Reflecting on October 8, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb42.htm

The last time SJPII talked about adultery of the heart being possible even if you are looking upon your spouse. In this talk, he not only expands on that, but says that it may applied to those in marriage “even more so”. In reflecting on all that we have learned, that seems to follow exactly on the road we have laid. The married couple in a unique communion, in both giving and receiving. At its most pure, it is a complete opening of one’s self to the other. In the openness, one also becomes the most vulnerable a person will ever be. In opening yourself up like that, you are trusting the other to receive that gift in a way that is pure. That is the responsibility of the other. When they distort that responsibility and look upon the other in a reductive way, that gift is shattered. To shift the Spiderman quote, with that great responsibility comes the great power to destroy a person’s experience and affect their human understanding. It is precisely because that relationship is so important in the view of SJPII and Christ that a spouse “even more so” can commit adultery in his heart on their own spouse. It is also precisely that this spousal relationship is unimportant in the eyes of the world that the world sees no violation in viewing each other this way.

SJPII makes the distinction that it is not whether the woman that is being looked upon is your wife that determines whether it is adultery in the heart, but “precisely because he looks in this way at a woman”. What I thought about was the application of this to homosexuality and how that might be explained. If people try to get around the teaching by saying I can look on my wife with lust, some might argue that Christ only points to the opposite sex as being adulteress, therefore looking upon the same sex with lust is not restricted here. That may seem like a stretch because in many places homosexual acts is spoken of as sinful, but even if the arguments are made, I think the same arguments made for spouses defeat it. The gender is not Christ focus, it is the intentionality of the look. If you look on a person with a reductionist desire, if you look upon them as an object to satisfy your sexual urges, then you are committing adultery in your heart. Just as wife or not does not determine the sin, male or female does not matter. It is the intentionality of the look that determines whether it is adulteress.