Is romantic attraction and expression sexual in nature?

[Rau]

rau, you are holding a girl’s hand and you get sexually excited, you find a way to put that excitement to sleep. Common sense. If you are saying that you were able to do that by simply ignoring it (and this worked for you) then this conversation has been a pointless distraction from the subject of this thread.

Well, yeah! And I was mortified at the assumptions you seem to have made. All from a simple observation about what might happen on a date with a pretty girl!
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12152626&postcount=87

 

[GaryTaylor]

Indeed! Lets get back to the discussion: Is romantic attraction sexual in nature?

I say, yes! It is the attraction to others for the purposes of mating.

Aside from denial by rationalization of terms. Deliberate activation of sexual functioning outside the proper state of marriage is seriously inordinate and sinful. In marriage such stimulation is right only when it serves in some way to prepare for or to complete a natural act of marital intercourse. Sexual function is meant by God to serve for the begetting of children.

 

[Rau]

…But the CDF was clarifying that it is not only the activity that is disordered. The inclination itself is disordered.

(That does not mean though (to be clear)- that the inclination is “a sin itself” –that would not not be correct. Indeed disordered inclinations need not ever enter into* any* sin for one does not choose to act according to them -but rather increase in virtue—to the heights of holiness).

Bookcat - I believe everyone agrees that there is no sin in the inclination itself, and I believe everyone also agrees with the following statement from the Catechism:

*The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered…etc.*The above is printed in the Catechism plainly - so, I am unsure what needed to be clarified (as per your opening comment above). Can you explain - is there some clarification beyond what I’ve just quoted from the Catechism??

 

[GaryTaylor]

Bookcat - I believe everyone agrees that there is no sin in the inclination itself, and I believe everyone also agrees with the following statement from the Catechism:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered…etc.The above is printed in the Catechism plainly - so, I am unsure what needed to be clarified (as per your opening comment above). Can you explain - is there some clarification beyond what I’ve just quoted from the Catechism??

Susceptibility to temptation is not sin. Trent taught that concupiscence “comes from sin and induces to sin.” Our response to the temptation determines the right or wrong, and this begins with entertaining the temptation thought by thought.

So we are talking persistent self awareness and honesty when inclination is objectively disordered.

 

[SMGS127]

Indeed! Lets get back to the discussion: Is romantic attraction sexual in nature?

I say, yes! It is the attraction to others for the purposes of mating.

I’m sorry but you just don’t have a convincing argument One Point. If I pen a letter to a woman telling her how beautiful she is and how my heart misses her presence, etc. etc. [cue the Middle Age oversappy romantic letters], you are suggesting that is a sexual act? If I run my fingers through a girls hair and kiss her on the forehead, that is a sexual act? Where does it end? Is holding someone’s hand a sexual act?

I do not feel my separation of the Greek terms for love has been adequately addressed. I do not see how an agape-based romantic act (e.g. Telling someone they are beautiful, or hugging them after a stressful day, or kissing them as a sign of your close bond) or a storge-based romantic act (pledging to take care of someone for the immediate future or even until death) can be considered sexual. I also do not see how an exclusivity agreement must indicate possession. Does my wireless phone carrier “possess” me? Yet they have more of my “rights” locked away than a person in a storge commitment does, who is free to walk away at any time.

I have been in many, many relationships. I know what Eros romance is. I know exactly how it feels, why it is present, how one can use it to both expand on and better a relationship. However, I am proposing a relationship absent Eros, and I do not believe that demands either a lack of romance (for there are 3 types of romantic love) or commitment (for there are two types of romantic commitment). I do honestly feel that much of the opposition found on this forum is not grounded in opposition to my arguments but in disbelief of them. Disbelief that someone can enter into an exclusivity commitment without seeking possession. Disbelief that someone can kiss someone for a non-erotic reason. Disbelief that romance can lead in a direction other than sex. Lack of personal experience does not mean lack of existence, and I personally know all these things can be true.

There have been many gay and lesbian Catholics who have come to the same conclusion I did. If non-gay/lesbian Catholics want to handwring over it, I suggest you come up with answers to my arguments, instead of pretending my arguments can’t exist in the real world. In other words, explain why you believe storge love to be unique to marriage. Explain why you believe agape love to be unique to marriage. Explain why you believe acts that do not engage the sexual drive, sensual desire, genital activity, or sensual delight are still sexual in nature. I do not believe people can reasonably argue these points, and I believe this is why people are so desperate to challenge my premise. But my premise is real and solid. You don’t stand up when people are bullying someone you love because you want to have sex with them. You don’t seek to make someone that you love smile because you want to have sex with them. Romantic acts are so divorced from the sexual act as to be separate entities in themselves. The fact that the married seek to find ways to integrate the two does not imply a necessary connection between the two.

I find the idea that romance = sex position to be intensely rigorous and not based on Catholic doctrine but on a disbelief in those who can separate the two.

 

[Rau]

Bookcat - I believe everyone agrees that there is no sin in the inclination itself, and I believe everyone also agrees with the following statement from the Catechism:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered…etc.The above is printed in the Catechism plainly - so, I am unsure what needed to be clarified (as per your opening comment above). Can you explain - is there some clarification beyond what I’ve just quoted from the Catechism??

FYI - I came across this clarification from the Canadian Conference of Bishops. After noting the non-sinfulness of the inclination, they write:
*Nonetheless, when oriented toward genital activity, this inclination is “objectively disordered.”*The specific calling out of “genital activity” (as the relevant object for the disorder) is interesting.

 

[Rau]

Speaking of Selmys, this is a wonderful article by her partially on this topic:

sexualauthenticity.blogspot.com/2012/05/looking-to-desire.html

I extract a section from that article which is similar to the ideas you have described. It also speaks to the distinction between desiring sexual acts (wrong) and desiring other ‘goods’ of a relationship. I believe the author is a woman, attracted exclusively to women, and seeks to live a chaste life:

*When I look at a woman, and see that she is beautiful, that she is desirable, that she is enticing, I’m seeing something that is objectively true: she is objectively a manifestation of the imago dei, she is objectively attractive, and it is objectively legitimate for me to desire to be united with her in the vast communio personarum which is constituted by the Church and by the whole human race. My desire is not disordered in and of itself: it becomes disordered when I direct it, or allow it direct itself, towards something which is forbidden. If it leads me to fantasize about homosexual acts, or to think of the woman as a sex object, then it becomes disordered, that is ordered towards an end which is not in conformity with Truth and with the dignity of the person. But what if I make the act of will to redirect that desire, to use it as an opportunity to give glory to God for the beauty which He has made manifest in that particular woman? Or to meditate on my desire for the one-flesh union of the entire humanum in the Eucharist where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, slave nor free, woman nor man? Or as an opportunity to contemplate the relationship between the doctrines of the Communion of Saints and of the resurrection of the Body? What if, by an act of will, I take that desire and order it towards its proper end: towards the Good, the Beautiful and the True?

This is what I mean when I speak of sublimation, and it relates to what Joshua and other gay Christians mean when they speak of being both gay and chaste. It means that the word “gay” is being used to refer to the fact that some of us are more easily able to experience the goodness and beauty of the body in the bodies our own sex than we are in the bodies of the opposite sex. Obviously that leaves us open to homosexual temptation, just as the ability of most men and women to more easily appreciate bodily beauty in the opposite sex leaves them open to heterosexual temptations (to pre-marital sex, to adultery, to pornography, to sexual fantasy, etc.) Obviously in so far as it leads to homosexual temptation, it is disordered. But the word “gay” can refer to the orientation of that initial erotic impulse, irregardless of whether it develops towards disordered lust, or towards an appreciation of Christ playing “lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His.” Which is why, in my submission, gay chastity is a calling, not a myth.*

 

[Rau]

I’m sorry but you just don’t have a convincing argument One Point. If I pen a letter to a woman telling her how beautiful she is and how my heart misses her presence, etc. etc. [cue the Middle Age oversappy romantic letters], you are suggesting that is a sexual act? If I run my fingers through a girls hair and kiss her on the forehead, that is a sexual act? Where does it end? Is holding someone’s hand a sexual act?

I do not feel my separation of the Greek terms for love has been adequately addressed. I do not see how an agape-based romantic act (e.g. Telling someone they are beautiful, or hugging them after a stressful day, or kissing them as a sign of your close bond) or a storge-based romantic act (pledging to take care of someone for the immediate future or even until death) can be considered sexual. I also do not see how an exclusivity agreement must indicate possession. Does my wireless phone carrier “possess” me? Yet they have more of my “rights” locked away than a person in a storge commitment does, who is free to walk away at any time.

I have been in many, many relationships. I know what Eros romance is. I know exactly how it feels, why it is present, how one can use it to both expand on and better a relationship. However, I am proposing a relationship absent Eros, and I do not believe that demands either a lack of romance (for there are 3 types of romantic love) or commitment (for there are two types of romantic commitment). I do honestly feel that much of the opposition found on this forum is not grounded in opposition to my arguments but in disbelief of them. Disbelief that someone can enter into an exclusivity commitment without seeking possession. Disbelief that someone can kiss someone for a non-erotic reason. Disbelief that romance can lead in a direction other than sex. Lack of personal experience does not mean lack of existence, and I personally know all these things can be true.

There have been many gay and lesbian Catholics who have come to the same conclusion I did. If non-gay/lesbian Catholics want to handwring over it, I suggest you come up with answers to my arguments, instead of pretending my arguments can’t exist in the real world. In other words, explain why you believe storge love to be unique to marriage. Explain why you believe agape love to be unique to marriage. Explain why you believe acts that do not engage the sexual drive, sensual desire, genital activity, or sensual delight are still sexual in nature. I do not believe people can reasonably argue these points, and I believe this is why people are so desperate to challenge my premise. But my premise is real and solid. You don’t stand up when people are bullying someone you love because you want to have sex with them. You don’t seek to make someone that you love smile because you want to have sex with them. Romantic acts are so divorced from the sexual act as to be separate entities in themselves. The fact that the married seek to find ways to integrate the two does not imply a necessary connection between the two.

I find the idea that romance = sex position to be intensely rigorous and not based on Catholic doctrine but on a disbelief in those who can separate the two.

I think the “concerns” I have with what you propose flow from issues such as you highlight above. I worry about the practicality of engaging as closely with another as you describe, yet without the relationship transitioning/evolving to the sexual (genital, to be clear). I know you have addressed that exact point ad nauseum, and I accept what you have said.

I cannot see any prohibition in Catholic teaching (that which has been presented in these threads) against the relationship type you envisage. I can well understand, and even support, a view that such a relationship is **inadvisable ** (in general) for the reason mentioned in the prior paragraph. But if it is truly not motivated by a desire for genital acts, and you are confident that there is no near occasion of sin for you or your friend, and scandal can be avoided, then I am unaware of Catholic teaching that would prohibit it.

 

[One_point]

I’m sorry but you just don’t have a convincing argument One Point. If I pen a letter to a woman telling her how beautiful she is and how my heart misses her presence, etc. etc. [cue the Middle Age oversappy romantic letters], you are suggesting that is a sexual act? If I run my fingers through a girls hair and kiss her on the forehead, that is a sexual act? Where does it end? Is holding someone’s hand a sexual act?

Hello Smgs, I think you are applying the meaning of sexuality rather narrowly. I can do all these activities two very different ways. I can tell my best friend she is beautiful the same way I tell it to my sister or my mother. I want her to be happy about who she is or I am just commenting observationally. Tell my love interest the same compliments on their outer beauty can be done those same ways but also a third way which I will not describe but I am sure everyone knows. The bottom line is there is a meaning to these and this meaning is what is sexual.

I do not feel my separation of the Greek terms for love has been adequately addressed. I do not see how an agape-based romantic act (e.g. Telling someone they are beautiful, or hugging them after a stressful day, or kissing them as a sign of your close bond) or a storge-based romantic act (pledging to take care of someone for the immediate future or even until death) can be considered sexual. I also do not see how an exclusivity agreement must indicate possession. Does my wireless phone carrier “possess” me? Yet they have more of my “rights” locked away than a person in a storge commitment does, who is free to walk away at any time.

Like I said yesterday, you possess in another that which you have a right to restrict in them. In that area, their just freedom is no longer the primary ruling standard, somebody else has acquired rights. Pledging to take care of someone does not give them rights over who you become romantically involved with. It gives them rights in justice to expect you to fulfill your promise reasonably as far as you can. I can make the same pledge to my sister if we are both over 40 and single and likely to remain so in our old age but I would not expect her not to date a nice man if she met one. I would expect her to be able to fulfill her promise to take care of me regardless and reasonably in the circumstances. Maybe when I am old and sickly, I could move close by or even in with them. Whatever arrangement. Most importantly, I would not expect her not to be romantically involved with other people or to be share certain emotions only with me.

Besides marriage, consencration and such, I don’t think humans have rights to demand vows of basically (emotional) celibacy or exclusive emotional commitment on others unless they do it in expection of the vows of marriage. Otherwise, I cannot fathom just what would give two single catholics the basis to expect this exclusivity from someone they cannot marry. Please try to see this from a different point as well, and you might understand why it is a difficult concept for some of us.That seems like something that can be pledged to those we are marrying or reasonably expecting to or to God himself. Otherwise, it is sacred and really my own, who I am emotionally intimate with. A girlfriend cannot restrict that and I can be emotionally intimate with several best friends.

 

[One_point]

I don’t believe I said agape cannot exist in marriage. I just did not accept that making out is an expression of agape especially outside marriage. It seems like an expression of eros to me and I agree with Kamaduck when she places it there even without sexually explicit intent.

Also, you really cannot be surprised that people have a hard time believing that French kissing is agape C’mon Smgs. You have to admit that you are presenting a most unusual idea to us at the very least. In human society as we know, the kind of thing involved in a French kiss is practiced strictly for very particular relationships. Even in emotionally and physically expressive cultures, nobody kisses like that outside a dating/mating scenario. So at the back of our minds we have this thing telling us, there surely is a reason why human social norms are structured this way. I just cannot think of a French kiss and agape in the same sentence. I mean, It is not dirty, but agape? Maybe we should first start with defining and explaining terms of love and then proceed from there, eros, philia and agape.

 

[SMGS127]

Hello Smgs, I think you are applying the meaning of sexuality rather narrowly. I can do all these activities two very different ways. I can tell my best friend she is beautiful the same way I tell it to my sister or my mother. I want her to be happy about who she is or I am just commenting observationally. Tell my love interest the same compliments on their outer beauty can be done those same ways but also a third way which I will not describe but I am sure everyone knows.

Yes, but as I have said, that third way is not the manner in which I do any physicality besides actual sex. That may be hard to understand I guess, but it’s true.

Like I said yesterday, you possess in another that which you have a right to restrict in them. In that area, their just freedom is no longer the primary ruling standard, somebody else has acquired rights. Pledging to take care of someone does not give them rights over who you become romantically involved with. It gives them rights in justice to expect you to fulfill your promise reasonably as far as you can. I can make the same pledge to my sister if we are both over 40 and single and likely to remain so in our old age but I would not expect her not to date a nice man if she met one. I would expect her to be able to fulfill her promise to take care of me regardless and reasonably in the circumstances. Maybe when I am old and sickly, I could move close by or even in with them. Whatever arrangement. Most importantly, I would not expect her not to be romantically involved with other people or to be share certain emotions only with me.

I guess this is the uniquity among gays and lesbians though. The emotional expectation is partly because neither of you are willing or capable of entering into a relationship with marital aims. So you make the commitment to each other precisely because that isn’t expected to happen. But if it did, there is nothing in the commitment to suggest that someone cannot leave it for the relationship with a marital aim. So it is still storge.

Besides marriage, consencration and such, I don’t think humans have rights to demand vows of basically (emotional) celibacy on others unless they do it in expection of the vows of marriage. Otherwise, I cannot fathom just what would give two single catholics the basis to expect this exclusivity from someone they cannot marry. Please try to see this from a different point as well, and you might understand why it is a difficult concept for some of us.That seems like something that can be pledged to those we are marrying or reasonably expecting to or to God himself. Otherwise, it is sacred and really my own, who I am emotionally intimate with. A girlfriend cannot restrict that and I can be emotionally intimate with several best friends.

Again, you are not giving up your rights. You are merely making a pledge, one that should not be turned into a lifelong one unless one is positive that they will never be interested in a relationship with marital aims. But it is first and foremost a contract among friends, albeit romantically [but not sexually] involved friends.

And as I said, these are not vows. They are merely expectations between two people that trust each other immensely. And the trust between the two would also mean that they trust each other to communicate if they wished to pursue a marital relationship instead. But as they are gays or lesbians, it is significantly less likely that this will occur, meaning the expectation of commitment is stronger, but it is not absolute. People in a romantic friendship do not have the “right” to each other, but I see nothing wrong with saying that you will only partake in it as long as both of you are exclusive. In other words, my girlfriend would be free at any point to pursue a marital relationship, but out of respect for that person she went after (and her), I would not be comfortable continuing a romantic friendship with her. Although, again, it is the rare case indeed that two lesbians (or gay men) in such a friendship would be looking to enter into a relationship with marital aims.

 

[SMGS127]

I don’t believe I said agape cannot exist in marriage. I just did not accept that making out is an expression of agape especially outside marriage. It seems like an expression of eros to me and I agree with Kamaduck when she places it there even without sexually explicit intent.

Also, you really cannot be surprised that people have a hard time believing that French kissing is agape C’mon Smgs. You have to admit that you are presenting a most unusual idea to us at the very least. In human society as we know, the kind of thing involved in a French kiss is practiced strictly for very particular relationships. Even in emotionally and physically expressive cultures, nobody kisses outside a dating scenario. So at the back of our minds we have this thing telling us, there surely is a reason why human social norms are structured this way. I just cannot think of a French kiss and agape in the same sentence. I mean, It is not dirty, but agape? Maybe we should first start with defining and explaining terms of love and then proceed from there, eros, philia and agape.

I don’t know really how else to explain it.

Unless it’s during sex, I make out with my girlfriend to better a good in her (happiness, bonding, trust, comfort). That’s the definition of agape love. I don’t understand how no one has experienced this . I mean, I know what making out with eros is like too, as I would do so during sex, but the two types of making out, while involving similar physical movements, are so incredibly dissimilar in their experience, meaning, and effects that I can’t imagine why so few people have done so. Are people too bound by their sexual impulses? Is it just something people haven’t tried to do? I’m not going to believe people don’t CARE about the goods in their partner’s life. So I’m equally confused by the inability for people to process agape making out vs. eros making out.

 

[One_point]

Again, you are not giving up your rights. You are merely making a pledge, one that should not be turned into a lifelong one unless one is positive that they will never be interested in a relationship with marital aims. But it is first and foremost a contract among friends, albeit romantically [but not sexually] involved friends.

The issue for me, smgs, is making that pledge in the first place. Why would you make a pledge over another person’s emotional intimacy? What possible good reason could there be? For those who have began to seriously date, it is to deepen that emotional bond that is precisely suitable for a married/marrying couple (and even then I have read writers of the JPII’s theology warning nonmarried couples to be careful not to enter too deeply into some emotional intimacies that are inappropriate outside the full commitment of marriage. Women are taught to guard their hearts.) For the consecrated, it is the same. It is not an end in itself. So you have two women who would like to make pledges to restrict the emotional intimacies of others, for what possible reason would they like a single friend to be only emotionally intimate with them? That is not agape at all. Honestly it seems rather self-centred to me.

And as I said, these are not vows. They are merely expectations between two people that trust each other immensely. And the trust between the two would also mean that they trust each other to communicate if they wished to pursue a marital relationship instead. But as they are gays or lesbians, it is significantly less likely that this will occur, meaning the expectation of commitment is stronger, but it is not absolute. People in a romantic friendship do not have the “right” to each other, but I see nothing wrong with saying that you will only partake in it as long as both of you are exclusive. In other words, my girlfriend would be free at any point to pursue a marital relationship, but out of respect for that person she went after (and her), I would not be comfortable continuing a romantic friendship with her. Although, again, it is the rare case indeed that two lesbians (or gay men) in such a friendship would be looking to enter into a relationship with marital aims.

The way you describe it here, it seems this emotional intimacy is possessive, I am yours and youre mine, even if only temporarily. That to me is eros. Why would agape require unnecessary restrictions on the inner life of others over which we have no claim or even a right to make a claim? This is why I think this is a sexual thing. Genital sex is just the completion of this desire to be completed in another. it is not the whole of sexuality.

 

[SMGS127]

The issue for me, smgs, is making that pledge in the first place. Why would you make a pledge over another person’s emotional intimacy? What possible good reason could there be? For those who have began to seriously date, it is to deepen that emotional bond that is precisely suitable for a married/marrying couple. For the consecrated, it is the same. It is not an end in itself. So you have two women who would like to make pledges to restrict the emotional intimacies of others, for what possible reason would they like a single friend to be only emotionally intimate with them? That is not agape at all. Honestly it seems rather self-centred to me.

I guess the best way to describe it is that divided attention limits your ability to provide goods for any individual person, whereas committed attention greatly enhances your ability to provide for them. And you don’t make the commitment for yourself. You make the commitment for your partner.

The way you describe it here, it seems this emotional intimacy is possessive, I am yours and youre mine, even if only temporarily. That to me is eros. Why would agape require unnecessary restrictions on the inner life of others over which we have no claim or even a right to make a claim? This is why I think this is a sexual thing. Genital sex is just the completion of this desire to be completed in another. it is not the whole of sexuality.

The restrictions are to allow the person to devote the attention necessary to fulfill their agape love as best as possible. But it is not possessive. Possession is not temporary with humans. You either possess someone until you (or they) die in marriage, or you don’t possess them at all. Humans cannot be taken at will.

Again, you commit yourself to your partner. You don’t take a commitment from them. But the relationship is set up in such a way as to maximize each partner’s ability to express their agape and storge romance for the other. There is no need for eros in this equation.

Although I will say one further thing. Ms. Selmys is of the opinion that eros is not always barred by the Church, though I’d imagine she believes it is barred from being expressed through physical acts. She discusses repressing one’s emotional expression of one’s eros feelings for another as something that isn’t necessarily required in the Faith. So even if the commitment were eros, that would not necessarily be a problem, if individual physical acts did not involve it. The following is a quote from her:

1. W/r/t the spousal meaning of the body, yes, eros realizes its fulfillment in the reciprocal relations between a man and a woman. For some people, however, this fulfillment is not going to happen this side of the eschaton. Those people still experience eros, and they still need an ordered way of doing so, because repression just doesn’t work. I agree that exclusive same-sex attraction is sub-ideal, but it’s non-culpable, it’s real, and ideal human beings are in short supply. Besides, it’s possible to have fruitful experiences of the spousal meaning of the body as a result of SSA – I have a lot of conflict with my feminine identity, and there have been several occasions where my attraction towards the beauty of other women has been a tremendous help in coming to terms with and understanding the spousal meaning of my own body.

 

[One_point]

I guess the best way to describe it is that divided attention limits your ability to provide goods for any individual person, whereas committed attention greatly enhances your ability to provide for them. And you don’t make the commitment for yourself. You make the commitment for your partner.

The restrictions are to allow the person to devote the attention necessary to fulfill their agape love as best as possible. But it is not possessive. Possession is not temporary with humans. You either possess someone until you (or they) die in marriage, or you don’t possess them at all. Humans cannot be taken at will.

Again, you commit yourself to your partner. You don’t take a commitment from them. But the relationship is set up in such a way as to maximize each partner’s ability to express their agape and storge romance for the other. There is no need for eros in this equation.

Although I will say one further thing. Ms. Selmys is of the opinion that eros is not always barred by the Church, though I’d imagine she believes it is barred from being expressed through physical acts. She discusses repressing one’s emotional expression of one’s eros feelings for another as something that isn’t necessarily required in the Faith. So even if the commitment were eros, that would not necessarily be a problem, if individual physical acts did not involve it. The following is a quote from her:

There could be no conceivable reason why such a restriction on that which you have no rights over would enhance agape. It would seem to limit it in my view as you are no longer a giver but a taker and more so of that which is not yours in justice: another’s inner emotional freedom.

As to the 100% human donation requirement, that only applies in marriage. But couples who are dating can reasonably expect to limit only reasonably the level to which their partners get romantically involved with others: a certain kind of intimacy is required that is only an anticipation and preparation of the full intimacy of marriage. Besides this, they maintain the intimacy of friendship and no more. But they cannot restrict the emotional closeness of their girlfriends with other friends. Even in marriage, a husband can only restrict this to the extent that it interferes with his marriage. Anything more is unjust. His wife may be his own fully, but she is not his property she is only God’s property. So my issue here remains: what right a faithful catholic has to say to another, outside dating, be only emotionally intimate with me. or express only certain emotional intimacies and affections with me. If not, I will not express my emotional intimacies with you. that just doesn’t sound like agape love.

The church speaks of sexuality as precisely this dynamic of being completed in another human being. we are all one in different ways. this one on one exclusivity that brings the sexes together, that is sexuality and conjugal union is its ultimate expression exchanging bodies.

 

[SMGS127]

So my issue here remains: what right a faithful catholic has to say to another, outside dating, be only emotionally intimate with me. or express only certain emotional intimacies and affections with me. If not, I will not express my emotional intimacies with you. that just doesn’t sound like agape love.

They don’t have that right. They do, however, have the right to commit the majority of their attention to one person, and for the other person to reciprocally return said commitment. You don’t have the right to control your partner’s romantic involvement, but you do have the right to control your own. Again, the trust dynamic of the relationship must be so that either person would communicate that they wished to pursue another. And then the first person has the right to alter their own perception of the relationship. Neither is bound to do anything. But as long as both people are willing to commit to the other, even if it is on the basis that the other commits, I see no problem. It is a voluntary act of self-giving, the very definition of agape, that underlies the relationship.

 

[One_point]

1. W/r/t the spousal meaning of the body, yes, eros realizes its fulfillment in the reciprocal relations between a man and a woman. For some people, however, this fulfillment is not going to happen this side of the eschaton. Those people still experience eros, and they still need an ordered way of doing so, because repression just doesn’t work. I agree that exclusive same-sex attraction is sub-ideal, but it’s non-culpable, it’s real, and ideal human beings are in short supply. Besides, it’s possible to have fruitful experiences of the spousal meaning of the body as a result of SSA – I have a lot of conflict with my feminine identity, and there have been several occasions where my attraction towards the beauty of other women has been a tremendous help in coming to terms with and understanding the spousal meaning of my own body.

I totally disagree with her. she agrees that eros exists for the male and female and then claims that because gay people have eros they can go ahead and express it in the opposite fashion? Natural law says we should use God’s creation for his purposes and according to his design. If eros is for the male-female relations (what the church calls sexual), then directing it to male-male, female-female is contrary to God’s plan. No one is culpable for experiencing their eros for the wrong object/sex, but saying it is ok to foster even while we admit it is design for the male and female is to pervert truth to suit our desires. Her idea that eros must find expression in the wrong sex because humans are in short supply? Tell me about it! How many single catholics are there in the world. Does she think nun’s eros dies in the convent when they go in? If we cannot find the properly ordered object of our eros then we commit it to Christ in the intimacy of prayer. Her reasoning is just stranhge to me!

 

[SMGS127]

I totally disagree with her. she agrees that eros exists for the male and female and then claims that because gay people have eros they can go ahead and express it in the opposite fashion? Natural law says we should use God’s creation for his purposes and according to his design. If eros is for the male-female relations (what the church calls sexual), then directing it to male-male, female-female is contrary to God’s plan. No one is culpable for experiencing their eros for the wrong object/sex, but saying it is ok to foster even while we admit it is design for the male and female is to pervert truth to suit our desires. Her idea that eros must find expression in the wrong sex because humans are in short supply? Tell me about it! How many single catholics are there in the world. Does she think nun’s eros dies in the convent when they go in? If we cannot find the properly ordered object of our eros then we commit it to Christ in the intimacy of prayer. Her reasoning is just stranhge to me!

You might want to read this piece by Aaron Taylor, expanding upon this argument:

spiritualfriendship.org/2014/03/19/christianity-and-same-sex-eros/

I’d be interested to know what you think.

 

[One_point]

They don’t have that right. They do, however, have the right to commit the majority of their attention to one person, and for the other person to reciprocally return said commitment. You don’t have the right to control your partner’s romantic involvement, but you do have the right to control your own. Again, the trust dynamic of the relationship must be so that either person would communicate that they wished to pursue another. And then the first person has the right to alter their own perception of the relationship. Neither is bound to do anything. But as long as both people are willing to commit to the other, even if it is on the basis that the other commits, I see no problem. It is a voluntary act of self-giving, the very definition of agape, that underlies the relationship.

Why would anyone need to communicate that they wish to pursue another? Even the language of “pursuit” here I find highly inappropriate. I never communicate to any of my friends before I start a new friendship. This indicates some control over another’s emotional life.

 

[SMGS127]

Why would anyone need to communicate that they wish to pursue another? Even the language of “pursuit” here I find highly inappropriate. I never communicate to any of my friends before I start a new friendship. This indicates some control over another’s emotional life.

Because you are communicating to them that, due to the potential feelings of the new partner, it would be unwise to be as romantic as previously?

Also, I don’t think you realize the level of communication in a romantic friendship.