It is undeniable that the church’s teaching in recent decades has paid attention to the theme of the family, although this attention is not completely new. The lengthy time span begins with the Second Vatican Council and the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes (1965) and passes via the Fifth Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (1980). But the years closer to our own days are marked by the extraordinary (2014) and ordinary (2015) sessions of the Synod on the Family and by the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016) that was their outcome. The common thread that binds these various expressions of the magisterium combines (although with a varying sensitivity) the awareness of the changed cultural and societal family structures in our time and the importance of offering a proposal in terms of values and experience that plunges its roots deep down into the original message of the Gospel. Both theological reflection and pastoral praxis have helped to bring about a “reading” that is both realistic and constructive, even if it does not lack tensions between ideal levels and concrete realizations, between the truth of the Christian proclamation and the histories of family life.
One of the areas in which this becomes particularly obvious is the sphere of conjugal sexuality, to which we wish to devote some reflections. It is evident that neither the Council nor the Synod in 1980, and still less the more recent Synod and Amoris Laetitia (AL) itself, wanted to be a systematic treatment of sexual ethics or a manual of practical norms to be followed. It is interesting to note that, precisely in AL, the term “sexuality” never appears in any chapter heading, and that it is found only once as the title of a subchapter (280‒286). However, its way of approaching the theme of the family forms the background and creates the larger horizon within which we can move to consider the topic of conjugal sexuality.
A second premise is likewise necessary: conjugal sexuality is both a part and the mirror of a larger consideration of human sexuality in its entirety. Conjugal sexuality does not exhaust this topic. There was an erroneous tendency to think so in the past, when the entire topic of sexuality was inflected towards its procreative function, and it was given its place exclusively within marriage. This inflection was the result of a restricted perspective and of a limited knowledge of premises that have been clarified and superseded from a scientific point of view too.
This is precisely where we can begin to consider a change of perspective when AL looks at conjugal sexuality. In complete accord with Vatican II, AL affirms that matrimony “‘was not instituted solely for the procreation of children’ but also that mutual love ‘might be properly expressed, that it should grow and mature’” (125). Understanding sexuality as the language of love means freeing its praxis from the pressure to obey the procreative purpose and locating it in the tension of a relationship of reciprocal attention to the world and to the life of the other person, man or woman. Does this seem a small matter? And ought it to be taken for granted? Most certainly not!
The linguistic structure itself may perhaps help us to grasp this transformative dynamism: moving from a term like “matrimonial sexuality” to “conjugal sexuality” has the advantage of a shift of emphasis that is not merely superficial and cosmetic but affects the attitude and the content on various levels. Above all, we come to see the importance to looking in dynamic terms at the existential sphere of affective relationships – among which marriage, with its institutional aspect, is certainly the apex, but not the only modality.
We turn to how we speak about the goals of lived sexuality. We know that in the past, procreation was considered the primary goal of marriage, but it is not the accomplishing of this goal that legitimates the praxis of sexuality. Rather, it is legitimated by the relational character of the encounter. The point is that it is not the desire to realize a goal, but rather the desire to express affection and closeness, that makes sexuality a sincere, respectful, and constructive language.
The moral quality of sexuality is gradually shifting from the evaluation of its acts to the consideration of the intentional consistency and the attitude of the persons. This epochal transition, which is summarized in the formulations of the most recent moral theology as “from matrimonial morality to the ethics of affective relationships,” is amply received and appreciated by AL when it states: “Sexuality […] is an interpersonal language wherein the other is taken seriously, in his or her sacred and inviolable dignity” (151). The importance and, in some aspects, the novelty of this teaching by AL must be understood in the light of an orientation to which Pope Francis returns when he examines the variety of possible situations of divorced and remarried persons. Apart from the possibility of access to the sacraments, in accordance with all due directions and distinctions, the Pope also takes up the language about the importance of lived intimacy and sexuality, which he recognizes as constructive expressions of confidence, fidelity, and harmony in family life. With regard to an earlier restrictive perspective that tolerated the status of divorced and remarried persons on the condition that they lived “as brothers and sisters” (298, note 329), AL recognizes the intrinsic value of sexuality as “a marvellous gift to [God’s] creatures” (150).
In the footsteps of the Council, AL has pursued the path of elaborating the theme of sexuality in a decisively personalistic approach that broadens the horizon and specifies different evaluative criteria. And this applies to every form of sexuality, even outside the matrimonial-conjugal context. In order to find meaningful words to speak of a sexual moral theology today, the order of nature and of its acts (this is how one could synthesize the approach of the traditional sexual moral theology) will need to accept being compensated for by an order of the person and of his or her relationships. This does not mean that there would no longer exist a criterion for drawing a distinction between what is good and what is evil, as some alarmist voices want to make us believe. It simply means that what is evil is evil principally and exclusively because it offends persons, violates their dignity, infringes their rights, abuses their fragility, and reduces the space they have for autonomous decisions and for liberty. This is demonstrated unequivocally by the dramatic lesson taught us by abuses in society and in the church – both those with a sexual background and the abuses of the consciences and the free decisions of persons. Nor should we forget that the appeal to a revision of the traditional sexual moral theology is strongly conditioned by the negative experiences of the abuses in the church, as is clearly shown (to take one example) by the “Synodal Path” of the German church.
The construction of a sexual ethics that was based on the acts and on the roles that are solidly established in our cultures is no longer capable of doing justice to the authenticity and sincerity of attitudes and to the integrity of people’s behavior. The resistance to every attempt at evolution in this field ought really to give us food for thought. Fortunately, we possess much more highly developed instruments for interpreting people’s awareness – from the insights of the biological sciences to those of the disciplines of anthropology and behavioral and social science. In particular, there is available an epistemological and evaluative approach that derives from the discourse and the perspective of gender studies; this has made us sensitive to the cultural and social conditionings with which roles and functions have been constructed. These are expressed in cultures of inequality, as well as in the depiction of persons and their sexual characterization, which have frequently generated toxic behaviors of domination, submission, and suppression. Attempts to oppose and reject this kind of discourse have been made too quickly, over-simplifying the intentions, distorting the articulations, and ignoring their importance. If we renounce the contribution made by knowledge of the gender culture, we make ourselves accomplices, consciously or unconsciously, of existential behaviors and sexual attitudes that are trivialized, violent, and discriminatory. If we leave the positive stimuli provided by AL suspended in an unfinished and nebulous path, without taking responsibility for the labor of pursuing the discourse in a coherent and rigorous manner, we incur a shared responsibility for so much injustice that debases our social structures and our interpersonal relationships, especially those that are most intimate and most stable.
Being concerned for the good of affective relationships, in the recognition of the ample range of their manifestations and realizations, ultimately means dreaming of, and desiring, a world that is more human.