Margaret Farley – Rev. Dr. Paul Pace SJ

Just Love: A framework for Christian Sexual ethics MARGARET A. FARLEY

Chapter 1: Opening the Questions

 Finding the Way Why we are here New maps Problems with the terrain  The Task

5. Just Love and Just Sex: Preliminary Considerations  Sources for Christian sexual ethics  Scripture  Tradition  Secular disciplines of knowledge  Contemporary experiences

 We have a clearer insight on all sources, but also of their limitations. We try to coalesce insights from all sources

Sources for Christian sexual ethics: the Bible  Very little concrete detail  OT: related to community Procreation Within a patriarchal context + stories of dissent, eg Song of Songs, Ruth

 NT: greatest commandment is love Call to conversion Radically renewed relations Replies to specific questions  Yet Bible is essential: love is more central than sexuality, life more than sexuality  The whole of Biblical witness is probed

Sources for Christian sexual ethics: Tradition • Complements Scripture, helps us understand it • Yet different, sometimes contradictory strands so that there is need for discernment here too • Essential for our discussion: Christian community’s understanding of Christian life is not only a fund of wisdom but somehow revelatory of God’s plans • Obviously in a discerning way • Not just ‘reading off’ • Nor dismissed because of changes eg religious freedom

Sources for Christian sexual ethics: Secular disciplines

• Much information that gives us a kind of ‘access’ to reality • They are essential too for our quest • Still some disagreement • Much more aware of ambiguity of most of our sexual reality • Need for exegesis and interpretation of information and of claims

Sources for Christian sexual ethics: Experience • All the above are experience, but • We are referring to how things are ‘felt’, experienced, what sensations, feelings, insights • Experiences can be • Unique • Shared

• Most problematic: socially constructed, to what extent are they generalisable…

• Yet it challenges all the above in a very real way: they must ‘ring true’ in people’s lives

LOVE • ‘In ethics, Love is the problem and not the solution!’

• What is love? The basic norm is the • Reality of the beloved • Reality of the lover • Reality of the relationship

• The possibility of mistakes always exists

Framework for a Sexual Ethic: Just sex Let us use JUSTICE as basis for our framework: • Not justice and love but • Justice in loving and in the actions that flow from love • Many ways of understanding justice (giving others their due): • Persons and groups of persons are to be affirmed according to their concrete reality, actual and potential

Norms for just sex: 1. Do no unjust harm • The fact that persons are persons grounds the experience of obligation in their regards • ‘Sexuality has to do with vulnerability. Eros, the passion for the other, the passion that accompanies the wish for sexual expression, makes one vulnerable…capable of being wounded’. (Karen Lebacqz) • Precisely because sexuality is so intimate to persons, vulnerability exists in our embodiment and in the depths of our spirits

Norms for just sex: 2. Free consent • This is central to the treating of persons as autonomous and free • No violence, of any sort • But also, no deceit, no betrayal • Promise-keeping, truth telling • Also respect for privacy, for ‘bodily integrity: do not touch, invade or use unless an individual freely consents

Norms for just sex: 3. Mutuality • • • •

Active receptivity, receptive activity A mutuality of desire and embodied union It has not always been so Sexual partners need to discover their threshold of mutuality: it is part of their moral task to discover their partner’s threshold • Dangers of taking it for granted, not realising it is something that can be perfected, that it needs to be worked for and demands openness and humility

Norms for just sex: 4. Equality • Equality of power • This rules out regarding the partner as a property, commodity • Equality need not be, may seldom be, perfect equality,. Nevertheless it has to be close enough, balanced enough, for each to appreciate the uniqueness and difference of the other, and for each to respect the other as ends in themselves

Norms for just sex: 5. Commitment • Tradition saw it as a central quality , it protects the vulnerability of the process, and of the persons • Sexuality is of such importance in human life that it needs to be nurtured, sustained, as well as disciplined, channeled and controlled • Relationships change, and they must be sustained to enable persons to know and be known, love and be loved • Sustain either through novelty of persons or through life-long commitment

Norms for just sex: 6. Fruitfulness • Openness to other life beyond partners, not an egoisme a deux • If a relationship is completely sterile in every way, it threatens the love and the relationship itself • What would this mean for infertile heterosexual couples, or for those who choose not to have children, or for gays and lesbians, for single persons • In countless ways, not necessarily reproduction.

Even with children, it does not necessarily end there.

Norms for just sex: 7. Social justice • Sexual partners have always to be concerned about not harming ‘third parties’.

• In this norm, the focus is on the larger social world, especially gender equality and women’s rights • But it also includes racial violence, development, globalisation,…

CDF judgement June 5, 2012 With this Notification, the CDF expresses profound regret that a member of an Institute of Consecrated Life, Sr. Margaret A. Farley, affirms positions that are in direct contradiction with Catholic teaching in the field of sexual morality. The Congregation warns the faithful that her book Just Love. A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics is not in conformity with the teaching of the Church. Consequently it cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue