Theology of The Body - Commentary - By Sebastian Moore, OSB

By Sebastian Moore, OSB

Another Catholic moral theologian, Benedictine, Sebastian Moore, (who has publicly identified himself as homosexual) is critical of what he regards as a lack of connection to real people in their real lives: "I keep getting the feeling, reading these profound reflections, that their author does not believe that there is any clue to the sublime reality in sexual experience itself. In reflection on one's body in its maleness and femaleness, its essential incompleteness, yes; in the mysteriousness of the union of the two in one flesh, yes. But in sex, as we enjoy and suffer it? Somehow, no. That never comes through. This is a phenomenology of sexuality, descriptive of its intentionality. But we are light years away from the world of D. H. Lawrence. I mean that there is no feeling for the area of experience for which Lawrence has found such memorable words. Of course I don't want the pope to write like Lawrence! It's just that when I think of Lawrence, and then read this text, I get the feeling that, though phenomenological and existential, it really is not talking about what Lawrence is talking about at all."

Sebastian Moore also argues that in his protracted discussion of the "shame" of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they become aware of their nakedness, the pope fundamentally misunderstands what the story is saying. In the Genesis account, according to Moore, "it is shame that sets the stage for lust", but "in the pope's account, it is the other way round: lust generates shame....What we see of sex, in the story of the Fall as presented by Pope John Paul, is sex as shameful, but not the way the story intends, but rather the way he intends, that is, as shameful because of lust."