Sexuality, between dead ends and path
At the heart of the bodies dances a volcano. Telluric, its tremors stir our dreams, our thoughts and our actions. From childhood to the tomb, pacified or in irruption, in the look, the smile and the gesture, we are sexualized. Some shamelessly display this animal power. A part of its mystery remains nonetheless veiled. Sometimes limpid and joyful like a spring morning. Sometimes paradoxical and tortuous like a hazy evening. Whatever the path of life – continence of the consecrated person, fidelity of the couple, assumed debauchery, provocation of the rebel… – no one overlooks it. And everyone discovers the dead ends …
Puritan dead end …
He anguishes us, this beast lurking in our lower abdomen. Hence the temptation to tame him once and for all. Let him obey and become a lamb. Dangerous illusion. He is believed to be numbed with stiffness. He is watching us, behind half-closed eyelids … The better to surprise us. So the angel turns into a beast. So, the predation of children around a sacristy. So, these indecent fathers addicted to the most creepy pornography. So these male slayers of lascivious morals, changing into transvestites during naughty evenings. Hypocrisy…
Libertine dead end …
May 1968 dreamed of saving us from Puritanism through sexual liberation. This allowed a more human reception of sexuality in these meanders. And this, even in the churches. Who among us does not meet divorced-remarried, homosexual or truant people, inhabited by a spiritual life well above the average? However, the smiling “peace and love” facade cracks with #MeToo. Liberated sex is not synonymous with peaceful sex. Where does “consent” begin, where does it shipwreck? Vanessa Springora’s recent book makes people react. Why now ? I was 12 years old in 1975, when I saw the one she accuses presenting his book Under sixteen in a prestigious literary program. I didn’t understand how they let him talk like that on TV. And since La Familia grande, among those who today turn away from the illustrious father-in-law, how many knew and were complacently silent? Tartuffe in the land of sores … Let us dare to admit it: the triumph of individualism is currency in denial of others. Divorce has become commonplace, but few analyze its social cost for the couple’s children. Denial. AIDS prevention is necessary, but an awkward silence surrounds education for engaging sex. Denial. Abortion is presented as a right, but beware of anyone who still dares to whisper that it concerns an unborn life. Denial.
“Love and do what you want”?
Puritan and libertine dead ends are twin sisters. Both are based on a contempt for the body and a denial of our relational nature. They therefore lead to “confinement”, by forgetting that sexuality is language. The babbling of the newborn can turn into the eloquence of the poet. Like it, the sexual drive is called upon to educate itself in a life project. With its failures and falls, but in a humanizing relationship to oneself, to others and to the Founding Mystery of all love, whatever the name given to it. In his commentary on the First Epistle of St. John, St. Augustine taught: “love and do what you want” and not “do what you want and you will like”. The language of love is a rough road to liberation from our egoisms. Single, married, consecrated, separated … whatever our course of life, let us dare to unmask the dead ends of our sexuality, to travel on this road, where eros (love as desire) and agape (love as gift) are s’ embrace. “The more these two forms of love, even in different dimensions, find their proper unity in the one reality of love, the more is realized the true nature of love in general.” (Benedict XVI, Deus caritas is, n ° 7)