Sunday, June 12, 2005
A RESOLUTION TO THE DISAGREEMENT ABOUT SACRED SEX ?
In Dom's blog, Rosemarie posted a link to this passage from the Summa Theological where you will find:
This is what Augustine means by the words quoted, which do not exclude intensity of pleasure from the state of innocence, but ardor of desire and restlessness of the mind. Therefore continence would not have been praiseworthy in the state of innocence, whereas it is praiseworthy in our present state, not because it removes fecundity, but because it excludes inordinate desire. In that state fecundity would have been without lust.
Reply to Objection 4. As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 26): In that state "intercourse would have been without prejudice to virginal integrity; this would have remained intact, as it does in the menses. And just as in giving birth the mother was then relieved, not by groans of pain, but by the instigations of maturity; so in conceiving, the union was one, not of lustful desire, but of deliberate action."
If sexual relations prior to the fall were more like those in the animal kingdom, always expected to be generative and not intended to be unitive, then it would be reasonable to see them as sacred because God has a hand in the creation of new human life.
If that were true, and the fall brought about erotic interest in the sex act, which was subsequently regulated in marriage, and then called "unitive" at Vatican II, relations since the fall could no longer be considered sacred. The act would not change, but man's perception of the act and reaction to it would have changed.
This, of course, would still not make sexual relations "sacred" today. God would still be held apart from the carnal desire for the unitive act. That carnal act would be more akin to eating dessert, i.e., profane, than to that which we call sacred, its morality when engaged in within marriage notwithstanding.
