Where do we go...

It's a good question, Edith, and one I've been pondering this week.  The Catholic bloggers are out and about reporting on West and his supporters and critics.  Perhaps West is becoming too much of a scapegoat here for the larger question at stake: Should there be another sexual revolution?  Or has sex become too much the focus of our evangelization?  Do we try to co-opt a revolution and re-direct it, or do we put our focus elsewhere?  

Right now my answer to the questions at stake would be to steer away from a "sex-centered" anthropology and to move into a larger Catholic understanding of the human person that we put forth for the rest of the world to see.  Sure, we finally have some good vocabulary to talk about the holiness of sex in all of its carnality, but human sexuality is only one road to take in arriving at the larger picture of the human person as known through the revelation of Jesus Christ.  If we are made for happiness, might we also not try with equal effort to redirect the Western utilitarian or economic conception of the human person?  Could we not also promote true happiness by cultivating a love of the arts?  Could we talk about the body's role in relating to others without stopping at the "nuptial" understanding of it?  

I think the answers are yes, yes, and yes.  Agatha introduced us to a discussion on celibacy a few posts back.  The celibate priest or religious participates in the very anthropology that married couples do by virtue of having a body.  For my part, the Theology of the Body is an anthropological study which uses sexuality to talk about our interpersonal relationships and our relationships with Christ.  I think we're (and West is) getting stuck at the beginning of the discussion though, and we haven't quite arrived where JPII intended to lead us.