, and, Eric, you know it."

That voice is going to be the subject of plenty of posts yet to come. Stay tuned.