Thomas Moore hits home
when he points out that nowhere in two thousand years of
Christian theology, Western art and pornography do we "yet have a religious appreciation
for the penis as the presentation of life's almighty power." Christianity, art and pornography
are equally at a loss, I would add, for a religious appreciation of the vulva, vagina and naked
breast with erect (aroused) nipple as a celebration of the almighty power of femaleness. At
best, Christian theology and art have ignored the mystery of male phallic power or reduced
it to flaccid penises. Theology has also sterilized the mystery of female sexuality with its
emphasis on a virginity that represses or denies the creative power of female sensuality and
eroticism.
The quiet celebration of the flaccid penis by Donatello, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and
others was, I think, a subversive attempt to get the theologians and the ordinary lay folk to
ask how male sexuality might fit into Christian spirituality. In the Renaissance, a few
Christian artists dared to portray the child Jesus and John the Baptist with naked, flaccid
genitals. A few paintings even dared to show the crucified Christ with hints of an erect penis
beneath a loin cloth. But Christian "orthodoxy" quickly castrated these few attempts.
Similarly, there are a few paintings showing the Mary nursing her son. In classical
art, Bernini's sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, and Teresa's own description of
her orgasmic ecstasy and mystical union with her God stand alone in celebrating the
passion and pleasure of female spirituality and eroticism. Who knows what messages were
drawn from their powerful sensual presentations?
Unfortunately, these scattered attempts to connect the life-serving power of our
sexual nature with our spiritual life and nature have been quickly buried behind fig leaves,
whether artistic or mental.
In a different artistic vein, as Moore suggests, the larger-than-life-size penises one
finds in modern pornography are a feeble and equally unsuccessful attempt to restore the
phallic life-giving power of the penis within a holistic view that combines rather than splits
male sexuality from the spirit. Western pornography with its obsessive portrayals of
potency is obviously searching for the deepest meaning and mystery of the male phallus.
Andres Serrano, Terrence McNally, Martin Scorsese and others have used photography,
theater and cinema to confront Christians with the need for a religious appreciation of
phallic power. Madonna, with her video "Like a Prayer," Judy Chicago, with her vulva-like
place settings for "The Dinner Party"
(1974-1979) and her 1979 book The Dinner
Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage, and other women artists, have issued a similar
challenge to religious leaders.
Of course, many religious fundamentalists condemn these and any other attempts to
rejoin the power of erotic pleasure and sexuality with spirituality as "pornographic and
blasphemous." In this sense, religious institutions and "pornographers" have long shared a
concern for the deepest meaning and mystery of our sexuality. Unfortunately, neither have
had much success in rejoining sex and spirit.
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