We continue now with the "carnal" or sensual vices; last week we spoke of Gluttony, and tonight our topic is Lust. Gluttony, as we saw, has traditionally been considered the least serious of the capital vices. Lust is less serious than other vices on the list such as pride, envy, and apathy; but it is considerably more serious than gluttony. "Hunger" for sexual gratification is much more vehement than hunger for food (though not as constant); and so, a lack of regulation in the sex drive tends to be more profoundly disorienting and debasing. And whereas the destructive impact of gluttony directly affects only the glutton himself, the impact of lust often extends directly to other persons and, at least potentially, to generations yet unborn. If it’s sinful to abuse the food that sustains one’s own life, it’s all the more sinful to abuse one’s sexual faculty with its inherent generative power that can help sustain the human species.

We’ve already noted in several cases that the tradition is rather diversified in its account of the capital vices, and that is all the more true in the case of lust. Jewish and Christian traditions diverge sharply here, and so do the various Christian traditions among themselves. Even within the Catholic tradition, we find strikingly different accounts in Augustine and Aquinas, and contemporary papal teaching differs from both of these. Moreover, as we know all too well, many different and even conflicting views about sexuality are currently advocated within the Catholic Church and within other Christian and Jewish circles as well.

I propose to treat this topic by first surveying the different outlooks on sexuality that I’ve just mentioned, both in antiquity and in the contemporary scene. As regards our current situation, I’ll take note of some ongoing developments and controversial questions. But, underlying this bewildering array of viewpoints, Christian and Jewish traditions (ancient and modern) do give us a consistent message about human sexuality and about its wholesome and unwholesome expressions. And so my concluding section will be a reflection on that consistent legacy.

Since the beginning of this series I’ve emphasized that we’re speaking, most properly, of "vices" rather than "sins." Our concern is not so much with external wrongdoing as with inner attitudes of the heart that dispose us toward corresponding patterns of wrongdoing. In the case of lust, this is made clear first of all in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Decalogue prohibits not only adultery, the prototype of lustful behavior, but also the nurturing of lustful desires for one’s "neighbor’s wife." These are the 6^th and 9^th Commandments as Catholics enumerate them (Ex. 20:14 & 17), and Catholic tradition has seen them as forbidding, respectively, all forms of sexual sin and all unchaste desires. The New Testament confirms this teaching, most vividly in Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus condemns not only the act of adultery but lustful desires which amount to "adultery in the heart" (Mt. 5:27-28).

A little over 20 years ago, many people reacted with cynical amusement when Pope John Paul II, in one of his Wednesday audiences developing a serial catechesis on purity of heart, commented that it was possible to commit the sin of "adultery in the heart" with one’s own spouse! On the whole, many married women seem to have grasped his point better than their husbands did. The pope’s point was that sexual intercourse in marriage is wholesome as an act of real lovemaking but not as an exercise of exploitation which selfishly uses one’s spouse as a mere object of sensual gratification. Although it can go in either direction, usually it’s the wife who is more vulnerable to sexual exploitation by her husband. If a man depersonalizes his wife by regarding her as a mere sex object, he is guilty of the lust which Jesus called "adultery in the heart." The metaphor of "adultery" – sexual infidelity to one’s spouse – is not at all outlandish here. Although the exploiting husband is not with another woman, he is not relating to his wife properly as his wife; instead he is degrading her into a mere instrument of his pleasure, and, in this way, he is breaking faith with her as his co-equal sexual partner.

Although he didn’t say this in so many words, the pope was drawing upon some long-forgotten elements of ancient Jewish and Christian traditions. Exodus 21:10 specifies that a husband is strictly obliged to provide his wife with sexual intimacy (onah) as well as food and clothing. In line with this biblical precept, Jewish law has emphasized that the responsibility for rendering the "marital debt" rests essentially on the husband, not the wife. Interestingly, St. Paul indicated that the responsibility rests on both spouses mutually (I Cor. 7:3), whereas Christians in later centuries conventionally assigned primary responsibility to the wife. But in Judaism, the legal tradition was clear that sexual gratification is something that the husband owes his wife, not the other way around. The Talmud even insisted that a woman could not validly renounce her conjugal rights, though she might do so regarding food and clothing. A man might sometimes abstain from conjugal relations in an effort to discipline his own lustful cravings, but not without his wife’s consent and only for a strictly limited time so as not to deprive his wife unduly. In short, the man’s policy of conjugal relations is to be one of self-giving love in attending to his wife’s sexual needs, not one of selfish lust in gratifying himself.

The danger of lust even within marriage has also been recognized, of course, in Christian tradition; but, as I’ve already forewarned you, Christian approaches differ from each other as well as from Judaism.

For St. Augustine, the unruliness of the sex drive bespeaks the legacy of Original Sin. In his outlook, all sexual pleasure and desire, even within marriage, is somewhat tainted with sin. Only if the spouses in their intercourse are intending and hoping to procreate will they be excused from all sin. Absent this procreative intent, conjugal intercourse will incur sin – although it is only venial sin, provided that procreation is not purposely avoided and other circumstances are in order. Of course Augustine also knew that marriage was supposed to be a relationship of intimate love, but apparently he did not see this as having any essential tie with sexual intercourse. He even suggested that the ideal relationship between spouses would be sexually abstinent, though he also realized that this was an improbable ideal in practical terms.

Thomas Aquinas, writing eight centuries later and drawing heavily upon Aristotle, was notably more optimistic than Augustine concerning sexual pleasure, and indeed sensual pleasure in general. As we saw last week in connection with gluttony, Aquinas regarded the bodily appetites for food and for sexual mating as wholesome in themselves because they furnished the necessary incentive for people to eat and to procreate, thus sustaining their own lives and the life of the human race. Aquinas also found a way to allow for a closer connection between sexual intimacy and spousal love, inasmuch as this love is necessary for the proper upbringing of the offspring generated by marital intercourse.

Still, in Aquinas’ account, procreation remains of primary importance in upholding the wholesomeness of sexual desire and pleasure. While marital love is also an essential dimension, its importance is subordinate to that of procreation in the moral assessment of sexual conduct. Aquinas did not adopt Augustine’s view that sinless conjugal intercourse required a procreative intent on the part of the spouses; he allowed that the intention of rendering the "marital debt," even without reference to procreation, would also satisfy. But he did stipulate that the procreative capacity of any given act of intercourse must be left unhindered. Any contraceptive procedure would render the intercourse "unnatural" (literally contra naturam, "against nature"), placing it in the same general category as other "unnatural" acts such as bestiality, homosexuality, or masturbation. Based on his principle of assigning supreme primacy to procreation in the over-all meaning of human sexuality, Aquinas even finds himself compelled to assert that any type of "unnatural" lust is worse than all other varieties of lust outside this category. For instance, marital contraception or consensual homosexuality or masturbation must be judged as worse than adultery or even rape or the abuse of a minor, since these latter actions don’t exclude the possibility of procreation whereas the former do!

Christian reflection, whether in its Augustinian or Thomistic versions, differs palpably from the Jewish tradition. In stark contrast with Augustine, and going beyond Aquinas, Judaism asserts that the bodily pleasures of eating and of mating are to be enjoyed as much as reasonably possible. Abstention from pleasure is seen as an ungrateful rejection of God’s blessings; the Talmud even says we will be accountable in the life to come for all our failures to enjoy pleasure on earth. Of course the disciplining of unruly lustful urges is recognized as necessary, but prolonged sexual abstinence is discouraged and celibacy is decidedly frowned upon. Although procreation is an obligation or mitzvah of major importance, it is not asserted as the "primary" good of marriage or even, in all cases, as an essential requirement; in any case, conjugal love is valued in its own right even apart from procreation.

Protestant thought was at first heavily Augustinian, and on this continent it was largely shaped by Puritanism. But since the last century – beginning with the cautious acceptance of marital contraception by the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion in their Lambeth Conference of 1930 – Protestant thinking has developed in a way that might be loosely described as a recovery or retrieval of Jewish perspectives. Catholic teaching has also developed, though of course it continues to resist contraception as well as other departures from traditional sexual norms. Since Vatican II, we no longer teach that procreation is "primary" in a hierarchy of matrimonial goods, and we exalt the lovemaking dimension of sexual intercourse more than ever before. Still, as Pope Paul VI enunciated in the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) and as John Paul II repeatedly reminds us, the magisterium insists that the procreative and lovemaking dimensions of intercourse are morally inseparable. This principle of "inseparability" is not generally accepted in contemporary Protestantism, and has never been accepted in Judaism. Many Catholics today, of course, also have trouble with it.

A frequently heard argument runs that if the inseparability principle is abandoned and marital contraception accepted, the way is open to justify many other sexual practices traditionally condemned by all Christian and Jewish teaching. It can been proposed, for example, that the use of contraceptives makes it possible to engage responsibly in premarital sex in certain cases where marriage must be postponed; or, that gay sex in the service of a committed love relationship is wholesome even though it is necessarily non-procreative; or, too, that occasional masturbation is acceptable as a harmless release without heavy moral significance. Of course, the acceptance of contraception does not automatically involve accepting these other practices; historic Judaism and Protestantism had condemned the latter practices, and conservative Protestants and Jews today still do, without reference to any "inseparability" principle or to the issue of contraception. But it must be admitted that, once openness to procreative possibility is no longer embraced as an absolute moral norm for sexual conduct, it becomes more problematic to identify a basis for absolutely condemning any of the above practices.

Adherents of papal teaching, and even some others, are quite disconcerted by these "slippery slope" reflections. If they don’t want to follow the pope on contraception, they’re nonetheless at pains to find some way to avoid "giving away the whole store" (as they would describe it). Still others, however, are not afraid to get on the slippery slope and explore possible justifications for not only contraception but other traditionally condemned practices such as the ones I’ve mentioned. Justifications for certain cases of premarital sex, gay/lesbian sex, and masturbation are increasingly proposed today among mainstream Protestants and non-Orthodox Jews, as well as among revisionist Catholics who are at odds with papal authority in these matters. Even Solomon Schimmel, the Jewish therapist I’ve cited so often throughout this series as a champion of traditional moral perspectives, declares his willingness at times to recommend some of these practices to his sexually inhibited patients.

Neither Schimmel nor his progressive Christian counterparts should be accused of advocating "lust." They approve certain traditionally condemned sexual practices, not because they condone "lust," but because they have concluded – in a departure from the earlier tradition – that sometimes these practices are not instances of lust. In other words, in their view, contraceptive sex and premarital sex and gay sex and masturbation are not always expressions of irrational, unrestrained sexual craving. The issue between this revisionist line of thought and the older outlook is not whether "lust" is ever acceptable; the issue is, rather, what counts as "lust"?

Authentically Christian and Jewish revisionists are committed to upholding the precious value of sexual integrity. I’m referring to what our Catholic tradition still calls the virtue of chastity; but I prefer the term "sexual integrity" because, in the popular mind, "chastity" is too narrowly identified with the consecrated celibacy of priests and vowed religious. All people, not only priests and vowed religious, need to be sexually "integral" (or "whole" or "well put together"); our sexuality needs to be "integrated" into a life of mature love which is, in one way or another, life-giving for others and for the human community as a whole. The opposite of this is sexual "disintegration," where one selfishly pursues sensual gratification in a way that does nothing to foster love and life. That is what is meant by "lust," and – as agreed by all, Jews and Christians, revisionists and traditionalists – this lust is profoundly debasing and dehumanizing.

Like all the capital vices, lust has its own typical offspring. As always, I’m here following the account that Aquinas adopted from Gregory the Great. The first three of the offspring should be grouped together: precipitousness / praecipitatio; recklessness / inconsideratio; inconstancy or fickleness / inconstantia. All of these are species of imprudence. Prudence is the virtue whereby we rightly apply our mind to discerning and doing what we ought to do. Nothing clouds the mind like out-of-control sensuality, and sexual lust is as out-of-control as it gets. One of the problems with the campaign advocating condom use as an AIDS prevention measure is simply that the campaign sends an incoherent message, i.e., if you’re going to fool around with sex (lust), take precautions (prudence); the catch is that lust itself undermines prudence.

Besides imprudence in its various forms, the other offspring of lust are identified as follows: blindness to true human values / caecitas mentis; self-absorption / amor sui, and, correspondingly, rejection of God / odium Dei; finally, worldliness / affectus praesentis saeculi and, correspondingly, despair of future life / desperatio futuris saeculi.

So, like the other vices in their different ways, lust both blinds us and isolates us from one another and from God. Christian and Jewish traditionalists and revisionists continue to argue over the specification of this principle – e.g., are premarital sex, gay sex and masturbation always an expression of this kind of depraved spirit, or can these acts sometimes be included within a life of sexual integrity that is loving and life-enhancing? – but not over the validity of the principle itself.

Conversation on this subject will go forward, and it will often be intense and even heated – as it must be, considering the important values that are at stake for all of us as individuals and for society and for the faith community itself. Let us pray that, without losing needed intensity, the general conversation in church and society will also become more civil, i.e., that all of us learn to have more respect for others whose outlooks differ from our own. Above all, we pray that the process will lead us ultimately to a more spiritual sense of our sexuality, i.e., a recognition that there is more to us than our sexual urges, and also, conversely, to a spirituality that is more frankly sexual, i.e. a spirituality whereby we transcend fear and shame about our bodies and their appetites and, instead, gratefully celebrate our sexuality in a way that does credit both to our Jewish heritage and to our faith in the Incarnation, the mystery of the very Word of God sharing our earthly, bodily life as one of us.

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