Review article
SEXUALITY AND PROCREATION IN THE MAGISTERIAL CONSCIENCE OF THE CHURCH. SOME HISTORICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
Basilio Petrà
; Theology of University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Abstract
Highlighting that since the mid-nineteenth century there is an impressive cultural transition tending to overthrow the previous multi-millennial hermeneutic network by abandoning the primacy of procreation over sexuality, that is the procreational understanding of sexuality, this essay analyzes the relationship between sexuality and procreation. The author evidences a Pythagorean origin of the western ‘procreationism’. Trying to go beyond procreationism by analyzing the key documents of the ecclesial magisterium in the twentieth century as well as the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the author reflects on sexuality and the communitarian meaning of human existence by emphasizing the centrality of the conjugal love. Rather than to procreation, sexuality should be related to conjugal love, the total sharing of existence between a man and a woman, their full and rich unity. In the end, the author traces the distance and the proximity between the ecclesiastical and the dominant vision of the relationship between sexuality and procreation, indicating a limited area of convergence and a vast area of divergence.
Keywords
Sexuality; Procreation; Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia
Hrčak ID:
212016
URI
Publication date:
8.11.2018.
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