What Went Wrong?
So went the title of Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis's book on the Islamic world. Perhaps there ought to be a similar book for what went wrong in the Church with regard to the virtue of chastity. Under the category "too much information" falls a sad piece in NCR with revelations concerning a convert who works for Crisis magazine. I wish he'd write a book about how he overcame that problem, assuming he has. Although I suspect the answer is simply to admit helplessness and ask for God's grace.
The problem of unchastity has rocked the American church with the priestly scandal and a great public service would be for someone to figure out what works, since the 50's solution of repression* arguably didn't, nor obviously feeling a bit too - at ease? comfortable? - with one's sexuality, as perhaps some who fall are.
This is a delicate subject and I'm not sure I should write about it at all, but the revelation is not all that surprising in hindsight. College professors surely find themselves sorely tempted. And it seems the very way he found God and the Church - through beauty - might've also been the path that led to grave sin. His unabashed appreciation for art and rejection of puritanism was appealing, but the unspoken assumption was that sex was part of that appreciation but was neither repressed, nor expressed outside of marriage. I (naively) thought that mainlining Catholic novelists, as he did, helped inculcate a proper view of sexuality.
Of course I understand that he is forgiven and that this should in no way taint him (just as no one thinks less of St. Augustine because of his past) but I think looking for ways to prevent or explain lapses is a good thing, as Martha might say.
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* - Since I wasn't around for the 50s, I'm coming by this second hand: via my older and wiser pastor, via anecdotal evidence in the painful books of Frank McCourt, and also via Fr. Groeschel, who mentions this in the beginning of "The Courage to be Chaste".
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