The mystery of marriage is truly profound. For the Pharisees, asking Jesus about divorce, they were not interested in what God wanted regarding marriage but what suited themselves or to which school of thought Jesus belonged to. Jesus points out their "hardness of heart" (Mk 10: 5) and that the state of Jewish law was not what God had wanted "from the beginning of creation." (Mk 10: 6) What then would the Lord say about the state of marriage and sexual mores in our society today? It is not a question of hardness of heart but the lack of a heart! The sexual revolution of the 1960s made possible by the advent of artificial contraception has debased intimate human relationships by commodifying sexual experience and separating the goods of the sexual act: life-giving and love-giving. This has had implications for the whole of society and is threatening even greater chaos through so-called gender fluidity which denies any coherent understanding of the complementarity and mutuality of the sexes. The nature of amorous relationships is also debased by the separation of erotic love (eros) from that of chivalrous self-sacrifice (agape). Instead of becoming fruitful and intimate relationships have become sterile and self-seeking. I read the following in a book entitled Ratzinger's Faith - The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI by Tracey Rowland:
"Applying this theology one concludes that for Benedict XVI the sexual revolution of the 1960s should be opposed, not on the basis of archaic casuistry, not because sexuality is merely a means to the end of procreation, but rather because the underlying vision of the dignity and meaning of human sexuality offered by 1960's Freudians, Nietzcheans and New Age sex therapists is really not truly erotic. It is not only destructive of human dignity and integrity but it takes the pathos out of the whole experience. It trivializes sex and undermines romance and courtly love because both romance and courtship presuppose spiritual chivalry. Being prepared for heroic self-sacrifice for the good of another is the very essence of chivalry and the very antithesis of the morality of Nietzche's superman or the feminist superwoman. Just as God and rationality either stay together or reason goes off on its own tangent and becomes violent, sexuality goes off on its own tangent and becomes banal and depressing" (p. 72)
What is the answer? Perhaps, we, by the grace of God, need to have a new heart fashioned for us purified of selfishness, pragmatism and self-indulgence: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God." (Ezek 36: 26-28)
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