The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology
by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler foreword by Charles E. Curran
Georgetown University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-1-58901-208-0 Library of Congress Classification BX1795.S48S25 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 241.66088282
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics.
While some documents from Vatican II, like Gaudium et spes ("the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other"), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church has not carried out the full implications of this approach. In short, say Salzman and Lawler: emphasize relationships, not acts, and recognize Christianity's historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality. The Sexual Person draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition and provides a context for current theological debates between traditionalists and revisionists regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human. This daring and potentially revolutionary book will be sure to provoke constructive dialogue among theologians, and between theologians and the Magisterium.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Todd A. Salzman is a professor of Catholic theology and chair of the Department of Theology at Creighton University. He is the coeditor of Marriage in the Catholic Tradition: Scripture, Tradition, and Experience and author of What Are They Saying about Roman Catholic Ethical Method?
Michael G. Lawler is professor emeritus of Catholic theology at Creighton University. He is the author of What Is and What Ought to Be: The Dialectic of Experience, Theology, and Church and Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions.
REVIEWS
Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler's new book . . . is among the most important works in Catholic sexual ethics to emerge in the last two decades . . . Their book will be noticed because of its controversial positions on contraception, same-sex relationships, cohabitation and artificial means of reproduction. However, its contribution is its clear articulation of a person-centered natural-law ethic that offers Catholics an authentic way to think about sex in relation to their faith.
The present volume is their clearest and most detailed critical inquiry into sexual anthropology to date. The dialogue that this volume should generate between the authors and the advocates of the New Natural Law Theory will be very valuable.
An unusually rich resource for a dialogue on sexual ethics among a diverse group of religious ethicists who seek more fruitfully to articulate how Christians are called to shape their sexual lives in the contemporary world.
Salzman and Lawler have succeeded brilliantly in combining a rigorous historical-critical engagement of the Catholic moral tradition with a set of creative, forward-looking proposals . . . Salzman and Lawler have written an engaging, well-researched book that handles extremely complicated and controversial questions in a nuanced and intellectually rigorous manner.
They cover the whole gamut of issues in sexual ethics in impressive and thoroughly scholarly detail. They are conversant with the results of a wide range of recent studies in sexual psychology; and this material is effectively integrated into a tight philosophical argument . . . it is very refreshing to read such a balanced treatment, controversial but not at all combative or defensive in tone. Their conclusions are thoroughly constructive and very convincing. Overall, it is a most impressive achievement.
Stimulating reading for theologians and graduate students.
[Salzman and Lawler] move among four foci: the Catholic tradition, the school they characterize as the "New Natural Law Theory," the Revisionist school, and their own constructive synthesis. The careful critiques of the three positions are worth the price of the book but their positive reconstruction (so often missing in critical works) is equally valuable. . . . Their work has a carefully constructed base of historical and sociological analysis as well as the requisite theology. It is well researched, carefully documented and logically argued.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword by Charles E. Curran
Prologue
Chapter One Sexual Morality in the Catholic Tradition: A Brief History
Historicity
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in the Catholic Tradition
Reading Sacred Scripture
The Fathers of the Church
The Penitentials
Scholastic Doctrine
The Modern Period
Conclusion
Chapter Two Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Traditionalists
Introduction
1. ¿Nature¿ Defined
Object and Objectivity
Sociology of Knowledge
Perspectivism v Relativism
¿Nature,¿ Knowledge, and Norms
2. The Revision of Catholic Moral Theology
3. Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology
4. Traditionalists and Sexual Anthropology
4.1 New Natural Law Theory: Basic Goods
4.2 Martin Rhonheimer
4.3 John Paul II: Thomistic Personalism and the Theology of the Body
5. Conclusion
Chapter Three Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Revisionists
Introduction
1. Revisionist Critique of Traditionalist Natural Law Sexual Anthropology
2. Karl Rahner: Person as Free and Historical
2.1 Freedom, Historicity, and Basic Goods
2.2 Revisionists and Basic Goods: Universal and Particular
3. Revisionist Theologians and Sexual Anthropology
3.1 Louis Janssens: The Human Person Adequately Considered
3.2 Richard A. McCormick
3.3 Feminist Revisionist Theologians
3.4 Virtue Ethics: A Shift in Focus
4. Conclusion
Chapter Four Unitive Sexual Morality: A Revised Foundational Principle and Anthropology
Introduction
1. Conjugal Love and Sexual Intercourse
2. Multiple Dimensions of Human Sexuality
3. Truly Human and Complementarity
4. Sexual Orientation Complementarity and Truly Human Sexual Acts: A Reconstructed Complementarity
5. Holistic Complementarity, Truly Human Sexual Acts, and Sexual Norms
6. Conclusion
Chapter Five Marital Morality
Introduction
1. Marital Intercourse and Morality
2. NNLT and Marital Morality
2.1 Two-in-One-Flesh Communion
2.2 Consummation Adequately Considered
2.3 Self-Integrity and Sexuality
2.4 Instrumentality and the Sexual Act
3. Modern Catholic Thought And Marital Morality
4.Marital Morality and Contraception
4.1 Contraception and Socio-Historical Contexts
4.2 The Procreative Model of Marriage
4.3 Humanae Vitae and Contraception: Challenges to the Procreative Model
4.4 The Personal Procreative-Union Model of Marriage
5. A Renewed Principle of Human Sexuality and Contraception
5.1 Totality and the Conjugal Act
5.2 The Inseparability Principle Revisited
6. Conclusion
Chapter Six Cohabitation and the Process of Marrying
Introduction
1. Cohabitation in the Contemporary West
What the Sciences Tell Us
The Meaning and Nature of Commitment
2. Betrothal and the Christian Tradition
2.1 Historical Considerations
2.2 Socio-Theological Considerations
3. Complementarity and Nuptial Cohabitation
3.1 Complementarity: Classicist and Historically Conscious
3.2 Marriage as Sacrament
3.3 Catechumenate for Marriage
4. Conclusion
Chapter Seven Homosexuality
Introduction
1. The Bible and Homosexuality
Homosexual Orientation and the Bible
Interpreting the Bible on Homosexuality
The Bible and Contemporary Discourse on Homosexuality
2. Magisterial Teaching on Homosexual Acts and Relationships
Natural Law Argument
Procreation Argument
Complementarity Argument
3. The Moral Sense of the Christian People and Homosexual Acts
4. The Morality of Homosexual Acts Reconsidered
5. Conclusion
Chapter Eight Artificial Reproductive Technologies
Introduction
1. Defining Artificial Reproductive Technologies
2. The CDF Instruction and Artificial Reproductive Technologies
2.1 Natural Law: Biological and Personalist Interpretations
2.2 The Instruction¿s Personalist Language
2.3 Heterologous Artificial Insemination (AFD) and the Personalist Principle
2.4 Homologous Artificial Insemination and the Biological Principle
2.5 A Methodological Shift
2.6 AFH and the Inseparability Principle
2.7 The Morality of AFH
2.8 The Meaning and Nature of Parenthood
2.9 Interrelationship Between Parenthood and the Conjugal Act
3. Parental Complementarity, Relational Considerations, and Social Ethics
3.1 ARTS and Health Complications among Children
3.2 Family and Society: ARTs and the Common Good
4. Conclusion
Epilogue
Introduction
1. Intra-Church Dialogue
Horizon and Conversion
2. Extra-Church Dialogue
Notes
The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology
by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler foreword by Charles E. Curran
Georgetown University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-1-58901-208-0
Two principles capture the essence of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of heterosexual marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler examine and challenge these principles. Remaining firmly within the Catholic tradition, they contend that the church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics.
While some documents from Vatican II, like Gaudium et spes ("the marital act promotes self-giving by which spouses enrich each other"), gave hope for a renewed understanding of sexuality, the church has not carried out the full implications of this approach. In short, say Salzman and Lawler: emphasize relationships, not acts, and recognize Christianity's historically and culturally conditioned understanding of human sexuality. The Sexual Person draws historically, methodologically, and anthropologically from the best of Catholic tradition and provides a context for current theological debates between traditionalists and revisionists regarding marriage, cohabitation, homosexuality, reproductive technologies, and what it means to be human. This daring and potentially revolutionary book will be sure to provoke constructive dialogue among theologians, and between theologians and the Magisterium.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Todd A. Salzman is a professor of Catholic theology and chair of the Department of Theology at Creighton University. He is the coeditor of Marriage in the Catholic Tradition: Scripture, Tradition, and Experience and author of What Are They Saying about Roman Catholic Ethical Method?
Michael G. Lawler is professor emeritus of Catholic theology at Creighton University. He is the author of What Is and What Ought to Be: The Dialectic of Experience, Theology, and Church and Marriage and the Catholic Church: Disputed Questions.
REVIEWS
Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler's new book . . . is among the most important works in Catholic sexual ethics to emerge in the last two decades . . . Their book will be noticed because of its controversial positions on contraception, same-sex relationships, cohabitation and artificial means of reproduction. However, its contribution is its clear articulation of a person-centered natural-law ethic that offers Catholics an authentic way to think about sex in relation to their faith.
The present volume is their clearest and most detailed critical inquiry into sexual anthropology to date. The dialogue that this volume should generate between the authors and the advocates of the New Natural Law Theory will be very valuable.
An unusually rich resource for a dialogue on sexual ethics among a diverse group of religious ethicists who seek more fruitfully to articulate how Christians are called to shape their sexual lives in the contemporary world.
Salzman and Lawler have succeeded brilliantly in combining a rigorous historical-critical engagement of the Catholic moral tradition with a set of creative, forward-looking proposals . . . Salzman and Lawler have written an engaging, well-researched book that handles extremely complicated and controversial questions in a nuanced and intellectually rigorous manner.
They cover the whole gamut of issues in sexual ethics in impressive and thoroughly scholarly detail. They are conversant with the results of a wide range of recent studies in sexual psychology; and this material is effectively integrated into a tight philosophical argument . . . it is very refreshing to read such a balanced treatment, controversial but not at all combative or defensive in tone. Their conclusions are thoroughly constructive and very convincing. Overall, it is a most impressive achievement.
Stimulating reading for theologians and graduate students.
[Salzman and Lawler] move among four foci: the Catholic tradition, the school they characterize as the "New Natural Law Theory," the Revisionist school, and their own constructive synthesis. The careful critiques of the three positions are worth the price of the book but their positive reconstruction (so often missing in critical works) is equally valuable. . . . Their work has a carefully constructed base of historical and sociological analysis as well as the requisite theology. It is well researched, carefully documented and logically argued.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Foreword by Charles E. Curran
Prologue
Chapter One Sexual Morality in the Catholic Tradition: A Brief History
Historicity
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome
Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in the Catholic Tradition
Reading Sacred Scripture
The Fathers of the Church
The Penitentials
Scholastic Doctrine
The Modern Period
Conclusion
Chapter Two Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Traditionalists
Introduction
1. ¿Nature¿ Defined
Object and Objectivity
Sociology of Knowledge
Perspectivism v Relativism
¿Nature,¿ Knowledge, and Norms
2. The Revision of Catholic Moral Theology
3. Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology
4. Traditionalists and Sexual Anthropology
4.1 New Natural Law Theory: Basic Goods
4.2 Martin Rhonheimer
4.3 John Paul II: Thomistic Personalism and the Theology of the Body
5. Conclusion
Chapter Three Natural Law and Sexual Anthropology: Catholic Revisionists
Introduction
1. Revisionist Critique of Traditionalist Natural Law Sexual Anthropology
2. Karl Rahner: Person as Free and Historical
2.1 Freedom, Historicity, and Basic Goods
2.2 Revisionists and Basic Goods: Universal and Particular
3. Revisionist Theologians and Sexual Anthropology
3.1 Louis Janssens: The Human Person Adequately Considered
3.2 Richard A. McCormick
3.3 Feminist Revisionist Theologians
3.4 Virtue Ethics: A Shift in Focus
4. Conclusion
Chapter Four Unitive Sexual Morality: A Revised Foundational Principle and Anthropology
Introduction
1. Conjugal Love and Sexual Intercourse
2. Multiple Dimensions of Human Sexuality
3. Truly Human and Complementarity
4. Sexual Orientation Complementarity and Truly Human Sexual Acts: A Reconstructed Complementarity
5. Holistic Complementarity, Truly Human Sexual Acts, and Sexual Norms
6. Conclusion
Chapter Five Marital Morality
Introduction
1. Marital Intercourse and Morality
2. NNLT and Marital Morality
2.1 Two-in-One-Flesh Communion
2.2 Consummation Adequately Considered
2.3 Self-Integrity and Sexuality
2.4 Instrumentality and the Sexual Act
3. Modern Catholic Thought And Marital Morality
4.Marital Morality and Contraception
4.1 Contraception and Socio-Historical Contexts
4.2 The Procreative Model of Marriage
4.3 Humanae Vitae and Contraception: Challenges to the Procreative Model
4.4 The Personal Procreative-Union Model of Marriage
5. A Renewed Principle of Human Sexuality and Contraception
5.1 Totality and the Conjugal Act
5.2 The Inseparability Principle Revisited
6. Conclusion
Chapter Six Cohabitation and the Process of Marrying
Introduction
1. Cohabitation in the Contemporary West
What the Sciences Tell Us
The Meaning and Nature of Commitment
2. Betrothal and the Christian Tradition
2.1 Historical Considerations
2.2 Socio-Theological Considerations
3. Complementarity and Nuptial Cohabitation
3.1 Complementarity: Classicist and Historically Conscious
3.2 Marriage as Sacrament
3.3 Catechumenate for Marriage
4. Conclusion
Chapter Seven Homosexuality
Introduction
1. The Bible and Homosexuality
Homosexual Orientation and the Bible
Interpreting the Bible on Homosexuality
The Bible and Contemporary Discourse on Homosexuality
2. Magisterial Teaching on Homosexual Acts and Relationships
Natural Law Argument
Procreation Argument
Complementarity Argument
3. The Moral Sense of the Christian People and Homosexual Acts
4. The Morality of Homosexual Acts Reconsidered
5. Conclusion
Chapter Eight Artificial Reproductive Technologies
Introduction
1. Defining Artificial Reproductive Technologies
2. The CDF Instruction and Artificial Reproductive Technologies
2.1 Natural Law: Biological and Personalist Interpretations
2.2 The Instruction¿s Personalist Language
2.3 Heterologous Artificial Insemination (AFD) and the Personalist Principle
2.4 Homologous Artificial Insemination and the Biological Principle
2.5 A Methodological Shift
2.6 AFH and the Inseparability Principle
2.7 The Morality of AFH
2.8 The Meaning and Nature of Parenthood
2.9 Interrelationship Between Parenthood and the Conjugal Act
3. Parental Complementarity, Relational Considerations, and Social Ethics
3.1 ARTS and Health Complications among Children
3.2 Family and Society: ARTs and the Common Good
4. Conclusion
Epilogue
Introduction
1. Intra-Church Dialogue
Horizon and Conversion
2. Extra-Church Dialogue
Notes
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
