Overview
"This book examines the celestial admissions policies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The twentieth century transformed standards remarkably. After nearly two thousand years of division, for example, the Roman Catholic Church admitted Jews into heaven in 1964. The Vatican now vigorously encourages Jews to take pride in their faith, even as the Vatican encourages homosexuals to feel ashamed of themselves. Although the Vatican has not explicitly condemned gays and lesbians to hell, the Holy See has led the world to think of hell as the natural resting place for this curiously unpopular group. No matter that gay people may be monogamous and otherwise model Catholics, the sex they have virtually disqualifies them from paradise." And so the way we worship apparently matters less to God than the way we make love. The diagnosis may not be limited to Roman Catholicism, for today Jewish, Protestant, and Muslim communities also struggle to decide what the next world holds for their sexual dissidents. Curiously, debates over where gay people belong now feed into debates over how much equality women deserve in the West's three major faith traditions.Synopsis
What does it take to get into heaven? If you're Roman Catholic, Portmann argues, the red-hot issue is sex.
Since the late 1980s, the Vatican has made great efforts to encourage Jews to celebrate their faith, yet continues to reject homosexual Catholics. Portmann, himself a Catholic, finds it striking that the Vatican says Jews can "get to heaven" by being Jewish but strongly implies that even monogamous gay and lesbian Catholics cannot. Portmann concludes that, in the Church's eyes, sexuality now trumps theology.
Focusing on Catholicism, Sex and Heaven also raises compelling questions about heaven in Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam. This original and powerful perspective is sure to startle and amaze.
Publishers Weekly
The Catholic Church's public image as a spoiler of fun in the bedroom is the subject of this pointed critique of the church's teachings on human sexuality. Portmann, an author (In Defense of Sin) and religion teacher at the University of Virginia, believes the church has made correct sexual behavior a kind of ticket to heaven. He disagrees with the price of admission, particularly when it comes to homosexuality, and likens the church's teachings on sexual purity to various strictures that have fallen by the wayside, such as those against lending money at interest and eating meat on Fridays. He also suggests-in a rather obtuse comparison-that since the church has changed its view of Jews and their salvation in recent years, now allowing for the possibility that they will be admitted to heaven, it should also consider lifting its ban on homosexual sex. Finally, he warns that the church has made its views on sex so pre-eminent as to risk losing its "salvific reach and transcendental purpose." Portmann supports his stance with numerous citations, but his case is weakened by the fact that he fails to deal directly with the church's many documents on human sexuality, which present sex in both an earthly and heavenly context. This trenchant study will appeal to those demanding changes in church teachings on human sexuality, but not to readers who see the Catholic view of sex as rooted in Christian orthodoxy. (Mar. 26) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
The Catholic Church's public image as a spoiler of fun in the bedroom is the subject of this pointed critique of the church's teachings on human sexuality. Portmann, an author (In Defense of Sin) and religion teacher at the University of Virginia, believes the church has made correct sexual behavior a kind of ticket to heaven. He disagrees with the price of admission, particularly when it comes to homosexuality, and likens the church's teachings on sexual purity to various strictures that have fallen by the wayside, such as those against lending money at interest and eating meat on Fridays. He also suggests-in a rather obtuse comparison-that since the church has changed its view of Jews and their salvation in recent years, now allowing for the possibility that they will be admitted to heaven, it should also consider lifting its ban on homosexual sex. Finally, he warns that the church has made its views on sex so pre-eminent as to risk losing its "salvific reach and transcendental purpose." Portmann supports his stance with numerous citations, but his case is weakened by the fact that he fails to deal directly with the church's many documents on human sexuality, which present sex in both an earthly and heavenly context. This trenchant study will appeal to those demanding changes in church teachings on human sexuality, but not to readers who see the Catholic view of sex as rooted in Christian orthodoxy. (Mar. 26) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.From the Publisher
"A fascinating and probing inquisition into the Catholic church's obsession with sex."--Conscience
"This trenchant study will appeal to those demanding changes in church teachings on human sexuality...."--Publishers Weekly
". . . there are very interesting and knowledgeable passages in this book and he has read widely in popular as well as scholarly texts."--The Tablet - The International Catholic Weekly
"Overall, the book is readable and passionate. Many readers will resonate with the author's pain. His self-revelation in the concluding chapter of why he was moved to write the book is a poignant testimony to what many who continue to fight battles for change from within the church likewise feel."--Catholic Books Review
". . . insightful, conscientious . . . Yet for all its analysis about the sex that gays are not supposed to have, Sex and Heaven is not a rant about individual rights denied or a condemnation of bigoted religious beliefs." --Southern Voice
"This book is knowledgeable, perceptive--and, surprise--well-written . . . This book delivers. . . All you wanted to know about Heaven and never dared to ask. . . Portmann subjects the inscrutable, the idea of Heaven, to strict and penetrating scrutiny. The result is like a trailer park after a tornado." --White Crane Journal
"Sex and Heaven is an exploration of the nature of morality and how religions, in particular he Roman Catholic Church, have focused on sex and sexual orientation to measure a soul's eligibility for admission into heaven. Portmann reminds us that the Church has already had to accept defeat on the issues of the morality of slavery and the position of our earth in the galaxy; now it must acknowledge and cleanse itself of the anti-Semitism and homophobia-'the ancient heterosexual dance'--at its core. Portmann is persuasive, compassionate and learned, and Sex and Heaven will change forever most readers' perceptions of heaven." --Elizabeth Abbott, author of A History of Celibacy and A History of Mistresses
"John Portmann's book has the great merit of going far beyond the themes of the sexual revolution and even of the gay and lesbian liberation movements, towards a wider consideration of the general meaning of sexuality for religion and for social morality. As the author shows very persuasively, all the sexual politics of the Christian churches, and also of lay Western societies, depends on the idea that a correct view of sex is the sole key for achieving salvation today. Portmann offers hope to those people interested in a richer personal spirituality, one which does not begin and end with sex."--Gianni Vattimo, professor of philosophy at the University of Turin, author of After Christianity and Belief, Socialist member of the European Parliament
"The Roman Catholic Church is in modern times the last great hope for the very paganism--that certain spiritualization of the flesh--that it has always ostensibly condemned. In John Portmann's analysis, the many sexual controversies in which the Church has embroiled itself, especially in the United States, have made modern Catholicism seem oddly like a fertility cult, albeit a singularly paranoid one. Paradoxically, we define religious and moral orthodoxy as an erotic discipline, a sexual panic scarcely distinguishable from sexual indulgence. Portmann offers us an informal, genial invitation to consider what is most new and challenging in recent scholarship on sex and the Church. He is entertaining, but also very well informed."--Ellis Hanson, professor of English at Cornell University, author of Decadence and Catholicism