See part I here.

See part II here.

See part III here.

See part IV here.

See part V here.

6. Insensibility is less grievous than lust

[Note: this post is exclusively about TOB, not in itself, but as it is taught or defended by some, as a needed antidote to Puritanism.  Fr. Faggioni claims (and I am inclined to agree) that it is not an attribute of TOB as Pope John Paul II taught it.  I only post it here because some people with completely normal sensibilities are scrupulously wondering if in fact they are prudes.  And they wonder this explicitly because of what they have learned of TOB.]

Many advocates of TOB assert that it is needed to respond to the Puritanism, Jansenism, Manicheanism, Albigensianism, Montanism, Gnosticism–in a word, any “body-is-evil”-ism, which apparently was the staple of Catholicism before TOB came on the scene.

The first problem with this claim is that it needs to be proven. While there were certainly Catholics who perhaps regarded most or all of sex as sinful, they may not have had anything to do with any of these “-isms.”  Personally, I think the charge is exaggerated, giving too much credence to people’s excuses for why they went in the other direction (e.g., Hugh Hefner’s sad story about his mother not hugging him enough).  People’s impediments to sex may be totally on the level of the emotions, having nothing to do with an espousing of any one of these speculative doctrines in their intellect.  If someone does not hold that our spiritual nature is a seed of divine light trapped in matter, then he or she is not  Manichean.  And if someone does not hold that only perfect charity is acceptable to God, and that any acts that are not done with the purest of motives are therefore sinful, then he or she is not a Jansenist.  If some people thought that sex was evil in itself, they did not get that from Catholic orthodoxy.  It is not the teaching of St. Thomas (see especially here, reply to the third) or St. Alphonsus Liguori (Theologia Moralis, Lib. VI, tract. vi., cap. ii., dub. i., 882), for instance.

But even if the sensibilities of American Catholics needed a little enlightenment, it’s not as if the excesses of the pornographic age are closer to the moral good, and thus preferable. As Josef Seifert put it, “Hugh Hefner’s ‘sexual revolution’ is even far more opposite to John Paul II’s and Dietrich von Hildebrand’s ‘sexual revolution’ than prudishness, which at least is no deadly sin or even any sin…” [he said it here, but it has since been removed]

This is exactly right. Everyone knows that virtue lies in the mean between the extremes. But this does not mean that each extreme is equally disordered. Of the two vices opposed to any virtue, one has a greater commonness with the virtue; one goes at least in the same direction. The other is more contrary, as Aristotle says:

To the mean in some cases the deficiency, in some the excess is more opposed; e.g. it is not rashness, which is an excess, but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to courage, and not insensibility, which is a deficiency, but self-indulgence, which is an excess, that is more opposed to temperance. This happens from two reasons, one being drawn from the thing itself; for because one extreme is nearer and liker to the intermediate, we oppose not this but rather its contrary to the intermediate. E.g. since rashness is thought liker and nearer to courage, and cowardice more unlike, we oppose rather the latter to courage; for things that are further from the intermediate are thought more contrary to it. This, then, is one cause, drawn from the thing itself; another is drawn from ourselves; for the things to which we ourselves more naturally tend seem more contrary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves tend more naturally to pleasures, and hence are more easily carried away towards self-indulgence than towards propriety. We describe as contrary to the mean, then, rather the directions in which we more often go to great lengths; and therefore self-indulgence, which is an excess, is the more contrary to temperance (Nicomachean Ethics, II, 8 )

When persons (due to their consitution or upbringing) have a particular inclination to the excess (quite likely in today’s situation), the remedy is actually for them, in their own mind, to aim for the deficiency (for it will not be the true deficiency).  And this is particularly the case when dealing with matters of pleasure:

For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so…But we must consider the things towards which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and the pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent.

Now in everything the pleasant or pleasure is most to be guarded against; for we do not judge it impartially. We ought, then, to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the people felt towards Helen, and in all circumstances repeat their saying; for if we dismiss pleasure thus we are less likely to go astray. It is by doing this, then, (to sum the matter up) that we shall best be able to hit the mean (Nicomachean Ethics, II, 9).

Both prudishness and lust are sins against temperance. But of the two, the first is less serious. Furthermore, it is not often found:

The opposite of lust is not found in many, since men are more inclined to pleasure. Yet the contrary vice is comprised under insensibility, and occurs in one who has such a dislike for sexual intercourse as not to pay the marriage debt.

I think TOB advocates would do better to focus on the problems of the age, rather than set up historical straw men.

The early Christians also lived at a time when there was rampant sexual license in the pagans on the one hand, and heretical sects of Montanists and Gnostics on the other, these latter asserting that the body was evil. And yet, the early Christians did not attempt to spread the word of God by asserting that the Revelation of the Eternal generation of the Son and the Trinity of Persons was the clarion call for a joyful sex life.  They preached Christ and Him crucified, and they preached against sexual excess. They told husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, but they also were not ashamed to express most sexual matters in terms of  “don’t”s. It’s the way sexual morality has to be, since temperance mostly involves curbing.  It’s the very meaning of the word.

See part vii here.