The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession by John Cornwell

Author:John Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Catholic, Christian Rituals & Practice, 20th Century, Modern, Christianity, Religion, Sacraments, Christian Church, History
ISBN: 9780465039951
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

Seminary Sexology

Immodest acts, however slight they may be, that are done from the motive of exciting lust, even though it do not ensue [sic], are grievous sins.

—H. Davis, SJ, Moral and Pastoral Theology

SEXUAL SIN WAS THE DOMINANT TOPIC OF THE MORAL textbooks we were obliged to study in preparation for future ministry. The sections on ‘Chastity and Modesty’ directly invoked the sixth and ninth commandments (in the Catholic Decalogue numerology) as the ultimate source of authority: ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ and ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.’ According to our moralists, the sixth commandment not only forbade adultery, ‘but all actions which are intended to lead or which naturally lead to it, and all actions contrary to the orderly propagation of the race.’ Meanwhile, the ninth commandment forbade ‘all lustful thoughts and desires’. Hence it was a mortal sin to derive the slightest wilful pleasure not only from words, thoughts, or deeds involving the illicit exercise of the sexual act, but also from wilful words, thoughts, or deeds that might lead to such ‘pleasures’.1

The point of the sixth and ninth commandments, then, was to inculcate in all members of the faithful the virtues of chastity and modesty, which virtues ‘exclude in the unmarried all voluntary expression of the sensitive appetite for venereal pleasure.’ This ‘pleasure is normally associated as well with the full exercise of the generative function as with the movement of the generative organs as they are preparing to function.’ All were called upon to be chaste, according to our moralists—both married and unmarried: ‘the rational motive of the virtue of chastity is the reasonableness of controlling sexual appetite in the married and of excluding it in the unmarried.’ At the same time, life-long virginity bestows ‘a special aureole’. Marriage was instituted by God for the ‘allaying of concupiscence as for the procreation of children’, but ‘the state of virginity is the higher and nobler state and absolutely more pleasing to God.’ Then, again: ‘All sexual pleasure, outside wedlock, that is directly voluntary is grievously sinful.’2

Homosexuality merited a mere six lines in our four-volume treatise by H. Davis, less than necrophilia. And yet the moralists established their abhorrence of homosexuality by placing it sixth in a catalogue of ‘perversions of the sexual appetites, beyond the order of nature’, right after sadism, masochism, fetishism, voyeurism, and exhibitionism (which, writes Davis, is often a perversion found in old men!: ‘Invenitur haec perversionem in senibus’). Homosexuality, which he termed ‘contrary sexuality’ (‘contraria sexualitas’), could be between men and men or between women and women. He adds what he calls the vice of the Greeks, namely ‘paederastia’, meaning the love of boys.

Catholic priests could look forward to responsible roles in the running of parish schools soon after ordination. Most parish priests would be ex officio chairmen of the school management boards. Yet what we were taught about moral and emotional development in childhood was outlandishly misguided. ‘Moral education’ for children, according to Davis, should involve ‘the curbing of curiosity’; ‘the

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