ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a nuanced treatment of sexuality that both celebrates its power and warns of its destructiveness; that both deconstructs traditional Christian strictures on sex, and retrieves values like commitment and parenthood needed to channel sex in positive directions. In reality, sex or sexuality is both personal and communal. Responsible sexual behaviour must take into account both sides of this reality. Christian tradition past and present identifies several values related to sexuality that define its positive aspects and help us to understand the nature and causes of its distortions. Positive sexual ideals yielded by Catholic tradition are commitment and parenthood, informed increasingly today by the values of gender equality and affective reciprocity and depth. A genuinely traditional sexual morality should be formed by the values of embodied sexual pleasure and union, affective unity, commitment and fidelity, shared parenthood, and partnership of life.
