Sexual ethics is social ethics

After Pope Leo XIV’s promulgation of his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” The New York Times ran an opinion article by a Catholic journalist that asserted the pope’s preference for “social justice over pelvic theology.”

The article is as contentious as it is contrived. The author contends that, because Pope Leo did not write an encyclical about sexual ethics, he is “trying to shift Catholicism away from the near fixation on ‘pelvic theology,’ or sexual morality.”

The author’s attempt to distinguish sexual ethics from public or social moral issues is an “either/or” mentality foreign to Catholic theology. But it also demonstrates confusion about the source and purpose of the Church’s teaching on sexuality and moral theology in general.

On the contrary of the author’s assertion, sexual ethics cannot be separated from social ethics. Like all aspects of moral theology, they share a common foundation, common purpose and common end. Attempting to separate the two is to corrupt both.

One need look no further in sacred Scripture than the first three chapters of Genesis to see that sexuality is integral to the very nature of the human person and the societies that we comprise. In the first creation account, it is not just any two human beings created, but rather “male and female.” And in the second account, after the creation of the man, God determined that it was not good for him to be alone. So God “built” a suitable companion for him in the form of a woman.

And what is the sole positive command that he gives the man and woman? Have sex. Why? To collaborate with God’s creative activity and propagate the human community. Together, the man and woman both complement one another and create a community of reciprocal self-gift. The social nature of the man and woman is not inseparable from their complementary sexuality. Indeed, the community is defined precisely in terms of their sexual difference.

The author of Genesis 3 further accounts for this by the reaction of the man and woman after they have partaken of the forbidden fruit. Their alienation from one another — the rupture of their communicative existence — is illustrated by the shame of their nakedness. Sexuality is no longer about mutual self-gift, but rather mutual exploitation. The social nature of the fall is illustrated in expressly sexual terms. Neither is separable from the other, either in their pure or fallen states.

This is reflected in the first paragraphs of St. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” “The transmission of human life is a most serious vocation in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator.” Human sexuality, the pope begins, “concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings.”

Pursuing this theme, Pope Paul VI accurately predicted a host of distinctly social implications of ignoring the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics. Artificial contraception, he explains, paves the road “for marital infidelity and general lowering of moral standards.”

Additionally, disregarding sexual morality leads to the objectification of the other. A man “who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.” Put another way, sexual ethics is social ethics.

Sexuality refuses to be consigned to private life. Indeed, it is arguable that nothing has more social and public implications than the practice of sex. Questions of with whom, when (and when not), where, how, to what purpose and why one has sex are all questions with inseparably public implications. They are rooted not merely in personal preference but in the very nature of the human person and his or her relationship to society.

In his essay “Sex in Public,” Protestant theologian Stanley Hauerwas has noted that “the claim that sex is a matter of private morality is a political claim dependent upon a liberal political ethos. Any attempt to reclaim an authentic Christian ethic of sex must begin by challenging the assumption that sex is a ‘private’ matter.”

Attempts to separate sexuality from social concerns are usually disguised exercises in denying the Church’s teaching on sexuality, rather than emphasizing its teaching on broader social issues. Sexual ethics is social ethics.

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