Thesising Day and Night....

Can I just say that I am obsessed with my developing thesis topic and all of the researching that goes along with it? Hi, my name is Karen and I have an addiction to academia. I hate to admit this to the world, but sometimes I get excited about Friday nights because I can read for my thesis and not have to worry about work the next day....wow, I can't believe I just said that out loud. Thank you in advance for being my friend.

Anywhos, I have been developing my thesis topic, which in case people were waiting with breath that is bated since my last post, is about Redefining Female Sexuality in a Post-Vatican II Church (That is part of my title, in fact). I have been reading a book for my independent study class called "Freeing Theology" and it is a compilation of different articles on different subjects in the feminist theology realm. I have been honing in on topics that relate to female sexuality and how the Church has defined and then redefined it over the decades, and came across a section in an article by Lisa Sowle Cahill (my new theologian crush) that really caught my attention.

Though not related specifically to my thesis, I thought that this was interesting to post. It relates to homosexual Catholics and their sexuality. After Vatican II, there was a shift from viewing sex not just as a physical act aimed at procreation, but as an act of intimacy that is relational and highly spiritual- that brings two people together in an act of mutual love. In Cahill's article, entitled "Feminism and Christian Ethics- Moral Theology", she brings up the controversial topic of homosexual intimacy, and I thought that this paragraph was brilliant and definitely insightful:

" The displacement of the procreative purpose of sex by its affective and communicative ones also has signaled increased openness toward lesbian and gay relationships, although moralists vary in the interpretation given to them. However, even ethicists who regard the significance of shared parenthood to be a cross-cultural human meaning of sex, entailing a privileged status for heterosexual marriage, may regard the committed sexual relationships of homosexual couples as morally acceptable. Neither condemnation of gay persons nor the demand that they remain celibate is easy to reconcile with the fact that sexual orientation is a deep component of personal identity and the realization that gay persons are as capable as heterosexual ones of manifesting a range of human and Christian virtues in their lives."

To that I say...Amen sistah! Mother Church turns her wheels very slowly, but there are movements at the grass roots that are calling for another "aggiornamento".

Alright, I'm gonna go and try to save my nerdy reputation by buying cute outfits and going out drinking with girlfriends....