62. Staniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, 176. Staniloae’s teleological vision differs from a historicist teleology that accords no value to natures or the created order. Oliver O’Donovan well describes the latter perspective: “The heart of historicism can be expressed in the thesis that all teleology is historical teleology. The concept of an ‘end’, it is held, is essentially a concept of development in time. Nothing can have a ‘point’, unless it is a historical point; there is no point in the regularities of nature as such. What we took to be natural orderings-to-serve and orderings-to-flourish within the regularities of nature are in fact something quite different: they are orderings-to-transformation, and so break out altogether from nature’s order. The natural exists only to be superseded: everything within it serves only a supernatural end, the end of history. That may be conceived as the kingdom of heaven; it may be conceived as the communist paradise; or (as especially in liberal historicism) it may be simply an undefined term of self-justifying change, receding infinitely like the horizon as we approach it. But in each case natural order and natural meanings are understood only as moments in the historical process. They are to be dissolved and reconstituted by that process, and their value lies not in any integrity of their own but in being raw material for transformation” (Resurrection and Moral Order, 58–59). Liberal moral theology grounds itself in such purely historicist teleology; and O’Donovan’s reply is instructive: “We cannot object to the idea that history should be taken seriously. A Christian response to historicism will wish to make precisely the opposite point: when history is made the categorical matrix for all meaning and value, it cannot then be taken seriously as history” (Resurrection and Moral Order, 60). As O’Donovan goes on to say, “Creation is the given totality of order which forms the presupposition of historical existence. . . . Because created order is given, because it is secure, we dare to be certain that God will vindicate it in history” (Resurrection and Moral Order, 60–61).
63. Staniloae, The Sanctifying Mysteries, 177. Staniloae adds, “The wife is the human being who is closest to her husband, and vice versa, and they are thus because they complement and complete one another. In his wife the husband possesses humanity in the highest possible degree of intimacy that can be reached with him, and the same is true of the wife with her husband. They are revealed completely the one to the other within a state of total sincerity; each is to the other as another ‘I,’ while remaining nevertheless a ‘thou’ who is necessary to the spouse if he or she is to reveal himself or herself. Each forgets the self, making himself or herself the ‘I’ of the other. . . . Thus each of the two spouses brings into reality the state for which he or she is yearning and realizes himself or herself as person in reciprocal communion. But this realization only comes about when their bodily love is penetrated by and submerged in a spiritual love” (The Sanctifying Mysteries, 178). Staniloae later comments with valuable realism that “prayer is offered on behalf of those who marry so that they may receive the grace of God for many purposes: the grace to be able to control the tendency to exclusively seek the satisfaction of the desires of the flesh, for this degrades each member of the couple to the status of an object of the other’s selfish passion; the grace to be able to curb any other type of selfishness or infidelity of one spouse in his or her relations with the other; the grace to strengthen the patient endurance of each when confronted with the limitations of the other; the grace to strengthen the will of each spouse to be of help to the other so that their love in Christ may grow deeper, something that is not possible unless the selfishness of each is brought under control; and finally, the grace of having children, which in itself is identical with the curbing of every kind of selfishness and with the progress of the couple toward the fullness of communion” (The Sanctifying Mysteries, 190). By contrast, see the heartbreaking work of Perel, The State of Affairs.
64. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 81.
65. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 85.
66. Ratzinger [Benedict XVI], “The Sign of the Woman,” 69. See also Schindler, “Liturgy and the Integrity of Cosmic Order,” 306 (criticizing the theological perspective of Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J.): “what is risked in the idea of a partnership that is not innerly qualified by ‘handmaidenship’ is a slip into a kind of ontological ‘pelagianism’ that removes the Other-centeredness that lies at the core of, and accords the original and abiding meaning to, the creature’s rightful self-centeredness.”
67. Von Balthasar, “The Marian Mold of the Church,” 140.
68. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 86.
69. Schindler, “Liturgy and the Integrity of Cosmic Order,” 295. See also Schindler, “Catholic Theology, Gender, and the Future of Western Civilization.”
70. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 89.
71. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 91.
72. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 93.
73. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 93. See also Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 29.
74. See for example Farley, Just Love; Salzman and Lawler, The Sexual Person. The Catholic biblical scholar John J. Collins has advanced this same basic thesis in his chapter on sexuality in his What Are Biblical Values? For a much richer analysis, see Collin, Le mariage Chrétien. The biblical material has been accurately surveyed by Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. For a succinct summary of Scripture’s consistent perspective on homosexual acts, see Kuby, The Global Sexual Revolution, 193–94.
75. Harrington and Keenan, Paul and Virtue Ethics, 208. Keenan is identified as the “principal writer” for the chapter of the book from which this quotation is drawn (see Paul and Virtue Ethics, xiii).
76. Harrington and Keenan, Paul and Virtue Ethics, 208.
77. Keenan testified in favor of Massachusetts’s early (successful) effort to adopt same-sex marriage. See also the direction of Stephen J. Pope’s “The Magisterium’s Arguments against ‘Same-Sex Marriage’”; and Cahill, “Same-Sex Marriage and Catholicism.” Gerard Jacobitz contends, “If sexual orientation is an essential dimension of the human person, if it is not so much what a person is but who a person is, then it simply cannot be disordered” (Jacobitz, “Seminary, Priesthood, and the Vatican’s Homosexual Dilemma,” 98). This is to misunderstand the meaning of “disordered” in the technical language of Catholic moral theology. Humans, as body-soul unities, are ordered intrinsically to certain ends as constitutive of human flourishing (whether or not we consciously desire these ends). When we experience desires or commit actions that