Word: sexuality
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Coffin marching for peace, Father Groppi summoning his people out of the ghetto. Even so, the failure of the churches at large to deal with the social and psychological condition of mankind seems to many to reflect a decline of decision and direction. The prevalent eroticism in the arts, sexual permissiveness, the drug culture, the rise in crime and other violence, the increase in petty dishonesty ?all point to the erosion of the churches' moral authority. With gallows humor, a Catholic priest dismisses reforms like lay parish councils as "shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic...
...Perella's explication of the religio-erotic kiss symbolism in Western culture, it should be noted that not everyone has found mutual labial stimulation appealing. To the Chinese, for example, kissing had revolting associations with cannibalism. Even Dr. Freud seemed standoffish when he observed in his essay, "The Sexual Aberrations," that the lips are composed of mucous membrane and constitute the entrance to the digestive tract...
...androgynous idea that love is a spiritual passion for the whole, and that the soul-which is on the lips when kissing-seeks union with the light of perfect truth. At the other extreme are the worldly 16th century Italian, French and Elizabethan poets who jocosely dealt in sexual double entendres that poked fun at speculation upon mystical union through the lips...
...some medieval mystics, the kiss seems to have been one of the higher forms of contemplation. It was, Perella says, the "terminus," not the "prelude" to lovemaking. As such, kissing fitted perfectly into the medieval concept that there are dynamic benefits to be had from unsatisfied physical desire. Sexual release killed love; amor Interruptus not only kept love pure and burning but could also, as part of a cultural self-improvement program, lead the lover to moral excellence...
Eventually the idea of sexual restraint became an important element in that brocaded bag of tricks known as courtly love. But it took the cleverness of Baldassare Castiglione, a 16th century popularizer of Platonic love treatises, to humanize the conceit for sophisticated courtiers. In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Castiglione distinguished between sensual love and what he called rational love. Rational love, he said, puts greater emphasis on the senses of sight and hearing. He argued that as conduits for soul mergers, the eyes and ears are superior to the mouth, which responds to the inflammatory sense of touch...