In Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana, when Lawrence Shannon becomes disgusted by Hannah's story of her ride in a rickshaw with a salesman who masturbates in front of her, Hannah defends the salesman by asserting, "Nothing human disgusts me, Mr. Shannon, unless it's unkind, violent."

Williams thus effectively dramatizes the new sexual ethics in which the first principle of moral sexual behavior is the absence of violence, from which emerges an ipso facto presumption of morality. "Nothing human disgusts me," Hannah says. Such a humanistic ethic, however, is incompatible with the Catholic perspective.

In the June 2007 issue of U.S. Catholic, Michael Lawler and Gail Risch of the Theology Faculty at Creighton University propose a change in the Catholic teaching that fornication is immoral. "Betrothal Proposal," their article advocating this change, rests on several inaccurate notions of the moral law, history, and Catholic tradition. Their argument is that since Catholic couples who live together before marriage are part of a new "social reality," the Church's teaching that premarital sex is always immoral ought to change to accommodate the real-life behavior of Catholic couples. They further propose a "return" to the "ancient ritual of betrothal" which, they say, was a couple's premarital promise that they would be married in the future. According to Lalwler and Risch, this "ritual," which endorsed the couple's sexual activity before the marriage ceremony, was Catholic practice until the Council of Trent. Sex during the period after betrothal but before marriage, they argue, is "not pre-maritial," but only "pre-ceremonial" because the couple has promised to be married in the future.

In critiquing Lawler and Risch's article in U. S. Catholic, I'm going to criticize four of Lawler and Risch's claims. The first is the claim that moral principles emerge from the "social reality" of a particular time and place. Related to this is the idea that a person's subjective account of his behavior is definitive of the morality or immorality of the behavior at the level of the moral law. The second claim is that individual morality is holistic and based on the totality of a person's actions, rather than on the individual act in isolation. The third claim is that fornication was a part of Catholic tradition until the Council of Trent, which changed the Catholic teaching by instituting the marriage ceremony, thereafter limiting sex to the married state. Finally, the last claim is that the Church "as a whole" is responsible for establishing doctrine. "Social reality," or people's behavior, thus is a legitimate place to look for the "received tradition" of the Church.

The scope of Lawler and Risch's agenda is wider than their article in U. S. Catholic indicates. To show the breadth of their challenge to Catholic morality, I'm also going to refer to two articles by Lawler and Todd Salzman, also of Creighton. The first appeared in The Heythrop Journal of April 2006 and is called "New Natural Law Theory and Foundational Sexual Ethical Principles: A Critique and a Proposal." The second appeared later in volume 67 of Theological Studies and is called "Catholic Sexual Ethics: Complementarity and the Truly Human." The second article repeats verbatim some of the first. The basic premise of the articles is "that homosexual couples can engage in sexual acts that are natural, reasonable, and therefore moral." To reach this conclusion, Salzman and Lawler propose that the emphasis on biological and ontic complementarity in traditional Catholic sexual morality (i.e., complementarity that depends on the natural and ontological differences between men and women) is flawed and that sexual orientation must be part of a "holistic" evaluation of the morality of sex acts that are "truly human." A condition for a sex act to be moral, they say, is that it "must be in accord" with a person's sexual orientation. In simpler terms, their argument questions the Church's teaching that men and women complement each other because of an essential difference between the sexes. They reject this kind of complementarity and replace it with an idea of complementarity that includes "sexual orientation" instead.

I must integrate a criticism of Salzman and Lawler's work because the claim about premarital sex in U. S. Catholic is part of a wide attack on Catholic sexual morality. Salzman and Lawler similarly adopt the notion that experience determines the moral law and that the teaching power of the Church belongs to the whole Church, and not exclusively to the pope and bishops.

I. EXPERIENCE MAKES THE LAW

"Church teaching is sometimes slow to respond to social change and to sift out its beneficial aspects and thus sometimes can appear detached from real experience," claim Lawler and Risch. The "social change" they're talking about is the change by which "cohabitation has become, even for Catholics, more and more a conventional and socially endorsed reality."

Similarly, Salzman and Lawler argue that the Church's condemnation of homosexuality "ignores the life experiences of gay and lesbian couples." Unlike the Church, homosexual couples have confronted the question of the morality of homosexual acts "experientially" and "on the basis of the[ir] lived experience" as "monogamous, loving, committed, homosexual couples."

These arguments make the moral law dependent on subjective feelings about one's individual behaviors. They turn obedience to the law into simply obedience to oneself: the person who thinks he's acting morally is at the same time demonstrating the moral law in his actions.

On the contrary, the moral law really stands outside the individual's experience and exists as an independent command, to which a person is bound regardless of his feelings. The imperative of the moral law thus achieves its effect precisely when the individual feels himself commanded by the law, even against his inclination to act in opposition to the command. When Aristotle defines the "natural law" in his Nicomachean Ethics, he says that it is "that which everywhere has the same force and does not exist by people's thinking this or that." Aquinas also holds this view, which is the heart of Catholic morality. The law exists as a commandment, not as a byproduct of individual thoughts and experiences. It's exactly when the individual's thoughts and experiences conflict with the law that the law reveals itself most forcefully.

Thus, the arguments of Lalwer, Risch, and Salzman that the law must "respond" dynamically to experience and that subjective accounts of "lived experience" reveal the law are false.

II. HOLISTIC JUDGMENTS

Lawler and Risch's argument that an action can be judged holistically and in the context of future acts is also false. One can't commit an action today in the expectation that some future action will render the present action morally good. Yet this is the argument that Lawler and Risch make regarding premarital sex. Often, they use the confusing phrase "nuptial cohabitation" to refer to a couple's living together and having sex before marriage. They say that the promise to marry (the engagement or betrothal) means that cohabitation or sex before marriage is "not premarital." Instead, it's already "nuptial cohabitation." "Since their betrothal initiates their marriage," they write, "their cohabitation is not premarital."

Here, the problem is of elementary logic. A thing that initiates something else can't at the same time be identical to the subsequent thing that it initiates. A betrothal therefore may initiate a marriage, but it can't at the same time be a marriage. If, as Lawler and Risch say, "living together is a step on the path to marriage," then this kind of cohabitation isn't nuptial but, since it precedes marriage, is by definition "premarital."

Besides this confusion of the essence of things in which the promise to marry is made identical to the marriage itself, there's a further problem. Lawler and Risch argue that premarital cohabitation is rendered into marital cohabitation when and if the couple is finally married. It isn't true, though, that a person can commit an act today in the hope that some future act will render today's act into a moral act. This is precisely the argument that Lawler and Risch put forward when they distinguish between "those nuptial cohabitators who do not proceed to a wedding" and those who do. They further make a distinction between cohabitation with the intent to marry and cohabitation without this intent.

In reality, the moral status of an action isn't determined by its reference to some future action. The moral life is a sequence of independent actions, each of which must maintain fidelity to the moral law at the moment, and not in expectation of some future recompensation. The Catholic doctrine of judgment bears this out because a person's moral status at the moment of death determines the state of the person's soul, without reference to past actions or to the hypothetical future acts that the person might have committed had he lived. A person owes obedience to the moral law in the present and at every moment. It isn't correct to say, as Lawler and Risch do, that an action today acquires its moral content by its relationship to some future action, whether intended or actually consummated.

III. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT INVENTED MARRIAGE

When Lalwler and Risch claim that "betrothal is already a part of Catholic tradition," they make a historical claim that before the Council of Trent, premarital sex was allowed because the betrothal, which consisted of a future promise to marry, was the time for "sexual relations and pregnancy," only to be followed later by marriage, which by contrast is a present-tense consent to become wedded. "It was not," they say, "until the Council of Trent in the 16th century that the Catholic Church . . . decreed that marriage resulted from the nuptials or ceremonial wedding."

However, it's inaccurate to say that the Council of Trent "decreed that marriage resulted from the nuptials or ceremonial wedding." Prior to Trent, the Council of Basel re-affirmed the traditional doctrine and defined that marriage results from "mutual consent expressed in words about the present." Lawler and Risch are wrong that the Council of Trent suddenly invented a new notion that marriage is a present-tense vow. Trent adopts the same formula as Basel, and this formula for marriage has nothing to do with the accidental trappings surrounding a "ceremonial wedding." Marriage is a sacrament, and the minister of the sacrament is the couple who expresses mutual consent in the present-tense and before witnesses. Marriage results from the consent of the man and woman, not from the "ceremonial wedding." Lalwer and Risch speak as if the conventions surrounding the sacrament are all that separates a couple who has made future-tense promises from a couple who has made present-tense vows. This is untrue and was in fact condemned by the the Council of Constance.

The Council of Constance, also before Trent, condemned the opinion of Wyclif that "the words, I will take you as wife, are more suitable for the marriage contract than, I take you as wife." The Council further stated that the present-tense words trump the future-tense words in case of conflict. Therefore, Lawler and Risch's idea that only the superficial trappings of a wedding ceremony separate the future-tense promise from the present-tense vows is wrong.

Basel and Constance didn't arise ex nihilio. The definition of marriage as the mutual consent of man and woman expressed in the present is Catholic dogma, and this definition was handed by Christ to the apostles and has always been a part of Catholic teaching. It wasn't concocted by Trent, and there's no doctrinal "tradition" of premarital sex. In fact, from at least the eleventh century, the theological question of moral sexual relations centered on whether even sexual acts between a husband and wife were sinful. There was no question of the immorality of pre- or extra-marital sex.

IV. THE PEOPLE AS TEACHERS

The reason Lalwer and Risch appeal to "tradition" is that they don't view tradition as the deposit of faith, taught by the magisterium. They share the view of Daniel Maguire that in addition to the pope and bishops, the opinions of theologians and lay people are two other authoritative teaching organs. This mistaken view was recently "corrected" by the USCCB, but it's nonetheless an integral part of the new theology. Salzman and Lawler take it up in their defense of homosexuality when they say that the establishment of the doctrine and practice of the Church "is a task for the communion-church as a whole."

On the contrary, the "communion-church" isn't responsible "as a whole" for establishing doctrine and discipline. The Church is hierarchical. It's divided into the Teaching Church, which consists of the pope and bishops, and the Church Taught, which consists of the faithful. The pope and bishops alone hold the teaching power of the Catholic Church. As Pius X says, "There is a very notable distinction between the members of the Church; for there are some who rule and some who obey; some who teach and some who are taught."

In appealing to "tradition," however, Lawler and Risch appeal to people's habits. They claim that since premarital sex was at some times common for people who were betrothed but not married, this habit can rightly be considered Catholic "tradition." They also claim that the Church's teachings must "catch up" to the habits of the people when there's a conflict between them. This is similar to their view that the moral law arises from experience, except in this case doctrine originates from the habits of people, and not exclusively from the teaching office of the pope and bishops. Their view amounts to a rejection of the Church's divided structure, which is a dogmatic fact. The pope and bishops establish the doctrines and practices of the Church. The people in turn owe obedience to the pope and bishops' teachings.

V. CONCLUSION

I've proceeded here cautiously to show the shortcomings of Lawler and Risch's arguments in favor of fornication. Still, I believe Lawler, Risch, and Salzman aren't acting simply as "respected researchers." Their work, especially in its popular form in U. S. Catholic, relies not only on false theological and historical claims, but also on downright deception, as is clear from their misrepresentation of history and their revision of the structure of the Catholic Church. It's not unreasonable to assume that the average reader of U. S. Catholic doesn't have the expertise to question the departure from Catholic doctrine and philosophy that Lawler and Risch attempt. There's something sinister in their attempt because its aim is to recruit Catholics to dissent. "We invite Catholics to be ready to assist cohabiting nuptial couples," they say. They purport to offer a legitimate alternative to the magisterium of the Church, and they encourage disobedience. Although their language is scholarly, their tactic is cliché. The Church, they claim, is out of touch. It doesn't take into account people's "real lives."

Father Richard Sparks has exploited these clichéd sentiments in his popular lectures. "If you love your children even though they're having sex outside marriage, then think of how much more God loves them," he says. Lawler, Risch, and Salzman offer a viewpoint not unlike that of Richard Sparks. Look to yourself, they say. Your judgment makes the law.

No. The law stands outside us. We don't create it. We owe obedience to it. To say that moment by moment we make the law, to which we then owe obedience, is to say simply and solipsitically that we owe obedience only to ourselves.