Care for the Common Good Requires Sexual Morality, by Anthony Esolen

Catholics who put themselves forward as advocates of social justice seem to behave as if the sexual teachings of the Church did not bear upon the issue at all. These Catholics are not wrong to care for the common good. The quality of their recommendation—whether it is mistaken or not—will depend upon what they recommend, and how, and under what circumstances. A man may want to prescribe a good diet for you, and still be mistaken in feeding you margarine and soybeans. They are certainly wrong if they believe that they can secure the common good when the societas domestica—the phrase is Leo XIII’s—is a ship with a fifty-foot hole in the hull. I am not saying that sexual morality is sufficient to secure the good of the family, speaking generally, and with specific attention to the poor and vulnerable. It is not sufficient. It is, however, necessary. Children need more than sunlight and fresh air. But they do need them.

So we come to the relationship of a right sexual morality to social justice. The former is insufficient to secure the latter. But it is a sine qua non.

Let us address specifics. It is now a matter of controversy, as our readers know, what the Church teaches about buggery. The Church teaches that buggery is wrong. What about the desire to engage in buggery? It’s a bad desire. It is a perversion of the proper use of the sexual power, and a corruption of friendship. It forms no part of the saint God wants you to be, no more than does an inclination to commit any other sin, sexual or otherwise. Sin vitiates, and the inclination to sin is at least a defect, a shortfall. Spiritually we walk like cripples and hunchbacks. But the shattered knee and the crooked back are nothing to celebrate. In a sense they are nothing at all: privations, tending to dissolution….Read entire article:  crisismagazine.com/2019/care-for-the-common-good-requires-sexual-morality