Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Pope Benedict - A Stand Against Casual Sex
I hear that Pope Benedict is about to get a media consultant in the form of an Italian movie maker. A lot of people have expressed displeasure with Pope Benedicts. They see him as too strict after the genial Pope John Paul II. To be fair, he was following a Pope who is going to go down as one of the five greatest all time, along with St. Peter (duh), Pope Leo, Pope Gregory, and Pope John 23 (being a Vatican 2 guy).
But people misread both JP2 and Pope Benedict. John Paul was solidly Chirstocentric in all he said and did, and his philosophy was backed by the powerful and detailed theolgy of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict). The fact remains that the Roman Catholic Church of the past 30 years is not going to go silently into the goodnight, not without stating powerful truth in direct ways
For his New Year’s message Benedict has attacked the “banalisation of sex” and the loss of hope among young people.
I have not yet gotten through his new encyclical, Spe Salvi which translated is saved (Salvi) by hope (Spe). But he has touched on the great defecit of the 21st century modern West - a lack of hope. In the East and in the areas of traditional religion, hope is a false lie, since all of life is in the hands of the gods or fate, and life is but playing out of a chess piece in the board of the world. Against this message of fatalism and determinism, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of God’s offer of new life and new destiny, has been a huge change, and in a growing number of places in the world, a message to be embraced for the first time.
But here in the West, we have lost hope in the idea of hope. We see nothing better out there for ourselves. And in part this is because we have accepted the idea that all of life is just one great sensory experience. And, as our bodies become more and more adapted to such sensory experiences, those things that once gave us a “hit” become more and more dull. Whether it be the adrenaline of going straight down a Double Black Diamond, the injection of heroine, or more and more sexual experiences.
Sexuality has lost its great meaning. We have been told that sex is good, should be engaged in early and often. But sex without the foundational commitment, the foundational openness that comes from knowing that one is accepted by the other, loved, and that your sexual partner has all intentions of remaining with you for the whole of their life - well then it simply becomes a rush of hormones, a mix of internal drugs and the fantasty of emotional imagination. But it can never be true intimacy, which is what we ultiamtely desire. It is just an injection - an action without meaning.
So, Pope Benedict has, by attacking both sexual trivilization and the loss of hope has attacked the great lie of the secular modern world - it is all about what you experience. But experience without meaning is like a diet of cotton candy. It satisfies and excites for a period of time. But it is not an answer to a sustainable life. It is all flash and no meaning. And a life without meaning is a life without hope. It is a life where even those great things - sex, frienship, good food and drink, great books become like a life of attending grade school orchestras, where the din of every note drives into ones heart that the sooner this is over the better.
