In one sense this series by Tom McMahon may seem to be getting a long way removed from the documents of Vatican II. It's become a meandering series, over recent weeks dawdling to an extended look at the changed approach to the position of the laity, and the changes occurring in the thinking of the laity. Over the next three weeks his focus is on, wait for it, SEX! Women today, blokes next week and children the week after. How have society's attitudes to sex changed? Where is the institution placed in all this today?

Reluctant to leave the subject of LAITY ... a sex education session? Who will teach morals? Getting real in the modern world...

I am like a little boy with a new toy as I continue to write about the LAITY. I have a strong sense that we are here to stay and there is much to discover. Out of a medieval monastic governed institution Future Church is rising in the modern world people! There is much vigor, freshness, and newness in people with exploration and admiration all around. Religion and spirituality have left the clerical domain and entered the secular world. Some great spokesman said that the TWAIN would never meet; I am witness to the dissolving into one of what in my seminary training might have been called separation of the world and spirituality. The union is being accomplished by an educated laity. The old veil of tears is again becoming the Creator's paradise. After praying in the Our Father for years about God's kingdom to come we are becoming aware that Jesus told us it was right here. Morality is the web type relationship that binds all creation together; morals are the bedrock of our relationships within this earthy kingdom. I offer two commentaries on morality, today for females and next week for males, with the third week on infants. We look at understanding ever-present myths.

The female form...

Venus de Milo stirred Tom's interest in the female form at a young age. Click image to enlarge.

Once a clerical peer accused me of being over interested in women, particularly their breasts ... and then and here I admit to an overwhelming interest in the distaff side which has continued to interest me to this day. I venture humorously and seriously that the female by the nature of her body has much nurturance to add to the growth of human people. Even though Hollywood has hijacked them for trivial purpose mammary glands remain creation's symbols of new life, their mythological message a constant presence in modern society. I think the human body is one of the Creator's masterpieces and as a male I wholeheartedly acknowledge my interest in the female figure and function. I'm hard wired for this pleasure. Her person remains to me a mystery, worthy of investigation. By nature the female guards her innate sacred ability to reproduce. I vaguely began to think this way at age 13 when I saw a picture of Venus de Milo in our first year of high school latin book. I saw her externally and I wondered about her personality.

I have been confused by women who spend uddles of time "fixing" themselves up and then are annoyed that we males are looking at them. The Creator did a great job in curvy proportions and the human male eye seems to be well adapted to "standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by..." and there is no age limit to this talent. There is more to the woman than meets the eye. A morality of obesity has entered the American frontier.

As much as I relish talking about the human masterpiece (mistresspiece?) I limit myself today to problems of being a young female, age 11 or perhaps a bit more. I write with an eye to this beautiful creation growing into physical maturity in our age of technology. Society at large, institutional churches, and surely celibate Roman clergy will offer no guidance as the young female today wends her way through the perils of puberty and adolescence. I wonder how secure and informed are their mothers today as "the world turns" and the teenage years virtually involve adult situations and status?

I recall clearly sitting on a bench in Sydney Harbor last year as "uniformed school girls" passed in large numbers on their way to Catholic classrooms; they were various ethnic backgrounds yet I distinctly was aware that white Australians can be full bodied, tall and mature. I'm told that the female peak of chemical-sexual drive comes somewhere around 17-18 years of age. Some might crudely say this is the time of the hots … and it is all so cleverly hidden under the school uniform. I am reminded of my early school years being taught by Sisters who had their femininity hidden beneath black heavy surge, then called the Holy Habit. Those were the days of female suppression, surely contradictory to nature?

Tampering with nature...

From the Vatican Two days of Cardinal Ottaviani and Pope Paul the 6th's Humanae Vitae a silent pall has hovered over the birth control issue. Archbishop John Quinn, then metropolitan of San Francisco, received his kiss of death from John Paul the 2nd when Quinn asked publicly for a review of the morality of contraception. The stinking dead elephant in the church's front room was the best unkept secret of the 20th century. Problems have accompanied the human changing of nature since the days of creating civilizations, the Egyptians of four thousand years ago having a potient guaranteed to kill conception … and as well the female herself. It is about tampering with nature that will occupy the rest of this commentary. I approach having in mind that until the Industrial Revolution and well into the 20th Century the woman's body was viewed as property owned by the male — "she" a virtual "baby-making machine". I have in mind the ways the female body remains property in the age of modernity, a victim of commercialism. I view this as immoral. The day of the large European family is gone whereas control of fertility has become a definite issue in modern times. There is big money involved in the many facets of a young girls maturing and there is no institutional moral guidance. Is there here a role for woman priests — or better still a challenge to a priestly people who are willing to call a spade a spade?

I am 81 years old and except for tingly moments promoted by weak testosterone I am economically aware of the social and financial responsibility of messing with genital and sexual human drives. I have had my day in the sun where I found out I was a man and could interchange physically with the female gender. The negative mythologies of my early youth concerning human sexuality are long gone, especially as I reap the harvest of sewing my seed, rejoicing now in four grand children … about whose moral future I am deeply concerned. Yes, as I look at human sexuality with its power, joys and rewards, pitfalls, pain, disappointments and defeats I wonder who will guide the young and their older caregivers through the mysterious secretive labyrinth of the growing human body. It is not all surface?

The word "mores" is from the Latin for custom. Custom is sanctioned by the tribe (all humans live tribally), becoming law that is decreed by tribal elders or elected leaders; no individual sets acceptable morality as morals are reflections on the value system approved by the present population. 1920's prohibition of hard liquor in America is a classic example of a Federal law not being accepted morally by the majority of people. Morals change with changing times. I do not accept that the Creator-God has given us a set of morals by which we are to live or a special group of individuals who make decisions for the many. I find nothing on contraceptives in the Bible and certainly nothing in the history of the Roman church that qualifies its ministerial personnel to be sex educators. I do live by an awareness that human nature has built in guidelines of life that must be mutually studied and can be worked with. Healthy-minded people are the only genuine morality makers — and one cannot leave women out of the picture and find truth.

The Catholic Institution speaks to a human sexual issue with an abstract generalization: BIRTH CONTROL IS SINFUL! …and a unmarried hierarchy trained in a spirituality that avoids women continues to pass on the medieval mentality of Cardinal Ottaviani, who if were alive today would be 120 years old.

The institution continues to offer abstracts whereas the real problems are vested in the design of the female body and its healthy or unhealthy function.

As I listened today to our Public Radio station I heard a discussion on the side effects of contraceptive pills. The market is massive and each woman's body responds differently to a given drug. Victims of false advertisement spoke of blood clots, suicidal feelings, and permanent damage done by pharmaceuticals that have been on the market for fifty years — a span of two generations of fertile women who have allowed science/medicine to alter the chemistry of their bodies.

The Roman Catholic bishops have followed Ottaviani and Paul the 6th repeating blandly and dryly that all contraception is immoral. We have an international prohibition against which the majority of female laity have rebelled. The bishop hasn't a clue as to basic morality.

Who guides the young today?

Gina Lollobrigida. Click image to enlarge.

Limited by space, let's concentrate on a third generation: the young maturing female who at 11 or 12 has entered a sexual free world where anything goes and she fast learns from her peers how to be protected from pregnancy. Better diet and an accelerated body development have brought the teen body to a hitherto unknown center stage of entertainment and advertisement. Teenagers have become active in the sport of genital activity — might I add some (many?) at the age of 11.

I was at a family dinner recently where numbers of grandchildren helped celibate a golden wedding anniversary. I resent (to re-send in Gestalt therapy is to seek a second opinion — to get more information) being called a dirty old man as I saw the feminine beauty, with beautifully attractive mammary glands, in a slim 12-year-old who has the genetic profile of a Gina Lollobrigida. I have learned to look and appreciate the Creator's masterpiece. Rarely do I do another's thinking … yet with such powerful attractiveness I wonder how she handles her own sexual drives (or does the physical development match the mental awareness) and those of young males who are attracted to her (and who knows what is going on in his 15-year-old testosterone filling body and mind)? The latin root of attractiveness is "thrahere=draw", "ad=to". The power is in the human body chemicals, all reactive to smell, sight, and sound. Today all human senses are out in the open; we are a sexually saturated society — externally.

Back in the 1950's-60's I spoke to 22 Mothers Clubs on the obligation to educate their children sexually and genitally. I was the phenomenal clerical imprimatur using Genesis' GOD SAW THAT THIS WAS GOOD that allowed the word sex to enter the arena of Catholic education. The safe way to enter heaven in those days was to join the convent or priesthood and avoid the trails and tribulations of the world.

Let's leave this here as space and time runs out. Perhaps I have tried to cover too much. Modern society is an external sexual playground with a whole generation of young frolicking into risky fields of experimentation. We have a continuation school two blocks from our home, some of the young are 15 year olds with infant babies. Nature has done its thing!

And Tom McMahon in San Jose. Ca. wonders who is, or will be, the teacher of modern morality? Is a male celibate capable? Will these issues ever be publicly talked about? 31/08/2010

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