Eros in Sacred Scripture. Ideas for a renewal of sexual ethics

Intervention by Don Roberto Massaro*, moral theologian and teacher, held in the meeting "Corner Stones"(Florence, April 5, 2025). Transcription of the author's magazine made by the volunteers ofJonathan's tent.

I am really happy to share this moment with you, even if short. They told me - joking but not too much - that at 12.40 we will absolutely have to be out, because it's lunch time! So we will see not to get too well ... even if I don't guarantee.

Two words about me: I come from Puglia and I am a priest of the diocese of Conversano-Monopoli. In my ministry I mainly deal with teaching, in particular I teach moral theology both at the Apulian theological faculty and at the Alfonian Academy of Rome, which is an institute entirely dedicated precisely to moral theology. Then I do other things too ... but I don't want to steal too much time.

Today we are here because I was asked to propose an in -depth analysis on theeros in Writing. It is a theme that is very close to my heart, and on which I made some personal reflection, which I then collected in a small book published with the Messenger editions. The title is Can you live without eros? - A very simple, popular text, which can be read with pleasure even under the umbrella, without academic pretensions.

But before I start this path together, I would like you to present you, at least briefly. Name, where you come from and maybe because you are here today. We will also need for the laboratory that we will do later.

(Follow the interventions of the/participants, summarized briefly below to make the atmosphere of the laboratory):

– John: I'm from Reggio Emilia, parent of four children ... and the most "elderly", let's say so!
– Gianpiero: I come from Bologna, I am a parent too, I have two children.
– Roberto: i'm from Livorno, father of three children.
– Claudio: from Rome.
– Michael: it's my first time here, i feel the need to find a guide.
– Cristina: I come from Rimini, I'm a mother and grandmother. I am here to understand what the Church can finally say about Eros in a complete and inclusive way.
– Joy: from Florence, I participate in the Kairos group. As often happens, they are one of the few non -heterosexual women present.
– Connor: American, but I have lived in Rome for several years. I am a member of the Anglican Episcopal Church and I deal with ecumenical studies.
– Luca and Elena: from Imola and Reggio Emilia. Elena is the mother of three children and attends this environment also for one of her children.
– Valeria: of Bari, mother of a daughter (called in Apulian "Figghia", who makes it better!).
– Antonio De Caro: sicilian "now".

Writing and Eros: a path to rediscover

Obviously, we are not here to upset the writing. Quite the opposite. We are here to let ourselves be caused by it, to find out what has to tell us about the big questions that touch Eros, sexuality, the emotional dimension of the human being. Because - even if it often seems to us an absent or secondary topic - writing deals with these issues, and does it in a surprisingly original way, especially if we consider the cultural and historical context in which it was born.

Our path today will be divided into three moments:

1. A first introductory part, in which we will try to disassemble some ideas that we carry with us, offering new reading keys. It will also be a passage a little technical, but simple and clear, to put order in some background concepts.
2. Then we will pass to group work, divided into four subgroups. We will work on four biblical texts: three features from the Old Testament and one from the new. And we will do it, I hope, in an original way.
3. Finally, in the third part, we will pull the ranks to imagine pastoral perspectives: not only in relation to the LGBT pastoral care, but also compared to a wider, more vital, more renewed approach to writing.

I would like to start with an image: sometimes we treat the Bible as if it were the illustrative leaflet of a drug. You know, the liar ... open the tachipirine box and find that among the side effects there are stroke, heart attack, a series of frightening things. And then you ask yourself: "But is the paracetamol really dangerous?"

In the same way, we read the writing, we find a verse that disturbs us or scandalizes us, and we think: "So I was wrong?". But the Bible is not a liar, and it is not even as regards sexuality and affectivity.

A story within the Story

Writing tells the path of a people who, little by little, tries to understand who his God is. This is fundamental. We cannot think that the author of the book of Genesis, for example, was there to take notes live on what God did.

The stories of the creation - on which we will reflect - are not live chronicles, nor divine transcriptions fall from above. I am an expression of the faith of men and women who, in a given historical and cultural moment, tried to say: "I understand this of God". And they wrote what they sensed, with their limits, their beliefs, their language.

We believe that, in that human story, a greater story has been intertwined: that of God. But it is a gradual, non -magical intertwining. Writing is revelation, yes, but inside a path.

Sexuality and distinction from idolatry

The Bible, however, does not systematically deal with the issues related to sexuality. It does not do it as an ethical manual or a treaty would do. Why? Because the biblical authors - especially in the Old Testament - had a clear goal: distinguish yourself from the pagan world.

The people of Israel wanted to say forcefully: "We are not like them. We have a different God". They knew the pagan deities well like Zeus, who translated his wife, went down among humans, made children with fatal women.

All this dimension, for Israel, was unacceptable. And then it reacts: it does not arrange sexuality, but lists what they define to'abah, that is, "abominations", behaviors considered impure, because they are typical of pagan peoples. But what does this tell us today?

The context counts: Levitic and ... crustaceans

Let's make a concrete example, often also used against LGBT+people. Levitico 18 clearly says: “You will not have relationships with a man as you have with a woman: it is an abomination (to'abah) ". But a few verses before the same term to'abah it is used to say that crustaceans should not be eaten.

Then one wonders: why did we make the prohibition of relationships between men, but not that of seafood?

The answer is that, over time, the community of believers understood that some rules were linked to values ​​that we no longer recognize as binding. For example: the sacredness of the blood, the sense of pure and the impure, the relationship with life. All very important elements for Israel, but no longer central for us.

Think: it says that a woman after childbirth had to be purified before returning to community life. Why? Because he had touched something deeply sacred - life - and like Moses who had to cover his face after seeing God, he too needed a time to "return" in everyday life.

When the rule no longer holds the value

The rules should keep values. I tell you that you can't drink more than Tot if you drive, not because I want to check how much you drink, but why i want safer roads.

But if that rule no longer holds the original value, if it has become only an empty envelope ... then it must be rethought.

The same goes for many rules of writing: if today we no longer recognize the value they kept, or if that value expresses itself differently, then perhaps it is time to return to the heart, to the deep sense.

For example: how many of Catholic women today go to Mass with the veil today? None, or very few. Yet it was once a very important sign of modesty. Things change, the signs change.

When the rules no longer speak to the heart

Over time, some rules contained in writing lost the link with the value they intended to keep. And when this bond breaks, the rule stops talking. I give you an example, apparently far from the theme of Eros, but useful to understand each other: think of the third commandment, "remember on Saturday to sanctify it". Today we translated it with "you have to go to Mass on Sunday". But how did we pass from Jewish Saturday to Christian Sunday? And from "sanctifies the Saturday" to "Don't miss the Mass"?

The original sense of that rule was another: remember that God is there and you are not God. Stop. Recognize that work is not everything. Especially in a peasant society, stopping it meant recognizing that the earth, the harvests, life itself, are gifts of God. And then, more than insisting on the obligation of Sunday mass, perhaps today we should ask ourselves: do we still know to stop? Can we rediscover the value of rest, gratuity, gratitude?

The same goes for other commandments. Let's take the sixth: "Do not commit adultery", which was then transformed into "do not commit impure acts". But what does it really mean? What impurities are we talking about? Here too you need to return to the deep intention of the text.

The language of Genesis: questions of meaning

The stories of the Old Testament, in particular the first chapters of Genesis, answer fundamental questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we men and women?

These are questions that the human being has always asked himself. And that, in prayer, he tried to elaborate with the cultural means at his disposal. He did not know DNA, the XX or XY chromosomes ... but he sensed that in the difference between male and female there was something deep.

Yet, precisely on this, the ancient testament has an interesting ambivalence: on the one hand it is clearly patriarchal - it would be naive to deny it. But on the other it contains precious seeds of equality and mutual dignity. Our misogyny, the one we inherited in Christianity, it does not come from Judaism, but from the encounter with Greek thought, in particular with Aristotle.

It is there that, through the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, some terms took a meaning that they did not have in the original. But it does not spoil you everything: a song in particular we will see it in the workshops!

Sexuality as a social tool

Another important element: in writing, sexuality often has a function of maintenance of the social order. This explains to us, for example, why adultery was punished with death. In fact, it was seen not only as a religious sin, but also as the origin of possible social disorders: confusion in descendants, instability in family ties, heritage problems.

It was a way to say: "That woman is mine, you can't touch it". It was a question of control, of certain paternity, of legitimacy of descent. And this must make us think: is this really what we mean by Eros ethics today?

Today we have given marriage and sexuality a thickness relational, emotional, theological quite different. So how to read these texts?

Jesus and sexuality: a silent revolution

In the Gospels, Jesus does not show a direct interest for sexuality. He says almost nothing. And no, it is not true that "there were no homosexuals" in his time. There were different cultural and social forms, of course. But they were there. Jesus and Paul they never met homosexual couples in the modern sense, who asked to live a stable and shared relationship.

In the Greek-Roman world, homosexual sexuality was linked to practices such as the ieraduilia (sacred prostitution) or the pederasty (relationship between adult and teenager). The romans themselves looked with suspicion to these things, they called mos graecus, the "Greek costume". For them, a free man could have homosexual relationships, provided that had the active role and the other was a slave or a subordinate. But woe to reverse the roles: those who transgressed were punished.

Imagine Paolo, who announces a Gospel in which "there is no longer a slave or free, neither man nor Woman" (cf. Gal 3,28): he is faced with slaves that suffer sexual violence by their masters. How could he not speak?

And Jesus? He did not get married too. But be careful: not because celibacy was a value! At the time it was not at all. If the disciples had wanted to present Jesus in an "honorable" light, they would have said he was married. The fact that they did not do it is a sign that something has put in crisis too.

Celibacy, as ecclesial value, comes much later: from the thirteenth century onwards. Also for practical reasons - for example, avoid the hereditary transmission of the goods - and only after for reasons of "sacredness".

An ethics of the heart

The ethics of Jesus does not focus on the documents, but on intentions. It does not stop at adultery itself, but it comes to say that those who look with desire has already committed adultery in the heart.

Jesus looks inside, to the motive of the heart, not only to external action. This is revolutionary. And, yes, even much more demanding.

We see him in his relationship with women: think of Maria di Magdala. You saw the movie Maria Maddalena? It is not a "Da Gospel" film, but it tells well the effort of a woman who wants to follow Jesus in a time when women they were not accepted as a disciple. Jesus overturns everything: choose his disciples, also women. An unprecedented and scandalous thing for the time.

And Paolo?

Paolo - on which we have already said something - was very important in the formation of Christian sexual ethics. But be careful: not everything we read in the letters attributed to him is his. Some letters are from his school, his community.

That's why, for example, we find contradictory statements on women, on the veil, on speaking at the assembly. In some texts, women cannot prophesy; In others, they can do it as long as they bring the veil. Writing is a lively body that must be read in its context.

Read the Writing with new eyes

We often read writing without considering the context in which it was born and project it directly on our reality. For example, that passage by Paolo on women and the veil: there was a time when it was said that women had to cover their heads because they demonstrated modesty and respect. But one day some exegete woke up and asked: “But sorry, if Paul says that women prophesy ... then they could speak, they could prophesy. The problem, therefore, was not if could, but as do it. "

Perhaps that veil, in the context of that time, was simply a cultural sign of decorum, how to say today: "Please don't come topless in the church." I also tell it with a somewhat funny example: once, during a patronal feast, I saw a man in phosphorescent orange briefs enter the church. Now, I'm welcoming, but I just thought there: "No, this no." Maybe Paolo wanted to simply say: "When you participate in the liturgy, dressed in a respectful way." It is an invitation to the sense of the place, not an eternal regulation.

Laboratory: four songs to deconstruct and reconstruct

At this point, we started group work on four biblical texts, each accompanied by a brief exegetical comment. The songs were:

1. Genesis 1,26-31 - The creation of man and woman
2. Song of Songs - A hymn to love, desire, beauty
3. 1 Samuele - The intense and affectionate friendship between Davide and Gionata
4. John 12 - The anointing of Bethany, sensual and scandalous gesture

The method was simple: read the song, reflect on the comment, then answer a key question: "How does this exegetical reading change my way of reading this biblical song?"

For example, in the case of Genesis, many have discovered that the Jewish text does not say "male and female", but "male and female": they are not two biological nouns, but two qualities, two dimensions of human living. And this changes everything: it opens us to relationality, to the plurality of the human, to the fact that we do not exist alone but we are always in relation.

The result was a rich, profound comparison. A few inspiration from the groups:

Group on Genesis 1

With the help of Martin Lintner's comment, we reflected on the meaning of the transition from "male and female" to "male and female". It is a freeding passage: there is no more about two fixed and biological identities, but of dimensions who can live every person.

This led us to ask us important questions:

• What kind of fertility is it evoked here?
• What implies that God has no sexual connotation?
• Why does the text say "Let's be man" (plural) and then returns to the singular?

The conclusion is that the human being was born in relation, not as an isolated individual. The relationship is the original data, not the point of arrival.

Group on the Canticle of Canticles

We recognized that the Canticle is a hymn to love and desire, but not only in the marriage context. He tells us one free affective relationship, which goes beyond the bond of procreation. It is a text that breaks the patterns.

This led us to reflect on:

• As the Church read and sometimes censored desire, especially homosexual;
• As well as in celibacy and consecrated life, one can live a deep emotional dimension, without being "neutral";
• The need to recognize as authentic also the affections that are not aimed at procreation, but to reciprocity and tenderness.

Group on Davide and Gionata

A touching text, almost scandalous for the tenderness it transmits. Davide and Gionata embrace each other, kiss, cry together. A love that, although not explicitly sexual, has one very strong emotional intensity, of which you are not afraid.

We wondered:

• Because we stopped considering males capable of emotions so deep?
• Who has decided that crying, touching each other, saying "I love you" was only by women?

Davide and Gionata subvert the hierarchies: Gionata is the prince, but gives David the symbols of power. They are not the same, but they become it. It is a text that talks to us about equality, freedom, and friendship as a form of salvation.

Group on Giovanni 12 - The anointing of Bethany

This text puts us in front of a gesture that unites body, oil, perfume, caress, tears. It is scandalous, sensual. But it is also a gesture of free, prophetic love that Jesus welcomes with dignity.

We noticed:

• As the body has a central role, and how this is re -evaluated in the Gospel;
• That desire and love they are not always codifiable in moral categories;
• That authentic faith it passes through the sensitive, concrete, even erotic experience.

Before concluding

What we tried to do today was to read the writing not like a moral code, but like a path. A story of the research of God within human history, made of bodies, affections, desires, relationships.

"Because in the tenderness of the affections, in the relationships that they free, Eros can also become a place of revelation." , as I write in my book Can you live without eros? (Messaggero Editions), eros is not only drive, but strength that puts on the move, which pushes to the encounter, which opens to life.

How much wealth reveals the Holy Scripture when it is read starting from us, starting from here, from this experience of ours?

Now I will try to summarize. From your reflection it has clearly emerged that the body, in the story of the set of Bethany, is at the center of the scene. Jesus is in relation, and sin - if you can say so - is not something that has to do with the body. On the contrary. In that text there is no explicit condemnation of the gesture of that woman. She enters, breaks the alabaster, greases the feet of Jesus and dries them with her hair: deeply bodily, sensual gestures, we could also say erotic. Yet Jesus welcomes. The only dissonant voice is that of Judas, which is scandalized for the "waste".

And then the point is not so much the condemnation, but rather the effort to grasp the centrality of the emotional and sensory experience. We have reflected how important it is to touch and be touched: love is expressed through experience, through the senses. There can be no separation between body and spirit. This has emerged since childhood: a child embraced, touched with affection, will be a more peaceful child. We all need to express love with the senses: with touch, embrace, kiss, voice, perfumes ... love needs these languages.

And Jesus welcomes him. It welcomes gestures and people, as they are. It welcomes the way everyone manages to love. And this is what speaks to us.

I connect to the added value that writing can offer us when we read it from a queer perspective. Let me explain: Queer theology was born as a branch of the theology of liberation, which has a long history behind it. Both offer us a way of reading the writing starting from the life, from the reality of the excluded, of the poor, of those who are on the margins. And it is there that the announcement of Jesus becomes more authentic, deeper, more liberating. Perhaps this is why these readings make us breathe. Because they bring us to the heart of the evangelical announcement: liberation.

Of course, they are not the only possible. The writing is rich, it offers many levels of reading. But the perspective of the last helps us to go to the center of the Gospel.

Now, some ideas to continue reflecting on Eros in the Bible. I say it immediately: in writing we will not find eternal and universal rules to be applied automatically to sexuality today. It would be a betrayal of the sacred text.

Let's take Paolo: in chapters 5 and 7 of the first letter to the Corinthians he addresses the theme of the body and sexuality, but he does it because he responds to a specific case - a man who lives with his father's wife. Paolo starts from a concrete fact of his time, not from an abstract theory. And we must respect writing by recognizing this breath.

There are two fundamental elements to be grasped:

1. The essential nucleus of writing, which is Jesus and his unconditional love for all and all, in particular for the excluded. This is what becomes the key to reading everything, also Eros.
2. The method of Writing: face situations starting from the stories, from concrete experiences. And from there to discernment.

For example, the story of the creation in Genesis. We cannot read it as a manifesto of binary otherness between male and female. It would be a forced operation. The text tells us rather about the relationship. The human being is created in relation: "We make the human being". That "let's do" - that some, perhaps daring a little, interpret as a reference to the Trinity - could also be read as an involvement of the human in the process of creation itself. God creates with the human being, who is called to build the world together, the kingdom.

And again: that distinction between male and female - which is not necessarily a dichotomy - speaks to us of reciprocity, of taking care of each other. It is not necessary to take it as a basis to exclude other forms of identity or orientation. Indeed, perhaps it tells us that a relationship is biblically blessed if it is based on the treatment.

Today we are in front of a paradigm change. We are discovering and experiencing a new vision of sexuality, which we can no longer think in the only terms of man-woman, marriage, children. That model is no longer the only one. But what remains valid is this: every sexual relationship should be based on taking care, not on the domain.

In the Canticle of Canticles, the protagonist is the woman. It is she who leads the desire, to seek, to speak. And in that poem we find more female faces, almost indicating the wealth and complexity of the female. It is a deeply bodily text, full of desire, beauty, passion. And he has no claim to norme or regular. It's just love. A love that seeks, which gives itself, that lets itself be found. Here too, tradition has seen the imprint of God in this human love.

Of course, religion - as Marx also said, and perhaps he was not wrong - was often used as a tool to keep the subjects good. There are ancient texts of moral theology that make you smile, like those who recommended to put glass paper in teenage gloves to avoid masturbation. Or others who believed more serious to masturbate than rape, because rape - at least - was "open to life". Understand how distorted these visions.

The story between Davide and Gionata, if read in parallel with that between Davide and Betsabea, reveals two opposite conceptions of Eros. In one case there is possession, domain, abuse. In the other there is tenderness, reciprocity, deep affection. We cannot project the modern idea of ​​homosexual relationship there, but we can grasp that there was a variety of affective bonds. And that what mattered was not the orientation, but the quality of the relationship.

Even the episode of the set of Bethany - as you said - is fully erotic. If we mean passion, sensuality, involvement, everything there is everything. A woman enters, dissolves her hair - which is forbidden in public - and performs a gesture of total love towards Jesus. And Jesus welcomes. It welcomes that gesture, that body, that perfume, that femininity without filters.

Jesus also loved like this, with passion. Not with detachment. Not with coldness. Christianity, on the other hand, has often let itself be influenced by philosophies that despised the body, such as neoplatonism or stoicism. And we have lost extraordinary wealth. Jesus touches, caresses, looks in the eyes, accompanies, embraces. It is an incarnate love.

Three things to close:

1. We help the new generations to rediscover the positive message of the Bible on sexuality. It is not a taboo, but a gift.
2. We free the Eros from the marginality to which we relegated it to Christian life. We cannot think of becoming saints ignoring our sexual body.
3. We recognize that to make good moral theology we must start from listening. Not given by abstract ideas, but from the concrete experiences of people. It is from there that every credible ethical reflection is born.

Thank you.

*Roberto Massaro, presbyter of the diocese of Conversano-Monopoli (Bari), achieved the license and doctorate in moral theology at the Alfonsian Academy of Rome and the master's degree in Philosophical Sciences at the University of Salento. Former rector of the episcopal seminary of his diocese is a professor of moral and bioethical theology at the Regina Apuliae theological institute of the Apulian theological faculty. Among his publications we remember: The ethics of the cure. A common ground for shared public ethics (Rome 2016); with P. Contini SmartLife. Identity and Relations in the time of the Network (2018); with G. Del Missier and P. Contini, For the possible good of the couple. Sexuality, ethical dilemmas and real life (2019); Can you live without eros? The erotic dimension of human action (2021); Can we still educate? Moral education and youth world (2024).

> The other interventions held at the "corner stones" meeting (Florence, April 5, 2025)