The Hook Up Culture and the Catholic Alternative
If sociologist Lisa Wade is to be believed, the “hook up” culture—an ethos of casual sex with no commitment or emotional attachment—while perceived as hegemonic and enjoying broad support, is in fact a source of much dissatisfaction to the students involved. What she says seems to be in accord both with my long ago experience as an undergraduate, and more recently with my observations of student culture here at Trinity College.
Many students want an alternative. Catholicism has one to offer. This would appear to be, if you will forgive the turn of phrase, a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, it is a match that I do not see happening. In my opinion a key reason for this is that the Church has lost much if not all of its credibility on matters touching on human sexuality. We are simply not listened to. This lack of attention is not restricted to secularists who reject everything the Church teaches. Even within our community, large numbers of otherwise faithful Catholics simply ignore some or all of what the Church teaches. You might object to my description of them as “faithful”, but simply dismissing them as “Cafeteria Catholics” or “Catholycs” does them and the depth and complexity of their faith lives a disservice.
While it is relevant to try to discern the reasons for this loss of credibility, I am more interested in a forward looking question: what can we do to be heard, to present the Catholic alternative in a way that the current generation of young people will listen to and accept? This is a pressing pastoral question, one which I have no good answer to. My colleague Brett may have some in his recent book, but I must confess that I have not yet bought a copy. (Sorry Brett!)
But reflecting on it, I wonder: is it a package deal? Must we present it as an all or nothing proposition? Or is there a hierarchy of truths about human sexuality, and if so, what are the most fundamental ideas we should try to convince young men and women to believe? My gut says begin with love, begin with the dignity of the human person. But after that, I am uncertain. Thoughts?
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I wouldn’t emphasize “love”…that’s a recipe for the whole conversation descending into sentimentalism and making emotion the standard.
Of course, Catholics don’t mean just an emotion by “love” but the way people will take that is “As long as we’re ‘in love’ it’s good and a beautiful thing.” Of course, “in love” is a fickle thing and purely a passion, especially for most student-aged people like that…and emphasizing that sounds like just a recipe for heartbreak and serial-monogamy, not anything really healthier than promiscuity.
I’d start with a category like “meaningfulness” perhaps.
I really don’t think there is a way to have this conversation and make it just about the sex. If people’s fundamental outlook these days is essentially hedonist more generally, you won’t be able to convince them just starting from or with the isolated issue of sex. You have to get to the heart of their whole basic paradigm regarding the meaning of life and true happiness before we can really make any headway.
It’s a daunting task.
I understand where you are coming from about “love” but I don’t think we should yield ground on the word. “God is love” “God so loved the world” “love one another as I have loved you” are too central to the gospel message to replace with something like “meaningfulness.”
Also, though it is a lesser evil, I think sex in the context of long term relationships is significantly better than the casual, deliberately meaningless sex of the hook up culture. Long term relationships bring to the fore that sex occurs between two subjects; hooking up is all about reducing your partner (and especially the woman) to an object.
A colleague told me a story some years ago that drove this point home for me. He was a writer, and beyond his teaching ran a writer’s circle for serious writers in the community. He had one particularly talented student he invited to join. The student (a male) submitted a semi-autobiographical story about a hook he had. In it, the protagonist is on the receiving end of oral sex in the girl’s room and in the course of it he notices that she has a new video game on her xbox. Totally entranced, when finished he gets up and goes over to start playing. The story ends with him playing the xbox while the girl lies on the bed crying. My colleague told me that the student was taken aback by the harsh reaction the story generated from the other writers, who all felt that the protagonist was a heartless, selfish jerk (among the milder and printable comments). The student could not understand what they thought was wrong.
I agree with David: let’s not yield ground on the word “love.” Let’s instead start the conversation by giving a new definition of the word “love” — not the definition of Hollywood and passion and emotion — but define it with the ideas of meaningfulness, true happiness, sacrifice, unselfish, giving, and Brett’s “a relationship which opens out, and doesn’t close in”.
Thales, I must have done something wrong if your first response to my post is to agree with me! :-)
Heh. You’re a thoughtful guy, David!
Must we present it as an all or nothing proposition?
I think this is a very salient question. I believe this is one of three points why the Church has lost credibility on matters of sexuality and sexual ethics:
1. The emphasis on the negative – e.g. “don’t have sex”, coupled with an exaggeration of the gravity of sexual sins leads us to distrust our natural instincts which tell us that sex is good and is worth pursuing (which it is). This creates confusion, repression, and guilt – essentially the opposite of what the virtue of chastity is supposed to bring us.
2. The lack of a clear example of the tangible benefits of chastity. The models of chastity that are presented are not models that the general public idealizes – lonely old priests driven to sexual misconduct, yardstick wielding nuns, cutesy brochures containing “churchy people” smiling and doing “churchy things” (this may not be politically correct, but let’s face it – most of the people who wind up on brochures about chastity hardly reek of sexual desire).
3. The “all or nothing” ideology you mention, which defies common sense. Is it really “grave matter” for two people who are five days away from their wedding to have sex? Is it really that bad to see my girlfriend/boyfriend naked if we have well-established boundaries that we will not cross and we communicate frequently about them? If I am truly in love with my partner, is it really going to totally cut me off from God to express that love sexually, or is it simply a matter of imprudence?
I think a re-centering around the actual principles behind the teachings on sexuality would make far more sense. Sex is good. You don’t need to be married to have sex, and it’s not intrinsically going to cut you off from God to do so. But sex also carries consequences that may permanently bind you to your partner, so you’d better ensure that you’re committed enough to see it through. If so, those consequences will compound your joy. If not, you will bring much suffering on yourselves and those around you. That suffering will drive you from God. Therefore, it is most prudent and most appropriate to save sex for marriage, and it is very strongly recommended that you do so.
Sex is good. You don’t need to be married to have sex, and it’s not intrinsically going to cut you off from God to do so.
Why say this? Why not hold up a standard of virtue and challenge people to it? Love is sacrificing oneself for another’s good and happiness and fulfillment — and that means abstaining from sex until marriage, since that is a sacrifice which leads to the beloved’s (and the lover’s) greater good, happiness, and fulfillment.
I know that we all fall from the ideal, that we all sin — but although we do that, let’s not lower the ideal in the first place.
(Maybe I misunderstood your point, because your last several sentences seem to be an argument in favor of saving sex for marriage, and they don’t seem to fit with the sentences I quoted.)
We are in agreement. We need to hold up the true standard of virtue and not back down from it. But where we’ve gone off the rails is in distorting the truth to emphasize the virtue, which destroys our credibility. Sex is “grave matter” because of its consequences. It therefore has the potential for mortal sin. But it is not intrinsically evil to have sex outside of marriage.
Sex is a natural construct. Marriage is a social construct. The social construct is not necessary for the natural construct to be good, as it is already intrinsically good. We therefore should not say that sex outside of marriage is evil. That’s a distortion. Putting someone in a position where their entire lives could be irrevocably changed without the appropriate mutual commitment and communication is irresponsible and imprudent. If you know this, and you still proceed anyway, that is evil.
The problem is, society has already figured out that sex is good, so there’s no point in distorting things anymore. Tell the truth: Yes, you can have sex. But chances are extremely high that, if you’re not married, you’re doing something very problematic and possibly gravely evil.
Thales, I tend to agree with you, but I also sense some of the dynamic tension Dan is pointing to, especially given the low credibility of the Church on this question. We don’t want the ideal, “the best” as it were, from becoming the enemy of the good. Case in point: my wife went to a presentation by a woman who wanted to talk about reaching out to young women in destructive sexual relationships: either prostitution, or wildly promiscuous relationships. Early in her presentation, the head of a local pro-life group stood up and denounced the speaker for suggesting any alternative beside preaching chastity before marriage, and then stormed out. After she was gone, the speaker said she agreed in principle, but felt it was important to meet these women where they were and guide them slowly towards the truth. Too big a step and they would never get their foot in the door.
Here is another story that I think illustrates this point. I heard it from the director of a local homeless shelter that is the “wet” shelter: it will take people currently using drugs and alcohol. As part of their outreach they try to get their clients clean and sober, but they have to take it one step at a time. So, for example, he recounted a budgeting class where one of the questions they discussed was how much the men spent on drugs and alcohol, and how they would have to cut back to stay on budget for the month.
David,
I agree with you entirely on this point. Two times in a row!
The key is prudence: or, as you put it, meeting someone where they are and guiding them slowly towards the truth. I couldn’t agree more. To evangelize the world, without scaring people off or turning them away; it’s a very difficult thing, but one we are called to.
You’re beginning to scare me Thales.
The basic approach in our book is to tie expressions of physical intimacy into the broader relationship. Physical intimacy makes sense, and is healthy and fulfilling, when it expresses the truth about the relationship between two people. Cautious of the situation that “A Sinner” points out, we don’t say things like, “If you love someone . . .” but we suggest people ask themselves concrete questions about the relationships like “Do I feel like he listens to me?” or “How do my friends feel about her?” or “Do I pray more or less now that I am in this relationship?”
Such questions (we typically divide them into questions about the social, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual aspects of a relationship) don’t admit to the same kind of fudging as whether or not one is “in love.” Once people learn how to “read” their relationships, it becomes fairly easy for anyone who has not completely corrupted their natural sense of modesty, to make healthy decisions about physical intimacy. In fact, it is those with a history of poor decisions who are often more conservative in their approach once they learn to look at things in this new way.
Very often, when we present this model, someone will tell us, during Q & A, “This makes so much sense! Why hasn’t anyone told us this before?” I hear this from Catholics, but also from seculars. Many people who may not be convinced that sex before marriage is wrong can still see the value of linking their physical intimacy to the relationships in general.
When I presented at the 3rd Annual International TOB symposium in the UK last spring, I finished up with some audience participation. After giving some sample questions, I asked them what other questions might one ask to gauge a relationship. I’d like to share my two favourite ones with you here:
1. A young woman suggested that for many girls it is important to ask “Am I actually attracted to this person?” As a guy, I had never thought of it this way, but talking to many young women does give the impression that many of them end up in physically intimate relationships for reasons of social pressure and expectation that have very little to do with their own desires.
2. An old priest floored the whole room when he suggested asking “What does this relationship do to my relationship with the poor?” I had suggested questions that lead in this direction, namely, that the relationship needs to open out, rather than close in. When we are intimate with someone it should be life-giving for the whole community or it will not even be life-giving for us. But I had never taken it to its logical biblical conclusion. If relationships aren’t just about me and you, but about the community, then what does it mean for the least of these?
“A young woman suggested that for many girls it is important to ask “Am I actually attracted to this person?” As a guy, I had never thought of it this way, but talking to many young women does give the impression that many of them end up in physically intimate relationships for reasons of social pressure and expectation that have very little to do with their own desires.”
This is a really important question in my opinion especially in the hook up culture and the way it objectifies women. It should be posed to men as well. There is a strong pressure in some parts of the hook up culture here at Trinity for men to deny that they are attached in any way to their sexual partners. Men need to be asked what they really want from a relationship as well.
If we DON’T tie it to marriage, though, I fear linking it to “relationships” can have an even MORE deleterious effect than casual hook ups by sullying the very concept of relationship itself.
Objectifying someone is bad, yes, but it is somewhat less disturbing that someone would treat an object poorly.
To offend against someone you claim to love and be committed to, wherein there is a recognition of subjecthood and personhood and all that…seems to me like it could be worse, especially if there is a system where this person will eventually be discarded after a few months or years.
I understand the “gradually” impetus to get people to slowly make these realizations, but in the meantime…I tend to think serial monogamy could be MORE spiritually harmful than promiscuity, as it involves eventually “throwing away” someone you really DID love and know to be human, and hardening ones heart with the scar of that severing. At least in casual sex you’re never attached to someone in the first place, so the cauterizing of the attachment is not so inhuman as when it is a deep three-year relationship where the two people become intertwined only to “move on” eventually which implies much more callousness to me than “moving on” from someone you only knew for a night anyway.
I am afraid I cannot agree with you on this one: casual hook ups are vastly more destructive than any kind of relationship based on a recognition of the other person as a subject. With or without sex, people can have close relationships and then break up and move on. I watched the daughter of a friend at Church begin dating, become serious, get engaged and then break it off a few weeks before the wedding. She knew it was not the right thing. Did it hurt her? Yes. Did it hurt him? Certainly. Will it leave permanent scars? I don’t know, but I suspect small ones. Life is an accumulation of scars. Will they continue to live and grow as people despite this? Yes.
Individually more destructive as acts, perhaps. But I still think a SYSTEM of serial monogamy maybe moreso overall. There has always been anonymous sex. A “culture” of it at colleges maybe not. But people have always treated people that way. Giving public social recognition and approbation to a system whereby people use each other for several years at a time and then (for fear of commitment or whatever) “move on” strikes me as a recipe for never being able to make the REAL commitment when the time comes. It seems to me that matricide is worse than the murder of a stranger, exactly because one is supposed to love a mother more. Likewise, I’d think that offending against (and unchastity is an offense against the other person) someone you know and love is actually in many ways more inhuman than offending against a stranger, more twisted, as knowing them as a human and then STILL choosing to use them that way implies to me even more dissonance.
Brett writes:
“Very often, when we present this model, someone will tell us, during Q & A, “This makes so much sense! Why hasn’t anyone told us this before?” I hear this from Catholics, but also from seculars. Many people who may not be convinced that sex before marriage is wrong can still see the value of linking their physical intimacy to the relationships in general.”
Excellent point, but this lets me bring the discussion back to my big question: how should we preach this message so that we get a hearing? Again, our lack of credibility on these questions strikes me as a serious pastoral obstacle.
I think we need to propose, rather than impose. We use language like, “Here’s why the Church thinks this is a good idea . . ” rather than “The Church teaches . . .”
Another thing to be aware of is that you can gain a hearing when you speak into people’s experience. So many people are sexually wounded. If you sound like you understand that dynamic and have an alternative, ears perk up. Say what you will about Christ West, but he understands this very keenly.
Say more about Chris West: I know he is controversial, but have not read him since I have never been interested in the theology of the body—the few presentations I have heard at conferences have left me flat.
I’ll try to think about Chris West a bit for you and report back.
David,
I’m not a theologian and haven’t extensively studied or thought about the Church on sexuality, etc., but here’s my take on the Theology of the Body. I think JPII’s teaching of the Theology of the Body contains the substance we need to respond to the hook-up culture: it has the answers to the questions about human sexuality, identity, and relationships and and it has the reasons behind the Church’s teaching. It’s all there. The problem is that the theology is dense and not immediately understandable to the average person. So it has to be interpreted and understood properly, and then conveyed in a prudent and appropriate manner to the listener. And different people interpret the TOB and convey it differently. For example, you’ve got Brett, you’ve got West, and you’ve got dozens of others. And that is where the problems and the criticisms arise. Some interpretations are good, some aren’t; some good interpretations are conveyed prudently and some aren’t; and some that are good and properly conveyed in one environment might not be so appropriate in another environment. (Again, prudence is key!)
On West in particular: I’ve found the small amount of stuff that I’ve read and heard from him to be good and thoughtful. As you probably know, he’s been criticized from a variety of sides. I read and heard him pre-controversy and at the time, I didn’t feel that there were any huge red flags — but maybe I was an audience not susceptible to the minor flaws identified by critics. I recognize that there may be some merit to the criticisms, though I don’t think they fundamentally doom his approach. In West’s favor, I’ve gotten the impression that he himself approaches the criticisms humbly and realizes that he is imperfect and might be imperfectly conveying the Truth, and I get the impression that he is always open to learning more how to better evangelize this Truth.
At the risk of being unfair to the speakers I heard, it really felt like their description of Theology of the Body boiled down to two aphorisms:
“Leave room for the Holy Spirit in your relationship”
“Don’t use artificial contraception.”
If there is more to it, that was not effectively presented. I am going to wait to hear back from Brett and others on Chris West. Maybe someone more familiar with TOB can talk about it in the context of my basic question? I think TOB is relevant, but I want to focus on the pastoral issue of speaking to a world that doesn’t want to listen to us (often for very good reasons).
David,
If it’s just those aphorisms, sounds like they got TOB spectacularly wrong. In my opinion, the TOB is along the lines of all that has been said in this comment thread, about a different way of understanding love and relationships.
On the question of whether pre-marital sex separates one from God, I would say that it certainly could. To use traditional language, it is “grave matter.” On the other hand, the theology of mortal sin is clear that just because something is grave does not mean that it, always and in every case, cuts one off from God. To phrase things in such a way is unhelpful and misleading and probably costs us credibility.
My approach is this: if the NT is clear about anything, it’s the fact that our relationship with God is intimately bound up with our relationship to our brothers and sisters. To tell someone that an act separates them from God can be tough to prove and looks like an imposition, but it is not at all tough to prove that things like the hook-up culture wreck our relationships with our brothers and sisters. Once that has been demonstrated, all one needs to say is that that does not leave our relationship with God untouched. Obviously, as I become callous and selfish and willing to use people, my relationship with God suffers. I may even become so heartless that I cut myself off.
So I wouldn’t say, in presenting to young people, that it cuts us off or that it doesn’t, but simply that it is bad for us and turns us into people we don’t want to be, and that such things cannot be hermetically sealed off from the rest of our lives and relationships, including relationship with God. Again, getting people to ask themselves a few honest questions should demonstrate this pretty clearly. How many people will find that meaningless hook-ups help their prayer life or their relationship to the poor?
This.
Brett,
Just wanted to let you know I bought the book and read it this weekend, and was totally impressed. I’m still figuring out how to share it with my teenaged sons, but I know I want to.
Thank you and Leah for writing it.
R.
Thanks R. That’s great. I don’t know your sons, but my guess is that if you leave it in the washroom, it’ll probably get read.
In the short term, I think the Church could regain some of its credibility by letting married deacons and young married thinkers/writers like Brett take the lead on questions of sexuality. In the long run, it’s going to require the restoration of a married secular priesthood, in my opinion, and I know plenty of very “orthodox” priests who agree.
David
That you mention the adverse effect of the priest sex scandal on our credibility in sexual matters is a giant step for Catholic blogdom. Most blogs keep this topic off their blogs. I think the sex scandal makes institutional witness impossible while one-on-one work as some of you like Brett do does have success.
A celibate citing the catechism’s no’s to a group of young people will go nowhere fast.
But even a celibate who moves past “because the Church says so” to the deep structure reason underneath the Church’s commands will make progress. I remember being impressed when in my late twenties, a priest told a small group of us, ” the sexual contact must sign, symbolize and follow upon the extent of committment….when you vow your future to another, you have given all of you to that person and that is signed by giving all of you physically in sexual intercourse….young people now are signing full committment sexually way prior to even being committed to meet next week for coffee let alone vowing all one’s future crosses and successes….the sex must match the committment level and only the vow-er has given all so only they should sign all.”
He was terrific by way of charism but his own character failed later in a sex abuse act and three of us tried to have him removed from ministry back in the day when superiors felt free to dismiss us and judicial punishment would have been probation since it was an older teen he groped.
As clerical institution though…citing a catechism on sex to a Catholic high school class while having taken forever to protect children and only under the pressure of the press in 2002, that credibility ship has sailed not with all but with many.
Other questions on acts short of intercourse, I don’t have viable answers that I would put on others and I don’t trust Aquinas derived answers. Does masturbation put one in eternal hell forever…forever not 500 years…forever… despite God never mentioning it in over 600 laws to the Jews? True He never mentioned abortion or pornography in those laws but both were impossible technologically amongst a desert people….that would have been tantamount to giving them a law against in vitro fertilization which also did not exist yet.
“I think the sex scandal makes institutional witness impossible while one-on-one work as some of you like Brett do does have success.”
I am not quite so despairing, if only because institutional witness must be done through individuals. For example, my diocese has a very successful “Youth Spectacular” every year. My kids go and get a lot out of it. This provides an opening to speak to a target audience as an institution. The problem is, how to do it without simply relying on authority?
Folks, I’m in the midst of taking a stab at the challenge of presenting the Church’s wisdom on sexuality, but doing it in secular terms. I began work on a book this summer tentatively titled Sex Love God, and the basic idea is to try to tie the first two terms together through analysis of symbolism (what our bodies do is what we as people do, much along the lines Brett alludes to above). The real Christian turn is in loving: and yes, we do need to hold our ground in saying we know something about that rich idea in spite of the flattened versions abroad in US culture. Love demands seeing the other, falling into the depths of the other. In sexuality, that means never acting solely on hormones but always on the good of the other in the context of the community (hence that great point Brett’s priest friend made about the poor). And if we can get people to love we’ve already gotten them to God.
Credibility? I won’t invoke a single magisterial resource in the text, even though they have informed my thinking on the issue. I’m invoking neuroscience, sociology, literature, philosophy, and maybe eventually a theologian (we’ll see). There is no longer an argument from authority, so we have to re-learn the art of rhetoric.
This sounds fascinating. If you want a critical reader for your manuscript, I would be happy to volunteer. :-)
I may take you up on that! (But there’s a long road before I’d show my ramblings to anyone.) For now, though, I’m interested in anyone’s feedback on a series I’m running over at Patheos entitled “Sex and Christianity.”
Tim,
We’re having an interesting discussion on your piece at
http://joyfulpapist.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/obsessed-with-god-and-sex/
in which I’ve been critical of some of the ways in which you have worded your argument.
God Bless
Sex Love God. I LOVE that title.
David writes, “Even within our community, large numbers of otherwise faithful Catholics simply ignore some or all of what the Church teaches.”
I think this is because they have been taught, post-V2, that they *may* ignore some or all of what the Church teaches. The answer then, would be to begin teaching Catholics that they may *not* ignore what the Church teaches — to teach that fact as part of the Gospel, which you must accept as a whole or not at all.
As to those who have already been raised to believe that you may ignore some teachings, clearly they are a lot harder to reach. Quite likely they have not been taught the fear of losing salvation. But someone who has no fear of hell, it seems to me has not quite grasped the whole Gospel, though they may in fact know and love God. So we’re talking about a need to re-evangelize people who believe they are already evangelized. Very, very difficult indeed.
David, unfortunately the Church screwed up and lost credibility because of two big steps, one past, one recent with two replays:
1) I am not proud of my country for doing this, but The Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops (circa the 60′s) SCREWED UP ROYALLY with the infamous Winnipeg Statement that gave a symbolic “middle finger” to the magisterium and Paul VI via Humanae Vitae. They basically defied the authority of Rome by disacknowledging H.V. and this set up a chain reaction for other Bishop’s councils in countries to do the same. Usually, Canada/US are on the receiving end of such movements, but for once in shame Canada was the one that started this.That trickled down to joe pewgoer at Mass eventually, along with the misapplication of Vatican II and the promulgation of the birth control pill.
2) Like Muldoon and other commenters have said, including yourself (and kudos to putting it out there on the blogosphere): the sex scandals, with big blows via the left-wing mainstream media in 2002 and 2010. While more knowledgeful Catholics and even people attune to political/ideaological biases or knowledge of the media industries are smart enough to know better and not fall prey, lukewarm Catholics, critics of the Church, or the weakly catechized/educated would be shocked by such things and thus the Church’s credibility on sex issues is hampered further.
To me, if the Church wants to be credible in the eyes of joe weakly catechized pewgoer:
1) The CCCB should IMMEDIATELY issue a public apology stating that the bishops failed in the greatest time of need, to be sheperds to their flocks and allowed a host of sexual evils to occur in society because of the W.S. They showed great disobedience to their Holy Father and hence, the Church (in Rome) when they issued that statement. In otherwords, they own up to this moral calamity that they caused. This would have the biggest effect in Canada, obviously, but it’d also restore some credibility to the Church and bishops too. Furthermore, they RETRACT the Winnipeg Statement fully.
2) More generally, B16 should issue another general apology, but on behalf of all priests and seminaries for I) responding too late to the issue of sexual abuse and II) for having such lax standards as to allow homosexuals to enter the seminary and not disciplining them when they err, and trusting in the psychological profession fully, a secular profession devoid mostly of any type of pro-religious nature. There are exceptions in the form of the rare Catholic psycholgist/psychoanalyst, but that is rare. Plus the DSM-III took homosexuality out of it as a disorder. Furthermore, he should issue a total re-evaluation to be carried out by each countries’ papal nuncios of the seminary system to see if they are now complying with the new Church laws that were put out.
As to your final paragraph, this is going to have to be a full team effort, by priests, teachers, youth ministers and the new wave of theologians like Brett to undertake: They must teach how the media works and how industries are perpetuating this “hook up culture” for the purposes of the almighty dollar. Also the concept of sin must be introduced, particularly lust (sexual angle), greed (the industries behind the culture) and pride (the sin behind all sins). With those bases covered, finally one could go into what a proper relationship is and what it entails theologically as a Catholic, using great resources like the Catechism + YouCat, the Theology of the Body, Jason & Christina Evert’s books and Brett (+ Leah)’s How Far Can We Go, and don’t forget Scripture. Oh, and we have to get to the Parents! They are always the primary repository of the faith as outlined in one of Vatican II’s documents, but if they are crappy role models in Faith themselves, then the kids will go looking for someone else to emulate, and that might be their new “Daddies and Mommies” on MTV(TM), the Situation(TM???), Snooki, Ronnie and Sammi (Those last two btw are not a proper relationship between the cheating and Ronnie’s violent rages).
[ Humanae Vitae and the child abuse scandal are proper topics for discussion, but only in the context of the questions I posed. I am letting this post go through un-edited, but I do not want this to degenerate into a fight about homosexuality and the child abuse scandal, among other things.]
Ok David, I just caught on to your brackets there. I mentioned the scandal and HV to answer your question. This is why:
Your Question: ” … what can we do to be heard, to present the Catholic alternative in a way that the current generation of young people will listen to and accept? This is a pressing pastoral question … ”
This is why I mentioned HV and the scnadal, because there is work that the Church can do to restore their credibility by taclking these issues (They are doing a great job, but there’s always more to do …). Doing a “mea culpa” institutionally might just bring those people who don’t accept the Church’s teachings on sexuality back to Her. Let’s use the analogy of a verbal conflict/fight. When two people fight, both sides will be angry at one another. Think of the Church as one person and the young people who won’t listen to the Church because of those two events as the 2nd person. If the two people continue to pout in separate corners and be self-centered, thinking “I’m right, they’re wrong” and not listening, then the conflict cannot be resolved. At least one person (though ideally both people, for “it takes 2 to tango”) has to admit where they screwed up and take responsibility, right? That or give the other person “reason” to listen to them, and that might mean acknowledging their “feelings”, or one’s screwups as to how they got into the fight or conflict in the first place. This doesn’t mean the other person should be propped up or coddled, but someone’s gotta break for conflict resolution to occur. Both sides become willing to listen to each other by seeing the other person admit responsibility and be humble. Then the two people can sit down with cooler heads and possibly discuss a practical solution to the problem, or even kiss and make up.
So that’s why I mentioned it. Those admittances might be part of the solution to “being heard” if you understand my conflict resolution analogy.
You know I just of something. I know about Humanae Vitae because I studied it as part of a unit on abortion in my Moral Theology course in Gr. 12, at my private Catholic High School, St. Michael’s College School, Toronto, ON. However, my school was private and could design its own curricula including textbooks, whereby the separate school board has a different curriculum using a common pre-pack of textbooks, and that system is also subject to government funding (and henceforth curriculum demands). That system (and public school students too) likely would encounter H.V. So, how about just simply introducing the youth to HV, as they wouldn’t normally know of its existence (it was also written in 1969 too for that matter. Who knows about old stuff right?)
No Julian, I got your point. The editorial comment was to slow down people who were going to be responding to you so that they would stay on topic. You said some provocative things which could easily get us side-tracked.
Thank you David. I am glad you understand the point I was making. I can be blunt being little old conservative me.
edit to my last quote: “That [separate] system (and public school students too) likely would NOT encounter H.V.
I think the elephant in the room is that continence from 12 to 30 is assumed to be consistent with prior models. I think this assumption is ultimately erroneous, and I think trying to address the issue of premarital sex without addressing this leads to a failure of understanding. Economic pressures make imprudent the ordinary 20-something couple forming a family today. This is where I think ‘hooking up’ viewed as an expression of decadence is completely backwards. I think it is an expression of poverty. If we go back in time, we find education being the path for women out of poverty. With the first wave of educated women, you find them following traditional values and finding themselves isolated. They were unable to find men and found rumors of lesbianism following them. Having that example, the second generation of women is making no presumptions of everything working itself out. (“Conservative” colleges are largely aping the first generation example, having large swathes of graduates perpetually single and bemoaning society and the opposite sex on blogs.) The sexual strategy for all its ill effects has succeeded in keeping women desirous of sex in the market of marriage and coincidentally brought forth a taboo of marrying outside one’s age demographic.
I am afraid I don’t follow your reasoning: how does this lead to a hook up culture, which reduces sex to an impersonal commodity, instead of creating, say, a cultural of serial monogamy built on medium term inter-personal relations involving sex?
Monogamy is a marker of social status and class. A lot of men at the college level have not attained these markers or shown the probability of doing so to make monogamy worth pursuing for its own sake. Monogamy after all does come with commitments.
While there are deviations, for the most part this free sex is confined to college students in a fairly tight age cohort, making the sex not really as free as it would seem. The sex is reinforcing class and age expectations. This group dynamic allows for educated couples to find one another once they are in a position where they want to form family units.
This has led to one of the bigger frustrations of the past generation. Couples that have premarital sex are forming happy and healthy marriages. Narrowed down enough, their success rate is basically the same as couples that remained chaste. As opposed to the abstainers that formed marriages, there are a lot of abstainers that have found themselves unable to form happy and fulfilling relationships with the opposite sex. (For that matter, many of them can’t even get to the form relationship stage.) This accounts for a lot of the anger seen: people aren’t punished for sin, and the ones who don’t sin are punished.
Couples that have premarital sex are forming happy and healthy marriages. ….As opposed to the abstainers that formed marriages, there are a lot of abstainers that have found themselves unable to form happy and fulfilling relationships with the opposite sex.
I dunno. In my experience, it’s tends to be exactly the opposite, as a general rule (though, of course, there are always exceptions.)
There is data about this, and if I recall correctly, it supports Thales’ position. But I cannot find the studies I am thinking of. Can anyone else find them?
“If cohabitation is limited to a person’s future spouse, there is no elevated risk of divorce.”
http://marriage.about.com/od/cohabitation/qt/cohabfacts.htm
It seems Thales misread the second part as a commentary on marriage. I’m not aware of involuntary singleness statistics to establish sway on the matter. I am aware of quite a bit whining and moaning in the blogosphere from conservative men and women unable to find spouses in their late twenties and beyond. They are not consecrated virgins and did not have any intention whatsoever of being single so late in life.
I think there’s truth to both sides. There are people who have made very poor choices for spouses because they married too quickly in order to avoid temptation. This is clearly unhealthy and usually ends in disaster. On the other hand, the type of person who is willing to wait for sex is also the type of person more likely to work through the difficulties of a marriage and make it work. You see the opposite problem in the other group – they are able to focus on the qualities of the person and are much more likely to choose a better suited mate, but they are also less likely to commit. It’s a double-edged sword.
I’m not aware of involuntary singleness statistics to establish sway on the matter. I am aware of quite a bit whining and moaning in the blogosphere from conservative men and women unable to find spouses in their late twenties and beyond.
But then, reading the secular press and secular blogs, one can find plenty of people (mostly women but some men as well) who have done their fair share of sleeping around and yet still find themselves bitterly unable to find a spouse.
Couples that have premarital sex are forming happy and healthy marriages. Narrowed down enough, their success rate is basically the same as couples that remained chaste.
As I recall, however, most studies find that the more sexual partners someone has had prior to marriage, the less likely they are to have successful marriages.
I suppose one could argue that monogamy may have the data behind it, but “the piece of paper” doesn’t — but then unless one waits for “the piece of paper” to start having sex it’s not yet clear whether the person you’re cohabiting with will in fact be your spouse.
“If cohabitation is limited to a person’s future spouse, there is no elevated risk of divorce.”
Again, I dunno…. there are competing statistics that indicate there actually is a higher risk of divorce, even assuming cohabitation being limited to the future spouse. But even if this is true, I echo Darwin’s point: having only one sexual partner might be more relevant to the risk of divorce instead of the fact of getting a marriage certificate, but unless you wait for marriage before becoming sexually active, it’s not necessarily the case that your sexual partner will be the one you end up marrying.
I think this is true, but I wouldn’t necessarily phrase it in terms of women only, or of educated women in particular. The fact is that right up until the early 20th Century, the vast majority of people were working by the time they were adolescents and married in their teens or early twenties at the outside. Moreover, given the technology (low mobility) and milieu (most lived in small towns), there would have been much less opportunity for those who didn’t want to wait to fool around. It’s not for no reason that the automobile has been considered responsible for huge changes in American sexual practices. Thus, for most of history the onset of adult sexual drives coincided with the appropriate fulfillment and channeling of said drives, with fewer avenues for “distractions”.
Now, as you pointed out, the time from puberty to marriage often extends to 30 or beyond. This is in a context in which “hooking up” is the easiest it’s been in human history. Thus, how do you convince a young person to rein in a desire designed to be fulfilled soon after it arises for two decades or more, much of which will be spent away from parents as an adult on his or her own? From personal experience, having married at 36, I can say that the Church’s support for singles (especially, God forbid, single men who take their faith seriously but don’t want to become priests!) is absolutely abysmal. It tends towards the happy-clappy “churchy”-people approach that Dan speaks of with advice that boils down to seeing chastity as a positive thing rather than a burden, with no inkling as to how one does so, and remonstrances to wait. You also see blessings for mothers and fathers on Mother’s and Father’s Day, respectively, and Vocation Sunday/Week/Month, etc., but never any recognition of singles, by and large.
I’d also pick up on what Bill said re eternal damnation for masturbation and such. George Carlin once said that after Vatican II you didn’t have to eat fish on Fridays, but that he bet there were still “guys in Hell doing time on a meat rap”. This is hilarious, but a good example of the all-or-nothing mentality with which mortal sins were preached back in the day. I understand that one can construct a defense of teaching that masturbation or eating a hamburger on a Friday or whatever are really, truly mortal sins, at least in some cases (though always with qualifications because of intent, consent of the will, et cetera ad nauseam). Nevertheless, you’re not going to get a hearing if you say, with however many qualifications and disclaimers that such cases would be rare, and so on, that God damns some to Hell eternally for, ahem, spanking the monkey or having a Big Mac on a Friday in Lent.
I don’t really know what approach, if any, is going to work these days, but I think it’s very much a vexed question.
MZ writes, “Economic pressures make imprudent the ordinary 20-something couple forming a family today. This is where I think ‘hooking up’ viewed as an expression of decadence is completely backwards. I think it is an expression of poverty.”
If you’re only considering it in terms of a societal phenomenon, I might be open to this explanation. But if we’re considering it insofar as it affects Catholics, I think it misses the point.
Someone who is seriously striving for virtue and holiness would far rather be poor than fornicate even one time, let alone serially. Anyone might fornicate in a moment of weakness, but we’re talking here about habitual, serial fornication. People who act this way either don’t believe it’s wrong, or don’t care, or for some reason are giving some other concern a higher priority than virtue. If they’re Catholics that indicates a serious defect in their degree of faith or their faith formation.
David writes, “Many students want an alternative. Catholicism has one to offer. … Unfortunately, it is a match that I do not see happening. In my opinion a key reason for this is that the Church has lost much if not all of its credibility on matters touching on human sexuality. We are simply not listened to.”
I don’t know why we would expect people to listen to the Church with regard to a single moral issue, if they don’t listen to the Church with regard to the message of salvation in the first place. Now how to get people to listen to the Gospel, that’s the question for the ages.
Though only a budding theologian in my undergrad studies, I wanted to make one contribution to the thread. I attend what is considered one of the more “orthodox” Catholic universities in the U.S., with an active (seemingly evangelical campus ministry), high Mass attendance all week, etc. I say this because perhaps this skews my experiences in the past few years from the typical young adult…
I, however, think the concept of “hook-up” culture is somewhat misunderstood, even by those who study it. My evidence is merely anecdotal, but I would posit that those who are hooking up casually en masse in the ways everyone freaks out about and, similarly, those who are members of the chastity club/abstinence pledgers, etc. are the minorities. For most young adults, the rules on sexual activity and relationships are continuously in flux, though within more confined parameters that permit more than nothing, but often stop short of full intercourse. Short to medium-term relationships, even if not defined officially, are the seeming expectation.
I say all of this as a means of showing a potential way for the Church to enlighten young adults about why it teaches what it does regarding sexuality. My experiences say that the sexual activity/hooking up/whatever one calls it, is driven equally, if not more, by the desire for emotional intimacy rather than the mere hormones. Though this does not deal with the alcohol induced one-night-stands, a positive theology which presents sexuality as a relational activity (similar to presentations in the classrooms of general moral theology and ethics as a relational exercise) might be very helpful.
My peers (and I will admit myself) tune out too quickly when sexuality becomes a series of condemnations and lists of do/don’t. If there is a way to emphasize how sexuality used properly is ultimately life-giving, in service to others (including the poor…interesting thought, but with Millenials so service-driven it just might work!), and a tool that when used properly can really develop meaningful relationships so desired by those practicing the distorted dating model I live amongst today.
As a brief side note, I think pastorally there need to be major shifts too. Perhaps instead of denying any good in premarital sexual activity, by amplifying the glimpses of grace, beauty, love that sexually active young adults may experience, confessors, priests, other mentors could reveal how much fuller these divine gifts are within a properly order sexuality. This might just be a motivation for change in some young adults…
I’d really love to hear your thoughts on “How Far Can We Go?” This suggestion has much in common with our approach. (If you might be interested in blogging a review, I could probably get a promo copy sent your way. Let me know.)
@brettsalkeld Sorry for the delay in responding…I read a review of the book (I think on U.S. Catholic maybe?) and I remember thinking it looked interesting compared to the typical stuff put out on sexuality, etc. I’d be more than willing to review it if there’s a copy available, with the only hesitation/drawback being that I’d have to do it later in November. Senior year is quite busy with my thesis, seminars, etc., so I have limited extra/free time. However, if that isn’t too late, I’d definitely like to give it a look. Let me know…my e-mail is rshine20@gmail.com.