To say that the pandemic brought on by COVID-19 has dramatically altered sex, love, and family would an understatement. For many, family life has suddenly become very compressed, with parents and kids now home together all the time. Social distancing has meant that our interactions outside our homes are largely remote—we've all been forced to become Zoom experts. All this (along with a great deal of sadness, fear, and anxiety) offers an opening for some fresh theological considerations on family and relationships.
Published just before the pandemic began in the United States, Sex, Love, and Families: Catholic Perspectives is a collection of twenty-five essays divided into three sections: sex, love, and family. The editors, Jason King and Julie Hanlon Rubio, explain that their goal is to avoid the polarization marking so much of contemporary Catholic moral theology; on the one hand, fidelity to the magisterium and the absolute moral norms it defends, and on the other hand, revisionist perspectives and possible dissent. Moreover, they look to include essays that do not rehash “old arguments” but rather that seek to begin “new conversations.” The volume certainly does offer a survey of many different new conversations in moral theology—including ones that introduce such theological innovations as a “theology of foreplay” and “queer natural law.”
The strongest essays in the volume, though, are those that attempt to blur the line that has long separated Catholic sexual ethics from Catholic social teaching—a separation that has often facilitated (and been facilitated by) the ideological divisions that exist between Republican-voting “pro-life” Catholics and Democratic-voting “social justice” Catholics. Against this tired dichotomy, these essays offer hopeful ways to see that a focus on families can enable strong critiques of US policies on mass incarceration, immigration, and income inequality. One such example is Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar's excellent essay on the need to recognize the economic aspect of family life and the economic value of the care provided within families. To this end, Sullivan-Dunbar points out that viewing children as a “personal choice” has shifted care for children away from a shared responsibility of society and placed it solely onto the parents who made that choice. New conversations like this would certainly go a long way in helping to overcome some of divisions in the church brought on by US partisan politics. Generally speaking, after reading such essays, it would be difficult not to place Amoris Laetitia (and even Humanae Vitae) within the canon of Catholic social thought.
Although no volume can cover everything, there are some important issues that this volume does ignore. One is any kind of theological account of miscarriage, a tragedy that has left many Catholics with questions about how to think about the death of their child. Should there be a funeral mass? Sadly, Catholic teaching offers very little guidance here. The editors and authors surely have wisdom to impart on this matter. Also, there is no discussion of celibate clergy and their role in how the church thinks about sex, love, and family—particularly the often tortured experience of closeted men in the Catholic priesthood.
Still, Rubio and King have provided a very helpful and useful addition to contemporary Catholic moral theology. Their volume offers concise (most of the essays are approximately ten pages) snapshots of a variety of issues and would be excellent for graduate or upper-level undergraduate moral theology courses. And as already noted, the volume provides a welcome tool for moving past current polarizations in the church.
