When the Hurly-Burly's Done David Elliot Originally published in Issue X of Vulgata, March, 2003.

Like the macabre ebony raven that refused to leave Poe's bust of Athena, or the silent revenging albatross that hung around the neck of Coleridge's mariner, the presence of  controversy has plagued the University of Toronto for over five months now.  The whole dicey affair began with a well-meaning blunder: the Pro-life club at St. Michael's college thought that an intelligent lecture on Catholic teaching and sexual morality could be swallowed, or at least spark healthy debate, on campus.  Several months and a few grey hairs later, one looks back on such naivete with a chastened smile.  For, of course, between the homosexual lobby's picketing of the event and the ludicrous hubbub thrashed about in the media, the herald's cry shrilly told that hell hath no fury like political correctness scorned.  We should, perhaps, have trod more gingerly.  Chesterton had already warned us: "As regards sexuality", he said, "men scarcely reach sanity until they reach sanctity."  But being those who "dream dreams", we went ahead with the lecture anyway, and were surprised to see what we thought of as medicine from Above or as water in the desert being received like a prescription for wasp-licking. And while the atmosphere created by the media at U of T may still be thick with the blood and smoke of war, I am still not convinced that the lecture did not do much good. Too many students, alumni, professors, and religious have spoken up in defense of it for me to be certain of that.  Besides, we don’t know what those who heard the lecture may have said later to their Father in Secret, or what renewal will spring from it.  So far all the sediment has been rising to the surface of the pond.  Whether lilies will bloom there in the Spring is not yet known.

The lecture itself we entitled "Sexuality, Marriage, and the Family: In Our Efforts to Get With the Time, Are We Forgetting the Truths That Are Timeless?"  It was meant to be tartly reminiscent of the anecdote where Henry David Thoreau, reading Scripture at the breakfast table, was asked: “What are you reading, The Times?” “No” he replied, “the eternities.”  Such was our own unabashedly Christian intention.  The lecture itself took place on November 8, 2002, and to deliver it we invited Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College.  Kreeft is a widely acclaimed Catholic philosopher of impeccable credentials.  The author of over 40 books, he is one of the most widely read Christian authors of our time (by both Catholics and Protestants).  Unlike most writers, he can also speak, and so is highly coveted as a speaker at religious conferences.  We were quite blessed to have him.  Much of our aim, given the sensitiveness of the topic, was to avoid the lake-of-brimstone fundamentalist sort who tells everyone that God knocked down the Twin Towers because of feminism or conspiratorially winks at the camera and then calls Mohammed a terrorist.  Instead, we got a man who combined the serious logical acumen of a Socrates with the love of fun and nonsense of G.K. Chesterton and just a touch C.S. Lewis’ literary polish.  We certainly needed somebody who could dip the arrow of truth in honey before shooting it, since even to question whether anything other than consent and warm-bloodedness is needed in a given sexual act, is, at U of T, to put oneself at peril of awful litigation.

I had the pleasure of being Kreeft's host for the event, and was quickly impressed by the quicksilver lucidity of his mind.  Listening to him argue was like watching a duel between an expert fencer on one side and a lot of clumsy butchers on the other.  A candid American, Kreeft was unused to Canadian delicateness regarding controversial issues and to the fact that we like truth packed in ice and surrounded with barb-wire reservations.  This sometimes got him in trouble, despite some good rhetorical pirouetting.  But for all that, he was a consummate gentleman when it came to dealing with heartfelt or offensive objections during the talk.  Nobody seemed to understand better that “there’s no point winning the argument if you lose the customer.”  He had a deep sense of faith, too.  Kreeft knew how controversial the lecture would be at U of T because of its Catholic content and that it was being picketed by the homosexual lobby.  But when he saw Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity come into the auditorium in their white and blue saris, he thought that their prayers would have the angels win the day.  "Aragorn has arrived in his tall ships" he told me, "now the field will be won."

When Kreeft and I arrived for the talk the auditorium of 400 seats was nearly filled, with many leaning against the radiator at the back or on the pillars off to the side for want of room.  Television and audio recording crews were also present.  Kreeft opened up with a few lighthearted jokes and stories to ease the tension in the room.  Early in the lecture he agreed with Freud that sexuality is to humanity what sunlight is to the sky – all pervading.  But he differed with Freud on what sexuality essentially is.  For Kreeft, sexuality is something you are, not just something you do.  This is not to reduce identity to “heterosexuality” or “homosexuality”, but to find it in the mystery of masculinity and femininity.  That is why, Kreeft said, the mystics use lovemaking as an analogy of the soul’s union with God: because God comes into the “womb” of the soul as a transcendental Other, giving it life where before it was barren.

And though sex is an ecstasy, “a sort of embodied out-of-the-body experience”, it is also a teaching tool.  Hence the need to look along sexuality, not just at it.  To see its deeper meaning, that it is not just “four legs in a bed”, but (he said echoing John Paul II) an earthly metaphor for the eternal self-giving of the Divine Persons of the Trinity to each other.  Understood thus in sacramental terms, “You will see” Kreeft said, “that sexuality is sacred – that if anything is sacred, sexuality is sacred.”  It unites man and woman, “and when they make love, God often creates a new immortal soul that will outlast all the galaxies, which has infinite worth beyond all the universes that it is possible to imagine, and which is destined for infinite, eternal, and unimaginable ecstasy in the presence of God forever.  That’s why sex is sacred”, he said, “and that’s why you are sacred.”

When it came to the extremely sensitive issue of homosexuality, Kreeft insisted that Christians do not have the power to change Divine Revelation.  “If the Church’s teaching is the cargo of Christ’s ship”, he said, “then once we start throwing away some of the cargo – even a little bit of it – then we haven’t just thrown away some of the cargo and left the rest, we’ve made ourselves the Captain.  Once we start editing His mail instead of delivering it intact, we’ve made ourselves something other than the mail carrier, we’ve made ourselves the author.  And then we simply have another god and another religion.”

It was in the question-and-answer session that the battle was really joined.  Encountering everything from the heartfelt to the offensive to the grossly absurd (as when one questioner remarked that the Aztecs bloody sacrifice of thousands of people in a single day could be “quite a beautiful ritual”), Kreeft was both brilliant and prophetic.  When he was denounced as a crusty Pharisee for “forgetting” that Christ only commanded us to love, he responded that since loving a person implies hating what is bad for them, we must “hate” someone’s sins out of love for their soul, just as a surgeon “hates” someone’s cancer out of love for their body.  Don’t do that, and we don’t really “will” their good.  Towards the end, he was challenged by a homosexual activist who said: “I notice that you have used the word “tolerance” in your explanations many times, whereas I use the word “acceptance”.  When you say “tolerance”, you mean there’s something deviant (about homosexuality).”

Kreeft accepted the distinction and added that: “We don’t “tolerate” good things, we promote them.  We “tolerate” bad things for the sake of good things, and Catholics believe that homosexual persons are good things and that homosexual acts are bad things.  So they accept homosexual persons, but they don’t accept homosexual acts.  They “tolerate” homosexual acts, but they don’t “tolerate” homosexual persons – they love them.”  More than one such questioner walked away visibly moved.  At the end of the two hour lecture Kreeft received thunderous applause and a lengthy standing ovation.  But perhaps most impressive was the sense one had that the sword of his intellect shone, not because he was trying to make it shine, but because he was fighting for souls with it.  He went for the heart when he could have gone for the jugular.  So there was nothing of the pedant, and everything of the father, there.  And for that I am truly thankful.

Anyone wishing to peruse the stupendous amount of coverage that the lecture received (both favourable and unfavourable) is welcome to it on www.lifesite.net and www.themike.ca (where the lecture can be listened to in full).  I have no desire to elabourate on the ugly cut-and-thrust that took place in the ensuing months, though I do rejoice that the sheer fact of dialogue at U of T on sexual ethics has ended the old regime’s mandate of “in silence, consent”.  In darker hours I manage to buoy my spirits by recalling the stories from Butler’s Lives of the Saints where St. Jean Vianney was attacked by the devil (whom he called “the grappler”) with a ferocity directly proportionate to the stakes the latter had to lose on some issue.  Sometimes Vianney emerged literally bloodied from such encounters, and then he would smile through his broken teeth: “The grappler was terrible last night.  We must have some great catch coming in today.”  So we Students for Life, with the “broken teeth” of a tarred reputation, peer over the edge of the fisherman’s boat and look meekly to the nets for a better catch than weeds and coral.  After all, when we’ve finally reach the point of “when the hurly-burly’s done/ When the battle’s lost and won”, that is what will matter most.

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