8 Propositions on Sex and the Church

Kim Fabricus has an amazing (sporadic) thought provoking series at Faith and Theology, and since imitation is one of the more sincere forms of flattery, err, praise. Here are some thoughts of mine own on the matter of sex in the modern world and the Church (with a little of the State thrown in at the end). Take these offerings with the usual caveats provided the source, i.e., me.

1. Contrary to the modern emphasis of dialog on sex and the Church either in conservative or the progressive mainline Protestant churches this is the only entry (of the nine) on homosexuality. When one cites the oft quoted notion “love the sin hate the sinner”, this should be accompanied in the same breath, with the something like that following as excerpted from the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (repeated by all prior to Eucharist every time in the Byzantine rite):
   

   I believe and confess, Lord, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. I also believe that this is truly Your pure Body and that this is truly Your precious Blood. Therefore, I pray to You, have mercy upon me, and forgive my transgressions, voluntary and involuntary, in word and deed, known and unknown. And make me worthy without condemnation to partake of Your pure Mysteries for the forgiveness of sins and for life eternal. Amen. [note: emphasis mine of course]

   First in this sense is to emphasize not that I am the worst of sinners (as in I am a bigger and more egregious sinner than Stalin, Lenin, or Hitler) but that, like the log in my eye/splinter in his, that it is mine own sin and dealing with that it is for each of our our first and foremost responsibility. Any sin associated with being single and non-celibate or being homosexual is between, Christ, my spiritual adviser, and me.

2. That being said the sexual excesses and preoccupation by and about all matters sexual by the people and culture of this modern age is one that the church needs to address. Not just a prevalance and free or ready availability the explicitly pornographic material, it’s as well, the easy assumption in culture that premarital sex should be and is the normative behavior for adults and young people alike. These matters and not the former are the real problem.
3. This age is not unique in that same said preoccupation. The Roman Empire in the early and late antiquity has similar preoccupations. Now, setting aside the possibility that wealth of a culture leads to that preoccupation, one should ask how did the early church deal with this problem. It strikes me as a not unlikely proposition that in a large measure the ascetic and monastic emphasis of the early church was exactly this response.
4. The Anglican Protestants included, the early reformers rejected much of those praxis of the Catholic rite and church they thought “primitive”, in differing measures. Fasting, celibacy, and anchoresis were among those things set aside. Prayer and fasting are things that all Christians might rightly be called to for these are things that exercise our spiritual muscles, as like an athlete we train and ready ourselves for the eschaton.
5. Celibacy is the lifetime calling for only the few. In today’s sex-drenched culture and material opulence insisting on celibacy for the Roman presbytery is an issue for that church, for which they suffer with a scarcity of priests. Celibacy is however the calling for all who are not married. This gives a church and the society at large a number of benefits including: spiritual exercise like the above for the young and a strong incentive to get married and settle down. Modern Western liberal society has been experiencing a demographic crises and catastrophically shrinking birth rates.
6. Sex in the presence of birth control (or an assumption of abortion) and that without the same are fundamentally different things. Secular society would like to forget this, it is important that those in the Church do not.
7. The modern evangelical and protestant churches having let go of asceticism need to recover it. As well as the Orthodox and Catholic need to strengthen it. The question is how? If the leaders remind us that these practices are crutches, spiritual aids (as this post considers). That might help. But this message needs to hit the mainstream. Religious leaders get publicity in the mainstream press when they fall in some way. What we need to do perhaps, is that within the Christian community we need to celebrate the opposite, i.e., give publicity to those in our midst for ascetic achievement.
8. In a post on sex, I’ve spent too much time talking about asceticism and celibacy. Largely that’s because of the particular cultural setting in which this is written. However, it should be said that the Puritan’s had a lot of it right. That is they got their reputation for prudishness because they stomped down hard in their communities on extra- or pre-marital sex but … at the same time they celebrated, encourage, and one might say reveled in sex within marriage (see #5 above).