cormacburke.me.ke

2. Self-centeredness, the Enemy of Conjugal Love
Love moves outward toward the loved one; it seeks the good of the beloved. It is donative and, although it naturally tends toward union, the simple desire to possess or to take is not of the nature of true love. Hence the difficulty for the self-centered person (all of us, since the Fall) to learn to love, for she or he must strive to make other-centeredness take priority over self-centeredness.
To love another with all one's heart is difficult; it is not in fact possible without a constant battle to purge one's actions and motives, since some element of self-seeking tends to remain in the best of our actions. This applies constantly in married life; it is in the small details that love is shown, that it grows or dwindles. If all aspects of conjugal relations need purification, this is also true for the most intimate conjugal relationship of all.
If self-seeking predominates in sexual relations, then intercourse, even marital intercourse, is not mainly an expression of love. The natural satisfaction of the sexual urge is legitimate within marriage, but even there it may carry with it a degree of self-seeking that is contrary to love, hindering it rather than expressing or increasing it. "Disinterested giving is excluded from selfish enjoyment" (Theology of the Body, 130).
It is necessary to repeat that intercourse can and should be a maximum human expression of total conjugal love and donation. It ought to express full self-donation - more centered, ideally, on what the other receives than on what one gets. But it can be an act of mere selfish satisfaction. This has always been a main problem to be faced by conjugal spirituality and the pursuit of perfection in marriage.
Lust is one of the most radically self-centered appetites. As such it impels toward a joining of bodies that in fact causes a separation of persons, because those who are carried away by it in their mutual relations are afterwards left more separated from one another than before.
As a result of the Fall, says John Paul II, bodily sexuality was suddenly felt and understood as an element of mutual confrontation of persons ... as if the personal profile of masculinity and femininity, which before had highlighted the meaning of the body for a full communion of persons, had made way only for the sensation of sexuality with regard to the other human being. It is as if sexuality became an obstacle in the personal relationship of man and woman. (Theology of the Body, 118-19)
We are brought back to those strong statements of the Catechism that the original communion between man and woman was distorted as a result of the Fall, and their mutual attraction changed into "a relationship of domination and lust" (see pp. 507-8). Pope John Paul II did not hesitate to express the matter in an even more startling manner.[79] Commenting the words of Jesus about how adultery "in the heart" (see Matt 5:27-28) is committed by the one who looks lustfully (without any further exterior action), he points out that this can apply to a man even in relation to his own wife: "Adultery in the heart is committed not only because man looks in this way [lustfully] at a woman who is not his wife, but precisely because he looks at a woman in this way... A man who looks in this way, uses the woman, her femininity, to satisfy his own instinct. Although he does not do so with an exterior act, he has already assumed this attitude deep down, inwardly deciding in this way with regard to a given woman. This is what adultery committed in the heart consists of. Man can commit this adultery in the heart also with regard to his own wife, if he treats her only as an object to satisfy instinct" (Theology of the Body, 157).
Is this an exaggerated statement? Does it show a pessimistic or Manichean view of the married sexual relationship? Or is it a real possibility to be taken into account? Can a man lust after his wife; or vice-versa? If he or she can, is this a good or a bad thing for married life? Or is it something to be looked on with indifference?
Is a spouse not meant to be the object of a different and nobler sort of desire than simple self-satisfaction? Should we be surprised then at St. Thomas's opinion that "consentiens concupiscentiae in uxorem" is guilty not of a mortal sin, but indeed of one that is venial?[80] One can see this as Manichean if one wishes; yet one can also see it as a challenge to love and virtue. To the extent that intercourse is dominated by lust, it is far from virtue. It becomes truly virtuous in the measure in which it is a genuine expression of self-giving.
Concupiscence, with its self-absorbed desire for physical satisfaction, threatens the full authenticity of conjugal intercourse intended to be an expression of love-union. Concupiscence has brought about "a violation, a fundamental loss, of the original community-communion of persons. The latter should have made man and woman mutually happy by the pursuit of a simple and pure union in humanity, by a reciprocal offering of themselves... After breaking the original covenant with God, the man and the woman found themselves more divided. Instead of being united, they were even opposed because of their masculinity and femininity... [They] are no longer called only to union and unity, but are also threatened by the insatiability of that union and unity" (Theology of the Body, 120).
The presence of lust or concupiscence within marriage itself is undeniable. At this stage in our study, far from being able to confirm that marriage offers a remedy for concupiscence, we realize that lust, inasmuch as it introduces an anti-love element into the sexual relationship, poses a threat to marriage and particularly to married love itself. How then, within a truly Christian understanding of marriage as a call of love and as a vocation to sanctity, should married persons treat the presence of concupiscence?