Reason is not enough

A few further thoughts on the modern crisis in our understanding of human sexuality...

Part of the Post-Enlightenment legacy, which is now playing havoc particularly with the upbringing of the young, is a mis-placed trust in reason.

Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that reason is held in too high regard. Whilst our Faith is characterised by mystery, it does not reject, but rather honours, reason. To give up on reason is not a Catholic approach at all: revelation may take us further but is always reasonable. The Word, the Logos of the Father, is truth incarnate; and theology, the queen of disciplines, is (rightly understood) faith seeking understanding.

No, my point is different. The modern error is to set too much store by our being subject to reason. My current bête noire, the CES gay propaganda masquerading as an anti-bullying resource, is a case in point. One of the many things wrong with it is that it seems to assume that you can argue a child into virtue: that once you have given cogent reasons why bullying is wrong, the child will no longer bully. (There are, of course, many other and more serious things wrong with Made in God's Image, and I have documented many of them elsewhere on this blog).

But Catholic tradition, and everyday experience (including my own, as I look at my own patterns of sinful behaviour) demonstrate that such is not the case.

In fact, we have a disordered relationship with reason: too often, our passions are felt more strongly, and we either ignore or distort our reasoning, to indulge our passions.

This, the Church teaches, is part of the damage to our nature brought about by that original catastrophe, known as the Fall.  

One of the many things I lament in the change from the Traditional to the New Rite of Mass is the loss of the wonderful prayer from Psalm 140 (said at the incensing of the altar): Pone, Dómine, custódiam ori meo, et óstium circumstántiæ lábiis meis: ut non declínet cor meum in verba malítiæ, ad excusándas excusatiónes in peccátis. (Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips.  Incline not my heart to evil words; to make excuses in sins.)

To make excuses in sins... How those words resonate!

Human sexuality is damaged by Original Sin: we desire that which we should not desire. And reason, which should order our desires to the good, is subjugated to our passions - unless we train ourselves -  discipline ourselves - to submit to grace.

That is why virtues are learned by practice and example, not just by exhortation; and why when the Faith is abandoned, and 'sexual preferences' (ie a particular sub-set of our passions) are made sovereign, reason lags far behind...

For the tragic results, you need only look around.