Foreword
It's been a grim century, so far. But even with all the threats of terrorism and war, it's had its lighter moments. One of the funniest was the publication in 2002 of a textbook on reproductive behaviour in non-human animals, titled Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.
Should have been a best-seller with a title like that, you might think. In fact, "Dr Tatiana" barely made it to the shelves of bookstores in Australia.
I had to order my copy from Britain. When it arrived, the front-page centred on a letter allegedly sent to the author by a member of the animal kingdom. It read:
"My name's Twiggy, and I'm a stick insect. It's with great embarrassment that I write to you while copulating, but my mate and I have been copulating for ten weeks already. I'm bored out of my skull, yet he shows no signs of flagging. He says because he’s madly in love with me, but I think he's just plain mad. How can I get him to quit?" Signed "Sick of Sex in India."
The recipient of this letter, "Dr Tatiana", was in reality also its author, and the author of the book. Biologist and science journalist Olivia Judson hit on the humorous device of pretending to be a magazine "agony aunt" to help her human readers explore and explain the diversity and purposes in sexual behaviour in the world of beasts, birds and non-human species generally.
Regardless of your beliefs about creation, evolution or sexual morality, the picture it presents of sexuality in animals is unarguable in one overriding way. I Throughout all non-human creation, sex is linked with the generation of new life
Reproduction. The passing on of genes. Even with the huge diversity in sexual antics engaged in by creatures as different as the three-spined stickleback, or the stick insect from India, the end objective of sex in the millions of species of life that inhabit this planet is the creation of new life.
Humans are a little different, some people might argue. After all, for thousands of years, humans have regarded themselves as more than mere animals - as creatures of spirit, in fact.
And sex in humans clearly has an affective dimension, as well as a reproductive one. Sex in humans "strengthens the bonds" between man and wife, doesn't it?
Obviously, it can. But one part of the human race, the Catholic Church, has consistently taught that strengthening the affective bonds between man and wife is not all that sex is designed to do.
It's also designed for the generation of new life. These two purposes, affection and reproduction, should not be artificially separated from each other, even if that can easily be achieved - which these days, it patently can.
To some of its critics, the Catholic Church has placed itself beyond the bounds of reason by taking this two-fold view of sex. However, the evidence from biological science suggests that the opposite is the case. By insisting that sex in humans is linked inextricably with life, not through some artificial decree but by the inbuilt design of the human species, the Catholic Church is insisting on what is, patently, a biological reality.
And the reverse is also true. Those who suggest that the Catholic Church is at odds with reality through its anti-contraceptive teaching are themselves, indeed, sharply at odds with the biological - that is, the physical - nature of the human beast.
Terms like the one I've just used, "the human beast," are problematic for many people, of course. Many of us - even, or perhaps especially, the most educated and "refined" among us - do not like to think of ourselves as in any sense "animals."
The great 20th century author C.S. Lewis took a different view.
In his classic anthropological work The Screwtape Letters, Lewis imagined a dialogue - again in the form of letters - between a junior "devil" and a senior one. Their endlessly fertile topic was: what is the best way to corrupt a human being?
The senior demon, Screwtape, explains at one point that the I body in humans is not to be seen as merely an irrelevant encumbrance to their spirit.
In fact, the body is a key feature of the whole design of the human creature, put there deliberately by God the Creator (referred to sneeringly, throughout The Screwtape Letters, as "the Enemy") with the ultimate intention of enabling humans themselves to become like God, through the exercise of their own free choice.
The idea of a creature that is at once both spirit and flesh is not only deeply distasteful to the pure spirits of these fallen angels.
It is also absolutely unacceptable. "Humans are amphibians, half spirit and half animal," Screwtape explains to the junior devil.
"The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of it' things that determined Our Father [i.e Satan] to withdraw his support from Him."
Devils and amphibians aside, the purpose in Christopher West's book is to explain the teachings of the Catholic Church in relation to both sex and the human body.
West reveals, in his own words, the lesser-known "why's" behind the better-known "what's" of the Catholic Church's teachings about sex. To do this, he uses two important tools.
First, as a young, contemporary married man he is well aware of the issues and concerns that today's society feels in relation to the sometimes fraught issue of sex.
Second, as a graduate and now a teacher with the international John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and the Family, he draws on the most up-to-date theological insights available to the Catholic Church in the area of teaching about sex.
Christopher's book comes at a good time. Unlike the stick insect from India, most of us are far from "bored out of our skulls" with the topic of sex.
But there's no doubt that for many young people, the absence of clear and intelligible explanations of the "spiritual" side of sex - and why things go so wrong when our bodies are misused - has caused a lot of sadness and despair.
Christopher West is no agony aunt. But as this book shows, he wants to help the many of us who have difficult questions in this area.
Paul Gray, February 2003