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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 24 SEPTEMBER
On Wednesday, 24 September, tens of thousands gathered in St.
Peter's Square to hear the Pope continue his catechetical development of
the theme of adultery.
1. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ said: "You have heard that it was
said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who
looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his
heart" (Mt 5:27-28). We have been trying for some time to penetrate the
meaning of this statement, analyzing the single elements in order to
understand better the text as a whole.
When Christ spoke of a man who looks lustfully, he indicated not only
the dimension of intentionality in looking, thus indicating lustful
knowledge, the psychological dimension, but also the dimension of the
intentionality of man's very existence. In the situation Christ described,
that dimension passes unilaterally from the man, who is the subject, to
the woman, who has become the object (this does not mean, however, that
such a dimension is only unilateral). For the present we will not reverse
the situation analyzed, or extend it to both parties, to both subjects.
Let us dwell on the situation outlined by Christ, stressing that it is a
question of a purely interior act, hidden in the heart and stopping on the
threshold of the look.
It is enough to note that in this case the woman—who
owing to her personal subjectivity exists perennially "for man," waiting
for him, too, for the same reason, to exist "for her"—is
deprived of the meaning of her attraction as a person. Though being
characteristic of the "eternal feminine," she becomes at the same time
only an object for the man. That is, she begins to exist intentionally as
an object for the potential satisfaction of the sexual need inherent in
his masculinity. Although the act is completely interior, hidden in the
heart and expressed only by the look, there already occurs in him a change
(subjectively unilateral) of the very intentionality of existence. If it
were not so, if it were not a question of such a deep change, the
following words of the same sentence: "...has already committed adultery
with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28) would have no meaning.
2. That change of the intentionality of existence, by means of which a
certain woman begins to exist for a certain man not as a subject of call
and personal attraction or as a subject of communion, but exclusively as
an object for the potential satisfaction of the sexual need, is
carried out in the heart, since it is carried out in the will. Cognitive
intentionality itself does not yet mean enslavement of the heart. Only
when the intentional reduction, illustrated previously, sweeps the will
along into its narrow horizon, when it brings forth the decision of a
relationship with another human being (in our case: with the woman)
according to the specific scale of values of lust, only then can it be
said that desire has also gained possession of the heart. Only when lust
has gained possession of the will is it possible to say that it is
dominant over the subjectivity of the person and that it is at the basis
of the will, and of the possibility of choosing and deciding, through
which—by
virtue of self-decision or self-determination—the very way of existing
with regard to another person is established. The intentionality of this
existence then acquires a full subjective dimension.
3. Only then—that
is from that subjective moment and on its subjective prolongation—is
it possible to confirm what we read, for example, in Sirach (23:17-22),
about the man dominated by lust, and what we read in even more eloquent
descriptions in world literature. Then we can also speak of that more or
less complete compulsion, which is called elsewhere compulsion of the
body. This brings with it loss of the freedom of the gift, congenital in
deep awareness of the matrimonial meaning of the body, of which we have
also spoken in preceding analyses.
4. When we speak of desire as the transformation of the intentionality
of a concrete existence, of the man, for example, for whom (according to
Mt 5:27-28), a certain woman becomes merely the object of the potential
satisfaction of the sexual need inherent in his masculinity, it is not at
all a matter of questioning that need, as an objective dimension of human
nature with the procreative finality that is characteristic of it.
Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount (in its whole context) are far
from Manichaeism, as the true Christian tradition also is. In this case,
there cannot arise, therefore, objections of the kind. It is a question,
on the contrary, of the man's and the woman's way of existing as persons,
that is, of that existing in a mutual "for," which—also
on the basis of what, according to the objective dimension of human
nature, can be defined as the sexual need—can and must serve the
building up of the unity of communion in their mutual relations. Such is
the fundamental meaning characteristic of the perennial and reciprocal
attraction of masculinity and femininity, contained in the very reality of
the constitution of man as a person, body and sex together.
5. The possible circumstance that one of the two persons exists only as
the subject of the satisfaction of the sexual need, and the other becomes
exclusively the object of this satisfaction, does not correspond to the
union or personal communion to which man and woman were mutually called
from the beginning—on
the contrary, it is in conflict with it. Moreover, the case in which both
the man and the woman exist reciprocally as the object of satisfaction of
the sexual need, and each on his or her part is only the subject of that
satisfaction, does not correspond to this unity of communion—but
on the contrary it clashes with it. This reduction of such a rich
content of the reciprocal and perennial attraction of human persons in
their masculinity or femininity does not at all correspond to the "nature"
of the attraction in question. This reduction extinguishes the personal
meaning of communion, characteristic of man and woman, through which,
according to Genesis 2:24, "a man...cleaves to his wife, and they become
one flesh." Lust turns away the intentional dimension of the man's and
woman's mutual existence from the personal perspectives, "of communion,"
characteristic of their perennial and mutual attraction, reducing it, and,
so to speak, pushing it toward utilitarian dimensions, within which the
human being uses the other human being, for the sake merely of satisfying
his own needs.
6. It seems possible to find this content again, charged with the human
interior experience characteristic of different ages and environments, in
Christ's concise affirmation in the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time,
we cannot in any case lose sight of the meaning that this affirmation
attributes to man's interiority, to the integral dimension of the heart as
the dimension of the inner man. Here lies the core of the transformation
of ethos aimed at by Christ's words according to Matthew 5:27-28,
expressed with powerful forcefulness and at the same time with admirable
simplicity.
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