The Opal and the Pearl

With seven billion human beings on one planet, Nark Patrick Hederman believes we need a new ethics guiding us in our way of relating to one another sexually. Picking up on Irish president Michael D. Higgins' call for a new Irish ethics, Glenstal monk Mark Patrick Hederman in his latest book, The Opal and the Pearl, examines sexuality in the lives and writings of James Joyce, Iris Murdoch, and W B Yeats, and delivers an alarming critique of the Catholic Church's 'monosexual' stance. The message of artists has been consistent: 'we cannot be reduced to any formula. We have to accept the blood-and-guts reality of what we are. We need to be human, fully human and any ethics must provide for us as such.' Hederman critiques Catholic teaching on sex and stresses the need for an ethics of sexual behaviour outside the very specific and particular demands of heterosexual marriage. 'Now that we have legislated gay marriage and accepted the fact that sexuality does happen for reasons other than procreation; now that we also recognize that some of the most heinous sexual crimes have been perpetrated within the "sanctity" of marriage; it is surely time to take a more comprehensive approach to the ethics of sexual behaviour.' To be read with care and attention, and some caution.

Columba Press, 2016, ISBN 978-1782183068, 224pp.