Every now and then in the life of a reporter, there comes an interview conducted or a speech recorded which one prizes. This causes one to return to listen and savour the taste from an intellectual feast, marvel at the beauty of the spoken word, and to revel in the treasure added to life's exquisite artifacts.
One such tape in my archive is that of a speech delivered by Fr. Clyde Harvey, rector of the Trinidad-based Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church, in San Fernando. Fr. Harvey shot to prominence in the Caribbean about a year ago following the announcement that an American had been selected to become the highest ranking Roman Catholic cleric in the twin-island republic, following the death of Archbishop Anthony Pantin. Fr. Harvey decried the appointment. He did not mince words, and pointed out that the replacement served to colonise the church afresh.
Delivering a speech last year, I heard him say: "In the area of human sexuality, the Church has more to learn than in many instances it has to teach." I have often marvelled since, at the profundity of that claim. Indeed the church is strong in judging sexual immorality, but has not done too good a job in probing the meaning of sexuality as distinct from sex.
I heard him late last year as he presented a paper, "Toward a Theology of Sexuality" at a conference sponsored by the Caribbean Conference of Churches, in the Dominican Republic.
Churches, he pointed out, need to probe the difference between sex and sexuality. In his words: "there will never be a relevant and effective theology of sex as sexual ethics until we have articulated in depth a theology of human sexuality."
Here is where the church has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The theological institutions in the Caribbean where pastors and other church workers study and are trained, have few if any courses on human sexuality. Indeed, there are few such courses in the non-theological educational institutions.
And isn't it true that a lot of the problems that emerge during counselling (pastoral counselling or just counselling to heal relationships) relate to the differences between sex and sexuality.
Sexual activity and sexuality, he stressed are both multifaceted and multivalent. "One of the reasons why our churches have such difficulty in dealing with the issues of sexuality is that we ignore the fact that sexual acts take on different meanings in different circumstances. And at the heart of the human being of many people are fundamental differences, which will always call forth different forms of expression. The Christian compulsion seems to have been to establish one universal meaning for sex. The result has been, in the words of one English writer: 'A failure to recognise mutuality, justice and beauty in some sexual relationships which do not embrace this universal meaning,'" said Harvey.
So how then does one construct a theology of sexuality? This may be done, Fr. Harvey said, by asking the right questions of the Bible. He advocates a philosophical theology as a beginning, for he sees this kind of discipline as necessary to deal with question of humanity at the level of significance, and so embracing the meaning of life. He says: "Theology is first and foremost a question of meaning. What is the meaning of human existence? What are the doorways to understanding the human condition in the light of our understanding of the divine, revealed or acquired? Does our understanding of the divine throw any light on our understanding of our sexual being."
The challenge facing the church, says Fr. Harvey, is to move beyond merely saying to constituents, "Don't commit sexual immorality," but to create a vision of sexual relating.
"Our sexuality in its being and expression is multifaceted and ambiguous. Anyone who goes deep enough experiences that ambiguity. It arises when you experience a powerful sexual energy in yourselves even as your body begins to show its wear and tear. It arises in the orgasmic moment when you want to give all and receive all only to know that you will never be all."
"Young people today know that ambiguity from very early in life. The Sexual Revolution somehow does not bring happiness so they look for something deeper, positively so. They either opt out of the sexual journey, substituting for it journeys of power, for example politics and management, or journeys of psychological manipulation often equated with the divine and so-called 'spirituality'. They hear the church trumpeting its negative message and yearn for a more positive invitation to full life. We are yet to find a frame of reference for sexuality and our sexual relating which can invite us to transcend this ambiguity, this pain, and ultimately the very differentiation of male and female."
Churches, Fr. Harvey rightly points out, often see the problem as one of curbing sexual desire, yet those who are married know that the challenge is to keep sexual desire going and growing.
A theology of sexuality is primarily a doctrine of human BE-ing. It is not only a theology that draws boundaries but opens up vistas on human meaning as it seeks to relate this aspect of human existence to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, he said.
Quoting theologian James B. Nelson, Fr. Harvey says "(Sexuality) is our way of being in the world as gendered persons, having male or female biological structures and socially internalised self-understandings of those meanings to us. Sexuality means having feeling and attitudes about being 'body-selves'. It means having affectionate orientations toward the opposite sex, the same sex, or quite possibly toward both. It means having the capacity for sensuousness. Above all, sexuality is the desire for intimacy and communion, both emotionally and physically.
"It is the physiological and psychological grounding of our capacity to love. At its undistorted best, our sexuality is that basic Eros of our humanness - urging, pulling, luring, driving us out of loneliness into communion, out of stagnation into creativity.
"Until we find a way of expressing sexual meaning, and of creating a vision of sexual relating... until we are open enough with the varieties of sexual being which are present in the human community and are able to move beyond physicalism which expresses itself most potently in an obsession with penetration, beyond patriarchy where the male is normative for almost everything sexual and beyond power relations which allows us to see that communion that is born of the Spirit ... until we are able to do that, we will not turn the tide on any of our sexual problems. What it means is that we have to be prepared to challenge people to ask a different set of questions. Questions which are applicable and valid whatever form of sexual relationship one may be in. It is not a question of whether this or that is right or wrong, but rather who or what am I becoming. Who or what are we becoming, what are we witnessing to by the life we live."
Fr. Harvey's words rang hauntingly as I pondered the recent upsurge in reports of sex scandals among Roman Catholic priests in the United States. The sexual sins of Protestant pastors are equally a matter of concern. Though they are not in the headlines now, many counsellors will testify to the predatory and the sexually shameful behaviour of Protestant pastors and church leaders. Isn't this cause for more reflection in the church on the matters of sex vis-a-vis sexuality.
His words seem doubly important as the church community seeks to minister to those affected by sexually transmitted diseases especially HIV/AIDS. While he does not discount the importance of stressing fidelity in the marital relationship and abstinence for the unmarried, he is saying sexual relating in the church and wider society is couched too much in the language of prohibition and this needs to be balanced by an affirming, ennobling, positive way of demonstrating masculinity and femininity. This, he seems to be saying, is the foundation for everything else that will be taught in church. Let's hope that those who would teach this, are themselves very secure in their sexuality.
Is it not of some importance that before the Biblical record tells us anything of sanctification, salvation or rapture, it tells us that human beings are first and foremost sexual beings "male and female he created them." Indeed, he was saying that masculinity and femininity are world views, and the church must help to shape those world views especially where they run risk of becoming warped. Citing the Apostle Paul he said: "Human sexuality cannot be separated from the call to holiness since it is as sexual beings that men and women are one in Christ. Women are called to the journey from property to person in the full freedom of a daughter of God, even as men are called to journey from sower to sustainer.
For Fr. Harvey, the challenge for the church is to ground a theology of sexuality, not in Biblical prescriptions rooted in patriarchy, not in natural law, not in ignorance and fear of the potency of sexual energy, "but in life, the movement, the intimacy in differentiation, which is at the heart of our Trinitarian doctrine."
An invitation to live sexuality in this way, he said, "would challenge, engage directly, the western obsession with orgasm, and seek to promote that communion which is born of tender care, which would express even in the human body, the koinonia, the fellowship of the Spirit. It would challenge the obsession with conquest, which is at the heart of so much promiscuity and witness to that self-affirmation and other affirmation, which is the fruit of true love. It would provide an agenda for sexual relating beyond the reproductive years, indeed beyond the years of body beautiful."
Mark Dawes is a Gleaner Staff Reporter. Send feedback to dawesmark@hotmail.com.
