Of Stations and Stockings: Sexuality and Spiritual Seeking

I surveyed the dimly light church, admittedly trying to see if I fit the stereotype of those spending their Friday evening this way.  Sure, there were the prerequisite number of older folks, and some parents hushing their younger children or cajoling their sullen adolescents.  A few, like me, were from the “young professional crowd.”  But this was a student parish, and we could rely on a significant group of undergrads trickling in at the last minute for Stations of the Cross.  My head twisted not too subtly at the sound of heels click-clacking on the tile.  A group of young women, dressed in the common uniform of short skirts and stockings, sporting more make-up than I ever saw on Sunday morning, made their entrance.  As we followed the Cross around the Church, their engagement was certain, and as I left, they remained kneeling in prayer—more piety than I could muster at the moment.  This was no light-weight, pre-requisite religious activity.   Even so, I couldn’t help questioning how they planned to spend the evening after we were done reflecting on Our Lord’s Passion.  Of course, it was easy for me to judge, walking in hand-in-hand with my husband into the early spring nightfall.  But I was not so far removed from the college experience to forget the seeming gulf that existed between the desire to live out my faith and the demands of a faith tradition that was seemingly unaware of the cultural and emotional terrain I was fording on my spiritual journey.  In the speech of the churchgoers among us, it was the gap between Friday night and Sunday morning.

As I’ve spent the last three years back in school, immersed in ministerial studies, I’ve tried hard to balance my diet of Vatican documents and theological treatise with the insight and longings of spiritual seekers figuring it out “on the ground”—myself among them.  In that time, I’ve seen you speak in this space with concern and confusion about the pervasiveness of the hook-up culture, appropriate levels of intimacy in committed relationships, and the implications of being “a little bit married.”  As the popularity of the Pure Sex, Pure Love column attests, these matters are by no means separated from your spirituality.  But as spiritual people, how do we respond when the permissiveness of cultural norms and the restrictiveness of church teaching communicate that sex and spirituality, at least for the unmarried believer, must function independently of one another?

Perhaps you can you identify with one of these scenarios:

I’m doing my best to tow the line, trying to define how the Church’s teaching applies to me as concretely as possible.  I like to think I have a definitive answer to the question, “How far is too far?”  But sometimes it seems…up for negotiation.

I’ve decided that the Church ideal for sexually moral behavior is unrealistic or attainable.  Sometimes I get driven by inner desires or outside pressures, but I see myself as a basically moral person and I like to think that my common sense and conscience dictate things.  If I have misgivings about my actions, hopefully my other good deeds make up for it.  After all, Jesus seemed to have a much bigger problem with corrupt religious officials than women endangered or ostracized due to illicit sexual behavior. 

Right now there’s too big a rift between what I believe and what the Church teaches for me to formally practice my faith…

…for now, I am living an amazing double life—one in my public faith community, where I am actively involved and even lead—and one in my private life, where the boundaries of physical intimacy are open for my own discretion.

Donna Freitas, while a professor at a small Catholic university, detected similar tones of angst among her students and decided to document these struggles through official research, published in her recent book Sex and the Soul.

She found that students in secular and religious schools alike were dissatisfied with the pervasiveness of “hookup culture” and disturbed by the disconnect between beliefs or moral norms taught in classrooms and the way students recreated outside of them.  Students desired to cultivate their spiritual lives (whether publicly or privately), and simultaneously experienced sexual desire they longed to act upon. These desires were not mutually exclusive—young adults yearned to talk with Freitas about sex in relation to the soul—but they had difficulty reconciling the two. 

We know, in our heads (via doctrine) that the Church isn’t anti-sex.  Sexual intimacy can be a powerful expression of love, and reflective of the love God has for us!  We have heard that sexuality is a gift from God, and that we appropriately express our sexuality according to our state in life…with a little help form the virtue of chastity.  But I hesitated using this word here, knowing that it produces some sort of (unsettled) response in many of us.  Last week in my sexual ethics class, my professor opened discussion by asking how we would explain Church teaching on chastity.  One student, otherwise known for his extensive, thoughtful responses, blurted, “Keep it in your pants until you’re married!”  He later redeemed himself, offering something akin to our catechism’s definition: “Chastity is a virtue that allows us to do what is right, good, and truly loving in the areas of relationship and sexuality.”  But practically speaking, even the budding theologian could not deny how Church teaching typically falls on our ears:  Chastity spells sanctioned, even encouraged sex between husbands and wives, sex as a no-no for everyone else.  It would seem for the “everyone else” that chastity is about what you don’t do, as opposed to an active means of cultivating the spiritual life, to nurturing one’s relationships with others and with God.  Singles who are still discerning if, when, or with whom marriage factors into their future find themselves with few cues as how to navigate the journey from a single life, where celibacy is the ideal, to marriage where physical sexual activity is an expression of faithfulness before God and to one another.

Let’s pause for some nuance. Because like me, you might have missed something the first time Sister, or that sweet grandmotherly catechist, or that too blissful peer youth group mentor told you about chastity—namely, that it isn’t just about the abstinence.   Nor is it about total sexual silencing, but rather as our US bishops tell us, “guiding sexual instincts toward loving service of others” and “recognizing one’s embodied existence as male or female as a gift from God.” This understanding of the love relationship between God and humanity, and by extension, of human beings for one another, takes us all the way back to the creation story of Genesis, where human beings are created in God’s own image and man and woman are created for one another.

Regardless of where we stand on the Church’s teaching on premarital sex, perhaps we can all find common ground on this point.  But we don’t get a lot of guidance on what love directed toward “the good of another” looks like in our emerging dating and evolving romantic relationships, which, for better or worse, are not devoid of sexual feelings seeking physical expression.  In our culture, young people are warned of the occasions for sin present in dating and exclusive relationships, but are not granted the necessity of such relationships in the search for a marriage partner today.

Freitas and her colleague Jason King have sought to reframe dating not in light of its possibilities for sin, but for its potential for deepening one’s love for God, others, and self. They situate dating within a larger quest.  Although the dating relationship is temporary, members of a dating couple companion one another on piece of life’s journey, where each person learns to love more deeply and to understand how to live out this love in response to God’s call.  Dating is not a distraction from God, but an opportunity to grow deeper in relationship through deeper understanding of self and other. 

I think this proposed theology of dating can offer a new set of questions that recognizes and respects young adults' capacities for deep thought and sensitive reflection, questions that go beyond categorizing  “good or bad,” and “right or wrong” behavior. 

So, I invite you to think about this:  As you get ready for your next date, or party, or night out with friends, what if you asked,

How will my actions tonight be a reflection of God’s love for me?

Or, how will they reflect the love God has for another, as shown by me?

These aren’t easy to answer questions with clear answers, by any means.  But I think they might help to open a dialogue between "sex and the soul."

We don’t necessarily need to separate Stations and stockings.

But we do need to think about how to bring them into the same room.

(The author) will graduate with her Masters of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago this spring.  

In the meantime, she still debates whether or not to wear her stockings in the seminary.