Church and sexuality:
Why the interest and concern?

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

Why is the Church so obsessed with sex? Questions like this usually refer to the Church's keen interest in upholding sexual morality.

To be sure, the Church does feel an urgent need to uphold the truth about sex. Why? For all the reasons we've noted about how important the issue of sex really is.

Sexuality is not just something biological but concerns the "innermost being of the human person." To the extent that our understanding of sexuality is skewed, so is our understanding of ourselves. Think how intertwined sex is with the mystery of life. Without sex there would be no life.

The deepest truth about sexuality actually reveals the deepest truth about life. It's this: we are called through the gift of God's grace to share in God's life by loving as he loves - and this call is stamped into our very bodies as male and female; it's stamped into our sexuality. Paraphrasing John Paul II: rediscovery of the nuptial meaning of the body always means rediscovery of the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of life. That's why it's such an urgent matter.

The sexual urge taps into the most powerful drives and desires of the human heart. Depending on how they're directed, these drives and desires have the power for great good or great evil. In short, as created by God, the sexual urge was given to us as a "love instinct" that leads to life. But when it's cut off from the source of love and life (God), it tends to become a "lust instinct" that leads to death.

Sexual attitudes and behaviors, then, have the power to orient not only individuals but entire nations and societies toward respect for life - or toward its utter disregard. To be sure, when lust is woven into the fabric of a society, that society can be nothing but a "culture of death."

Sound exaggerated? Our nation alone murders over 4,000 preborn babies every day in order to satisfy its lusts. And that's only the beginning.

Disordered sexuality is the "Pandora's box" that unleashes a host of societal evils: from the poverty of "fatherless" families and the staggering proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases (some fatal, such as AIDS), to newborns found in dumpsters and increased violence among teens - all these can be traced to the breakdown of the sexual mores that hold the family intact as the fundamental cell of society.

As sexual attitudes and behaviors go, so goes marriage. As marriage goes, so goes the family. As the family goes, so goes society. Paraphrasing John Paul II once again: human life, its dignity and its balance, depends at every moment of history and at every point on the globe on the proper ordering of love between the sexes.

We will never build a civilization of love and a culture of life unless we first live according to the truth of our sexuality. If the Church is "obsessed" with sex, it's because she's "obsessed" with upholding the dignity and balance of human life and the plan of God for humanity that our sexuality is meant to reveal.

Christopher West is a member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book, Good News About Sex and Marriage (St. Anthony Messenger Press).