Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Better View

In the February 6 edition of NCR, there is a book review by Julie Hanlon Rubio, an associate professor of Christian ethics at St. Louis University (a Catholic institution).  Professor Rubio is described at the end of the review as "the author of A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family and coeditor, with Charles E. Curran, of Marriage: Readings in Moral Theology No. 15, both from Paulist Press.

The book Rubio reviews is one I have called to the attention of MOJ readers:  Todd A. Salzman & Michael G. Lawler, The Sexual Person:  Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Georgetown University Press 2008).  (Here's a link to the book at amazon.com, where it's selling much better than any of my books ever did.)  To read Rubio's review, click here.  Some excerpts:

Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler’s new book . . . is among the most important works in Catholic sexual ethics to emerge in the last two decades. The authors, professors at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. [a Catholic institution], have both written extensively on sexual ethics and have a thorough knowledge of current theological debates. They stand firmly within the Catholic tradition even as they argue for significant change.

Their book will be noticed because of its controversial positions on contraception, same-sex relationships, cohabitation and artificial means of reproduction. However, its contribution is its clear articulation of a person-centered natural-law ethic that offers Catholics an authentic way to think about sex in relation to their faith.

Salzman and Lawler, both married Catholics, offer a new approach to sexual ethics that questions the adequacy of a traditional sexual morality that says sexual acts must take place within marriage and be open to life. They show that historical critical scholarship raises questions about whether these principles are truly scriptural and truly human. . . .

This book’s authors and other revisionists, on the other hand, offer a more adequate person-centered ethic in which making good sexual decisions means discerning whether or not actions contribute to human flourishing. Sexual acts that are “truly human” must be loving, just and able to meet the test of “holistic complementarity.” Complementarity is defined in relation to sexual orientation. For persons with a homosexual orientation, sexual relationships with a person of the same sex are complementary and can be loving, just and moral.