Sex and Heaven: Catholics in Bed and at Prayer

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Summary: This Book Delivers.
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If we must classify Sex and Heaven by John Portmann one appropriate rubric might be "Queer Studies," but this volume surely is a very exceptionally queer study. This book is knowledgeable, perceptive - and, surprise - well-written (the author's Yale and Cambridge education shows).

This book delivers. The first third is indeed about sex and Heaven, more in fact, sex in Heaven. Yes, we will be all there in Heaven. Some of us, as in life, tall, some short. And our differing personalities (but no envy) - sort of laundered. The laundering I fear might make for a most dull place. An endless ocean cruiseship with all one's fellow passengers lobotomized. The old spiritual notwithstanding, we won't all be white in the heavenly light. Will there be slavery there? Is an affirmative action program in place? Yes, Portmann actually asks these questions. All you wanted to know about Heaven and never dared to ask. Questions you never thought of asking. But very few answers. Portmann subjects the inscrutable, the idea of Heaven, to strict and penetrating scrutiny. The result is like a trailer park after a tornado.

As for the all important question, who gets aboard and who is left standing on the dock (worse, goes to Hell), Portmann suggests the varsity team as an analogue (later the country club). Now who but a Yalie would think of that? There is a chapter on "The Sex We Don't Have"; that's important with respect to the question of who does and doesn't get in. From all this the author extracts one central generalization. Historically the church, primarily the Roman Catholic Church (he also examines Islam - plenty of sex in their Paradise - and Judaism), has become totally preoccupied with sex to the exclusion of all else - including theology, not to mention the Scriptures. These days, according to Catholic teaching, it seems, correct sexual preference is far more important than correct religious views or even good acts for getting into Heaven. Heresy - blasphemy even - are overlooked but gay love, never, never, never.

Another third of the book, more than is necessary I feel, deals with the relationship between Roman Catholics and Jews (Protestants get relatively little attention). Once, closely following The Gospels, the Vatican condemned Jews as Christ-killers. But there has been a drift away from Scripture. From censoring the Oberammergau Passion Play - out of deference to Judaism - to ceasing to convert Jews, the Church has moved to letting non-Christians, but not non-heterosexuals, into Heaven. And so, the author concludes, a straight Jew has a much better chance of getting into Heaven than a gay Roman Catholic.
In my own opinion, the Gospels are the foundation of Christianity. The Faith cannot exist without them. If the Roman Catholic Church, or any other church, drifts away from The Gospels it will cease to be a Christian church. Ridiculous? Unbelievable? Portmann writes (p. 115). "I have not considered whether...leaving Christ behind might benefit the Catholic Church. True, demoting Jesus would simplify relationships with non-Christians enormously..." This is not the only way Rome has drifted away from original Christianity - think of the Mary cult in the Middle Ages.

Is such a drift reflected in this book? Aquinas, Augustine, and St. Paul are cited frequently, but the Gospels sparsely. At first, with his devastating questions the author appears to be an iconoclast. And so offers few answers. The reader asks himself, "What, if anything, does this guy believe?" Deep in the book we begin to see. He is (as he told us on the first page) a Roman Catholic. But certainly not another lapsed Catholic. Portmann is a very knowledgeable and intelligent Catholic. He know the details; and he knows the big picture. His insight into the manifold problems facing his church could hardly be more clear for a layman. What at first appears to be some kind of an attack on Rome, the reader slowly discovers, is in fact a clever apologia for the Church.

In the conclusion to this book, the author writes, "Heaven is what I'd focus on if doctors told me I had only one more year to live... I would attend Mass daily and pray the rosary." But, characteristically Roman Catholic, he makes no mention of reading the Gospels. All his questions are answered there. Jesus loves us all, I believe, and He will save us if we let Him. Dante placed the fallen Satan at the very center of Hell at the exact point in all the universe most removed from Jesus' Throne.
If I may add to one of the author's major points, not only has Rome (and many Protestant "Christian" sects as well) replaced theology with a sick preoccupation with sex, over the centuries the historical churches have equated sex with sin and sin with sex. Something which Jesus, whose sexual views were extraordinarily liberal for the prejudiced and violent times in which He lived, never did. Nothing is more removed from the teachings of Jesus, from the Eleventh Commandment that Jesus gave His disciples and us, than homophobia.

Reviewed by R.A. Horne in White Crane Journal