English
EspañolOur masculine or feminine sexual condition has personal meaning because it communicates the person’s intimacy and manifests it. It has the power of fecundity because it can engender its own children.
Text
“Every human person “must learn, with perseverance and consistency, the meaning of his or her body.” Sexuality is not a means of gratification or entertainment; it is an interpersonal language wherein the other is taken seriously, in his or her sacred and inviolable dignity.” (The Joy of Love, n.151)
Commentary
We are witnesses to how the media treats the topic of sexuality in the wrong way. We can also fall into two equally erroneous extremes: one is puritanism which places the sexual dimension of the person as a negative and shameful aspect that should be avoided. The other error is a playful triviality, in which human sexuality is trivialized to the point of considering it a game, or as a consumerist use and disposal, talking about it in a double sense, with sarcasm and jokes of dubious taste, under which often hides nothing more than the greed of bodies for one´s pleasure.
While attempting to talk naturally about this topic to other young people, I have noticed their surprise and astonishment because an idea regarding sex has been implanted in their minds. It is the idea that sex is taboo or only what fashionable songs mention or what they see in TV series and movies.
To propose the greatness of human sexuality is to explain its personal and spousal meaning adequately, that is to say, its loving meaning. The human body is capable of communicating the person, that spiritual who we each are, as a gift and an embrace. Between man and woman, the reciprocal gift and embrace of the sexual body is a special way – a specific and exclusive way – to access the most intimate human union between their persons: to be a communion of love, faithful and lifelong, capable of procreating and educating one´s children in the bosom of the family.
No other sexual formula or alternative is as whole and complete. This discovery is not a desire to travel back in time to the past centuries, nor to say that sex is a bad thing, it is a desire to highlight the true beauty and richness of its value.
In the same way, wine is not an invention that occurs only thanks to winemakers or the winegrower, independently from the soil, the vines and the vine shoots, the weather, and the best season for pruning and harvesting. We are nature, culture, and freedom, not just one thing in opposition to the rest of our human dimensions. We must keep this in mind when dealing with human sexuality. Neither gratuitous experiments should be done, nor assertions in the air, nor ideological impositions. We must know and respect our nature. The price of not doing so is profound human drama.
It is convenient to discuss sexuality with our youth, at home and also in educational institutions, without falling into taboos or luridness, but presenting it for what it is, that natural dimension of man that must be lived with the dignity and respect proper to the human person and not the animal.
It is attractive to present sexuality in terms of the male and female body language and how it non-verbally expresses the fascinating self-giving and embracing capacity – a reciprocal, whole, and sincere surrender, acceptance, and correspondence – between males and females.
