Conjugal and Extramarital Sexuality

Summary

1 Meaning of Sexuality

1.1 Definition

1.2 Challenges

2 Meaning of Conjugal Sexuality

2.1 Marriage and Sexuality

2.2 Challenges

3 Meaning of Extramarital Sexuality

3.1 Sex Between the Unmarried

3.2 Challenges

4 Towards a New Understanding of Sexuality

4.1 Ethics and Sexuality

4.2 Perspectives

5 References

1 Meaning of Sexuality

1.1 Definition

Sexuality is a “fundamental component” of human personality, “an integral part of personality development and its educational process” (CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION, 1983, n.4); it is “one of the structuring energies of the human being” (MOSER, 2001, p.35-6) that presents itself in a complexity of dimensions (biopsychological, sociocultural, political-economic, anthropological-religious, sanitary-educational, ethical-moral). Being a constitutive dimension of the human, sexuality encompasses the whole person, “assumes, expresses, and realizes the integral mystery of the person” (VIDAL, 2002, p.23). It is also a “dynamic reality,” in continuous evolution, “oriented towards personal integration” (VIDAL, 2002, p.22) and, therefore, capable of favoring or compromising the realization of the person throughout their existence.

Sexuality, unlike genitality, expresses who the person is and their way of positioning themselves towards others. It characterizes “a way of being, manifesting, communicating with others, feeling, expressing, and living human love” (CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION, 1983, n.4). Being a reality that impels the human being to move out of themselves and enter into relation with others, sexuality “has as its intrinsic goal love, more precisely love as giving and receiving, as giving and receiving” (PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE FAMILY, 2002, n.11) and thus becomes the “place” par excellence of openness, dialogue, communication, communion, “of the most genuine experience of reciprocity and love” (ZACHARIAS, 2006, p.7).

1.2 Challenges

For sexuality to be a personalized and personalizing reality, it must be embraced as a gift and integrated into a life project that gives it meaning. Detached from a life project, it risks becoming an inhuman and dehumanizing reality, as it can be the place of the most beautiful experiences of life, but it can also be the place of experiencing the consequences of human fragility and vulnerability, “a source of frustration and suffering” (GUIMARÃES, 2014, p.61).

Integrated into a life project, that is, being part of the deepest meaning given to existence, human sexuality is called to be the language of this meaning. No matter how diverse the reasons for which people live, they all want to love and be loved. In this sense, love, as “an affective, affirmative participation in the goodness of a being” (VACEK, 1994, p.34), can not only be assumed as the ultimate meaning of every life project but can be “the” life project par excellence. Love is the only reality that, in fact, humanizes sexuality (CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION, 1983, n.6); it allows us to discern the calls that come from the relationships we establish with those who are part of our lives. When authentic, love takes us out of ourselves and opens us to the other. And in recognizing the other as someone to be loved, we recognize all their rights to realize themselves as a person.

2 Meaning of Conjugal Sexuality

2.1 Marriage and Sexuality

The experience of love, as the deepest meaning of one’s existence, can be concretized in marriage, understood as a total communion of life and love for life (JOHN PAUL II, 1981, n.11). It is through conjugal love that a man and a woman give themselves completely to each other, in a context of definitive commitment, and open themselves to the gift through which they become cooperators with God in giving life to a new human being. For the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, it is only as an integral part of this love that sexual giving truly realizes itself, and therefore “to this conjugal love, and only to this, belongs sexual giving” (PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE FAMILY, 1995, n.14).

Oriented towards interpersonal dialogue, conjugal sexuality contributes to the integral maturation of the person, opening them to the gift of self in love. And, “linked, in the order of creation, to fecundity and the transmission of life, it is also called to be faithful to this internal purpose. Love and fecundity are, however, meanings and values of sexuality that are mutually inclusive and mutually demanding and cannot, therefore, be considered either alternative or opposed” (CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION, 1983, n.32).

2.2 Challenges

According to Humanae Vitae – which well synthesizes Catholic doctrine to this day – there is an

inseparable connection that God willed and that man cannot alter on his initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. In fact, by its intimate structure, the conjugal act, while deeply uniting the spouses, makes them capable of generating new lives, according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and woman. By safeguarding these two essential aspects, unitive and procreative, the conjugal act fully retains the sense of mutual and true love and its ordination to the highest vocation of man to fatherhood (PAUL VI, 1968, n.12).

Outside the marital context, therefore, any intimate sexual relationship constitutes a “grave disorder” because it expresses a reality that does not yet exist, that of the definitive community of life with the necessary recognition and guarantee of civil society and, for Catholic spouses, also religious (CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION, 1983, n.95). By assuming marriage as the “only” place that makes the totality of giving possible (JOHN PAUL II, 1981, n.11) and, therefore, as the “only” licit context for responsible sexual relationships, “other contexts” and “other narratives” made by so many unmarried people are excluded, as they should all, without exception, be sexually abstinent (HARTWIG, 2000, p. 90).

3 Meaning of Extramarital Sexuality

3.1 Sex Between the Unmarried

Embracing marriage as a concrete life option to realize oneself in love means not reducing consent to “a punctual act,” but assuming it as “the expression of the reciprocal gift of the spouses throughout the entire conjugal life” (VIDAL, 2007, p.104). This concretely implies the commitment to realize oneself sexually, exclusively through the other (CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, 1987, II. A1); the continuous effort to be fully present in the relationship; the sincere decision not to lie to the other and the commitment to live in function of the value one wishes to preserve, that is, love as a common life project. Unity and fidelity are not only demands that arise from a contract but two dimensions of conjugal love that, when not assumed, prevent love from becoming history, from people realizing themselves and realizing the vocation to which they were called and being, therefore, happy. They are values not only propositional but imperative for those who embrace marriage. It is through the unity and fidelity of the couple that the communion of life and love is realized and becomes a source of mutual realization.

The sexual relationship, inside or outside marriage, contributes to the satisfaction of sexual desire. No matter how pleasurable the satisfaction of this desire is, it always testifies that sex promises what it cannot give, as pleasure itself is incapable of satisfying the infinite capacity that a person has to be loved. The ego cannot pretend to be enough for the you and vice versa (VALSECCHI, 1989, p.74-87). In this sense, although sexual pleasure expresses desire and openness to mutuality, it is only a means to this. Since the essence of sexuality is love, understood as giving and receiving, then sexual intimacy should be an expression of this fundamental essence. It is in this sense that love becomes the condition sine qua non to adequately express one’s sexuality. The problem is that a person’s capacity to love can be destroyed when pleasure is made the purpose of sexuality, reducing other people to objects of one’s gratification. Without a doubt, pleasure cannot be the ultimate end of sexuality, just as a person cannot be used as a means.

3.2 Challenges

It is necessary to understand the true essence of love: self-giving and welcoming the other that elicits the desire to respond with love. From this derives the ethical-moral responsibility to place ourselves before pleasure to welcome it and make it a source of growth and life (and not of possession or consumption), to discover the reality of which it is an image, that is, openness to others (and not an end in itself) and to recognize that even satisfying all our desires, we will never feel fully fulfilled (the experience of pleasure involves much more than the satisfaction of desires). But the greatest challenge is to make an interpretative reading of our desires. Some may be integrated into our life project. Others not, if we are responsible (GUDORF, 1994, p.84). If assumed and integrated into a life project, our desires and consequently the experience they provide, can help us achieve the mutuality we so aspire to (ZACHARIAS, 2014, p.161-3).

Marriage, understood as a definitive communion of life, and conjugal love, as “the basic and core element of the living reality of the couple” (VIDAL, 2007, p.123), constitute the key to understanding why all other intimate relationships outside it are considered illicit, whether among single people, involved in new family configurations or widowed, whether among heterosexual or homosexual people. There is undoubtedly a complex unity between marriage and family; but it is only from its integral core – conjugal love – that we can more deeply grasp the ethical evaluation that the Catholic Magisterium makes of these relationships. Addressing the issue of new family configurations and even sexual intimacy between people outside marriage implies recognizing that family, marriage, and sex are not necessarily linked to each other and that, therefore, a priori principles and legal status cannot be the exclusive criteria used to evaluate people’s sexual experiences; that sexuality should be considered more in reference to people and their relationships than to acts; that assuming heterosexual marriage as an ideal for societies does not imply denying the ethical recognition of other contexts based on respect, giving, responsibility, care, affection.

4 Perspectives for a New Understanding of Sexuality

4.1 Ethics and Sexuality

Both the exercise of conjugal and extramarital sexuality raise ethical-moral questions. In both contexts, the richness and fragility of sexuality can manifest. The fact that people are married does not guarantee that their relationships will automatically be an expression of love, fidelity, openness, communion, giving. And the fact that they are not married does not mean that their relationships are automatically an expression of lovelessness, infidelity, selfishness, violence, abuse. If not well integrated, well conducted, well harmonized with the whole of existence, the experience of sexuality, whatever its context, can destroy people, dehumanizing them (COELHO, 2010, p.49-50). And we have to admit that marital status and affective-sexual orientation become secondary issues.

If ethics is the science of values that guide the person in their process of humanization (LÓPEZ AZPITARTE, 1983, p.251), we need to go beyond mere sociological data (which would lead us only to recognize the existence of contexts distinct from the ideal for the experience of sexuality) and legal liceity (which would make us content to know if the context guarantees the licitness or illicitness of this or that practice). In the person’s humanization process, moral conscience, personal scale of values, and the realization of the common good as an expression of justice always have primacy. And we have to recognize that the experience of love can be expressed in multiple ways. All of them, however, are subject to the vulnerability and weakness of those who love. Practically, this means that, no matter how much love is the deepest meaning of our existence and the only reality that humanizes the experience of our sexuality, we learn to love and this learning also depends on our greater or lesser maturity and affective-sexual integration.

4.2 For a Renewed Ethics of Sexuality

Love, when true, generates, expresses, and strengthens mutuality (SALZMAN – LAWLER, 2012, p.223). This means that “love is true and just, right and good, as long as it is a true response to the reality of the beloved person, a genuine union between the lover and the beloved, and a precise and adequate affective affirmation of the beloved person” (FARLEY, 2006, p.198). For an intimate relationship to be an expression of true love, it must favor reciprocity, that is, the mutual gift of self, must overcome merely personal interests, move from eros to agape (BENEDICT XVI, 2005, n.2-11).

If love is characterized by being an effective and/or affective affirmation of the other, it is necessary that my love be recognized as love. If this does not happen, there will be no reciprocity. But for this to happen, there must be a certain degree of commitment between the parties. Extramarital relationships that are characterized by being anonymous, promiscuous, adulterous, deceitful lack a context that favors mutuality and, therefore, cannot have ethical legitimacy, as they will never be promoters of the human. Only a commitment that extends over time can provide the relationship with the proper context for maturation. It may be that such commitment lasts forever; it may be that it does not. This is not the most important thing, from an ethical point of view, as it is a reality totally dependent on the capacity to love and the intensity of the love of the people involved. The most important thing is that this commitment, as long as it lasts, expresses itself as affection, responsibility, care. All this is part of the loving experience and, as people grow and mature in their capacity to love and, therefore, in the experience of mutuality or reciprocity, the commitment also matures and solidifies. Even if the commitment is not necessary as a starting point for intimate sexual relationships, it should be the point of arrival for those that are truly expressions of love.

Ethically, the quality of the relationships we establish is at stake, as not all collaborate for our humanization and for the quality of the way we position ourselves towards others, as not all generate reciprocal relationships, whether conjugal or extramarital. There is an urgent need for a sexual ethic that recognizes the moral goodness of relationships that express the values proper to marriage even if people are not married; that does not require the definitiveness of commitment to justify intimate relationships; that recognizes that love does not necessarily have to be conjugal and heterosexual for it to humanize sexuality; that considers more the quality of relationships than what can or cannot be done in this or that context.

Ronaldo Zacharias, sdb. Salesian University Center of São Paulo. Original text in Portuguese.

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