Okay, today we want to plow forward with our subject, and just to review what we were doing last time, we started the subject of the vow of chastity by trying to go back and find the theological foundation for chastity or for celibacy, and we'll get into the terminology in a few minutes. And so we looked at a kind of Trinitarian archetype for sexuality, actually, and then one on the level of Christology, John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus, being kind of the integration of an astronomy. And then finally that notion of the union of God with man, the union of God with creation, again, so that marriage becomes a kind of paradigm or pattern for the whole of the history of salvation, for the whole of God's plan, as we find in Scripture, explicitly sometimes between God and Israel, implicitly as far

[01:06]

as the whole creation is concerned, the sort of wedding of spirit and body. And then we have to think about how celibacy fits into this whole scheme, and Luke helps us with that, as he distinguishes that inner integration, the presence of the two, both the masculine and feminine poles within the human person, and the inner integration that takes place in the absence of the external, man or woman, and how through this inner integration we relate to God, and through our relation with God the inner integration takes place, so that the person is supposed to be able to find a deeper fulfilment in the celibate life. This is a very controversial point. It used to be said with a kind of arrogance that celibacy leads you to a greater capacity for love, greater human integration, greater fulfilment, but it's very much disputed nowadays on the grounds of experience. It's something that

[02:08]

needs to be thought about carefully. And it's one of these areas where the criticism, say, from psychology, or just from the experience of people with religious, helps us actually to find out in which ways we need to redirect our life in order to find what celibacy is supposed to bring us to, or what our vocation is supposed to bring us to. It's not enough just to draw from theology, you have to draw also from human experience, as I think people did in the past time. Okay, today we want to get back to Roberts and just follow him for a little while with an occasional digression. Before we do that, I finally located this document which he refers to as PH, repeatedly, Persona Humana, which is the Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics from the Holy See, from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

[03:13]

in 1975. This is it, and I'll put it on the shelf as well. Some of you saw at least part of this, I'm sure, in the Catholic papers when it came out, and then the discussion was followed. This treating of the state of sexuality at present, and some things that the Church has been worried about, the official Church, and some matters on which there's been a good deal of confusion, three of them being, especially mentioned, those of premarital sex or extramarital sex, homosexuality and masturbation, the question of whether these things are a matter for sin, or whether the Church's doctrine should be reconsidered. And of course, the document simply confirms the traditional doctrine with a kind of pastoral breadth, which hasn't been found so often up to now. But there are no basic changes in the doctrine in that document. Roberts refers to it occasionally. Okay, any questions or remarks or anything before we...

[04:17]

Okay, we're in Roberts, the beginning of Chapter 3 on page 46, and first of all, Saint Benedict doesn't talk about a promise of chastity. Remember, we thought that that was rather surprising. He says more about poverty than he does about chastity. He only mentions chastity sort of in passing, where he says that we should love chastity, but that's among the instruments of the works of which there are 72, so it's not exactly something that sticks out. And then he says the brothers should love one another, they chased love, and then we're going to see here another place in Chapter 33 where he mentions it. Why is it that he doesn't mention it? Simply because it was presupposed, it was taken for granted. It didn't even need to be said that chastity or celibacy or virginity in the broad sense was an element of the monastic life. Everybody knew it. And Roberts contends that it's included in the direct conversion of life.

[05:28]

Then he uses a kind of striking imagery. Just as it's hard to think of a blind man driving a truck in the centre of a modern city, so also would it be very difficult to imagine monastic life without a promise of chastity. Now, why does he pick that image? Has anybody got any ideas? You're puzzling me. Roberts? Well, he's not a merman, he admits it at the beginning of his book. He says, I do not have the powers of expression of what it is. There must be some reason why he chose that image. In page 46 there, why does he compare the blind truck driver in the centre of the city with the one who doesn't have a promise of chastity? I think that the thing must be this force, this sexual force, which if it's undirected is going to lead you to disaster. So only a promise of chastity can sort of anchor that force and direct it so that the person can travel in the monastic life, so that he can make the monastic journey. The image is somewhat lacking in beauty,

[06:34]

as Martin would have named it. He either would have been more beautiful about it, or he would have been more sarcastic, so that it was funny, one of the two. Then he quotes chapter 33 of the rule. Now, this is on poverty. Let no one presume to give or receive anything without permission of the other, nor have anyone, since they are not permitted to have even their bodies or wills at their own disposal. You see, he says you don't have your body at your own disposal. That presupposes some kind of commitment of the body, either through obedience or implicitly through chastity. And it seems to reflect a passage of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7. A wife does not belong to herself but to her husband, in the same way the husband does not belong to himself but to his wife. I thought that there was an explicit reference to the body, mention of the body in that passage of St. Paul, which there's not. I think there is. 1 Corinthians 7. Not that it's that important, but...

[07:35]

We've got another place. Yeah, here it is. Here it is. Here it is in 1 Corinthians 7, earlier on. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not rule over his own body but the wife does. That's earlier in 1 Corinthians 7. It's not the passage that he... No, it's the same passage, but somehow his translation skips the word body. But that's where the point is, you see. That's where the point of the correspondence with St. Benedict. Anyway, chastity seems to be implied there. We'll get to that later. Some of the interesting questions you raise about early monastic literature is, why don't they talk about the things they don't talk about? The man wrote a book on the rule of St. Benedict and said, well, he doesn't mention the Blessed Virgin, he doesn't mention the Eucharist, any of the extremely important things in our faith he

[08:41]

doesn't mention. And it's good to ask ourselves why. And often it's because they were so taken for granted, as it is with the Eucharist, of course. The Desert Fathers are even more struggling, the things that they speak. When Reinhold is one of the real experts on the Desert Fathers, when he sets out to make his introduction to the sayings of the Fathers, he has a long section on the silences of the Fathers, why they don't speak about the things they don't speak about. And one thing is that they don't even quote the scriptures very much, and he explains that. And then all of the things, he lists all of the things that they don't speak about, which is so fundamental for the monastic life. And if you set out to write a theory of the monastic life, you're going to mention those things first of all. But the first things we jump on today are exactly the things they don't talk about, really surprisingly. And it's because largely the Desert Fathers are leading this apophatic life, this apophatic life which does rather than say it, and which sort of indicates often by turning away from something

[09:47]

and by hiding itself. I'm saying that in a too quick and crude a way, but I'll let it appeal to you. What we think about, they did. T.S. Eliot once said, I forget how he put it, it's as if somebody had said, well, we know so much more than the Fathers, we know so much more than the earlier writings. He's talking about literature, not about monasticism. And then the reply is, yes, but they are what we know. And that means several things at once. They are what we know, and that we know the tradition and they are the tradition. But it means more than that, it means that what we have in our heads as an object of thought, they realized. In other words, their lives realized what we talk about. It's that kind of thing.

[10:50]

So we've got a beautiful explicit theology, and sometimes, as they say, it can be like painting an oasis on the wall, you can't drink it. They have a big book on church, because it was a struggle. And so they have a lot on fornication, that's what they live with. And the funny thing is, if you look through those titles, of the sayings of the Fathers, they're all positive, I think, except that one point. If they don't talk about chastity, they don't talk about fornication. Cassian, on the other hand, talks about chastity. And for them, it's the sort of main adversary in the spiritual struggle, that particular reading of Peter's thought. And so there's a large collection of Saint Benedict.

[11:51]

Saint Benedict, why doesn't he give it that much attention? Largely, I think, because, for one thing, he's not so interested in evil thoughts as they were, and therefore in characterizing those particular things. And the other thing is, I suppose the discipline of the Synodium has a lot to do with working that out, defending the attacks and so on. But I don't know a full explanation. I wonder if part of this is, in a sense, writing about beginners, in a sense, Desert Prodigy, maybe more susceptible to that sort of thing. It can be, but the notion that you get when you read the Desert Prodigy is that this is not only for the advanced, and these falls are pretty crude. A lot of these monks that fall into fornication, they're pretty obviously beginners, or at least they're not masters.

[12:56]

And so Saint Benedict's silence on this remains a little mysterious to me, especially when you compare it with the Desert Prodigy. That's it, that's a paradox. We can take longer. You might expect Saint Benedict to say more about it than we do. Now, we're still talking about Saint Benedict's allusion to Saint Paul, on certain things. The thought seems to be that the monk has entered into a marital relation, not only with God, but also with the community of which he is a member. That surprises us. It surprises us, but in a way it's true. The community becomes your family. If your body, your will, and so on, is not at your own disposal, it's for service, right?

[14:02]

And so it's for the service of your brethren. You can't very easily think of the marriage relationship extended to a commandment, extended to an old group of people. It's much more easy to consider just a one-to-one relationship with God and with Christ, as it is biblically. A bishop, however, is said to be married to the church, and as a ringless, it was to symbolize that the church is the bride of Christ. You can't say the same about the relationship between a monk and his wife. He doesn't have that pastoral responsibility for it. Okay, he says there was one attitude which was common in the first centuries of Christianity, but got lost in the Middle Ages somewhere, and now is reappearing. And it's expressed in a way that the three ordinary religious powers are listed, usually.

[15:05]

It used to be poverty, chastity, and obedience for a long while. Now, this was not the first period. This is a medieval period. This is, since the time of the scholastics, especially. Sacrifice of exterior material goods by poverty. Those are the things that are least close to you and least important to you. And you would sacrifice those when you come into the monastery. Sacrifice of the goods of one's own body by chastity. We may object to that a little, because goods of one's own body, it seems to put chastity, sexuality, interpersonal relationships on too exclusively physical a level. But this whole business is difficult to deal with, because we're talking about the body, and at the same time we're talking about the whole of personality. This comes out later. Sacrifice of the good of one's own will by obedience. You may remember that B. Griffiths, in his book, expresses the three vows in this way, and it's a beautiful way of expressing it. It's got its own logic to it. That as you get closer to your inner self, as he calls it, closer to that total gift of self,

[16:08]

which is the handing of your inner self to God, or the realization of your inner self, or whatever, you move closer to your center, from things that are not you to something that is you, and yet in a way is not completely you, to the self. And he says you've come closest to handing over the self to God, the total self, through obedience. Now, obedience can comprehend those other two commitments, of course. Obedience can read those. You can extend any one of the three to seem to include the other two. But he says, at times the order was inverted, starting with obedience because of its more universal influence in the organized religious life. Obedience can order everything else, including poverty and chastity. Then came poverty, and finally chastity is the least influential until we die. Nevertheless, in point of fact, the most radical vow is that of chastity, or consecrated virginity. So Vatican II treats chastity before poverty and obedience. And then he gives a quote from

[17:13]

Roman Gentium there, in which it singles out virginity or celibacy first. Now, what does he mean by most radical? He's going to say later on that from the commitment of chastity or celibacy, all of the other elements of a monastic profession spring. Now, I'm going to propose that to you as sort of a puzzle or an open question, is why chastity or virginity or celibacy should be that important, that radical. I don't claim to understand it, but we can sort of walk around it and look for the reason. It has something to do with the heart, of course, and the place where body and spirit fit together, the place where body and spirit come together. And the fact that in some way, in chastity, you make a turn there, a decisive turn, and orient our whole person, including the body, and symbolize by the gift

[18:16]

of the body towards God, towards the spirit, rather than the other direction. Which isn't to say that by a choice of marriage somebody orients himself towards the earth, merely towards the flesh. It's not as simple as that. That would be stupid to say that, because that too is a way to God. So the Church returned to an approach shown by the Gospels and Saint Paul, he says, because he says that when Jesus wants to talk about committing himself to the Kingdom, he talks especially in terms of chastity. I don't know if you can say that. I think if you compare chastity with the other two vows, you could probably say it. But I think he talks just as much of the cross and of renunciation itself, that kind of death to self in general. Certainly more about that than he does about chastity. It sticks out more from the Gospel. And then he quotes a

[19:18]

couple of passages, one from Matthew, one from Luke. Not everyone can accept this teaching. Now, the teaching has been on, remember the context in Matthew 19? It's been a question of divorce. And somebody asked Jesus if it's legitimate for a man to divorce his wife for any reason. And he says, no, except for chastity, except for adultery. And the disciples say to him, well, if that's the way it is, then it's better not to marry. And he says, well, not everybody can take this, but only to those to whom it's given. So the item under discussion is changing there, and he's saying that not everybody can choose not to marry, unless it be given to you. And Saint Paul says, everybody has his own gift, one in one way, one in another way, suggesting that the vocation to marriage is a gift of God, just as the vocation to celibacy is a gift of God. And yet he's urging people to choose celibacy. The interaction between grace and free will comes out once again there, with all of its mystery. Not everybody can accept this teaching, only those to whom it's given to do so. There are

[20:22]

eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of kingdom and power. Let anyone accept this who can. So it's a gift and it's something you have to grasp at the same time. It's making oneself a eunuch for the sake of kingdom and power. It sounds pretty grim, and it's not until we read about the kingdom in other places that we realize the glory of it. The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those judged worthy of a place in the world to come in the resurrection do not. They become like angels and are no longer subject to death. Sons of resurrection, they are sons of God. Now, if you look in the context, you find out that he's not talking about this life directly, he's talking about the next life. Because it's that argument about the woman who married seven brothers, you remember, and whose wife is she going to be in the next life? No, they don't do that. That's what he says. Would have been possible, maybe it would be the Mohammedan affair with all seven.

[21:26]

No, Jesus rules out that possibility, as well as the possibility to be married to one of them, because they don't marry nor take wives in the next life. So he's not directly talking about this life, and yet he's indicating that the life of celibacy will have a continuity into the next life, since the next life is what we call celibacy, singleness. And then Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, which is a very important passage for the whole matter of chastity, brings us back to this life. He says, I want you to be free from worry. The unmarried man is busy with the Lord's affairs, whereas the married man is occupied with pleasing his wife and busy with the world's demands. There's an immense amount of insight in those two words. I mean, he cuts clean through the whole wisdom and grasps the core of it. That marriage unites you with the world and unites you with a woman, and the two somehow

[22:28]

are connected. He says the same thing on the side of the woman, that marriage unites you with a man and unites you with the world, because you have, in some way, to be connected with the world and to serve the world and use the world and be rooted in it in order to please your partner, in order to please your wife or your husband. So when somebody gets married, he marries a wife and he marries the world in some way. And Saint Paul says that divides you. You can't be totally occupied with the world. You have to be concerned about this world. And then we remember that marriage, of course, is something that's consummated in the flesh and the flesh is part of this world. And it's as if you have a choice as to whether to unite yourself to the world in that way, to marry the world as you marry a person, or to reach out towards God and try to have this union with him, which tends to draw you out of the world. Even though you remain a creature in the world, you remain a creature in the body, in the flesh. And Saint Paul says that he who joins himself to the Lord becomes one with the Lord as one spirit. He says one flesh.

[23:32]

So he's urging his people to remain unmarried. You said that analogy in terms of the monk and the synodium, and the monk's family. In some ways, the synodium puts us up to the world. There's a parallel, but it's a tricky and a dangerous one. That's the trouble, yeah, there's a parallel. Just as before, Roberts went so far as to say that your monastic profession in some way marries you to the community. That's a striking statement of this. So if you become a hermit, then in some way you're moving out of that bond, you see. It's tricky because it automatically tends to put the aramidical life, even as an external thing, above the cenobitical life, and to make it seem more spiritual, you see. And the big danger is, of course, we get married to our own self, and we just go off into isolation, and we go around in that little orbit of

[24:38]

self-centeredness, by not having responsibilities towards others. We tend to think of these things in terms of fulfillment, in terms of pleasure, in terms of love, and so on, but they're responsibility, they're commitment too, they're service too. And this is especially true in a community. It's hard to say whether the community sort of gives you more support, or whether it asks more from you. Who knows? But anyway, it's not just that one side. So that thing about the aramidical life is true, but very tricky, as all of those inferences about the relative order of cenobitical life and aramidical life are very tricky. So you tend to end up too easily with a hierarchy, with the married people down here, then the cenobites, and then the hermits. And the hermits are practically in heaven, I mean, at least down to the neck they must be already in the next world. But it ain't true. There may be a bunch of neurotics. No, there shouldn't be, but you can have. That automatic thing about a state in life putting you somewhere, that's the danger.

[25:44]

Now I have to say something good about the aramidical life. I don't know. It's more inescapable than monastic life, that is, the demand to grow,

[27:05]

as well as being more natural. It is the natural way of growth. And so monastic life has to strain itself in order to be as effective a way of growth as married life. And often it hasn't. It hasn't done it, in many cases. Because what do we do with that freedom that St. Paul says that we have from the world? Well, that freedom can too easily be turned just to self-satisfaction, or can be just allowed to evaporate in those ends. Or, simply, people can withdraw from marriage and come right out of the field, and therefore not really grow, because they never get pulled out of that field. Monastic life in other times had more bite to it, and so it would force you in a certain direction. It would prod you in a certain direction, because it was hard. The work, the obedience, and the austerities of your life were sufficient so that you had to move along, at least to a certain extent. You can never generalize that, because you can never force

[28:08]

anybody into sanctity by external means. But just as marriage had that tendency and gave that external effort, so did the monastic life, but it's not so true nowadays. And so it falls back more on the individual, you see, to find his source of motivation within him, and to move. But we certainly don't want to look at marriage as if it were sort of a second best, or just where people decide not to go anywhere, because if they don't want to go, it's a normal individual. And there's been such an unbalanced doctrine on this, when theology and these things are written about only by monks, and only by celibates, and only by priests. Now the counter, the revolution on the other side has come now, so that celibacy has to defend itself. And so marriage seems to have all the value in it. Sure.

[29:12]

It can become just a conspiracy to become... I haven't seen a whole lot of happy marriages, and I haven't seen a whole lot of marriages in which people have really gotten a lesson that they should have gotten out of it, on which they've really grown. And if it happens on one side, then maybe it won't happen on the other side. Maybe one partner will grow to a great degree of love and self-giving, and the other partner stays right there. There is something good in marriage. This is a thing by the English Benedictine Foundation called Consider Your Call. There's a very good section on celibacy. I thought that this would be a more or less routine document, you know, worked up for you more, but it's a good job beautifully. Consider Your Call. There was something good here about the long way... We can talk about the ideal of marriage and the ideal of celibacy, but married people

[30:21]

experience the difficulties of marriage and celebrates the difficulties of celibacy. If comparisons are made, it must not be between the ideal of the one and the experienced difficulties of the other. See, so it's hard for a monk really to talk about the married life since he hasn't experienced it. He may have the ideal in his head and later, 40 minutes, start knocking down his own life. He has an urgency, that's what I'm saying. A lonely or discouraged celibate can deceive himself by dreaming about an ideal of marriage, just as he can present a false case for celibacy if he compares the problems and frustrations of marriage with the ideal of his own vocation. He's talking about difficulties and problems. He could also be talking about successes and unsuccesses, and be unfulfilled, frustrated, and undeveloped people in their marriage. Neither one was an answer. In the life of those who, following the call of Christ, leave everything in order to devote themselves entirely to the Lord.

[31:24]

Then he's got a paragraph there which we can skip. Thus, from the primitive church until the 12th century, consecrated virginity was fully accepted as an official state of life which is independent of the profession of poverty or obedience. You'd have consecrated virgins who are not nuns, who are not monks. Both by its inner demands and through its social structure of non-marriage, consecrated virginity continues to be the element which most tangibly separates the religious from the bonds of this world. For a monk, we can say that all the other elements of his profession spring from this one. Now, that's the thing I want to leave as a kind of koan. Is that true? And if it's true, why is it true? Is celibacy really that basic to the monastic way? And if so, how do you explain it? And if so, then it must say a lot about what the monastic life is, must it not? If it's really that radical, if it's a root of the monastic commitment in itself, then it must tell you a lot about monasticism. Well? It seems to me why it may be said this, it seems that chastity

[32:35]

is a thing that you can cling to for the longest or is the most easily hidden, clinging to it can be most easily hidden, so that because it's able to be hidden, it's more easily protected, therefore it's the most precious. It's the most precious, that's why I think they're saying it's the root of the most, or the center, what are they saying, it's the center? He uses the word root. Here he says all the other elements of his profession on a page before he said the most radical vow is that of chastity. I think it's because it's the most precious. Radical comes from root, and radix in Latin is root. I think it's because chastity would be the most precious vow, as opposed to poverty. What about obedience though, because that pertains to your will and everything. So does chastity. It does. It refers to your will on another side. The commitment of yourself

[33:40]

in some way is expressed, chastity catches the totality of it in some way, because your body and your spirit are both involved, and the will is in the middle. If you're able to give up the most precious element of yourself, then that would be the lead towards the root of this conversion process. I think you're very close to the answer. I was thinking, you shouldn't say giving up, but redirecting. Yeah, that's right. You're giving up one use of it. And he gets to that later on. You don't give up sexuality, in other words, you don't give up sex, you can't because it's built into you, but you redirect it. You give up the most ordinary and most obvious and immediately most attractive use or exercise of that, for the sake of something else. Seems like it's also the law that's most dependent on the person. Yeah, yeah. It makes you directly conscious of your need,

[34:43]

of your poverty, and see it from that point of view also, it's poverty. It's the first element of solitude, really, because the first thing about being alone for an adult is being without a husband or wife, is being unfulfilled sexually. When we say sexually, we don't just mean physically. Somehow, it hits man in the middle, I think that's the reason. It catches him in the middle, and therefore catches the whole of him. That means it catches the whole of him. All right, but we're going to look further as we go on. It's more concrete, for one thing. That's right, that's right. Well, it depends on what you're asked to do. The thing about chastity is that it's concrete, whereas obedience is very general, you see, because obedience, well, it sounds okay,

[35:45]

because you don't know what you're going to be asked to do. Whereas chastity is right there in the flesh, you know, it's very concrete, especially when it concerns a particular person that one is related to or attracted to, but also just because it's written into his own body in a way that obedience is not. Obedience for Jesus, for instance, in the end, meant Gethsemane and the cross, didn't it? So that's got awful physical, too. But there's a relationship between that obedience of Jesus, which led to the cross, and the crucifixion, and this whole question of celibacy and sexuality, and about chastity. There's a relationship between those two, between the cross, which is kind of the consummation of a certain marriage between God and man, and this whole matter of consecrated chastity. I don't know, let's just sort of presume that Jesus' chastity allowed him to say yes, his obedience allowed him to perform the action, and see what's at the root of being able to say that yes.

[36:49]

His chastity made him free, in other words you say, and made him able to obey, because he wasn't tied to woman, wasn't tied to the earth. And also the purity of heart, because chastity extends to the purity of heart, if he carried it inside, with his heart. Q. Chastity is already a kind of a death to the body, in a way, which is consummated in death, finally, especially on the cross, by Jesus. It's a separation of spirit and body. And they used to relate chastity to martyrdom, of course. There's consecrated chastity and martyrdom, which seem to be on one line. But anyway, he says that all the other elements of his profession spring from this commitment to chastity.

[37:49]

Let's go back on page 16 and look at those main commitments of the profession, the elements of the profession. We put them in several levels on the preceding page, poverty and chastity. Then the basic observances of our order, and he's got five of those. First of all, withdrawal from society. Okay, now the first element, the first level of withdrawal from society is not having a wife. This is verified, at least in the language in Syriac, where one of the words for monk was a single one, was unmarried one. We don't have that in the West. Monarchist doesn't necessarily come out, you know, immediately come out when you're married. Secondly, the life of prayer. What's the relationship there? Well, St. Paul says you only separate from your wife in order to pray. He says remain unmarried in order so that you can be undivided to turn yourself to God. You see, that's the relationship somehow. Celibacy frees you from that other attachment, from that attachment to the world, and thereby enables you to move towards God in prayer. And if you read Luke's book, remember how he talks about

[38:54]

the celibate through his freedom from woman, from the world, whatever. Having a greater power to direct himself to God, which was his prayer being having another dimension, through that inner thing that happens in him. Three, austerity of life. What's that got to do with it? Well, it's as if chastity was a central element in austerity of life, okay? And most of the things we think of regarding austerity of life are physical things, aren't they? Physical penances or deprivations and so on. But the core of them is chastity. The other ones protect chastity, and chastity is like the first expression of this saying no to the impulses of the body which turns out, turns into various kinds of austerities. I'm putting this very quickly. You see how all of these things can be strung on one thread, and that thread is chastity, that direction of sexuality. Fourthly, the common life. How do you make that happen? Common life, first of all, as opposed to marriage, on the social level, you see,

[39:59]

you've got these two social structures, one of which is marriage and family, and the other of which is, on the external level, is the renunciation of marriage for the sake of this other group, the common life, okay? And putting all things in common and so on, even your body, in a sense. And then the other thing is that if you forego this one-to-one relationship with marriage, that's supposed to develop into a capacity for these other relationships in the community. One, in part at least, takes the place of the other. Not entirely. Not entirely. There's still a gap left there. There's a gap of solitude which can only be filled by God, and that will, if it ever gets further out. And finally, monastic work. This one puzzled me a bit. Until you think about the sexuality business in terms of energy, as he does later on when he talks about chastity and eros, the energy which is sort of spared by chastity,

[41:00]

by the renunciation of sexuality, sexual activity, that energy gets redirected into work, channeled to work, sublimated into work. We'll come back to that later on when he talks about eros. Because he considers eros to be very largely a question of energy. There's something we have to consider. Something like this is like, how long do you think people like the Baptists have been here? Right. What about community, monastic ideas? And yet, I haven't thought it out. I don't think we have to find a special theology for them, but it seems to me that there's probably room for something on the margin of the two kinds of life. Like where St. Paul says, well, don't separate yourself from your partner except for this purpose of prayer. Now, for people like that on the boundary line where they're separating themselves, because they must live a life of relative celibacy, I'd say, in a way.

[42:01]

They're certainly not totally into the sexual thing. They must be partially celibate in order to orient themselves towards monasticism in that way, to assimilate monastic values in that way. They can't be taking marriage as many people take it in the world with total abandonment. They must be getting close to what St. Paul says, be married, have a wife as if you didn't have a wife, possess as if you didn't possess, and so on. So St. Paul talks to married people in those terms, and it seems to me that he's talking to people whom he's urging to be like those people probably who are the families of St. Benedict. It's probably a difficult boundary line to live on, but... One of the pros that people really should compare more to the monks is it seems like that's more of an authentic Christian way. That's right, that's right. You can't really say that marriage to people in the world is really what we should be comparing it to. That's right. Because there's kind of indulgence. Yeah, and it's not a Christian society, right?

[43:02]

It's not a Christian society, and it's a society in which sex is a very exaggerated issue, is a very sore and distorted issue. So you're right about that. As long as we don't have enough of these people to know, at least we don't know it probably. Yeah, I talked to a priest there back home, he's on a trip, and he's ahead of the curve. Oh yeah, yeah. And he's taught new lessons to people, so I don't know if I should be doing more of these kinds of things. What's the problem? I'm not a Christian. Okay. That's it, that's how you do it. Is the teaching of the Church on marriage between slaves and the man and the woman to come together as children? No, that certainly is not a law or ruling of the Church, but it used to be somewhat exaggerated in that direction, okay? They talk a lot about the ends of marriage, there's been a lot of controversy about that. Why do people get married? Why do a man and a woman get together? Is it only in order to propagate children?

[44:05]

Now, for a long while, a lot of theologians were pushing that, and that tended to be the quasi-official doctrine of the Church, that the only purpose of marriage is the beginning of children, and the only purpose of the sexual act is the beginning of children, okay? That puts a lot of people in a problem. For instance, if the wife is incapable of having children, is it permissible to have a sexual intercourse or something like that? A lot of other problems. But nowadays, no. There's been a realization that that is not the only purpose of marriage, and the dispute as to whether it's even the principal purpose of marriage, or is it rather the good in itself of love between two human beings, and also, of course, the sacramental representation of the whole mystery of God, which is involved in it, okay? So it's okay for two people who cannot have children to get married, for instance. I believe it's also permissible to have a loving sexual intercourse

[45:13]

without the intent of having children. Yes, that's right, sure. Although deliberate exclusion of the possibility of having children through the use of contraceptives is still against the law of the Church. That big furor over Romano Generis was hard for me at that time. That hasn't changed. Okay, terminology. We'll come back to that issue about the centrality of celibacy, which is important for understanding monasticism. Terminology. He wants to talk about three or four different words there. Chastity, virginity, and celibacy. So we won't spend a lot of time on it. Let's see what he says. He likes the term consecrated virginity. Virginity has a richer historical and biblical sense to it. So he likes to use that. Even though the word chastity is more common. Now, chastity has a broad meaning. It refers not only to unmarried people, but to married people as well. So there's a chastity which is the right use of marriage, which does not mean abstaining from sexual intercourse,

[46:14]

but it means a temperate use of sexual intercourse. So in many respects, these families of St. Benedict could be Mr. and Mrs. Chase. Sure, certainly. I'm sure they are. And they probably make some commitment to that. I don't know if they have a public commitment, but I'm sure it's part of their program. Others will live chastity according to the dictates of Christian morality, either in marriage or as celibates, even though not in a religious state or religious order. Perfect chastity is abstaining from the sexual act, total content. Now, the vow of celibacy. What does celibacy mean? To be celibate is to be unmarried, simply right. So a vow of celibacy is a vow to remain simple to the unmarried. Virginity has a more precise meaning. Now, virginity historically meant, of course, integral physical virginity, especially because of a woman who the physical thing is more prominent.

[47:17]

Not having had sexual intercourse, but it has to be taken in a broader sense. In fact, there used to be a condition for entering some continents when they had this right of the consecration of virgins. But that has been, I think, I don't know, maybe it still exists in some continents. In general, it's done away with. And virginity is taken in a broader sense. It's a commitment to abstinence from sexual activity in the future, regardless of the past. Yeah, on the natural, the secular sense of virginity, that's what it means. So this is a special sense that it gets used in afterwards, where it just refers to the commitment to the future. But the renouncement of marriage for love of Christ, that notion of virginity is much more prominent in the Gospels there.

[48:21]

And so it's useful to keep the word. And consecration, of course, implies that something is still intact. This state has an element of mystery. Not all understand it, nor will understand it. It belongs to the world to come. It causes us to enter, even now, into the liberty of a risen body. It should. It testifies to the definitive and eternal state of every Christian. So it's an eschatological reality, if you'll pardon the word. And the element of mystery, I think, is very important, which is connected with the element of faith. In other words, you never sort of get a proof or an explicit justification for this. Once again, this British book is good on this. He's got a long section on that.

[49:29]

Write a consecration of virginity. It is no more possible to prove that a lifelong commitment to celibacy is valid than it is possible for someone in love to prove that his fiancée is the right person for him. For most people, the choice of Christian celibacy is not the final stage in a rational argument, but part of an intuitive response involving the whole man, a personal response in faith. Many people make the choice without analyzing the justification for it, because they've encountered celibacy as a beautiful fact in the lives of others, and as something that seems to work. Or again, they may have realized that celibacy is part of the lives of most of the peak human beings in Christian history. Christ, Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, and so on. And that carries not only for the individual choice of celibacy, but also for the mystery of celibacy as a whole. It remains as a mystery, sort of shrouded in the clouds. So the word virginity is more apt for expressing this content,

[50:33]

which is not only spiritual, but also supernatural in the spirit of religion. And once again, we get back to that point that I was quoting Teilhard about, the love of Christ is the motive for this. And there is a kind of, some kind of a marriage with Christ involved in this, which remains very interior, very hidden. Some kind of a marriage with Christ involved in this commitment to virginity. A lot of the parables in the Gospels, and the things that Jesus said, of course, are related to this. We think of the church as being a bride of Christ, but actually it's each one of us as well. It's a lot easier for women to come to terms with that than it is for men. That was traditional, as I pointed out in my spiritual theology. So then he talks about the difference between material and natural virginity, and recovered virginity through penitence.

[51:33]

The promise of perpetual abstinence is the principal element in the spell of virginity. That which is consecrated by the vow of conversion of life is the present and the future, not the past. So there's something in there about God's grace, God's gift. Sort of the all-embracing character of God's grace. And then you remember some of the women in the Gospel who were not sinless. Like Mary Magdalene was a very prominent place in the Gospel. The adulterous woman and so on. Especially Mary Magdalene. She had seven devils thrown out of her. We don't know whether she's the same as the sinful woman or not. Elsewhere in the Bible there's a confusion there. In tradition she was always regarded as having been a sinful woman. And later on she comes to play a central role after the resurrection in the spreading of the virginity. The central role of God, especially in the Gospel of Saint John. And that's not without reason. So it's as if nothing were irrevocable in God's grace,

[52:42]

including sin, especially sin. Okay. Christian virginity, consecrated virginity, signifies two things. He's going to hang on to this term, consecrated virginity. The state of perpetual abstinence from marriage. I think you have to say in addition from marriage, also from sexual activity, genital activity at least. And the consecration or inner dedication of the state to Christ. Basic requirements. In this vow, more than in any other, the interior psychological and spiritual aspects receive principal attention. Now this is touching on what Philip was saying before. Somehow this vow gets further into you than the other ones do. It gets into the place where your body and your spirit are joined. It gets into the depths of your heart. In fact, it's impossible to separate this interiority of Christian chastity from its more external dimensions. And then he goes on to quote that document, Persona Nomana. It's a virtue which marks the whole personality, both interiorly and exteriorly.

[53:47]

You might quarrel with that. You might say, well, doesn't obedience, doesn't poverty have a very interior reflection? Doesn't it reach right into you? Somehow for me, it's a combination of the physical and the spiritual. And chastity, it makes it cut deeper, it makes it so concrete. It's very hard to make these distinctions with language, for some reason. There's a depth of radicalness in chastity and the whole sexuality business, which is not in the other spheres. And it's got to do with this whole bodily character of Christianity, which includes the resurrection, let me put it this way, the incarnation. And first of all, the creation of man as body and spirit, and the fact that God breathed his spirit into earth to make man. Secondly, the incarnation, the physical death of Jesus on the cross, which is very important, it's not just symbolic, but very important.

[54:55]

And the resurrection, and finally, the Eucharist. Now, all of these things in some way are connected with this business of chastity that we're talking about, and the sexuality. And the reason why chastity is so central, it has to be. Philip? I certainly think obedience cuts interiorly and exteriorly, but probably not to the depth that chastity does. And the other thing about chastity is that chastity is your ability to depropriate somewhat your connection almost to immortality, even in that moment, where obedience doesn't get into that dimension as much. No, it doesn't touch it right away, yeah. I think there might be another reason. That's another reason, yeah. And then chastity touches directly on your relations to other people, more perhaps than obedience. It touches on a lot of relationships, not necessarily a working relationship. No, not a working relationship, but the deeper kind of relationship. And also, it somehow relates to the whole energy of your life, on a level of energy.

[55:57]

Henry? When you use that word penetration, I think it would be like chastity, the word of God penetrating our division of soul and spirit. That's right. That's right. That's right. And the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, which Cashin talks about, and which St. Paul talks about, of course, that's the principal battleground for the classical background. Grigor? Didn't Thomas Horton write that obedience is, to some extent, still self-will, as you're saying, that you would be obedient to? I don't remember that. Oh, he's a subtle one. I mean, to some extent, you're still using your will, it's in your heart to be given up to something. So what was he selling when he said that? I mean, what was surpassing obedience? I don't know. What's better? My goodness. Maybe it was chastity, because that's what you're good for. It seems like chastity is a good self-improvement.

[57:05]

Yeah. It comes into your nature. But see how hard it is to express these things in language. There's a kind of instinct that we all have to experience. And keep the question open. So we did our terminology, and then... The state of consecrated virginity involves the renunciation of any thought or desire of marriage, and then not only the renunciation of the pleasure, which always comes from sexual activity, but any idea of marriage. It sounds a little bit unrealistic for some people to say, I'm planning a married life. Religious. That's what he's talking about. For a religious to think seriously in the deliberation about getting married, even without thinking of sexual acts of pleasure, would be a real infidelity to Jesus, for the chastity of which he's talking about. It is certain. Personality is a primal tradition.

[58:06]

The cultivation of chastity inherits hope by the monastic life. Now, he's got two different dimensions here. The negative dimension, the renunciation of any voluntary act directly related to sexual, that is, genital stimulation. Often, we used to talk about sexual activity and so on. We talk much more about genital activity nowadays. It's a more precise word. And it refers, of course, to activity of the genital organs. Rather than... Because sexual is too big a word, you see. You can't get away from sexuality, but you can restrain yourself from genitalia. So you find that word out. This negative obligation receives its weight from chastity's positive meaning. The vow signifies, above all, that you assume responsibility of cultivating chastity positively. And this means integrating your sexuality into the rest of your human, Christian, and monastic life.

[59:10]

So that's a big item, and something that hadn't been talked about sufficiently up to recent times. See, the negative aspect had been adequately covered, but not the positive aspect, this matter of integration. Abstinence is pretty hard to take. Just the renunciation of a big piece of your nature and your personality is hard to take, unless you can understand that you're really integrating. That you're not really amputating anything. You're reorienting. Integrating means to bring into a larger whole. So sexuality gets brought into a larger context. Not only the larger context of human love, but the larger context of divine love. Two general, simultaneous phases. First, becoming aware of your sexuality. That sounds simple, as if you could just say it in five words, but it's deeper than that. That you are made to love, and that you have an indelible mark on all levels of your human and Christian life,

[60:11]

which is a sexual mark. Then, the inner ordering of these levels of love, so that all the life energy which God has granted you can be expressed in a way which corresponds to your political future. So, becoming aware and then ordering. And I suppose we become aware very gradually, as we're able to take it, and that as we successively become aware of these elements, then we have a responsibility of ordering, of integrating, of bringing them into line, which is a matter more of prayer than anything else, but also of a good deal of work. This is the real work of chastity, a lifelong process. It may be surprising to hear him say a lifelong process, especially in that case of awareness. I don't know to what extent that does, that increasing awareness does continue to be in effect, but the ordering certainly does. Which will really not be completed until your entire being is glorified

[61:13]

on the day of the final resurrection. It's correct. The ultimate transformation is in the resurrection, but the transformation begins already due to the inner virtue of chastity. It's hard for us to think of virtues in that substantial terms as being like a force infused by the Holy Spirit. The scholastics used to talk about them in those ways, as if the virtues were separate things that sort of received entities. It's harder for us to think of them in those terms. It's like a substance, independent existence to them. And yet, we do have the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We tend to think of these things more, I think, in a general sense now, as being modalities of that love which is given us, simply on the outflows of the Holy Spirit living in us and gradually bringing everything under the rule of Christ,

[62:17]

everything that's in us, all of our energies, rather than a specific gift. So, chastity is not just exterior with marriage, it's just exterior. We should purify the heart. Then, he quotes the saying of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, to look with desire on a woman, to look with, I think it's lust on a woman who's already committed adultery in this world. And I suggest to exceed more than marriage is quite a comparison. And I suggest to exceed more than marriage is quite a comparison. And I suggest to exceed more than marriage is quite a comparison.

[62:51]

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