Love and Sexuality

Pastoral Letter to the Young People of the Diocese of Pittsburgh

God's love and peace be with you.

No one can live your life or make your decisions for you. You are called to live in responsible freedom, drawing on the gifts God has given you, and responding to the challenges life presents to you. Still no one lives entirely alone. We can learn much from the generosity and energy of your youth, but you can benefit from the wisdom and experience of those who have made the same journey before you, and who want your life to be full and rewarding.

This is a time when you must also make important moral decisions that will affect the rest of your life. I am convinced from talking to so many of you that you are not only capable of making good moral choices but that you also want to make them. My hope in writing this pastoral letter is that you will give me some of your time so that I can talk with you about some of the biggest decisions you have to make and the moral and spiritual aspects of those choices.

I also ask you to share this letter with your friends who face some of the same questions and concerns that you do. They may not have others they can go to open up about issues as important as their moral and spiritual life. This letter is my way of trying to be with you in the discussion and help you at a very important time in your life.

At the same time I want to share this letter with those who work with young people and care deeply about their future, and with parents and grandparents whose own lives are inseparable from those of their children and grandchildren. I write also in the hope that teachers, whose mission in life is to serve young people, and priests, whose ministry calls them to special concern for the young, will benefit from these thoughts which reflect the Church's teaching. Our youth deserve our support as they seek to work out their vocations, their commitments, their very lives in a world far from ideal.

In a larger sense, I also share this letter with the whole Church of Pittsburgh, and with all people who sincerely have great affection for you, our young people, who embody our hope for the future.

Choices

Each one of us is free to make choices. Our decisions are important because they shape our life. Good choices take us in one direction; bad choices in another that can have devastating results. When we make choices we enter the world of morality. Some things cry out to be done and often we know we can and should do them. But there are also things we know we should not do. We enter the world of moral living when we care about what is truly good and when we acknowledge the authority of conscience. We enter the world of moral living with confidence when we seek from Jesus the wisdom and strength we need to lead our lives well. Morality is another word for living a good, full, healthy and free life according to right choices -- right choices that we individually have the freedom and the obligation to make

We live a moral life when we try to follow God's plan and Jesus' way for us. The voice of God speaks to us in our conscience. The challenge of every follower of Jesus is to listen to that voice and respond to it. When one enters his or her own heart, sincerely seeking the true direction and standard for love, God waits there. If you really care for the search for truth, for a better quality of life, and what is right, then find some quiet time where you can be alone with God whose voice echoes within your conscience. We are not left alone in the search for what is right. Jesus speaks to us through his Church which faithfully teaches us his message and truth.

"New Morality"

Some people speak of a "new morality" -- a phrase too often used to honor a morality that is really old and shabby. It promotes a way of life that compromises hopes and dreams, a vision without generosity and challenge, a response that yields too quickly to our weaknesses. Too often it speaks of choices with no youthful resolve, unwilling to make the commitments that would reveal the depth of real love.

But there is a morality worthy of the name "new," a morality that is vibrant, strong, and able to change everything. It is the way of life -- the lifestyle -- that Jesus taught and gives us the power to live joyful lives.

Jesus' Way of Life

By the truth of his word Jesus came to set us free. He offers us freedom not only from failure, doubt, compulsiveness, misdirected efforts and wasted opportunity, but also from enslavement to public opinion, to peer pressure, to the standards of a merely secular culture, and from values that too often reveal themselves as shallow, simplistic and self-serving. His freedom allows us to grow, to reach our fullness. It liberates us from everything that would keep us chained to selfishness and quick fixes.

Christian morality offers a fully human response to life. In Jesus we discover that questioning itself is part of the wonderful movement of God's grace within us. Religion is neither extraneous nor, even worse, a burden to our development and growth. In it we can find positive responses to the most important questions with which we struggle as we grow and try to determine who we are, how we should live and what we are to make of this life. God is not an "extra" in life but the answer to life.

Love is More Than Sex

Love is the norm of all Christian moral living. And love is more than sex. Jesus knew that love is the greatest of all gifts. Sexuality is itself a powerful gift of God, but it needs to be guided by a wise and strong love. Jesus' teaching about love and sexuality is not simply a set of narrow rules. Its purpose is not to make us nervous, to quench love with cautiousness, or to stifle spontaneity but to help us to be open and free. He teaches us to channel the powerful drives of sexuality into authentic and honest love. When a young man and a young woman come to love each other enough to leave father and mother, and all familiar things, coming together is not to be for a passing moment. This kind of love is meant to endure a lifetime. Personal love, touched with the energy of sexuality, speaks by God's design of faithful and lasting commitment, of promises that must be kept.

You already know how important commitments are to you. You expect your friends and others to keep them. In the same way, God's plan for a truly happy life involves personal commitment on a level that holds people together for life. Sex is a part of this plan. So too are love and commitment.

Jesus knew what the world is like. His disciples, too, had tasted the deception of a world in which momentary passion tends to drive people to act in ways that mock the hope for constant love, and give little hope for a happy family life and a lasting future. But Jesus knew how to renew honest human love. He never ceased teaching the truth.

Sex in a human relationship is intended to proclaim that a man and a woman love each other and are prepared to offer themselves to each other, not only physically, but spiritually and emotionally, not for a brief moment but for a lifetime. That is why in the scriptures and in the Church's understanding of human sexuality, sexual attraction and satisfaction are directed to something more significant. They are intended to nurture, build and sustain the bond of love between a man and a woman who, in God's plan, were created to complement each other. Even after the passage of years, long after sexual attraction may have dimmed, their love for one another still endures.

Love carries with it the responsibility of accepting whatever consequences the other person brings to my life, of being willing to give up much of what I alone would like to do so that together we can accomplish something beyond just myself. But this can only happen with authentic love whose commitment is deeper than just sexual attraction and satisfaction.

God's Plan

The Old Testament describes the creation of man and woman and speaks of the divine origin of our sexuality. The accounts stress the purposes of human love and sexuality. Genesis 2:18-24 emphasizes the way that sexuality should serve enduring and committed love. When the woman was created, the man said: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." The sacred writer adds: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen. 2.20-24).

The deep loneliness of the human heart is to be remedied by a love that is faithful and generous. Sex is not a trivial gift; it is genuine and fully human only when it expresses the kind of love that leads a man and woman to give themselves entirely to each other and brings them closer to God.

Another account underlines the creative aspect of sexuality. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it'" (Gen. 1.24-28).

Sexual activity not only serves enduring love, but through such love also calls new persons into being. New life is born out of acts of human love, to become the joy of parents and the focus of their lives. All sexual activity should be an expression of faithful love and should be open to new life. Life must be formed, nurtured, and educated, and that takes place within the family -- where the husband and wife work together.

Someday you may form a family with the person you love. You will share with each other not only your love but your future and that of your children. This vision of family and children demands a life-long commitment of love to one another. Some forms of behavior fall outside this vision. Premarital and extra-marital sex cloud this vision and undermine it. Such activity fails to be committed, responsible and truly loving.

Sex brings with it great responsibility because it calls for full commitment to your future life together. It promises a happiness far more satisfying and profound than momentary pleasure. Sexual activity's rightful place is only in the committed love of marriage. The Church proclaims that marriage is the exclusive realm of sexual activity because this is what God taught us and because even our own experience confirms that this is true. The Church holds up Christ's way of life so that we can find true happiness, not to keep us from having "fun." We teach the value and dignity of human sexuality, and the truth -- all the truth -- about sex because in God's plan it is to be used for the full, rich development of each person who chooses to give himself or herself to another.

Truthful Hearts and Truthful Love

Jesus taught that the pure of heart are blessed (Matt. 5.8). If we are right before God, all else will be well. "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14.23).

The heart leads us to make choices. Sometimes we make mistakes. Human beings can seek pleasure casually and forget the more important values in life. We can be swayed by insistent and strong impulses. The heart is inclined, when passion rather than love moves it, to speak a false language of love, in service of selfish interests. At such times we can wrongly choose momentary satisfaction over honest and committed love. We can place personal contentment and the use of others over the effort to make our life and the lives of those we love rich with enduring commitment. We can decide on the false and destructive use of gifts entrusted to us. Out of such choices comes the bitter pain that the sexual revolution has brought.

HIV/AIDS

One of the most highly visible and publicized campaigns today is about the HIV virus and the lethal disease it causes, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS.

The pain and death caused by AIDS have left many people feeling powerless and hopeless. Yet, as Christians, our faith teaches us that there is always much we can do. We have as great an obligation to respond to the human suffering caused by AIDS as we do to every other serious challenge in life -- through the grace of God and by following the teaching of Christ. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, as frightening and tragic as it is, compels us to put our faith into action.

Our response, then, cannot be indifference, prejudice or alienation. Fear may be understandable, but it must not paralyze us to the point where we cannot reach out to people who are sick and suffering, as Jesus did, and offer them non-judgmental and compassionate love.

Yet while we must respond to the needs of persons with AIDS, their families and loved ones, there is still another aspect of the AIDS crisis of which we must also be aware, that is, of course, the prevention of the disease. Here, too, we turn to the teaching of the Church for guidance.

The Moral Dimension of the AIDS Crisis

The Catholic Church believes that any solution to this crisis that does not include a moral dimension is inherently flawed and, while it might slow progression of the disease, it will not eliminate the problem. The way to guarantee that this epidemic is someday controlled is to encourage all people to use God's gift of sexuality morally and responsibly. Intimately connected with this effort is the belief in the sanctity of marriage as a lifelong, life-giving commitment. At the same time, we have a responsibility to seek help and encourage others to do the same if a problem with drugs or other addictive substances or activities develop

The HIV virus is a deadly infection and we are obliged to do what we can to prevent its spread. We need to acknowledge that in regard to AIDS, the U.S. Public Health Service states unequivocally that "abstinence and sexual intercourse with one mutually faithful unaffected partner are the only totally effective preventive strategies." All other claims to "safe sex" carry with them the potential for suffering and death.

The Quality of Your Life

Efforts today to persuade young people to rely on condoms to escape the bitter effects of bad moral choices are especially tragic. They are based, in part, on the judgment that you, our young people, have no self-control and are unwilling to lead morally good lives. Too many judge you as incapable of being chaste, so that you must be pressed to live a lower level of morality or they assume that you are not worth the effort to talk to about moral challenge and virtue. The media hold up for you as models people whose message to you is, "Moral living is too difficult, you don't want to live that way, and you can't do it!" People selling athletic shoes or their latest album want you to believe: "You don't have what it takes to follow Jesus so follow us!" Nowhere is this more apparent than in the massive campaign that implies it is alright to have sex as long as you use condoms.

It is difficult for many young people, as it is for most adults, to distinguish the promotion of condoms from the recruitment to a particular moral code and lifestyle. You are not told to be concerned about leading good lives, but rather to make sure that when you misuse sexuality, you do so "safely." But so-called "safe sex" is, in truth, not safe. The use of the phrase "safe sex" is scientifically inaccurate. Phrases such as "recreational sex" and "safe sex" are used as if such actions have no moral content or consequences.

Everyone knows that young women can often become pregnant, even when such precautions as condoms are used. When you are given the false impression that casual sex is safe, you are not being told the truth. You can still contract the HIV virus, AIDS and a variety of sexually transmitted diseases when condoms are used.

There already is growing statistical evidence that when young people are given a narrow vision of sexual responsibility (when they are told that casual sexual activity is tolerable if it is "safe"), they become more likely to engage more often in irresponsible sexual activity. And when they do, using protections that are frail, risky, and only partially safe, they increase all the more the chance for the harm from which they are told they are protected. With the massive moral disintegration going on in some of the nation's schools and the moral re-education being waged in the media by entertainment personalities, is there any wonder that there also has been an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies?

Your Freedom, Your Dignity, and Right Choices

I am firmly convinced that you are not only capable of understanding what is right but that you are also able to make responsible decisions. But both you and I know that it is not always easy. There is no easy solution to life. There are no quick fixes for the challenge of human moral living. But you are worth the effort.

You should not be classified simply as a health problem or a birth statistic. You are a person made in the image and likeness of God with a future ahead of you. You are capable of living a moral and responsible life. Do not sell yourself short.

Characteristic of Jesus' moral teaching is the respect that he shows to each person. When he looked upon the crowds who came to hear him, he saw each person as important, each one capable of greatness. His teaching was never timid: he was not afraid that good lives were somehow beyond us. He saw us as daughters and sons of God, whose lives could be fulfilled only if they were generous in love and strong in virtue.

We are also weak. Jesus knew that. In this, as in so many matters, his teaching was both sublime and practical. He insisted on things that might seem too idealistic to us. But he also promised to be with us and to provide what we need to fulfill our hopes. When he insisted on the best ways of living, he knew that there is no other way to happiness. We are able to live chaste lives because the love of God is always available to us -- a free and forgiving love.

Conclusion

Casual sex has led to tragedy. The sexual revolution promised a paradise on earth, but it created instead a wilderness of broken homes, child abuse, epidemics of sexual diseases and an immense increase of pregnancies among the very young. Under its banner many children were born not into secure and loving homes, but into broken families and into circumstances that promised little hope. The cruelty of massive abortion for personal convenience is the deadly fruit of the modern sexual revolution. It corrupted good things. Mass media and the entertainment industry, instead of serving well the ideals and hopes of youth, came to advocate petty selfishness, lust and control over others.

This flawed revolution has wounded many human hopes and brought about so much pain. What was forgotten is the simple fact that not only is sexuality a gift from God, but it also was meant to support love that would last a lifetime. It was to strengthen families, and make them strong and able to nurture and protect that space where generous, unselfish love can be learned. It was intended to be treated with reverent care, so that it could free us from loneliness. All the while it was to protect the dignity and worth of every person.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the joy of faith, Jesus' followers learned to live as he taught, and then to teach what he commanded. Today the Church must continue to proclaim Christ's teaching about love, marriage, and the family. We do this to keep faith with our Lord. The most precious gift we have to pass on to you is God's word and the wisdom of two thousand years of human and Christian experience, alive in the Holy Spirit. This way of life with all its challenge and proven value is what we want to share with you so that our lives and yours will grow into the fullness that Jesus promises.

Donald W. Wuerl
Bishop of Pittsburgh
May, 1992