Further to my previous posts trying to "break apart" the difficulties the Church seems to be experiencing in getting her message across in the matters of human sexuality...

I had written previously: "In my next post I would like to break apart further what I have written here to discuss the purely temporal considerations concerning the consequences of sexual acts. What I am endeavouring to do in approaching the subject in this way is to leave standing in stark relief the considerations which, it seems to me, ARE important in the theological realm."

Looking at the AIDS epidemic causing so much devastation in the world today, and particularly in the third world, I cannot see how any person could not be drawn to the conclusion that any society, for its own protection, does need to create laws, social customs, taboos or rites of passage that place some curb on the unrestrained human sexual urge. I would argue that such laws, customs, taboos or rites of passage need not necessarily be derived from any theological law or moral law. They are purely the same sort of "necessary law" as any society needs someone to lay down a definitive rule as to whether, in this place, we are going to drive on the right hand side or the left hand side of the road. In the natural order of sexuality we can observe from other species, as well as from what goes on in reproduction at the inanimate or less biologically sophisticated levels of the cosmos that there are a set of "rules" that operate to regulate the reproduction, transmission, and evolution of new life.

One could argue that, at the natural level, it is self-evident that there is some sort of hierarchy of laws and rules that operate at the biological, chemical and, in the higher primates and species, at the emotional level that tend to bring order into the business of how life is organised and how it reproduces itself.

What I have written in the foregoing paragraph might seem to be self-evident and some might question why in the dickens I have wasted the energy on making such glaringly obvious observations.

Going back to the very beginning of where I am "coming from" in my arguments, I remind myself, that my ultimate quest is two-fold: (a) in trying to understand what my ultimate purpose, and destination, is as a spiritual being; and (b) in trying to understand the "manner" or "way" or "the rules" by which, or through which, I – the individual – reach the things mentioned in (a). At the society-wide level, the Church exists principally as an organisation to assist the individual, and the community, to discern what (a) and (b) are.

I do not believe it is self-evident to a lot of people, either in the Church or in wider society, that there is a significant difference between the laws, social customs, taboos or rites of passage that a society might need at the purely temporal and social level to organise its affairs and the higher level theological and moral imperatives that a sophisticated human person might need who has begun to discern that life in fact does have such a thing as a "theological or moral objective". It is self-evident in society that many people simply would not have a clue that they in fact have a "theological or moral objective". Just go out into a shopping centre and ask a few people: "do you have a theological or moral objective?" If most of them didn't punch you on the nose, they would certainly look at you in a funny way for even asking such a question. Young children, for example, would not understand what the question even meant. It takes time as a human being to begin to appreciate that life does have a "higher purpose" simply than eating, sleeping, farting, belching, and smiling in the way a baby does.

As I said in the second paragraph, what I am gradually trying to do in this series of posts is arrive at the place where the "laws, social customs, taboos or rites of passage" that are important in the theological sense are standing in stark relief to even the most unsophisticated individual.

There is so much to write about on this subject and, in this series of posts, I am trying to condense down a whole lot of complex thinking to draw out particular general points. In this post, the general point I am trying to make is that the human family generally recognises the need that we all have to regulate our sexual behaviours. One doesn't need any "high falutin'" morality or "what God says" to come into the equation as to why this needs to be so. Society recognises that there are health considerations, and that children require a long period of nurture if they are to fully achieve their potentials as adult individuals and as citizens.

In one of my earlier posts I wrote: <<The Church ought to give itself a medal that it has managed to so successfully screw up holistic thinking about the relationships between men and women and turn it into a power play to such an extent that common sense has flown right out the door for millions of people across the face of the earth. Through our own feelings of self-loathing and guilt we have turned millions of people away from being able to see their maleness and femaleness in a balanced and holistic way.

Some people grasp onto rules and worship them as though they are God Himself. The rules are not God. They are a means by which we can start to plumb the depths of the Mystery that is God. It is God who is worshipped not the rules by which we might reach into the Mystery.

Rather than giving people guilty consciences and great long lists of thou shalt nots, we need a new list of what thou shalt do in the spirit with which Christ approached his work. Instead of giving fear-filled lessons on the negative sides of sex, why is the Church not leading the world in showing people how to express their God-given sexuality and love in the fullest of ways, including positive lessons about the sexual acts themselves? Yes, there are things we need to be careful of regarding this at times frighteningly powerful passion that lives within each of us but, at the same time, there is much of the Divine and stuff that is wholesome and good in this most beautiful of the human attributes. This is not a call to laissez faire attitudes or indifference, neither is it a call to deny that there is a sixth commandment. It is call to all of us to get all the commandments into a much more holistic and balanced perspective.>>

What I am trying to do in this series of posts is approach the sixth commandment issues from a completely new direction. I am arguing that most people do not need the Church screaming down their necks what God might think about the way they use their sexuality. Those things can be discerned from other places without the need to drag God, theology, or morality into the equation. They can be arrived at from common sense. What I would argue is that one of the reasons why "common sense" has been abandoned in large sectors of society (illustrated, for example, by the scale of the AIDS epidemic) has been because some people ‚ and particularly the Catholic Church ‚ have been trying to beat the world over the head with an overly sophisticated theological argument when they would have done far better to have argued the case merely at the level of common sense.

In my next post on this subject I am going to try and explore the places where the theological arguments ARE important. I believe the Church does need to recapture control of the discussion that goes on in society about human sexuality but not as a "power thing" for herself but because the human sexuality question is connected somehow intimately to the very highest objectives of what "being human" is all about. Quite apart from all the mundane questions and regulations that a society needs in place for its own good about sexual behaviours, what I am arguing, is that there are also a separate set of moral or theological imperatives that do need to be treated quite distinctly. Grahame Fallon directs our attention to this is his frequent references to our need for "an apprenticeship in self-mastery". In the next part of the discussion I hope we might be able to explore this more.

What I will be arguing is that if the Church is really serious about seizing back "the moral high ground" in civilisation she needs (a) to move much of debate about human sexuality back down to the level of "common sense" or "common law" and, (b) at the same time, she does need to delineate far more clearly the sorts of things that Grahame (and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) would point us to where questions concerning our sexual nature do rightly, and necessarily, intersect very directly with our theological nature (ie our relationship to the spiritual or Divine order). The ground has become muddy for too many people.

I do want to make a couple of other practical points in this post but I will post them as an addendum to this main argument.