Ombre e Luci - In a few words, what is sexuality?
The term "sexuality" brings together different things: sensations and gestures, pleasure and bodily functions. I prefer to speak of "sexual life"—a richer term, because it acknowledges that we are living beings and that we are sexed, meaning we are different as men and women. Every person, married or celibate, has a sexual life.
The emotions we feel, our desires, and also our drives, fantasies, and dreams—all of these are part of our sexual life. The appeal of another person, their face, their beauty, their voice, their eyes, the pleasure of being with them—all of this belongs to sexual life. So too does the fact that we do not have sexual relations with the first person we meet, the fact that we live in continence, in chastity, which is respect for the difference and distance between our bodies. Sexual life is not the same as sexual activity. The two things are confused far too easily.
What does it mean to be a man, to be a woman?
First, it means accepting that we cannot be everything, that part of humanity escapes us. If we are women, we miss what men experience; if we are men, we miss what women experience. It means aspiring to encounter the other, recognizing every difference—including the difference between the sexes—as a value. Every man and every woman were created in the image of God. We need both male and female to complete the image of God. This difference opens us to the other sex, and also to God.
Today people speak of a "right to sexuality." Does exercising this right guarantee happiness?
I'm not sure I understand this way of framing a right. Because it would mean that someone else bears an obligation. I would rather speak of a legitimate desire for physical pleasure, for fullness. Whoever has never known physical pleasure misses an important dimension of life.
But there are two extremes to avoid.
Believing that freeing our impulses leads to happiness and fulfillment
Today there is a kind of drive theory that we must look at critically. Simply satisfying our impulses can lead to an exaltation of the body that makes us regress, prevents us from growing, and works against our freedom. It does not allow us to reach desire, which necessarily passes through renunciation. It is easy to see that there is a difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure can be sad. By contrast, there can be joy in renunciation. Today people think only of their own satisfaction and not of the benefit of renouncing. The real question is how to transform sexual energy into a richer life, toward desire and toward love.
The other extreme is to systematically deny our impulses.
These exist within us, and total renunciation could bring strong frustrations and physical tensions.
All education consists of finding balance between these two extremes.
What matters is helping each person discover the truth of their sexual life and fill it with freedom. We can hope that everyone discovers authentic and genuine pleasures with their body as it is, with the acts they are capable of living. Physical pleasure is not necessarily the union of bodies. Embracing, being together with friends or family—these too are forms of pleasure. Between holding hands and the union of bodies, there are many degrees.
Sexual life is often separated from romantic love. Why?
Because we lose sight of the calling of sexual life, which is a covenant between two people, a mutual gift of two free persons. The union of bodies is and must be the expression of this gift. This is the heart of Christian thought as expressed by John Paul II. This gift brings happiness. It is not based on pleasure, but on joy. Joy is born from a true encounter between two people. The human being finds their truth in this gift, which is also reception. To reach happiness is to experience life as a gift at every level—spiritual and physical. And indeed, the gestures of love between a man and a woman express mutual gift and reception. Bodies are made for this. Whereas masturbation often represents a regression to an immature level of personality.
Can one be happy when marriage is not an option?
Being a couple is not the absolute of sexual life. We are not half of a couple searching for the other half. Each person, in their wholeness, has their own vocation. Besides, married or celibate, we all experience the solitude of existence. But celibates live this experience in a particular and irreducible way. Happiness consists in living this solitude as inhabited by a presence, by an inner wellspring, in the depths of oneself. This wellspring helps us discover that we are absolutely unique. Our life has value not only because there are no people like us, but because we are the fruit of one unique and gratuitous act. We are not in this world by chance, accident, or mistake. The source of our life is God, who loves and wants us to love. To experience this in one's own body—whether in a situation of so-called normalcy or disability—means discovering a source of joy and peace.
Moreover, it can bring us joy to belong to a group, a community, a movement, or a service. This form of fraternal and open covenant has much in common with a family.
Unmarried people can in some ways live gift and relationship even more fully than married people. They are more available. They can also live other forms of fruitfulness beyond physical procreation—spiritual fatherhood and motherhood of great richness. They can allow others to be born into a new dimension of life.
How valid is a marriage if the responsibility of those entering it is not complete? And if there is no openness to procreation?
As a moral theologian, I believe there can be a valid marriage for a person with intellectual or mental disability. A person may not bear complete responsibility in some important aspects of their life—particularly intellectual or social aspects—yet be fully responsible in what concerns relationship and commitment within a specific relationship. As for procreation, if there are objective reasons that make it undesirable, it seems to me that the "undesirable" becomes the "impossible." We are then in an exceptional situation: the couple might not desire children not from a refusal of fruitfulness or selfishness, but for objective reasons. In this case I believe the value of this union, this covenant, can be recognized. The first fruit of love is love itself. When two people help each other live, help each other bear disability responsibly, are born together into life, this is already a form of fruitfulness for the couple.
In our time, procreation is encouraged to satisfy the mother's desire for motherhood.
It is grave to view a child as a means to achieve the parent's fulfillment. It instrumentalizes the child. The child then serves to satisfy the adult's desire, to allow them to realize themselves. The question of the desire to have children must be posed first of all in relation to the child and their wellbeing. If someone expresses this desire, we must examine their reasons. There are profound spiritual reasons, such as the desire to give. But there can be less noble desires: the desire, for instance, to prolong oneself, to deny death, to forget one's limits by living vicariously through another. This can be a flight from oneself.
Now, disabled people often live in anguish. Anguish is the expression of a void. When all desires—like joy and procreation—are founded on emptiness, they become seductive. If there is a foundation of fullness, they become relative. To overcome one's infantile desires means to fully assume one's human condition. This can be an opportunity for spiritual growth to live one's existence fully. But this can happen only if one has the consciousness that one's existence has value.
"You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you...I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands." (Is 43:4; 49:16).
- Saverio Lacroix, 2003