1.- For centuries, the Christians extract a negative valuation of the sexuality from the old greek philosophy and from manichean positions, reaching aberrant extremes and accomplishing what is denounced in the Gospel: They lay heavy burdens on the shoulders of the people (Mt 23,4). But the opposite extreme also appears. There are a lot of people saying: Anything is licit for me. To this, Saint Paul answers: But not everything is to my profit (1Co 6,12). God’s project about the sexuality and the marriage is a call to fidelity, from the deepest, from the heart.
2.- The sexuality is one of the factors that forms human personality; it constitutes people like men and women, influencing decisively their individual evolution and their social insertion. Like the Scripture says, male and female he created them (Gn1,27). The Bible does not place the goodness of husband and wife sexual relationship in doubt. The book of Proverbs says: May you find joy in the wife of your youth (Pro 5,18; see Ct 4,1; GS 49). Before the Corinthians illusory continence desires, Saint Paul recalls them the sexual relationship duty: Let the husband fulfil his duty of husband and likewise the wife. (1 Co 7,3).
3.- In the Bible, the sexual difference between man and woman appears entailed to two fundamental functions. In first place, the mutual help, directed to redeem the human solitude: It is not good for the man to be alone; I will give him a helper who will be like him. (Gn 2,18). In second place, the fecundity, directed to the life transmission: Be fruitful and increase in number (1,28).
4.- God’s plan, thought to make husband and wife one flesh (Gn 2,24), is a love’s mystery that should not be betrayed. The Decalogue says: Do not commit adultery (Dt 5, 18; Ex 20,14; see Mal 2,14,15). Besides, the Scripture reflects the worries of a father with his daughter (Sir 42,9-11) and invites the man to go away from fornication (Sir 41,17) and from prostitution (Pro 23,27; Sir 9,3-6), reserving his love for his woman of his youth (Pro 5,15-19), or, in its case, to go to encounter the perfect woman (Pro 31,10; Sir 26,2-4; 36,21-27). In the biblical world the brides or spouses (from the Latin sponsos, from spondere, to promise solemnly) belong the one to the other (Dt 22,23; Mt 1,18). The courtship is valuated like mutual knowledge, discernment and engagement consent maturity period.
5.- The Roman Catechism (c. XVI) comments that, with adultery prohibition, God forbids any dishonest and impure sin. Saint Ambrose and Saint Agustin explicitly affirm it. And it is also confirmed in the Scripture with absolute evidence; it is established in many of its passages that God punishes, besides the adultery, other kinds of dishonest sins. In the Genesis, for instance, the sentence of Judah against her daughter in law is narrated; the Deuteronomy forbids the female Israelites to become prostitutes; his father warns Tobias to stay out of any fornication, and the Sirach says: Be ashamed of licentiousness… of gazing at another’s man wife.
6.- The sin affects, already in the Old Testament, not only to the fact of the adultery, but to the desire too. The desire broods the sin. In this manner, surrendering to his desire, David gets Bathsheba, Uriah´s wife (2S11, 2 and following). And two old men want Susana till becoming mad (Dn 13,9). The Decalogue forbids the guilty desire: Do not desire the wife of your neighbor (Dt 5,21)
7.- In the Gospel, Jesus sends us to the original God’s project: Man has now to leave father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one body (Mt 19,5). And, abolishing Moses concessions, he teaches: Whoever divorces his wife, unless it be for infidelity, and marries another, commits adultery. (Mt 19,9; see Mt 5,32 and Lk 16, 18). The expression illegal union (in greek porneia) refers to the unions forbidden by Law (see Lev 18-19 and Acts 15,22-29). In the encounter with the Samaritan, Jesus refers her to her true husband: You have five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. (Jn 4,18). The disciples perfectly perceive Gospel’s position and live it like something that overcomes them (Mt 19,10). Jesus tells them that to understand this is a God’s present (19,11). And there are more difficult things; there are some who, in the name of the Gospel, renounce to the conjugal life (19,12). According to God’s project, sexual relationship is integrated in a love’s context, a love that is an everlasting compromise and that manifests itself in the marriage consent (see GS 48).
8.- The marriage evangelic defense does not limit itself to denounce the adultery, but it reaches its deepest root: fidelity is a heart’s business. The heart is the root to be healed (Mt 15, 19- 20). It is the heart, the whole man, the one that manifests itself in everyone of its visages: You have heard that it was said: Do not commit adultery. But I tell you this: anyone who looks at a woman with the intention of possessing her has in fact already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5, 27-28). Love is the fidelity fountain and the summary of the whole Law (Rom 13,9). Heart’s fidelity also evangelizes.
9.- According to the original God’s project, the homosexuality constitutes a deviation, a deep disturbance of sexual orientation, as far as it is directed to the same sex (Rom 1, 26-27). Its origin remains obscure. Diverse factors may take place: a lack of normal sexual evolution, a delay in the evolutionary development of the personality, physical, psychic, familiar, educational or social conditionants, acquired habits. The homosexual person should not be legally discriminated. In the moral evaluation, type of conditioning is taken into account: there are some who are born like that, but there also others that make themselves so. Or they are made so. The homosexual person must be accepted with comprehension and supported with the hope of the overcoming of his difficulties. His personal responsibility must be prudently judged.
10.- In the corrupted ambient of Corinth’s port, Saint Paul denounces all the kinds of evil (1Co 6,9-10). He besides advises: Avoid unlawful sex entirely (6,18; see 1Thes 4,3-5; Eph 5,5). This precept (in negative) facilitates the accomplishment (in positive) of God’s will. Avoiding fornication (Tb 4,12) facilitates to Tobit the meeting with Sarah (7,11; 8,9), a love that apparently could have been born in casual circumstances, but in which the believer recognizes God’s intervention: This is God’s doing (Gn 24,50; Ps 127). The way was unknown and dangerous (Tb 5,2; 6, 3.14).
11.- Human sexuality reaches its deepest sense when it is integrated in the faith experience context, when God’s will glitters across the body, that is, across the human life in everyone of its dimensions. Your bodies are members of Christ and one spirit with Him (1Co 6, 15.19). So that, Saint Paul says, make your body serve the glory of God (6, 20).
Dialogue: Do we understand Jesus words? Diverse applications