Sex and the Human Person: Part V – Consummation
This series has shown that human sexuality is rooted in the order of creation because creation and the human person derive their structures from Trinitarian love. The human person is constituted, in part, by sex differences. Sex differences are integrated into all aspects of the human person from one’s physiology and pscho-emotional structure, to his very soul. Sex differences manifest themselves in a complementary way. Both men and women have everything that it means to be human but they possess it in different ways. Masculinity is primarily eccentric, meaning a man first goes out of himself before secondarily returning. Femininity is primarily receptive, meaning a woman first receives in order to give herself in return.
The human person’s sex establishes the manner in which he approaches his interactions with God and the cosmos. Interpersonal relations are no different. To have an authentic relationship with another requires the disinterested gift of self. The totality of the gift is dependent upon the relationship. However, sex differences are normative for the manner of interpersonal relationships. In interpersonal relationships, the masculine manner of giving himself in love is as primarily an initiating love, and the feminine is first an active receptive love in order to return love. This complementarity is the sole basis for the most intimate of relationships–the conjugal union. The body testifies to this metaphysical reality.
Conjugal union is authentic only in the context of a lifelong, total, and exclusive self-gift in the marital covenant. The cosmic structure of this union is the complementarity found in sex differences. Again, authentic conjugal union is only possible in the marital covenant and here only when the union is one of total self-gift; that is the giving entirely of one person to the other in an openness to fruitfulness.
Therefore, while complementary sex differences are a necessary precondition for marriage, this is not sufficient for an authentic conjugal union. Openness to fertility rules out any active attempts to squelch the procreative aspect of the conjugal union. Otherwise, the self-gift necessarily devolves into the selfish taking of the other rather than the reception of the other as a gift. This is true even if both parties are in agreement about contraception. Contraceptive sex becomes the taking of the other’s body for the purpose of sexual pleasure. Even if the motivation is not initially libidinous, contraceptive intercourse is still a selfish taking rather than receiving because it reflects the misguided desire for the unitive fruit of marital intercourse in separation from the procreative aspect–in other words, it is a rejection of the gift. Contraceptive copulation is a tacit rejection of the entire person because it rejects his fertility and the possibility of a gift of a third person, a child. The ill fruits of this mentality bear this out.
When the contraceptive pill became available in the U.S. in the early 1960’s the divorce rate soon shot up and a decade later the nuclear family went into “free-fall.” The astronomical increase in the abuse of women and children has tracked this societal disintegration. This is exactly what Pope Paul VI, in Humanae vitae, predicted and given this anthropology it is clear why he was right.
Male friendship with other men and female friendship with other women must necessarily be of a different order than the conjugal relation if there is to be an authentic gift. There is no possibility of fertile fruitfulness. There is no complementary structure required for the total self-gift. Any attempt at simulating conjugal union fails. It fails because it is sterile, there is no possibility of fruitfulness. This is obvious from the anatomy of both. However, it can also be understood at the psycho-emotional level, in fact, at the level of ontology. It fails because there is an inherent conflict in which both are either initiating, receiving, or one is deforming his personal sexual structure to try to be what he is not. The result of trying to live in contradiction to the cosmic order, in contradiction with one’s personal structure, is interior and interpersonal conflict. The faux attempt at consummation results in consumption.
Consumption is sterile; it is self-enclosed. Consumption isolates those who engage in it and leaves them empty. Sexual activity that is not a total self-gift, is not open to the possibility of the gift of a third person, ends up objectifying the other person and so deforms an act meant to be one of disinterestedly giving into an act of self-centered taking. In the act of self-gift, we are satisfied because we enter into Trinitarian love. In the act of selfish taking, one may momentarily be sexually spent but he is never satisfied. And so that is not the end; the need for taking increases and some are tempted into a downward spiral in trying to satisfy the need for increasingly perverse acts of selfish taking that are more and more separated from the natural order of creation. As selfish taking becomes increasingly perverse, the person experiences less and less satisfaction and becomes increasingly disturbed.
One might think here of Uncle Screwtape, toward the end of The Screwtape Letters, describing the demonic motivation to consume the other. Consumption is a manifestation of the disordered attempt to consummate, to complete oneself in the other. I cannot help but think here of the thankfully rare but seemingly exclusive “homosexual” consumption that ends up in cannibalism–even voluntary cannibalism. But interpersonal completion–consummation–is only possible if it is in accord with the Trinitarian structure that man images. Consummation is only possible when the gift is total, complementary, exclusive, irrevocable, and open to the fruitful bringing forth of a third person.
This Trinitarian anthropology is very strongly supported by the empirical data of the medical and sociological sciences. While some like the American Psychiatric Association considers it “unethical” for any of its members to even look into such things, this clearly dogmatic/ideological response comes at the expense of those that the APA should be helping. Nevertheless, the evidence is clear that SSA is a disorder which manifests itself in myriad physiological and psycho-social disorders. Here are some stats again which demonstrate this (see the post “It’s Not So “Gay” After All“):
…homosexuals are four times as likely as their peers to suffer from major depression, almost three times as likely to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer from multiple disorders, and over six times as likely to have attempted suicide (and it points out that an “extensive study in the Netherlands (published in the Archives of General Psychiatry) undermines the assumption that homophobia is the cause of increased psychiatric illness among gays and lesbians. The Dutch have been considerably more accepting of same-sex relationships than other Western countries — in fact, same-sex couples now have the legal right to marry in the Netherlandsâ€).
Homosexuality and Hope also showed that “compared to controls who had no homosexual experience in the 12 months prior to the interview, males who had any homosexual contact within that time period were much more likely to experience major depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Females with any homosexual contact within the previous 12 months were more often diagnosed with major depression, social phobia or alcohol dependence. In fact, those with a history of homosexual contact had higher prevalence of nearly all psychiatric disorders measured in the study. Also, a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health has shown that 39% of males with same-sex attraction have been abused by other males with same-sex attraction.â€
…physical illnesses associated with homosexual sex: “the diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of abnormal homosexual behavior is alarming: anal cancer, chlamydia trachomatis, cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, herpes simplex virus, human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, human papilloma virus — HPV or genital warts — isospora belli, microsporidia, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis types B and C, and syphilis. Sexual transmission of some of these diseases is so rare in the exclusively heterosexual population as to be virtually unknown. Others, while found among heterosexual and homosexual practitioners, are clearly predominant in those involved in homosexual activity. Men who have sex with men account for the lion’s share of the increasing number of cases in America of sexually transmitted infections that are not generally spread through sexual contact. These diseases, with consequences that range from severe and even life-threatening to mere annoyances, include hepatitis A, giardia lamblia, entamoeba histolytica, Epstein-Barr virus, neisseria meningitides, shigellosis, salmonellosis, pediculosis, scabies and campylobacter.â€
Those who commit themselves to violating the natural order become slaves of their own passions. Instead of giving themselves and receiving the other as gift, they end up objectifying and selfishly taking the other as an object. They damage themselves, others, and the entire social order because they set out in the direct opposite direction from that for which they are really searching, the completion, satisfaction, and peace–true consummation–that only can come by entering into a selfless, giving communion with God.
Up to this point we have said that the structure of all creation reflects its Source–the Trinitarian God. More to the point, the cosmos is structured in accordance with the cosmic principles of masculinity and femininity. These principles have their origin in Trinitarian love. As such, human sex differences must be understood in terms of these cosmic principles. Thus, there is one human nature that is comprised of two binary terms, man and woman. We showed that one’s sex affects almost everything about him. In fact, the psycho-physical evidence from the sciences corresponds to the understanding that sex differences go to the very depths of the human person, in part, constituting their personal identity.
“…in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27)
By analogy we can use this phrase if we understand that human sex differences arise from universal cosmic principles of masculinity and femininity. However, we are not talking about gendered biology here.
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