SHAJI
KOCHUTHARA
Dharmaram
Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore
Paper Title: "The Meaning of Sexuality: Can the Christian and
Secular Approaches Meet?"
Abstract
The contrast between the secular and the religious approaches is sharply felt in the area of sexual ethics. Whereas religious approaches often accuse secular approaches to sexuality as hedonistic and devoid of values, religious approaches to sexuality are criticised as legalistic and unrealistic, leading to unnecessary guilt feelings. There are various values, however, which both the secular and the religious approaches to sexuality try to uphold. This paper tries to identify four values which can be identified both in secular and religious approach: love, procreation, pleasure/fulfilment, symbolic/mystical. The interrelationship and tensions among these values and the difference in the emphasis on each of these values are the points of contention between the secular and religious approaches. Often, the family has been considered as the relationship as well as the social institution that incorporates the various values in sexuality. However, this has been contested. More concretely, the concept of pleasure has been one of the major areas of conflict between the secular and religious approaches. Both in the Christian and secular approaches, we can identify different and even conflicting opinions. Listening to each other, as well as to differing and conflicting opinions within one’s own tradition with an open heart will help construct a sexual ethics which is more meaningful and fulfilling.
Dr Shaji George Kochuthara, CMI is Associate Professor of Moral Theology at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore. He is also the Chief Editor of Asian Horizons, Dharmaram Journal of Theology, the Chairperson of the Institutional Ethical Board of St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, Religious Adviser of the Ethics Committee of St Martha’s Hospital, Bangalore, and a member of the Asian Regional Committee of “Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church” and the Head of its Asian Forum. He completed his undergraduate studies at DVK in India and the post-graduate and doctoral studies in moral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. His publications include The Concept of Sexual Pleasure in the Catholic Moral Tradition (Rome: Gregorian, 2007), Moral Theology in India Today, ed. (2013) and Revisiting Vatican II: 50 Years of Renewal, Vol. 1 (2014) (both, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications) and over 30 articles. Email: kochuthshaji@gmail.com