Lived Experience and the Search for Truth: Revisiting Catholic Sexual Morality

Editors — Deborah Savage and Robert L. Fastiggi

REVIEWS

Mirus, Jeff, “Three blockbuster books on our contemporary gender crisis,” (October 2, 2024). Click here to read the review.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One: Philosophical and Theological Foundations 

Chapter 1: “When the Starting Place is Lived Experience: The Pastoral and Therapeutic Implications of Pope St. John Paul II’s Account of the Person” by Deborah Savage

Chapter 2: “Why Subjectivity Reveals Man as Person” by John Crosby

Chapter 3: “The Universality of Natural Law and the Irreducibility of Personalism” by Janet E. Smith

Chapter 4: “Ethics in Search of Its Experiential Point of Departure: The Philosophical Ethics and Moral Theology of Margaret A. Farley and Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II” by Eduardo Echeverria

Chapter 5: “Meaning and the Theology of Body” by Michele M. Schumacher

Part Two: Reflections on the Revolution

Chapter 6: “The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims: The Church was Right All Along” by Jennifer Roback Morse

Chapter 7: “The Sexual Revolution: Four Facts We Can’t Pretend Not to Know” by Mary Eberstadt

Chapter 8: “The Existential Contradictions of the Sexual Revolution” by Carl R.. Trueman

Chapter 9: “Transsexualism as Transhumanism” by J. Budziszewski

Part Three: Dispatches from the Front Lines. 235

Chapter 10: “Rethinking Humanae Vitae: Living Through the Sexual Revolution” by Deborah Savage

Chapter 11: “Married Experience and the Gospel of Life” by Richard Doerflinger

Chapter 12: “Male Chastity according to Pope St John Paul II” by Adrian Reimers

Chapter 13: “The Design of God’s Love: The Gift of Children Through Adoption” by Elizabeth Kirk

Chapter 14: “Motherhood and the Power of Vulnerability” by Carrie Gress

Chapter 15: “Fathers in the Image of God the Father” by David Deavel

Chapter 16: “Reverent Curiosity: Why the Church Needs to Listen to Gender Dysphoria” by Jason Evert

Chapter 17: “Integrating the Experience of Homosexuality into the Quest for Wholeness” by Marco Casanova

Chapter 18: “My Father Gives Me Bread: Same-Sex Attraction and My Journey toward Wholeness” by Amy E. Hamilton

Chapter 19: “Dispatches from the Front Lines: Teaching the Victims of the Sexual Revolution” by Anne E. Maloney

Part Four: The Science of Love

Chapter 20: “The Relationship between Theology and the Social Sciences” by Fr. Piotr Mazurkiewicz

Chapter 21: “Hormonal Contraception and the Physiology of Human Sexuality” by Angela Lanfranchi, MD FACS

Chapter 22: “Catholic Wisdom on the Origin of Human Life and its Link to Human Relationships” by Peter J. Colosi

Part Five: Global Challenges and Policy Considerations  

Chapter 23: “The Globalist Challenge to Authentic Human Love” by Stefano Gennarini

Chapter 24: “A Catholic Response to DEI Policies: Formation in True Love Through ‘Imago DEI’ Programs” by Jane F. Adolphe

Chapter 25: “The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement?” by Jennifer Bilek

Deborah Savage

Deborah Savage, (Ph.D., Marquette) is a Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio. Prior to her current appointment, Dr. Savage taught both philosophy and theology at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota for the thirteen years. She is a recognized scholar of the work of Karol Wojtyla/Pope St. John Paul II. Her research areas include: the nature of man and woman, the human person, the theological meaning of human work and the conversion of the acting person. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including Nova et Vertera, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, First Things, The Humanum Review, Catholic World Report, and Public Discourse. The most recent iteration of her theory of Man and Woman is a chapter in a volume entitled The Complementarity of Men and Women, edited by Dr. Paul Vitz and published by CUA Press (May 2021).

Robert L. Fastiggi

Robert L. Fastiggi (Ph.D., Fordham) is a professor of dogmatic theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit where he has taught since 1999. Previously, he taught at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas (1985–1999). He has authored 3 books; co-authored 2 others; and edited or co-edited 12 others. He is a member of the Mariological Society of America, the International Marian Association, and the Pontifical International Marian Academy.

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

Jane F. Adolphe, J.C.L./J.C.D., LL.B./B.C.L., Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law, Naples, Fl., Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame, School of Law, Sydney, Australia, Founder and Executive Director, International Catholic Jurists Forum. She has worked as an external and internal legal expert for the Papal Secretariat of State, Section for Relations with States.

Jennifer Bilek is an artist, activist, and investigative journalist. Her journalism has been featured in Tablet Magazine, First Things, and The Post Millennial.

J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government and Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin.  Dr. Budziszewski is recognized especially for his works on natural law and his series of line-by-line commentaries on Thomas Aquinas.  He also studies and writes about conscience; moral self-deception; moral character; human happiness; family and sexuality; religion in public life; toleration and liberty; and the unraveling (and possible restoration) of our common culture.

Marco Casanova, M.Div. Associate Director, Desert Stream Ministries. Marco oversees Living Waters in the United States. Living Waters is a pastoral healing program for men and women seeking focused accompaniment towards chastity. Marco writes and speaks about his experience of same-sex attraction, and how chastity is the roadmap for anyone seeking life beyond LGBTQ+-identification. He works closely with Andrew Comiskey as his successor of Desert Stream. He and his wife Ania live in Kansas City, MO. The work of Desert Stream/Living Waters can be found at https://www.desertstream.org/.

Peter J. Colosi, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI. He has published many articles and book chapters in the areas of Catholic medical ethics and social teaching, contemporary philosophical personalism and Franciscan studies in both academic and online venues. He is the main organizer and co-founder of the Theology of the Body International Symposia. There have been five Symposia thus far, in Austria, Ireland, England, Portugal and Holland, and the Symposia talks can be viewed at https://tobinternationalsymposia.com/. His personal website is https://peterjcolosi.com/. 

John F. Crosby was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Mobile, Ala.  He received his B.A. from Georgetown University in 1966 and his Ph.D. from the University of Salzburg, Austria, in 1970.  His teacher in philosophy was Dietrich von Hildebrand.  He has taught at the University of Dallas, the University of Salzburg, the Lateran University in Rome, and at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein; since 1990 he has been teaching at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he founded the M.A. program in philosophy.  He has published extensively on the thought of St. John Henry Newman, as well as on the thought of St. John Paul II.  The philosophy known as Christian personalism stands at the center of his teaching and writing, and the books he has written are The Selfhood of the Human Person (1996), Personalist Papers (2004), and The Personalism of John Henry Newman (2014). He and his wife, Pia, are the parents of six children, the oldest of which is John Henry.  He has assisted John Henry in founding the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project, which is devoted to disseminating the religious and philosophical legacy of von Hildebrand. 

David P. Deavel (Ph.D., Fordham) is an Associate Professor in and Chairman of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A former Editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, he co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (Notre Dame, 2020). His academic articles have appeared in Chesterton Review, Chicago Studies, The Journal of Markets & Morality, Nova et Vetera, New Blackfriars, and many books. He is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, member of the Board of Directors of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and University Faculty for Life, and a member of the Advisory Board for CUA Press’s Catholic Women Writers series. His public and popular articles have appeared in Catholic World Report, Claremont Review of Books, Commonweal, First Things, and The Wall Street Journal.

Richard Doerflinger, M.A., is former Associate Director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is a Faculty Fellow with the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, and Adjunct Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy with the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. He and his wife live in Washington state.

Mary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC, and is a Senior Research Fellow with the Faith and Reason Institute. She is author of several books including How the West Really Lost God, which examines the relationship between secularization and the sexual revolution; and Adam and Eve after Pill, Revisited, about the revolution’s destructive consequences on society, politics, and Christianity (Foreword by Cardinal George Pell).

Eduardo Echeverria (PhD, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam; S.T.L., University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum) is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. He is the author of numerous books, including Roman Catholicism and Neo-Calvinism: Ecumenical and Polemical Engagements (2024), Are We Together? A Roman Catholic Analyzes Evangelical Protestants (2022), Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II, 2nd edition (2019), Revelation, History, and Truth: A Hermeneutics of Dogma (2017). He is a member of the American ecumenical initiative, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. 

Jason Evert, M.A., is the founder of Chastity Project and its website, chastity.com. Over the past 25 years, he has spoken on the topics of chastity and gender to more than two million young people on six continents. He is also the author of more than twenty books, including Saint John Paul the Great, Theology of the Body in One Hour, and Male, Female, Other?

Stefano Gennarini, J.D., S.T.B., is the Vice President for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam). He represents C-Fam at UN headquarters in New York and researches and writes on international law and policy.

Carrie Gress, Ph.D., is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a scholar at The Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University of America. She is the founder and co-editor at the online women’s magazine and marketplace TheologyofHome.com and the author of ten books, including the Theology of Home series, The Anti-Mary Exposed, and The End of Woman.

Amy E. Hamilton, Ph.D., Research Associate, University of Texas at Austin and Fellow, Nesti Center for Faith & Culture-University of St. Thomas, Houston. Dr. Hamilton has been a Fulbright scholar and a Social Science Research Council Sexuality Research Fellow. Her dissertation focused on the life narratives of Christians who had experienced conflicts with their spiritual and sexual identity. She studies and writes on topics related to marriage, faith, gender, and sexuality. Her work can be found at: amyhamilton.org.

Elizabeth R. Kirk is an Assistant Professor at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, where she also serves as Co-Director of its Center for Law and the Human Person. Elizabeth’s scholarship focuses on law and the family, including issues such as parental rights, reproductive technologies, abortion jurisprudence, and child welfare and adoption. She also explores the relationship, both complementary and contrasting, between the Catholic intellectual tradition and law. 

Angela Lanfranchi, M.D., F.A.C.S., is a retired breast cancer surgeon who cared for over 20,000 women with breast disease over a 33 year career.  A 1975 graduate of Georgetown Medical School, in 1986 she was appointed a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at Rutgers-RWJ Medical School and is presently the President of  the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (www.bcpinstitute.org) which she co-founded in 1999.  She has published peer reviewed articles on the impact of  hormonal contraception and induced abortion on breast disease and women. She lectures nationally and internationally on those topics.

Anne M. Maloney received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN. Her areas of specialization include Philosophy of Women, Ethics, Philosophy and Literature, Philosophy of Religion, and Existentialism. She has published articles in Crisis Magazine, Human Life Review, and The Journal of Prolife Feminism. Also, she has contributed chapters to two books dealing with abortion and social ethics: LivingWith Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, edited by Alison Jaggar, and Catholicism and Abortion: A New Generation of Catholic Response., edited by Stephen J. Heaney. She is also co-author of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Mothers, Sons and Leadership. She has appeared on CNN and on National Public Radio, and has spoken many times in the Twin Cities area about ethics, feminism, abortion, contraception, marriage and sexuality. Her husband Stephen is also a philosopher, and together they have three children and two grandchildren. 

Piotr Mazurkiewicz: Priest of the Warsaw archdiocese, Professor in the field of political science and Catholic social teaching, head of the Department of Political Theory and Political Thought at the Institute of Political Science and Administration of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Editor-in-chief of the journal Christianity – World – Politics. Between 2002 and 2008 member of the Council of the European Society for Research in Ethics “Societas Ethica”. From 2008 to 2012 Secretary General of the Commission of Bishops of the European Community COMECE. From 2001 to 2023 member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder of The Ruth Institute, an interfaith international coalition to defend the family and build a Civilization of Love. She taught economics at Yale and George Mason Universities for 15 years. She resigned her tenured teaching position in 1996 to care for her children, a badly neglected Romanian adopted son, and a birth daughter. She founded the Ruth Institute in 2008, and has devoted her professional skills to developing a defense of traditional Catholic teaching on marriage, family and human sexuality.  

Adrian Reimers is adjunct professor of philosophy at Holy Cross College in South Bend, Indiana. His publications include the Soul of the Person: A contemporary philosophical anthropology, The Truth about the Good: Moral norms in the thought of John Paul II, Hell and the Mercy of God, The Good Is Love: The body and human acts in Humanae Vitae and John Paul II, and forthcoming The Ethos of the Christian Heart: Reading Veritatis Splendor, as well as a number of articles on the thought of Saint John Paul II.

Michele M. Schumacher is a wife and mother of four adult children, a doctor in sacred theology (S.T.D.), and a private docent (habil.) at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).  In addition to numerous articles and book chapters in various languages on feminism, sexual ethics, marriage, and spirituality, she is the author of A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America  Press, 2014); Metaphysics and Gender: The Normative Art of Nature and Its Human Imitations (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023); and God Acting in Man: Founding Human Freedom in Aquinas’s Natural Desire to See God Doctrine (forthcoming). She is also the editor and contributing author of Women in Christ: Towards a New Feminism (Cambridge, UK / Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).

Janet E. Smith is retired from Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, MI where she held the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics. She is the author of Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later and A Right to Privacy. Self-Gift is a volume of her already published essays on Humanae Vitae and the thought of John Paul II.  She edited Why Humanae Vitae is Right: A Reader, Life Issues, Medical Choices (with Christopher Kaczor), Living the Truth in Love: Pastoral Approaches to Same-Sex Attractions (with Rev. Paul Check) and Why Humanae Vitae is Still Right. In her retirement she is helping victims of the priestly sexual abuse crisis, writing on the glories of the Traditional Latin Mass and trying to finish several scholarly projects. Prof Smith served three terms as a consulter to the Pontifical Council on the Family and also served as a member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission III for 8 years. 

Carl R. Trueman is professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, PA.  Originally a student of Reformation and post-Reformation thought, he has more recently worked in the areas of identity and critical theory. He is the author of numerous books, including The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020) and To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse (Nashville: B and H, 2024).

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