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January 31, 2006

Love & the Pope

As stupid as this sounds, I was thinking about love the other night. I approached it as a linguistic difficulty, and scrawled in my notebook things like: “slave to language—see Burgess’ comments…”. And I came up with theories—basic and unhelpful ones, easily thought of before me. And then I personalised—I wrote notes about my differing interpretations of love and I’ll tell you about them later. But, soon exhausted, I placed my notebook on my bed-side table and fell asleep…
Imagine my surprise, then, to wake in the morning to NPR’s All Things Considered and hear that Pope Benedict himself had been thinking a lot about love too. So much so, in fact, that his first 71-page encyclical was all about the stuff. And he made some obvious but useful distinctions, and introduced me to this golden expression: “existential freedom”.
Benedict uses Greek distinctions of love to establish his thesis: “Eros”—meaning the erotic love between a man and a woman; and “agape”—unconditional love. Benedict says that “eros” is fine, as long as it is contained within “agape”—ostensibly an extension of marriage.
“Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex’ has become a commodity, a mere thing to be bought and sold or rather, man himself as become a commodity.
“Here we are dealing with a debasement of the human: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom [snap!]; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less related to the purely ‘biological sphere’.”
And I would agree. Largely. Our not fulfilling our “existential freedom” is our failure to be all that we can be. That is the meaning of existential freedom—all that we can be. Hunter S. Thompson himself said that sex without love just wasn’t any damn fun.
Of course, my problem with Benedict’s statements is that they provide no provision for “unified love” outside of marriage or between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman.
There’s another problem. Relativism. Pope Benedict, though often eloquent, believes in universal truths—endemic, inarguable truths which, if I’m reading my theology correctly, can be seen as the unchanging and benevolent body-glow of God. However, if you’ve read your Richard Rorty, or just plain simply believe that there’s no truth, only perception, Pope Benedict’s proclamations can be difficult to reconcile.
And what about the linguistic difficulties presented by the word “love”? What is consistent between the “love” you feel for your partner, mother, best friend, favourite author? What can I find consistent between these objects of attention? Is it what you find consistent between them? Doubtful. In fact, it’s doubtful if the shifting shades and colours of the heart, as the heart sees these objects, can be meaningfully articulated. Rather, it’s felt.
There is something strange in universalising something so personal. But, looking over these last few words—hyper-extensions of uncertainty and ego—Pope Benedict’s universal assertions contain a comforting glow. Unfortunately, for me, it’s a glow that remains non-negotiable as long as there are people excluded from the church’s definitions.

Posted by Marty at January 31, 2006 10:58 AM