Reality’s Interpretive Key
Almost every day you can see in the news more evidence about the confusion over same sex attraction disorder (SSAD). California’s courts have decided to legislate SSAD marriages into existence. New York appears to be making an executive decision just to ignore their laws on marriage. Of course, the thinking , if you can call it that, of these well intentioned activists is that this is a matter of civil rights and rights must be defended regardless of the law.
Looking at the meaning of the relationship of love that results in sexual intercourse, it appears fairly obvious that the natural end is to be found in the begetting and rearing of children. One wonders why the obvious is so hard for so many in our culture to be able to see today. Of course, one reason is that we have changed our perception of the meaning of sexual intercourse, via contraception, to one of the pursuit of pleasure. Another is that the fiasco of our no-fault divorce system has modified the meaning of marriage into the state subsidized pursuit of self-fulfillment through trial couplings.
Nevertheless, even when the meaning of the human person and these fundamental relationships is so distorted, for sexually complementary couples one can still see an obvious natural logic to the relationship. Not so with those who, in their disorder, pursue same sex relationships. This reminds me of an exchange I had last year with a young man who suffered from same sex attraction disorder. We were talking about this natural end of sexual intercourse. His response, as is true with many SSAD sufferers who have even considered this argument, was that he didn’t much buy the “teleological” argument (we did not explore in detail what he understood by this) because this did not accord with his experience.
Ahh yes, experience. Our society today seems to prize personal experience above all else. It is the hallmark for ascertaining truth. What is meant by personal experience seems to be a confused mishmash of elements of empiricism, romanticism, Kantianism, and postmodernism. However, personal experience need not be completely jettisoned as an element of truth testing, as a source of seeking reality. However, experience must be properly understood. When it is, one realizes that all experience must be contextualized.
John Paul II provides the key for using experience to interpret reality in his Crossing the Threshold of Hope. What he says is that the proper hermeneutic for testing experience is understanding the reality of Original Sin. So many activists lead themselves down the road to oblivion because they do not recognize this or they consciously reject it.
The various liberation movements all seem to fall into this error. For example, radical feminism has adopted as their truth testing hermeneutic, the judgment as to whether any proposition accords with feminine experience. Though it must be admitted even without acknowledging Original Sin, they are coming to realize that defining feminine experience might be an insurmountable challenge. Although they have not completely abandoned the idea. Regardless, the ill fruits of Original Sin can be ignored only at one’s peril. It does not seem to take much reflection to recognize this. One master of reflection, G.K. Chesterton, opined that Original Sin is the one revealed dogma that can be proved from human experience alone.
Without this key, like SSAD activists, radical feminists, and others, we are in danger of unreflectively considering all of our experiences as normative. But it is not simply acknowledging Original Sin and its underlying ill fruit of concupiscence that is necessary. One must go to the very root cause of Original Sin. John Paul II finds that the first sin was, and all subsequent sin is, the attempt to abolish fatherhood and the radiation of God’s fatherhood throughout creation.
This is a profound insight. It would not take much to see the manifestations of this rejection of fatherhood in the two examples provided: radical feminism and SSAD. Rejecting fatherhood: God’s fatherhood, ecclesial fatherhood, or spiritual fatherhood is a fallen inclination we experience because to accept paternal love we first must trust. Paternal love is a love of initiative.
One who is offered this love is put in the position of accepting it. Without trust, accepting this love seems to be very risky. This is particularly the case for those who been previously hurt in a similar situation. They often find it too risky to trust and prefer to remain in control. This is not self-control mind you, but control of the other, or at least of the situation. This means doing as they are tempted rather than submitting their inclinations to reasoned discernment. I suspect the reason for this is that they intuitively realize that they are asserting their will over the will of Someone else.
It is no surprise then that as we see the dissolution of the family, what we see most is that the landscape is beginning to be dominated by fatherless households. The solution for society is a restoration of authentic paternity and paternal love. The solution for each individual is recognizing when experiences are driven more by primal inclinations than by self-giving love. This is a prerequisite for discerning between an authentic human experience and a fallen human experience.
Understanding that Original sin is real, and that in our fallenness we are tempted to push our wills over/against this unseen Will that we do not trust, is the key to using our experiences to interpret reality.
Italian activist Gabriele Paolini 
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