Quest

Kevin T. Kelly

Todd A. Salzman & Michael G. Lawler, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology. Georgetown University Press, 2008.

Salzman and Lawler are two lay and married moral theologians in the US. They have made a name for themselves as challenging thinkers, especially in the field of sexual ethics. In The Sexual Person they offer a thorough overhaul of sexual ethics in the light of the person-centred theological vision undergirding Vatican II. I suspect that very many of my fellow moral theologians will accept, as I do, much of what is found in this book, both at a general theoretical level and in their teasing out the implications for everyday life.

They take their starting point from Vatican II’s emphasis on the nature of the human person, as found in the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes (GS). GS’s opening chapter is entitled, “The Dignity of the Human Person”. That is a kind of banner headline for its approach to morality, including issues in the field of sexual and marital ethics. A few bishops at Vatican II argued that sexual acts as such had their own specific nature over and above the nature of the human person. This was not accepted and n.51 of GS was worded very precisely to bring out this point. (cf. my New Directions in Moral Theology, pp.29-30) Moreover, the Drafting Committee insisted that this was “a general principle” which applied right across the board: “Human activity must be judged insofar as it refers to the human person integrally and adequately considered”. In fact, Humanae Vitae provoked such widespread criticism precisely because it seemed to disregard this key principle. The same is true regarding the current official teaching of the Church denying the goodness of sexual love in faithful homosexual relationships. Read more…