body theology, Books and Resources, Catholic Church, Papacy

Margaret Farley and Catholic Sexual Teaching: “Grave Harm to the Faithful”?

A favourite phrase of the Vatican when castigating those of whom they disapprove, is that they are “confusing the faithful”, used for example against New Ways Ministry. When they released their now notorious “notification” against Sr Margaret Farley’s book on sexual ethics. “Just Love”, they did not use quite the same phrase - the Notification is far too formal. Instead, they used a much stronger claim:

the above-mentioned book contained erroneous propositions, the dissemination of which risks grave harm to the faithful.

Clearly, if the book really does present grave harm, then that is a serious matter indeed - but is the allegation sound? I am not a trained theologian, and lack the scholarship for any formal analysis of Farley’s work, or the Vatican’s verdict, but I have done a simple test of my own, and find the reverse conclusion - the “confusion”, and the “grave harm” that the CDF warns against - is caused by the CDF itself.

Here’s the test - an examination of the sources quoted. There are only seven references quoted in the CDF Notification, all to the Vatican’s own publications (the Catechism, earlier CDF documents, and canon law), or to a handful of Biblical verses.

1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2352; cf; CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Declaration Persona humana on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics (December 29, 1975), n. 9: AAS 68 (1976), 85-87.
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2358.
3 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2357; cf. Gn 19:1-29; Rm 1:24-27; I Cor 6:10; 1 Tm 1:10; CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Declaration Persona humana, n. 8: AAS 68 (1976), 84-85; ID., Letter Homosexualitatis problema on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (October 1, 1986): AAS 70 (1987), 543-554.
4 CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons (June 3, 2003), n. 11: AAS 96 (2004), 48.
5 Ibid., n. 8: AAS 96 (2004), 46-47.
6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1646-1647, 2382; cf. Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-9; Mk 10:9; Lk 16:18; I Cor 7:10-11; SECOND ECUMENICAL VATICAN COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes on the Church in the Modern World, nn. 48-49; Code of Canon Law, can. 1141; JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (November 22, 1981), n. 13: AAS 74 (1982), 93-96.
7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1650; cf. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, n. 84: AAS 74 (1982), 184-186; CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Letter Annus Internationalis Familiae Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by the Divorced and Remarried Members of the Faithful (September 14, 1994): AAS 86 (1994), 974-979.

This could be fine, if only the CDF statements on human sexuality were widely accepted and reliable - but they are not. The entire edifice rests largely on a single, core principle: that any genital sexual activity must be open to procreation, so automatically excluding any possibility of approval for masturbation, contraception, or homosexual intercourse. This core proposition has been widely rejected by ordinary Catholics - and by Catholic theologians, priests and many bishops. Farley notes, for instance (as others have done) that a worldwide majority of Catholic moral theologians disagreed with the verdict of Humanae Vitae.

The fact that so many Catholics and theologians disagreed, of course, does not in itself make the teaching wrong, but there’s a far more fundamental problem. Catholic teaching more broadly pays lip service to the importance of paying due attention to the findings of science, both natural and human sciences - but on sexuality, it does not. The natural sciences of human and animal biology, the social sciences of psychology, sociology, and social anthropology, as well as the testimony of human history and simply lived experience, all demonstrate that there is much, much more to sexuality than simple procreation. The problem is that reducing to a simple set of mechanistic rules, summarized as “don’t do it, unless you’re married and ready to accept pregnancy” is so out of keeping with the available evidence, that the rule book is simply ignored - and therein lies great danger. For when we discard the rules offered by the Church as untenable, there is grave danger of abandoning all constraints on sexuality, accepting that in matters of sex, anything goes. But surely, we do need reasonable, responsible standards against which to evaluate our behaviour.

Into the gap left by the “approved” Catholic teaching, steps Margaret Farley’s attempt to introduce sanity. In marked contrast to the CDF”s blatant disregard of its own exhortation to pay attention to science, she has consulted widely findings from not just several branches of science, but also biblical scholars and moral theologians from Catholic, Protestant and Jewish traditions, secular historians and the historical development of church teaching, feminist perspectives, philosophy and more. (See the list that follows, for the extensive list of publications she references in the notes just to the introductory chapter, “Opening the Questions”)

The CDF claim that “Just Love” represents “grave harm to the faithful” rests entirely on the obvious observation that it does not accord with the Catholic Catechism. Well, no. It is not intended to present (or even to dispute) the Catholic Catechism, as should be clear from the subtitle, “A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics”. Christian, not Catholic, and a framework, not a prescription. The CDF may fuss and fume over Farley and her book, but faced with a choice between widely discredited, disordered CDF doctrine, and a thoughtful, evidence - based analysis that Just Love provides, I know which I would prefer to base my own standards on.

Works named by Margaret Farley in the notes to Chapter 1, Just Love.

  1. Mary Rose D’Angelo, Women in Luke/Acts: A Redactional View
  2. Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, Philosophy and Sex
  3. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
  4. David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America
  5. Eugene B Borowitz, Choosing a Sex Ethic: A Jewish Inquiry
  6. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality
  7. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter
  8. Lisa Sowle Cahill, Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics
  9. L William Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today.
  10. Charles E Curran, ed., Contraception and Holiness: The Catholic Predicament
  11. Charles C Curran, Contemporary Problems in Moral Theology
  12. Charles C Curran, Tensions in Moral Theology
  13. Elliot Dorf, Love Your Neighbour as Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics.
  14. Henry Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex
  15. John D’Emilio and Estelle B Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
  16. John C Faut, ed.. Hidden History: The State, Society and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe
  17. David M Feldman, Marital Relations, Birth Control and Abortion in Jewish Law
  18. Clellan S. Ford and Frank A, Beach, Patterns of Sexual Behaviour
  19. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol 1: Introduction
  20. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol 2: The Use of Pleasure
  21. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol 3: The Care of the Self
  22. Sigmund Freud, The Taboo of Virginity
  23. AndréGuindon, The Sexual Creators, An Ethical Proposal for Concerned Christians
  24. Beverly Wildung Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminine Social Ethics
  25. Richard Hays, Relations Natural and Unnatural: A Response to Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1
  26. Carter Heyward, Our Passion for Justice
  27. Christine E Gudorf, Body, Sex and Pleasure
  28. Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Encyclical Humanae Vitae: A Sign of Contradiction
  29. Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference
  30. Alison M Jagger and Susan R Bordo, eds., Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing
  31. Philip S Keane, Sexual Morality: A Catholic Perspective
  32. Alfred C Kinsey et al, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male
  33. Alfred C Kinsey et al, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female
  34. Anthony Kosnick et al., Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought
  35. Dale B Martin, Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans I:18-32
  36. William Masters and Virginia Johnson, Human Sexual Response
  37. Wayne A Meeks. The Origins of Christian Morality: the First Two Centuries.
  38. John Giles Milhaven, Christian Evaluations of Sexual Pleasure
  39. James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology
  40. John T Noonan Jr, Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists
  41. David Novak, Jewish Social Ethics
  42. Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family
  43. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again in Sinai, Judaism from a Feninist Perspective
  44. Kathy Preiss and Christina Simmonds, Passion and Power: Sexuality in History
  45. Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace
  46. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenonological Ontology
  47. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Phenomonology of Perception
  48. Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality
  49. Alan Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex
  50. Domna C Stanton, ed: Discources of Sexuality: from Aristotle to AIDS
  51. Phylis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality
  52. Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings. Myths and Modern Sexualities

 

 

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1 comment for “Margaret Farley and Catholic Sexual Teaching: “Grave Harm to the Faithful”?”

  1. Advocatus Diaboli
    June 27, 2012 at 4:21 am

    well, first, a bit of a correction I believe is in order. The vatican’s “favorite phrase” of ‘confusing the faithful’ is not for those they simply disapprove of. It is for those who clearly teach something OTHER than what the official church authorities teach. The basis of the claim is that there is only one legitimate authority in church matters, the collective episcopacy in union lead by the bishop in rome with the weight of scripture and tradition. Basically anyone who teaches something that is different than traditional orthodox catholic teaching is “confusing the faithful”. for example, the priest who taught my father that masturbation is not a sin literally confused the faithful because my mother was taught that it IS a sin. To this day, 20 something years later, she is still confused and bothered by being given such explicit and irreconcilable teaching by the church.
    In other words, anyone who teaches something that can be interpreted as heterodox or unorthodox can FULLY EXPECT to be told they are confusing the faithful.

    As far as grave harm is concerned, you and the CDF are talking about two completely different things. You are talking about things like harm “emotional well being, self esteem, and happiness”, where as the CDF is talking about harm as in damnation due to being led off the path through the rationalization of sin. Liberal catholics seem to be completely focused on making things as happy and pleasant and fulfilling in this life, while the actual catholic religion’s sole reason for existing is to teach how to attain eternal salvation and resurrection. I do not think that ascetic saints who fasted intensely and flagellated their bodies would qualify for “happy people in tune with their sexuality and emotional fulfillment and well being”. Oddly enough it is only through the near abandonment of “earthly happiness” that one attains salvation in either historical Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism. I think the church needs to start having a serious discussion on what the actual point and aim of the church is. Historically, it has been the view that teaching someone the truth about sin and salvation is a harsh but FAR MORE LOVING ACT than to just tell them what they want to hear and make everything pleasant for everyone - like a PARENT teaches a child even if the child doesn’t like what the parent says - it has not been called “Holy Mother Church” for nothing. Remember, the aim of the church is to TEACH and SPREAD the truth so that people may find salvation, it is not a human-happiness centered enterprise. It is not a modernist institution - you can tell if something is modernist or not by a simple test: modernity abhors discomfort.

    just looking at her list, I do have to say that she has assembled quite an eclectic group of thinkers, many with fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable views. I’d be interested to see exactly how should puts them all together; up front Ill go a head and say that I am skeptical that it is intellectually sound (and by that I mean that it is likely to be a bunch of rationalization, fallacies, mixing and matching, and “reinterpreting” data and philosophical statements that all looks nice on the surface but is really not feasible upon in-depth analysis), a bunch of sentimentalism. However, i will reserve judgment until I read it, if I can ever find the time - she just may surprize me.

    Reply

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