Grace & Peace!
If one goes out on dates, but without the intention of becoming engaged or married, then what is the point of the date?
(Why pre-heat the oven, if you aren’t going to prepare and then cook the meal?)
jmcrae, I had responded to Cecelia’s similar protest earlier. Here’s what I wrote to her:
…I find it disturbing that marriage must be construed as the end of all intimate romantic relationships. This suggests that such intimacy is impossible or immoral outside of marriage. I would argue it the other way 'round: that because of the sacrament of marriage and what it means–what it symbolizes in terms of God’s relationship with his people and with the entirety of creation represented by the new creation, the Church–*all romantic and intimate relationships receive and have value and are capable of virtue even if they do not lead to marriage. *Which is to say that even chaste, intimate, romantic homosexual relationships have value because they share in the charism of marriage by virtue of their chastity. I feel that this is what the catechism
wants to say or is even
trying to say when it ends the section on homosexuality with a note on chastity and when it discusses marriage as the supreme instance of chastity, but with all of the language of disorder, the message becomes unrecognizably distorted if not impossible to actually articulate.
For me, the consequence of your thought here is that human intimacy generally becomes proscribed or enters the philosophical dead-zone-twilight-area of hypothetical intimacy or, as the catechism might word it, “disinterested friendship.” To be honest, I have no idea what “disinterested friendship” means, though it suggests to me something like a “professional friendship,” lacking completely in any sort of intimacy. If by “disinterested” the catechism means “unmercenary,” that I understand, but I am
genuinely interested in the lives of all my friends. I have love and concern for them. None of my friendships are disinterested, insofar as I understand that term. I fear that when we basically say, “there is the relationship of marriage which contains all romance and all intimacy, and then there is everything else,” I fear that we fail to do justice to the many sorts of intimacy and relationships in our lives which actually reflect the virtues of marriage.
Throwing all caution to the wind, I’m going to bring up Jonathan and David. Before we go further, I’m not interested in proving that they were gay. I don’t think that label has anything to do with them. Moreover, I’m not interested to prove that they had sex. There are arguments pro and con. But both are immaterial to me. What is clear to me from scripture is the following:
–The two covenanted with each other such that their souls were knit together (“the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul…Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle”).
–Saul appears to have interpreted their intimacy as being of a sexual nature (this is not evidence that it was so, only that Saul
believed it was: “do not I know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother’s nakedness?”)
–Their relationship included kissing (“and they kissed one another and wept with one another, until David exceeded”). By the by, the word for “exceeded” is variously translated, but means, in short, to grow (i.e., as a child grows, as hair grows, as someone grows in renown)…
–David famously claimed that Jonathan’s love was more valuable to him than the love of a woman (“very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women”).
Again, I do not believe that calling David and Jonathan gay gets us anywhere interesting, nor do I believe that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that a physical relationship was sexually consummated between them. What
is clear to me is that David and Jonathan shared at least a chaste physical intimacy that could not be described in any way as “disinterested friendship” but which appears, given the evidence, to have had a romantic component to it. Again, I’m not saying they had sex.
Using your logic, though, jmcrae (and Cecilia’s before you), what’s the use of their relationship if they’re not going to get married? To me, it’s an absurd question.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
