John,

I think it's the sound of the Theologyofthebodians amassing their weapons of mass destruction on your frontier.

One question: if pscyhoanalysis is useless on the Irish, what's the corresponding fail for the Jews?

JOB

Tweeted two separate quotes from this--what a riot.

"Chastity" and "Fishnet Stockings" in the same breath--great way to enjoy coffee in the morning.

Thanks John!

This makes me really feel sorry for the Irish. No wonder they drink.

Wonderful! As a married woman, I completely agree that trying to draw a comparison between "the inner life of the Holy Trinity" and marital sex is JUST NOT GOING TO WORK! When I was reading various tomes on the theology of the body, I wondered if I was the only one who felt something was very wrong. Good to know I am not alone! As my (Italian) mother used to say, "There is a place for everything and everything (should be) in its place." The marital bed just isn't the place for contemplating the deeper truths of our faith.

As far as I am concerned John, the title of your post is a dead give away of your writer's soul.... it is stuck if you have to go there to bring people to your work/thoughts. Being an Irish Catholic Mother of two boys, and raised by 2 Irish Catholic parents, male and female, with seven brothers, sex was clearly happening in my parent's bedroom and the home was filled with sexual hormones... and there were a lot of discussions about remaining pure and chaste.... but trust me, there were a lot of other discussions as well.... pretty much all of the sins were covered; hence, all of us have a pretty solid moral foundation to stand upon...fall down, and find our feet again.
I believe that if you are caught up on the lack of integration of your sexuality and spirituality (again pointing to your title as the content of your writing went somewhere else) I would be pointing rather to the fact that the world you stepped out into had slid off the moral charts..... even, within the Church itself... over the last 25 - 30 years.... hence, the fact that your title was even allowed on this Catholic website... Your title is blasphemous to me.... I don't have to explain that to you, do I?
I say grow up, I mean, unless you are 19 you should be growing spiritually and perhaps if you are still in your 20's I should cut you some slack.... Sexuality in Ireland was a completely banned subject.... no one knew someone was pregnant until the baby was practically due to be born....

I hope that you will take the good, the bad and the ugly of your parent's foundation, appreciate the strengths and make the foundation you set for your children more integrated, more wholistic, more comprehensive upon which to stand.

The first half of your writing made me laugh. The second half unsettled me (in a good way).

I can relate to the first half because ethnic groups do have their own styles of relating and socialization.

As far as the second half goes (sorry for cutting the essay into two giant pieces),... just as there is nothing new about sin, there can be nothing new about grace.

John-

Great article!

I wonder if your observations regarding Irish prudery (for let's call it what it is) are restricted to the Irish women. It certainly seems to me that Irish men do not overly concern themselves with sexual mores. No more do they concern themselves with temperance of any sort. Perhaps the women of the Emerald Isle are overly concerned with both as a matter of self-preservation? Or in some cosmological way, they're trying to balance everything out?

"But is that kind of thinking . . . sexy? I'm single, so readers can correct me here, but the last thing I want to hear about on my wedding night is Trinitarian theology."

Is that kind of thing...sexy?.........YES!

I wed my husband 2 months ago. It's actually my second wedding- I say second wedding, because the first marriage of 5 years was annulled and therefore not an actual marriage. The first relationship was devoid of any knowledge of the Theology of the Body. A few years after that relationship ended, God blessed me with the opportunity to dive into and study the Theology of the Body. With 3 years of study, I wondered if a real life application was even possible. Even after meeting and becoming engaged to my fiance, I wondered: is it going to squash the intimacy of our wedding bed? is it going to be a problem that I have knowledge of this "deeper meaning" of sex?

Joyfully, I can attest to the fact that the Theology of the Body IS Sexy. Thinking of the "inner life of the Trinity" prior to marital union actually makes sex better! It sounds crazy, but it's surprisingly true. God wants you to have great sex with your spouse. The more united you are with God and His thinking, the better marital sex you will have.

That's what's so weird about it: it's not just about the two spouses, it's as you said, "also the ordinary means of grace within the sacrament; in other words, sexual intercourse is to being married what saying Mass is to being a priest. "

So- I disagree with the respondent above, "The marital bed just isn't the place for contemplating the deeper truths of our faith." Separating the two, would be like going to Mass, but not thinking about God. The Mass can be dull and boring if you miss what's going on there. Likewise, some married couples complain about their activities in the bedroom being dull and boring. Perhaps it's because they just need to think about how Sexy the "inner life of the Trinity" is? :P

Hi, Eve: I think it's great if a wife finds the Trinity sexy, and if this particular thought contributes to making her relationship with her husband better -- but the problem with the theology of the body proponents is their suggestion that religious thoughts are somehow inherently and universally sexy.

I can see a husband or wife silently praying before romance -- after all, one's private thoughts are just that, private. But I simply cannot imagine a husband murmuring sweet nothings in his wife's ear about the trinity as part of foreplay. It just defies all logic.

Sorry, Eve, I have to side with John and Lorraine here. Sex as an image / icon / metaphor of our union with God may have its uses, but I don't see how anyone can say it's sexy.

Sexy means enticing, seduction, deliberately arousing sexual desire. There's usually a hint of "naughty" in it, though it's debatable whether that's intrinsic or disordered. But there's really no congruence in my mind between these things and our pursuit of holiness or a relationship with God. One reason the "world-despising Gnosticism" John mentions was a danger for Christians is because our faith has certain strains of this belief - that the worldly distracts us from the other-worldly, and that a focus on God necessarily involves a rejection of some things of this world.

Indeed, a sub-theme of John's article is the nature of chastity, reigning in these desires, and even celibacy as a "higher good". People can't see celibacy as a higher calling that evidences one's single-minded pursuit of a relationship with God, and simultaneously see a theology of the body as "sexy". The first necessarily relegates sex as a "less worthy" activity.

Sorry, I just don't see it. Yet. Lots to chew on here, though.

Outstanding article.

All of this business about sex being holy is kind of weird. It certainly has its place [or we would not be here}, however, frankly, I think it's overrated and somewhat undignified. I also think that celibacy being so "heroic" is overrated too.
My life does not revolve around a roll in the sack and I am puzzled by the somewhat weird attitude of people who think that sex is either holy or profane. I don't think it is either and I believe some people should try to focus on other things.
Perhaps the Victorians were right?

It seems healthy that everyone learn *in a general way* that God made sexuality for our individual good, our family development, and our spiritual good. People should also be taught the long-range responsibility of sexual acts, especially as it relates to having and raising children. Any act that creates human beings must be handled responsibly, soberly, and with the greatest of care. American society needs to know those facts in a general way and in a way that urges safe expression within committed marriage.

But to go much deeper into theology seems unnecessary to me. Perhaps going deeper into details is an over-reaction to the sex-crazed culture of Hollywood and fraternity orgies? Perhaps people whose lives are lived in constant violation of the proper use of sex need to hear Theology of the Body discussions as a form of therapy and reformation from sexual addiction? I can perhaps see the use in that.

But as a norm, I think a the general approach to the topic is sufficient. The spiritual mystery and depth of sexuality is best discovered between spouses in the sanctity and privacy of their own committed union.

I'm going to invoke the Angelic Doctor, who I think could bring much needed levity to these type of discussions. There is a natural order, with its ends and goods. There is a Spiritual order, with its ends and goods. They cannot and do not compete, and when properly ordered, they fall in line with each other. Therefore, sex is part of the natural order, and to do it properly and ordered in the right way is a praise to God, and in itself does not need any extra incentive for it to be good and just. It is not that it is devoid of grace, only that it is full of natural graces, first graces, akin to the natural law. Even good pagans will rear their children well, understand that the creation of one human life particpates in the very foundations and propagation of the universe itself, etc. It is true that, when the infused virtues are "added" if you will to the natural virtues, they take on a whole new life and meaning, and the same applies to sex within the natural order...now, instead of merely human love, parents are now missionaries, creating followers of Christ through their act of marital love. And its true, that from the beginning of Christendom, the icon of Marital love has been a dominate Icon of understanding God's love for His people. But just like it is hard for people to understand that, in heaven, there is no Eucharist because there we have Christ (again, the prayer after communion by St. Thomas Aquinas speaks hopefully of seeing Christ face to face instead of through a veil), it seems to be hard for people to hear that "in heaven, there is no one given or taken in marriage." I think the same would apply to God and His people...its true, in a much higher sense we will all be "married" to God...and the soul's enrapture in the beatific vision is a...gulp...sort of "intercourse" with God...its still...not...intercourse...!

I think the main problem with the Theology of the Body is that it goes the way of de Lubac in the who Nature/Grace debate, and this has caused problems with everything the nouvelle theologiae (sp?) has touched. If there is an "innate desire" for God in everyone, you get massive, massive problems not only with soteriology, in the understanding of the Church, and of course the problem of Hell and evil (von Balthasar saying hell is empty anyone?), but it also plays out in ways like this, where people think even sex has to be something more than it is to be a good and wonderful thing. There is a natural order and a spiritual order, and just because some have become "eunichs for God" does not mean the natural order is bad...their virginity in fact begins the redeeming process that allows us "breeders" if you will to participate in the natural act of sex in a way purified back to its original intent and purpose.

I could go on about St. Thomas's very specific understanding about when sex even between spouses is laudable and when it is venial (and even mortal), but that's enough sex talk for now, right?

Sure, this article is humorous, well-written, lively, but it somehow misses its own point. It's setting up a straw man to ask whether realizing the inner reality of the Trinity in the marital act is "sexy." Of course it's not sexy, but when did "sexy" become the standard by which Catholics should measure?

The standard, as Irish Mom points out, is the integration of sexuality and spirituality, and this article's humorous rejection of that standard, along with its rude title, is unfortunate, at best. It is precisely the divorce of spirituality from the marital act that has led so many of us so far from the truths and freedoms of the Church's teachings on sexuality, procreation and contraception. And I am, as always, saddened to see Catholic sites succumbing to the winks and giggles and jokes that make light of the Church's teachings in this area.

If we want or need fishnet stockings and sexy Old Testament saints to get us in the mood to approach the marital bed, then we're really not ready to be anywhere near it.

I don't know why people tie themselves up in knots like this. There is no god and no one watching us but eachother.

Thousands of the priests who said mass every week with their clean hands weren't virgins because they'd been raping children for decades and your church covered it up.

Ireland existed before the church and one of the only benefits that's come from the revelations about sex abuse and now the workhouse/orphanage system is that its hold on the people's minds is waning.

Good Ridance!

Is Ridance supposed to be a contraction for River Dance? Because those Irish folk dances are joyous things.

I enjoyed this article, but find myself agreeing with Eve. God made sex to be a great good within a marriage--and it is! I find it meaningful theologically and on a more "fleshly" level or "natural" level it is simply fantastic. It ought to be as it comes from our good God who is Goodness to a degree so perfect that none of us can imagine enough goodness to come close to reality.

Theology of the Body is a wonderful way to look at this marvelous gift from God to us in marriage. I love to see it as being to marriage what saying Mass is to the priesthood. That is a really good image.

But our culture has cheapened sex in a way that is a sort of blasphemy, and this interferes with how people relate to sex within their marriages. I think this is the core problem that most have with the Theology of the Body, this cheapening of what sex is supposed to be all about. After all, if it is just entertainment with no ultimate meaning in life or eternity, then trying to see it from both a natural and theological perspective is just weird.

Hi John, I liked how St Francis DeSales speaks of marrital relations. He likens it to eating. Both are biological functions that we have in common with animals yet God raised each to a higher level. For instance I dont eat off the floor, or lick my food from a bowl. I can enjoy the most delicious french gourmet meal, but I wouldnt pair it with fritos as an appitizer. I dont pray the rosary while eating, but converse with my companions and enjoy the gift, a wonderful part of life. I dont need to watch people gorge themselves to make me hungry in fact people sloppily eating like animals can make you loose your appitite. I dont need to read books or attend class to learn how to eat, somethings come quite naturally. I dont ruminate over a good meal for days on end, when its over its over until the next meal. I dont abuse food or eating. Another thing, just like the intimate conversation that happens between your soul and God, the intimacy shared between a husband and wife looses its fragrance when discussed with others.

How reassuring to hear that others wince whenever they're forced to once more hear about the theology of the body. Frankly, even if it was meant to be edifying, it's always seemed to have a soft-core porn quality to it that makes my toes curl.

I am a York City Irish-American Catholic. A great article, not because of theological depth but because it stimulates new ways of looking at the familiar.

I think Theology of the Body inevitably leads to confusion for most people, even among its most intelligent and articulate promoters.

The analogy of the Mass to family life is the meal the family shares -- at the core of both is thanksgiving and sharing of life-giving food and drink -- one supernatural in character and the other natural.

Chastity ought to be practiced *and* discussed. It should not be a giggle inducing word.

Theology of the Body (TOB) suffers from two main flaws:

(1) Starting off from an errant humanistic approach based on the faulty principles of phenomenological philosophy

(2) People giving TOB way too much authority when, in the ranking of magisterial statements, it falls VERY low on the chart.

The expounders of TOB are even worse and in many cases immodest in their gushing language about sex, language which should be reserved to the bedroom.

Boniface

Great column. Loved it.

Very funny article, John!

The best result of the TOB controversy that has been going on for the past few months have been these essays written by Fr. Angelo of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. He has some great insights into the flaws of its current presentation, and makes thoughtful, practical, and spiritual critiques.
He compiled his essays on the subject here:

http://tinyurl.com/mvnzrz

I hope y'all find them helpful.

Boilerplate much?

So many issues. "Thousands of priests?" You're overstating your case a bit right off the bat. Even one is too many, but let's at least get the facts right. I anticipate your intellectual honest follow-up criticizing all the state-sponsored school teachers and the educational system as a whole for covering up their abuses.

Austin, hear hear.

Arguments have even been made that sex is a barrier to true emotional or spiritual union with the main man/woman in your life. Instead of saying 'I want to be with you for who you are' it says 'I want to be with you for what we do to each other'. It distracts from your shared higher aspirations because it focuses your attention on the physical, which may not itself be base but is necessarily (and regrettably) separate from what is highest in our natures. I mean, many tyrants and criminals have been quite good-looking and had lovely baritones and smelled nice, but they were horrible people, and anyone that fancied them was in an important sense betraying themselves.

The fact is, one can always ask, 'do you love me for myself or for my sex appeal?' and it's not a silly question because they're not the same thing. As any woman over a certain age knows. Sex may have ushered in the marriage, but the fear droning in the background is that one day it will break it apart.

This lack of connection between what is desirable physically and what is desirable in all other ways can be a serious problem. It causes people to compromise their happiness, chasing the right body types instead of the right souls. If they could put souls first and bodies second, they would be better off. This might mean putting off sex altogether.

Let's imagine that you were a 19th-century woman in love with Abraham Lincoln -- a great and good man, but with a high squeaky voice and who knows what else that didn't measure up to your standards(!). Your options would be: a) remain friends, and marry someone else -- i.e. reject him as the main soul in your life, since your energy, time, and intimacy would be disposed of somewhere else; b) accept the squeaky voice and try to accept him as a sexual partner/husband; or c) accept the squeaky voice and friendship and refuse to be kept apart, despite the fact that the chandeliers will never be swinging in your house!

It's a question of priorities. Sex complicates and muddies priorities, and sometimes turns them upside down. And yes, it's often somewhat undignified, in more ways than one.

I think that we should form our views of sex from the Bible and Tradition.

Some people don't like to hear this, but from the early Church on, the Eucharist, Baptism, and the mystical life were all related, and continue to be related to, conjugal love. St. Paul saw in the one-flesh communion of husband and wife the sacramental sign of communion between Christ and His Church. Intense Erotic love was related to Christ's union with his Church in the lyric cycle, The Song of Songs, as interpreted by various Church Fathers from Origen, Ambrose, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, on through the medieval exegete Bernard of Clarivaux. St. John of the Cross and other Baroque mystics spoke of mystical union with Christ in terms of erotic esctasy.

The point here being that the life of the Church and Her sacraments has often, and from the begining, been understood in the language of conjugal love. This says much about the sacrality of such love--that it is a consistent and formative model of divine love.

Beyond this, one can think of Tobias and Sarah, of their prayer prior to consummating their marriage. Or of how Isaac found such comfort and consolation in his marital love for Rebecca, following the death of his mother.

I think its important to begin here when thinking about sex. Let this be our "normal" from which everything else is to be judged "weird" or "not weird".

I wonder how much Irish embarrassment over carnal matters really differed from its contemporaries.

Anti-porn and anti-contraceptive crusader Anthony Comstock was super-Protestant.
Robert E. Lee once rebuked one of his generals for speaking foully in the presence of gentlemen.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Daniel Tuttle once whipped a stage driver for swearing in the presence of a woman.

Women and men really did used to shut up about certain things in mixed company.

How much of the "Irish Guilt" thing is something made up by lusty Baby Boomers? Didn't the Irish just hold on to customary standards of decency a little longer than the establishment did?

As an Irish woman, I'm offended by this article and some of the comments.

When I was in college, I served as one of the musicians at the wedding of some dear friends slightly older than I.

These friends, evangelical Christians, had been dating for four years or so, usually seriously. Out of obedience to Christ, they had stayed virgins throughout.

The bride was (is) the funny, vivacious, almost outrageous type of person. Her groom, a good match for her, was (is) the quietly amused type.

So when someone asked the bride the night before the ceremony -- it was actually just after midnight -- "Are you happy that the day is finally here?" it was in some ways not surprising that she answered, "Yeeesss. Yes. Now if we can just make it through the ceremony, through the talking and the vowing and the kiss and the recessional and all that, with minimal problems, I suppose Joe and I may just skip the reception."

(A brief silence.)

"Skip the reception?"

"May be. Because I am tired of waiting. Heck, after all this time, it's fifty-fifty odds that after he says 'You may kiss the bride,' the two of us will turn cartwheels down the aisle and then rush off to find the nearest broom closet!"

Lest anyone misunderstand: She wasn't being crude, and only minimally bawdy; and the joke was made smiling with a tinge of good-humored exasperation. It was funny and it was so entirely in character that everyone laughed and no one got the vapors about it.

But she was also not entirely kidding; and I have always thought that was in many ways the right approach. Faithfulness to God -- even to the point of exasperation -- followed by enthusiastic zeal in all the details of marriage.

Manda, we aren't dualists, though, right? You are not your soul, so it's not really true that the physical is separate from the spiritual.

And while I can't say that a whispered *homoousious* ever did anything for me, if you are missing the relationship between the physical and spiritual (in their most basic expressions) then you are missing quite a lot. Consider: the common practice of ancient religions to have prostitutes within temples had a sound theological basis.

I am laughing in agreement here.

And yes, I think parts of T of the B go too far for my taste ...perhaps because when clergy write about sex, which they themselves have not experienced (I'm assuming), it just seems a bit ... um ... off.

I'm all for the spiritual side of marriage, but stopping to pray in the middle of sex -- or even right before -- just creeps me out.

That said, I imagine that God has a pretty robust sense of humor. I like to imagine that God can and does laugh at funny off-color jokes.

And I kind of imagine God telling spouses, "Lighten up, you! Don't make it all so darn serious!"

P.S. John Gray -- "Mars and Venus in the Bedroom" -- has actually done more for the health and vitality of my marital sex life than T of B. But maybe that's just me/us!

"You are not your soul": I think you mean, "You are not JUST your soul."

Because obviously you are BOTH your soul and your body, just as you are everything from the crown of your head to your toes.

LG

The physical is separate, I think, from what is highest in our natures. Obviously we are all each one of us a kind of unity: in this life, body and soul must go together, and it's certainly true that if the mind says 'I admire this person' then the limbic system may well get a boost from that and say 'I do, too'. One eggs on the other. But very often the limbic response doesn't happen, or else it happens for an undeserving person/object of desire that the mind should be vetting and rejecting.

So I think it's more helpful to recognize that although we are a unity, it's a unity of component parts, which have different roles and influences on the whole. Right? Even though the physical or limbic response to someone may be strongly directed by how you *think* about that person, nonetheless, as Alan Bloom put it, 'no one is thinking at the climax' (I paraphrase). No reason why anyone should, of course. But the physical is separate from what's highest in our natures, is it not?

Great article! I had to save that one. Very funny and worth re-reading. I've enjoyed some of the comments, too. Thank you, Inside Catholic, for printing it and Mr. Zmirak for writing it.

Actually, I think Pope John Paul II's own writings on TOB are more helpful than the popular works out there that "sell" it. I don't have a problem with praying with your spouse before intimacy, and remembering that God has made the conjugal act (in a valid marriage) sacred. Sermonizing on the mystery of the Holy Trinity has a rather counterproductive effect on my romantic "mood"--it changes the atmosphere into one decidedly more favorable to abstinence. I'm no theologian, but trying to "purify" sex talk with other people (dragging it out of the bedroom and into the public forum) by drawing parallels between it and the Mass or other sacred mysteries . . . it's a great way to sell books, but is it a great way to strengthen marriage?

John's style often reminds me of the Old Testament author who, though making an analogy between Judah's corruption and a soiled loincloth, nevertheless illustrates that God is closer to us than our own underwear: "For as close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty (Jeremiah 13:11). Before pondering that one too long, recall that this is the same God who established His First Covenant with man to be a rite of -- well, you remember.

Funny, puzzling, sometimes bordering on the grotesque but always fascinating and thought-provoking -- well done, John!

To those who took offense at this article, do you take offense every time someone recounts some stereotypical behavior about a group of people, be it ethnic, religious, etc? If so, you must spend an incredible amount of your waking hours being offended. Instead, why not look at the kernel of truth that exists within the stereotype and disregard that which doesn't apply? It would be a shame to walk around constantly having your big toes stepped on.

As for the rest of the TOB discussion, as a former therapist, I'm entirely comfortable, perhaps too comfortable, with all of this frank discussion on (here comes that -gasp- word again!) SEX. I think this time in the church's history is a very exciting one. I think the Body of Christ is collectively trying to forge Her way through this largely uncharted waters and it's inevitable that some people cringe at the frankness while others welcome the discussion, yet I would hope that both groups are hoping to walk closer to their God in all ways, including the bedroom.

This arena has great potential to unite a fractured church, broken in many ways because of sinful sexuality (pervasive as it is w/i the culture and w/i the church's members) and it's my wish that each side of the isle try to learn from the other. It is usually the case that great growth comes from removing yourself from your comfort zone and stretching your boundaries in healthy ways.

There is a lot of welcome discussion here questioning TOB. I am all for it, and the Pope's work is great, it's the proponents of it that have started creeping me out. Definately TMI! And if I hear one more time about how great sex is and how it brings people close to God, is fantastic etc., with the implicit--'too bad for you, you-unlucky-virgins-still-seeking-a-spouse'--I'm going to go barmy! Or at least just stick to my knitting club on Tuesday nights, vs. the latest TOB presentation.

ENOUGH ALREADY! GET OVER YOUR SEXUAL HANG UPS. SEXUAL PRAYER IS ONE OF GOD'S GREATEST GIFTS. AND THERE'S A WHOLE LOT OF PRAYING GOING ON IN GOOD CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES. GOD IS GOOD! SEX IS GOOD! ENJOY HIS WONDERFUL GIFT!

You did not disappoint this Orthodox Jewish mother of five. Sexuality is not divisible from fertility, although holiness may be divisible from the human sense of control. May we all at least strive to achieve Sanctity and to accept its price. Bless you, I have to accept my own responsibility and do the dishes again.