- Feb 5, 2002
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The first of a two-part essay in response to James Martin, SJ, on experience, respect, morality, and authority.
In response to the question—by what standards are these experiences to be judged?—the therapeutic mentality presupposes that a person’s life experience is self-validating. Experience is granted an authority that sometimes even for Christians trumps the Bible’s own moral authority;3 indeed, an individual’s experience is taken to be “a final arbiter of truth and falsehood in the Church.”4 But I shall argue that this turn to individual experience as self-validating or authenticating is “no more acceptable that any of the other historically recurring attempts to make of private inspiration a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel.”5
In the epigraph to this article, Aidan Nichols correctly affirms, “It is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”A good example of the therapeutic mentality is found throughout the recent book by James Martin, SJ, titled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (hereafter, BB).6 Significantly, Fr. Martin does not argue for the authority of experience as self-justifying; rather, it is a presupposition of his work. There are two other presuppositions that play an important role in Fr. Martin’s work: his understandings of dialogue and of respect.
Experience, Dialogue, and Respect
Against the background of the presupposition of the therapeutic mentality that grants such authority to experience that it renders it self-justifying, we can understand why Fr. Martin does not argue but implicitly presupposes that “same-sex” attraction is good from the order of creation and even finds justification for this in scripture. That is, a homosexual qua homosexual is “wonderfully made” (Psalm 139), as Martin suggests in asking a same-sex attracted person to reflect on himself and his experience in light of that psalm (BB, 134-137). In this connection, it follows that Martin holds it to be legitimate to ground human identity in so-called homosexual orientation, which encompasses an individual’s personal and social identity. How does Fr. Martin justify the legitimacy of the self-description of a person’s identity, indeed, insisting on it? The only criterion that he suggests legitimizes it is individual experience. Individual experience becomes a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel, the teachings of the Church. This leads him to the conclusion that a person’s homosexuality is a creational given rather than being in itself inherently disordered, a sign of brokenness, an expression of man’s fallen condition. For example, Fr. Martin portrays the fact that persons with same-sex attraction find happiness in their same-sex attracted relationships, and can be caring and loving to each other as self-justifying experiences; that is, because they find their same-sex sexual relationships satisfying in many ways, they must be good. But since God is the source and end of all blessings, the anthropological question regarding the particularity of God’s will and purpose in creating man as male and female arises here (Gen 1:27; 2:24), regarding the question whether individual experience legitimizes same-sex attraction.
No, it doesn’t. The creation of male and female receives the judgment of goodness by God, which is his blessing. The Church has always understood same-sex intercourse to be inconsistent with Scripture, tradition, natural law reasoning – and, in particular, with Christian anthropology, which teaches sexual morality and hence marriage to be an intrinsically male-female union. Martin holds that there are “goods” in same-sex relationships – “love,” “commitment,” “fidelity,” “mutuality.” But we must not treat them as neutral goods abstracted from particular sexual behavior, which the Church unequivocally rejects, and from the larger culture of homosexuality – to say nothing of the worldview (the sexual revolution!) underpinning the interpretation of these goods.
Continued below.
www.catholicworldreport.com
“By the triumph of the therapeutic mentality, indeed therapeutic way of life, I mean a gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences. This therapeutic way of life is pervasive throughout the domain of, for example, homosexual sexual experiences in which “no criteria of validity [for those experiences is offered] other than the therapeutic experience of conviction.”2
In response to the question—by what standards are these experiences to be judged?—the therapeutic mentality presupposes that a person’s life experience is self-validating. Experience is granted an authority that sometimes even for Christians trumps the Bible’s own moral authority;3 indeed, an individual’s experience is taken to be “a final arbiter of truth and falsehood in the Church.”4 But I shall argue that this turn to individual experience as self-validating or authenticating is “no more acceptable that any of the other historically recurring attempts to make of private inspiration a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel.”5
In the epigraph to this article, Aidan Nichols correctly affirms, “It is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”A good example of the therapeutic mentality is found throughout the recent book by James Martin, SJ, titled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (hereafter, BB).6 Significantly, Fr. Martin does not argue for the authority of experience as self-justifying; rather, it is a presupposition of his work. There are two other presuppositions that play an important role in Fr. Martin’s work: his understandings of dialogue and of respect.
Experience, Dialogue, and Respect
Against the background of the presupposition of the therapeutic mentality that grants such authority to experience that it renders it self-justifying, we can understand why Fr. Martin does not argue but implicitly presupposes that “same-sex” attraction is good from the order of creation and even finds justification for this in scripture. That is, a homosexual qua homosexual is “wonderfully made” (Psalm 139), as Martin suggests in asking a same-sex attracted person to reflect on himself and his experience in light of that psalm (BB, 134-137). In this connection, it follows that Martin holds it to be legitimate to ground human identity in so-called homosexual orientation, which encompasses an individual’s personal and social identity. How does Fr. Martin justify the legitimacy of the self-description of a person’s identity, indeed, insisting on it? The only criterion that he suggests legitimizes it is individual experience. Individual experience becomes a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel, the teachings of the Church. This leads him to the conclusion that a person’s homosexuality is a creational given rather than being in itself inherently disordered, a sign of brokenness, an expression of man’s fallen condition. For example, Fr. Martin portrays the fact that persons with same-sex attraction find happiness in their same-sex attracted relationships, and can be caring and loving to each other as self-justifying experiences; that is, because they find their same-sex sexual relationships satisfying in many ways, they must be good. But since God is the source and end of all blessings, the anthropological question regarding the particularity of God’s will and purpose in creating man as male and female arises here (Gen 1:27; 2:24), regarding the question whether individual experience legitimizes same-sex attraction.
No, it doesn’t. The creation of male and female receives the judgment of goodness by God, which is his blessing. The Church has always understood same-sex intercourse to be inconsistent with Scripture, tradition, natural law reasoning – and, in particular, with Christian anthropology, which teaches sexual morality and hence marriage to be an intrinsically male-female union. Martin holds that there are “goods” in same-sex relationships – “love,” “commitment,” “fidelity,” “mutuality.” But we must not treat them as neutral goods abstracted from particular sexual behavior, which the Church unequivocally rejects, and from the larger culture of homosexuality – to say nothing of the worldview (the sexual revolution!) underpinning the interpretation of these goods.
Continued below.
The Triumph of the Therapeutic Mentality
www.catholicworldreport.com
