Our lives are entwined in a Divine love story; we are created to be related. Love is the basic vocation that we all share (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991). God's place is in all forms of human love. Intimacy is a hallmark of all Christian love (Au & Cannon, 1995).
True intimacy mirrors the relationality of the Trinitarian God. In the Trinity the three persons are in an eternal relationship of mutual and creative love. Intimacy is characterised by a mutual self-giving, by freedom from shame, by radical equality, by mutuality, by inclusivity and by justice with mercy.
Love is the basic vocation we all share. We begin with love, continue in love, and reach our fulfilment of love through, with, and in God when we die. The desire to be loved and to love, to be united with one another, is a deep-seated and natural yearning flowing from being created in Love's own image. God, whose Trinitarian being is to-be-in-relationship, invites us to a 'destiny of union with God and other(s) in self-giving love' (Coultier & Mattison III, 2010 p. 211)
A Christian understanding of love can be defined as 'seeing as God sees'. The Greek word, which is translated as 'love', in the quote from 1 Cor. 13 above is agape. The word, which appears to be used only in the Bible and appears to connote a particularly Christian conception of love, has its root in the concept of 'to prefer'. Thus, we could understand love in this sense to mean a certain kind of preference or a way of preferring. When I say I 'love' something, I am saying that I 'prefer' that something, that I have a preference for that something. If I say, 'I love sunny days' you understand that I am expressing some sort of preference or appreciation or desire for sunny days. In interpersonal terms, then, to say you love someone is to express a preference for that person. You choose to see that person in a certain way. You choose to will the good of that other person. The Christian understanding of this love, of this way of preferring is described in 1 Cor. 13:4-87. In this letter of St Paul to the early Christian community in Corinth, Paul is giving the Corinthians some advice on certain issues affecting the community. He is saying that to be an effective Christian community certain things are important. These are the things that the Christian community at Corinth should focus on and make a reality in their community. Paul argues that love is more important than any other feature of the Christian community. It is more important than all the other charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and the like. (Love is more important than even apparently heroic actions such as giving up your possessions or your life. Love is more important than all of the other virtues, even faith and hope. In the end, all that will remain is love. Love is a special kind of preferring. Paul characterizes this special way of preferring as follows: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-13). See Pope Francis' reflection on this Pauline text in Amoris Laetitia 90: 118 (2016) In the context of relationships and sexuality education this kind of love, this kind of preferring, defines how we should relate to each other at an interpersonal level as in the general notion of loving your neighbour as yourself. In particular this Pauline understanding of love can be applied to how husband and wife should relate to each other in the specific relationship between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. To illustrate how this might work, try replacing the word love in the text above with the word preferring. What this reveals is that love, in this Christian sense, is not selfish. To prefer is not to possess. Indeed, it is not really even about a 'preference' in the common English sense of something you like. Rather, it is about giving preference to the other, to the beloved. It is about concern for the flourishing, for the wholehearted living of the other, of the beloved one. When I say that I love sunny days, I do not make a claim on them, as if I control or own sunny days, as if sunny days are simply there for my pleasure. Rather, to say that I love sunny days is to be in wonder of sunny days for what they are—sunny, warm, bright. So too when we love someone in this Christian sense there is a certain unconditionality about that love. Our preference is for the person as a person, as he or she is, as the beloved, the one loved. It is about being in wonder of who that person is. In other words, love is about wanting what is good for that person. Love is about wanting that person to flourish, to realise the fullness of their humanity as made in the image of God, male or female. Love in the full sense of the word is a virtue, not just an emotion, and still less a mere excitement of the senses. The virtue is produced in the will and has at its disposal the resources of the will's spiritual potential: in other words, it is an authentic commitment of the free will of one person (the subject), resulting from the truth about another person (Wojtyla, 1981 p. 123).
The link between this conception of love and with the notion of 'preference' helps us to see another important dimension of the Catholic understanding of love. Love is intimately interwoven with justice. With this in mind scholars have discussed and debated the precise nature of the love-justice relationship for many years. What is clear from all of these debates is that irrespective of whether love is prior to justice or justice is prior to love, or whether justice is a kind of love or love is a kind of justice, the two are inseparable. To truly speak of justice, one must talk of love and to truly speak of love, one must talk of justice. Justice without love is hard and calculating. Love without justice can become self-absorbed and unfocused. So when Catholic social teaching talks about a 'preferential option for the poor' it is talking about loving by doing justice and about doing justice with and for love. So too, in the context of interpersonal relationships, to love someone, to truly 'prefer' someone, is to make sure that all of your interactions are truly just. What is sought is the mutual good of both parties not simply one's own good. Mutual love also extends outwards to the wider community.
The Christian understanding of God is a Trinitarian one. All relationships are meant to mirror the relationality that constitutes the Trinity. All relationships are to be characterised by love, radical equality, mutuality, inclusivity and justice with mercy. God is a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is not to say that there are three Gods. Rather this mystery gives expression to three 'persons' of the same divine being (substance). Three persons in one God. Christian mystics have contemplated this mystery for centuries. The central aspect of most of these reflections is how the idea of the Trinity helps us to understand what it means to say that God is love. The persons of the Father should not be understood to mean that God is male since God has no gender (CCC 370). God the Son or the Word becomes incarnate as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. Together with the Spirit all three persons are necessary if God is not to be reduced to simply an unmoved mover, or some omnipotent power. These three persons make God understood as pure divinity, the greatest good, the most powerful power, fundamentally relational and personal. Moreover, God's fundamental relationality is defined not by power or violence or competition, but by love. This means that contrary to many other conceptions of divinity or of gods such as Deistic notions of God as divine clockmaker, the Christian conception of God makes relationship with the world and with human beings, and a genuine concern for the wellbeing and flourishing of the world and of human beings, fundamental aspects of God's very own existence. We say, therefore, that the Christian God is a personal God, who is actively engaged in and with human beings and their affairs in history. God cares. God must care. It is part of God's very nature. It is worth unpacking this notion of Trinity a little further because it helps to explain what it means to love, to 'see as God sees', to prefer as God prefers. The relationship is as follows. The Father begets the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The relationship between the Father and the Son can be thought of as the relationship between the giver and the receiver of love and the reciprocation of the giver's love by the receiver. Out of love, the Son is begotten by the Father. The Son, in return, looks back with love to the Father. This mutual gaze of the Father and the Son, the giving and receiving of love, gives rise to the Spirit, a love that expands beyond the two into a genuine community of love. We can expand this understanding of relationality within God to explain the relationship between God and human beings. Just as the Father loves the Son, so God loves each and every human being. The Son reciprocates that love for the Father and so each human being is called by God to return God's love. This entails accepting with gratitude the gift of existence. It involves the realization that each individual is uniquely willed and loved by God. Finally, just as the Spirit flows forth from the love between the Father and the Son forming a Trinitarian Communion, so my love for my neighbour, my spouse, and my children, flow forth from God's love for me and my love for God forming a community of God, self and other. If I accept that God loves me, then I must also realise that God loves each individual. So when I see as God sees, when I love in the Christian sense of the word, I prefer the other person in the way that makes real God's preference for that person, a preference that God has for every human being. So to say that a Christian understanding of love is to 'see as God sees' is to say that in the other person I recognize someone who is like I am, but is not me. Nor is that person a product or an object of my creation or of my willing. Rather, that person is always an Other, a unique image of God, willed by God for his or her own sake. That person is loved by God. God's desire is for that person to share in the eternal love that is part of the communion of the Trinity.
Intimacy is a hallmark of the Christian life (Au & Cannon, 1995). Experiencing true intimacy begins with knowing ourselves as being loved and accepting ourselves as lovable (Delio, 2013). The Christian understanding of God as Trinity described above makes intimacy and self-acceptance possible, even if we have never experienced the love of another human being. God loves us to the extent that God is prepared to become one of us subject to all of the cruelty we can muster in our least humane moments God's love encompasses the humiliating and torturous death of Jesus, God incarnate, on the Cross. The consequence of all this is that regardless of how we have been treated, humiliated, or hurt, God knows what such treatment is like. No matter how we may have treated, humiliated, or hurt others, God knows what such hurt and humiliation is like. God loves us anyway. When we talk about intimacy with others we are discussing a special kind of relationship, a way of relating closely associated in the philosophical sense with the idea friendship. There is an expression in English about 'fair-weather friends'. These are people who are your 'friends' when the going is easy but when the going gets tough they are nowhere to be seen. Real friendship, real intimacy, goes beyond being nice to a person when to do so is easy. It is about committing oneself to another person over time, even when that commitment is difficult for either of you. The consequence of this commitment is the build-up of trust. Intimacy and trust go hand in hand. An intimate relationship can be defined as differing from other kinds of relationships in at least six ways (Randall, 2014): Knowledge: intimate partners have extensive often confidential knowledge of each other Caring: intimate partners feel more affection for one another than for most others Interdependence: frequent, strong, diverse, and enduring effects on each other Mutuality: tendency to think of each other as 'us' not just I or me Trust: the expectation that one partner will treat the other fairly, warmly, and honourably Commitment: expect their partnerships to continue and invest personally in that expectation. Finally, intimate relationships can create a context in which we can experience what it means to talk about transcendence and the sacred. In intimate relationships we transcend our tendency to egotistical self-absorption as we lose ourselves in our wonder and concern for the other. In truly intimate relationships this loss of self is paradoxically an affirmation of oneself as someone truly worthy. We discover our own worth, our dignity as a human person, as we discover ourselves through the eyes and heart of our intimate other.
Saint John Paul II, in his interpretation of Genesis, points out that feelings of shame have no place in God's original vision of human relationships. God creates the woman from the man and the man recognizes the woman as one like himself. Together they give expression to a common humanity. Genesis tells us that though they were naked they were not ashamed. So, when we ask how we should characterize intimate relationships one important characteristic is freedom from shame. One does not feel ashamed and one does not shame the other. Consequently, one neither wants to hide from the other nor harm the other as a perceived source of shame. In the Genesis narrative shame is symbolized by nakedness. We live in a society which covers the genitals, the most intimate parts of the body. This is quite appropriate because we do not live in a world free of shame. However, the symbolism inherent in the idea of nakedness can also be applied to other parts of ourselves in the context of intimate relationships. The relationship that is free of shame is the relationship that feels no need for secrets, no need to hide anything, no need to fear the other or punish the other. In other words, the ideal intimate relationship is one of trust and justice. Realising this kind of trust, this freedom from shame, requires the recognition of the other in the way that the first man and woman recognize each other, that is, as one like myself but different from myself. As a couple together we are better than we would otherwise be. Another word for this is 'respect'. Respect has its root in the Latin for 'to look back' or to return a gaze. We say that love is 'to see as God sees' and we affirm that in the Trinity the Father and the Son look at or regard one another with love. We say that intimate relationships are based on respect, recognizing that such relationships are based on a certain way of seeing ourselves, the other and ourselves through the eyes of the other. When the other looks at us we are not shamed, we do not feel the need to hide ourselves or feel threatened by the other. Nor do we feel the need to defend ourselves from the gaze of the other. We return this gaze without fear. We gaze on the other as one both like us and unlike us and with whom we are better together. That is respect. That is the Christian vision of intimate love.
There is a kind of healthy shame that functions as a protector and guardian of the deepest and most sacred vulnerable part of oneself: our bodily and sexual life: and protects us from abuse whether self abuse or abuse by others (Percy, 2005). Relationships and particularly those that have a sexual dimension can be accompanied by a sense of shame. This may be a sign that something is not quite right about this particular relationship. True intimacy, true love, should not result in feelings of shame or guilt. Learning to discern these feelings and their meaning is an important part of the journey to emotional maturity. Moreover, feelings and their meaning can be important when we talk about safety and relationships. Such feelings can function as a kind of early warning system. Teaching young people how to recognize these can be important in empowering them to protect themselves and seek help in situations that may involve inappropriate sexual language, touching and the like.
Communication in our society is frequently understood merely in terms of transferring information. The word communication can also refer to the functioning of the media. Pope Saint John Paul II, however, sees a deeper meaning for communication revealed in the Genesis narrative and especially in the statement that the man and the woman are naked and yet are not ashamed. In this connection, the words they were not ashamed can mean in sensu obliquo only an original depth in affirming what is inherent in the person, what is visibly female and male, through which the personal intimacy of mutual communication in all its radical simplicity and purity is constituted. To this fullness of exterior perception, expressed by means of physical nakedness, there corresponds the interior fullness of man's vision in God, that is, according to the measure of the image of God (cf. Gen. 1.:17). According to this measure, man is really naked ( They were naked : Gen. 2:25), even before realizing it (cf. Gen. 3:7-10). (Saint John Paul II, General Audience, 19 December 1979) The Catholic vision of communication in the context of relationships and sexuality education is one that 'sees as God sees'. The man and the woman in the Genesis narrative look at each other even though they are naked. Indeed, because they are naked they see the essential truth of the other as one like oneself and yet different and unique. When the man sees the woman and the woman sees the man their mutual 'seeing' can be described as respectful 'seeing' in the sense defined above. the man sees and knows that the woman is like him but different from him precisely because of her body. The woman sees and knows the man because of his body. But what they know is more than just the external truth about a physical difference. What they know is that together they form a union and commune with each another to become more than they could be on their own. In a symbolic sense in seeing each other naked each sees the other as God sees each of them. Each of them is an image of God, at the core of their being at both the external physical level and the interior spiritual level. God sees every human being naked in this sense. We can hide nothing from God. So to 'see as God sees', to love and to communicate in intimate relationships is to see the other as God sees him or her. this involves allowing oneself to be seen by the other through God's eyes. A man and a woman together are called to form a community, an intimate partnership of trust, based on honest communication one with the other.
Communication between a man and a woman goes beyond the sexual dimension. We communicate with every part of our bodies. We choose how to use our bodies to communicate. We communicate how we think and feel about the world in a bodily way. We can love with our bodies and hurt with our bodies. Through our bodies we can both be hurt and protect ourselves from harm. In other words there is a sense in which we can choose to use our bodies to give flesh to God's love. Sexual relations between a man and a woman in the context of marriage give flesh to God's love in a particular way. In the words of Pope Francis, 'Sexuality is not a means of gratification or entertainment; it is an interpersonal language wherein the other is taken seriously, in his or her sacred and inviolable dignity' (2016 Amoris Laetitia 151). Even though sexual relations between a couple have an inward focus there also needs to be an outward focus that extends their communication to the world beyond the family. This outward focus, this seeing as God sees is necessary to avoid an 'inward-looking, consumption oriented, privatized practice of marriage' (Coultier and Mattison 2010, p. 223).
Chastity can be understood as the virtue of self-possession. Being chaste entails integrating one's sexuality into one's whole life as a human person. Acting in a chaste way means not being controlled by biological urges. Rather these urges or 'passions' are integrated into one's self-understanding as a sexual being made in the image of God and engaging with other sexual beings who are themselves made in the image of God. Being chaste means taking control of one's desires and energies and directing them to those goods that are most rewarding, most meaningful and that most support one's own flourishing and the flourishing of others. It means making conscious choices about how one directs one's sexual identity towards, in, and through intimate relationships expressing a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of love and respect, seeing as God sees. Acting chastely involves treating individuals as human persons in their own right and not as mere objects of desire. Chastity means treating people with respect and care. Being chaste also Includes showing respect and care for one's own body. A person's own body is not an object but rather an integrated entity integrating body, mind and spirit. 'Much emotional pain and chaos is the result of trivializing sex and ignoring the value of chastity and purity. Sexual passion is only something of depth when it is related to chastity and purity. Passion and chastity, sex and purity of heart and mind, must be brought together. … Thus, we are chaste when we relate to others in a way that does not transgress their moral, psychological, emotional, aesthetic, and sexual boundaries' (Rolheiser, 1999 pp. 201-202).
Growth in the virtue of chastity and in sexual integration is a developmental and life-long process. People can practice chastity in different ways at different times of their lives. As a young person this usually means abstaining from genital sexual intercourse before marriage, because only in marriage is the full goodness of the sexual relationship between a man and a woman realized. However, it also means learning to embrace one's sexual identity as a man or a woman and to learn how to relate meaningfully, deeply, intimately and justly with members of both sexes through the development of friendships. In marriage, chastity in relation to sexuality means, above all, faithfulness to one's spouse, respect for one's partner's sexual desires or lack thereof at different times and mindfulness of how genital sexual intimacy serves the unitive and generative ends of marriage through conjugal love and procreation respectively. But here too friendship is an important aspect of living chastely. For some people chastity can mean a choice not to get married and therefore not to engage in genital intimacy either for a time or throughout a whole lifetime. Such a decision may be made to achieve some other good, such as the pursuit of a particular career or committing to a celibate life in the service of Christ and his Church. Chastity involves self-mastery and contributes to our living wholeheartedly as multidimensional beings with body, mind and spirit. In this way chastity helps the individual to integrate various dimensions of the self in the pursuit of the most noble goods for oneself and others especially the good of love, the greatest of the virtues. One cannot be a truly loving person if one is not also a chaste person.
A Catholic perspective acknowledges that not everyone will marry and indeed that not everyone needs or wishes to get married and start a family. A person may also choose personal fulfilment through living life as a single person or as a person who has chosen some sort of religious profession in direct service to the Church as is the case with Religious Sisters and Religious Brothers and with Priests. There is further consideration of these important and valid ways to live out one's identity as a human person below.
Saint John Paul II (1981) recognized the irreplaceable importance of the family, not only to the individual, but also as the gift that it represents to society at large. The Pope emphasized that the family is both the setting for physical nurturing and the privileged place where children are educated in all aspects of what it means to be human (Diocesan Department of Religious Education, 2005 p. 76). A committed and secure marriage partnership which is supported, supportive, and loving remains the best environment for the upbringing of children. From a Catholic perspective, the family includes mother, father and children, extended family of grandparents as well as aunts, uncles and cousins. Beyond these family ties though the family is about society as a whole. The first experience of society that we have as children is in the family context. The family is where we learn to engage with other people. The Catholic perspective sees families as both inwardly focused and outward-looking engaging with society and taking an active role in transforming society by making God present. In this way, families are opened up to 'the disruptive but ultimately Christ-bearing presence of others, especially others in need' (Coultier and Mattison, 2010, p. 222). The family in turn is what the Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et spes, calls a domestic church, which, as a sign of Christ, brings God to the world through service to society beyond the confines of the nuclear family. 'The Truine God is a communion of love and the family is its living reflection' (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia 11). A married couple who experience the power of love know that this love is called to bind the wounds of the outcast, to foster a culture of encounter and to fight for justice. God has given the family the job of 'domesticating' the world and helping each person to see fellow human beings as brothers and sisters (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia).
Celibacy accepted for the sake of the reign of God serves as a complement to the vocation of marriage (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991 p. 94). Celibates choose not to give their life to any one person and are challenged to share it generously with many people (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991 p. 94).