"Christ is showing us how the … Commandment, 'Do not commit adultery,' must be understood and put into practice ….
"The key phrase … is 'adultery in the heart.' This is a paradox. How can you commit adultery without committing adultery? …
"'Adultery in the heart' is usually understood as desire for another man's wife. … According to this interpretation, a man is free to look lustfully at his own wife. …
"…
"But in light of Christ's entire revelation, this interpretation must be broadened. Jesus affirms the Ten Commandments, but he doesn't stop there — he sheds new light on them.
"…
"In the situation posed by Jesus, a man looks upon a woman lustfully. It is significant that Christ describes her simply as 'a woman' — not as 'another man's wife.' Adultery in the heart is not limited to the boundaries that define adultery committed in the body. Instead, it is defined by the presence of lust. In Christ's example, the man's relationship to the woman doesn't change the fact that he commits adultery in his heart by looking lustfully. Even if she is his wife, if he reduces her to an object he is still guilty of adultery in his heart.
"This interpretation takes into account the true nature of lust. It reduces the call to form a communion of persons — the perennial attraction of masculinity and femininity — to mere satisfaction of the sex instinct. It reduces a person, called into existence for her own sake, to an object for my pleasure."
This is the talk which gained a lot of attention. Reported apart from the context of all that he had said about lust in previous talks, or even as fully developed in this talk, the headlines to the effect that the Pope says there can be lust and adultery in the heart within marriage were greeted with incomprehension and some ridicule. IMO, JPII makes perfect sense here. And of course, it can apply equally to gay men and their attitudes toward men. Even if sex is legitimate within a stable and loving gay relationship (which I would not agree with), regarding one's partner as an object for one's own gratification puts one into a condition of adultery in the heart, IMO.
An der Grabstätte von Kronprinzessin Cecilie
1 week ago
2 comments:
"Even if sex is legitimate within a stable and loving gay relationship (which I would not agree with), regarding one's partner as an object for one's own gratification puts one into a condition of adultery in the heart, IMO."
You are pefectly right: that's the nub of the matter.
Do you remember what Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about 'the gaze'?
The gaze of the other is objectifying in the sense that when one views another person painting a wall, he sees that person as simply a painter.
Sartre wrote that we perceive ourselves being perceived and come to objectify ourselves in the same way we are being objectified.
Thus, the gaze of the other robs us of our inherent freedom.
Now, while I doubt that this analysis is true in general, it is surely true for the lustful gaze.
Thanks for commenting.
I wasn't familiar with that idea of Sartre's.
It seems to me that when we perceive the painter painting, we perceive him as a person in his own right engaging in human activity. Does our seeing him as a person who paints deny him, in our estimation, a fuller range of human activity? Possibly so. This can be the fault of upper class people who regard their domestic servants merely as servants, or employers who regard their employees merely as instruments of production. In other cases perhaps we do not look beyond what the person is doing so as to think about his capabilities and potentialities as a human person.
But it seems to me, contra Sartre, that as long as our gaze does not contradict the wider humanity of the one we gaze upon, we have not truly objectified the other. And I think that is what John Paul means. If we would deny the domestic servant or the employee any recognition of their personal human dignity and reduce them to their work, then we offend their humanity in a way similar to the offense of seeing another as simply an object for our pleasure.
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