A Message to Prudes and Libertines

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 8/1/02)

The humorist James Thurber once published a book with the title Is Sex Necessary? Good question that. Americans are still fumbling for the answer.

Confusion about sexual matters is hardly new. Adam and Eve, before the Fall, were exceptions, but murky thinking on sex has been the rule for the vast majority of human beings ever since.

Here's a small illustration.

One of my daughters and her boyfriend play on a team in a softball league. (The team hasn't been having one of its best seasons, but no big deal — everybody's having fun.)

During a recent game my daughter's friend was coaching at third base when a teammate came sliding in on a close play. It must have been one of those knock-the-breath-out-of-you slides, because the runner was slow getting up. The third-base coach stepped forward to give him a hand.

"Don't touch him, don't touch him!" the umpire shouted.

Why not?

Because in this league, the umpire explained, there's a rule against same-sex touching.

So long to high-fives, I guess.

Trivial though the incident was, it underlined an important point: On the matter of sex, society has been growing steadily crazier for some time. Now extremes are cropping up on all sides.

That's no surprise. The Puritan and the libertine are cousins under the skin. Eccentric lurches toward prudery are predicable in an age of permissiveness, when the Supreme Court holds — as it did in the term just past — that virtual kiddie porn on the Internet enjoys free speech protection, while supermarket magazine racks blossom with stuff that would make a Nero or a Caligula blush.

The same pattern is visible in reactions to the clergy sex abuse scandal. Media which otherwise favor an anything-goes approach to sex play the role of stern enforces of morality. Bishops adopt a definition of sex abuse so broad that it covers even what Jimmy Carter called "lust in the heart."

Father Richard John Neuhaus, the eloquent editor of First Things, makes the salutary point that "saints are not saints by virtue of not being tempted, but by virtue of grace in overcoming temptation." But our schizoid culture seems determined to act out its belief that the only thing more blameworthy than being tempted is not giving in.

There is no easy solution to these aberrations. Courts, legislatures, media and even churches manifest a confusion that mixes up the decent and indecent, the innocent and the corrupt. Same-sex touching in a softball game is forbidden. But judges in Massachusetts and New Jersey are moving toward decisions that could lead to forcing same-sex 'marriage' on the nation.

Although some of this is hypocrisy, a lot of it comes from muddled thinking. We do well to turn to Pope John Paul II for advice. Few people speak with more appreciation for human sexuality — and more realism about it — than he. Secular conventional wisdom dismisses the pope as totally out of it on this topic. As so often, secular conventional wisdom is wrong.

"In the Christian view," John Paul writes, "chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or lack of esteem for it: rather it signifies spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness."

He counsels training and practice in the use of reason and free will to guide sex to its proper ends — love and procreation — and makes the point that, in a special way, the training in question is a duty for parents. It's a message both the prudes and the libertines need to hear.

Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C.

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