Review of Sr. Margaret Farley's "Just Love"

We have discussed Sr. Margaret Farley’s book, Just Love:  A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, before here, here, and here.  And, Amy Uelmen, Michael Perry, and I will be hosting an MOJ online symposium/discussion of the book at the end of the Spring Semester.

 

William May, professor emeritus at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America and senior fellow at the Culture of Life Foundation, recently reviewed the book in the Winter 2008 volume of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.  This excellent review is available here.  Scroll down to pages 793-797. 

 

Here is a short taste:  “Farley understands love as ‘simultaneously an affective response, an affective way of being in union, and an affective affirmation of what is loved’ (168) and declares that ‘only a sexuality formed and shaped with love has the possibility for integration into the whole of the human personality’ (173). Nowhere, however, does she consider love as the gift of self, its key meaning in Christian thought as Vatican II and John Paul II have insisted. This is a major inadequacy in her understanding. Farley’s analyses of love are superficial. One ought to contrast them with those offered by Karol Wojtyla in chapter 2 of Love and Responsibility, particularly her evaluations of emotional love, romantic love, and pleasurable (erotic or sensual) love with Wojtyla’s magnificent analyses of sensuality and affectivity (sentiment, intimacy) as ‘raw materials of love’ that need to be integrated into the person in order to be love.”

 

After an extensive analysis of the book, May concludes:  “Farley’s work is clearly incompatible both with the teaching of the Church on human sexuality and sexual ethics, and with sound philosophical ethics.”