Intimacy

This book is about intimacy between friends. The sexuality, affectivity and intimacy aspects, particularly of celibate lives, require new understanding, choices, and grace-facilitated developments. Our intimacy with the Divine is related to our intimacy with fellow beings. In an age when love has so many different versions this book can throw light on the nature of true love and intimacy. The author tries to be logical with his subject when he says that the heart of existence is love and the heart of love is intimacy. God is love and intimacy and we, made in his image and likeness have been made for love and intimacy. Deep down every human being experiences a mighty longing for intimacy. The craving to be united with another is a craving to be remade by the other's love into our true self that cannot be discovered except in loving union with another. Teilhard de Chardin pictured this strange alchemy of love when he wrote: "Love differentiates as it unites." Felix Podimattam OFM Cap. Is Professor of Moral Theology at St.Francis College, Kottayam, Kerala. He did his doctorate with the Alphonsian Academy, Rome under the direction of Bernard Haring, MA in Political Science from the University of Mysore, MA in Systematic Theology from the Gregorian University, Rome and post-doctoral studies in Washington DC, USA. He has authored more than 45 books on Moral Theology and Spiritual Theology. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE LONELINESS 1. Nature of Loneliness 2. Kinds of Loneliness 3. Roots of Loneliness 4. Ways of Coping with Loneliness CHAPTER TWO INTIMACY IN GENERAL 1. Nature of Intimacy 2. Universal Quest for Intimacy 3. Primacy of Heterosexual Intimacy CHAPTER THREE INTIMACY IN MARRIAGE 1. Marital Love in General 2. Marital Coital Intimacy 3. Marital Non-Coital Intimacy 4. Paths to Marital Intimacy 5. Ways to Recharge Romance CHAPTER FOUR INTIMACY IN SINGLE LIFE 1. Romantic Love and Single Life 2. Religious Purpose of Sex 3. Chastity of Single People 4. Different Grades of Sexual Actuation 5. No Total Genital Sexuality in Single Life 6. What about Partial Genital Sexuality in Single Life 6.1. Non-Marital Sexual Pleasure Need Not Necessarily be Lust 6.2. Sensuality versus Seductiveness 6.3. Meaning of the Sixth Commandment 6.4. Essence of Chastity 6.5. Opinion of the Churches 6.6. Data of Scripture 6.7. Mind of Christ 132 6.8. Moral Aspects of Sexual Pleasure CHAPTER FIVE INTIMACY IN CONSECRATED CELIBACY 136 1. Consecrated Celibacy as a Mystery of Intimacy 2. Intimacy with God 137 3 .Intimacy with Friends 3.1 Heterosexual Friendship and Consecrated Celibacy 3.2 Consecrated Celibates Are Sexual Persons 3.3 Legitimacy of Expressions of Love in Consecrated Celibacy 4. Pastoral Reflections on Consecrated Celibate Intimacy 170 4.1 Danger of Denying Sexuality 4.2 Obstacles to Celibate Intimacy 4.3 Intimacy in My Life