The new head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is an Argentine archbishop who wrote a book advising couples to kiss during sexual intercourse if they wanted to stop their relationships from growing cold.
Pope Francis announced on Saturday that Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, 60, his longtime personal theologian and ghostwriter, is the prefect of the Vatican department that maintains orthodoxy in Church teaching and doctrine.
The Archbishop of La Plata succeeds Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ, 79, who has been prefect of the dicastery since 2017, and will inevitably be made a cardinal.
In his native Argentina, Archbishop Fernández is controversial because of his writings on sexuality and most notably because of the 1995 book Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing, written to help readers to “kiss better” and to “motivate you to release the best of yourself in a kiss”.
He tells couples that the kiss is “the thermometer of love”, and warns them that “love is in danger” when they have sexual intercourse without kissing and only “to relieve the instinct and satisfy a need”.
“If there are no true kisses — deep, tender, and frequent — it is because love no longer exists or is dying, wounded,” he wrote.
“A true kiss shows that the other is sacred to me. But when sex is out of control, and we want more — more pleasure, more intensity — the other is transformed into a sponge which we want to squeeze out totally, until the last drop.
“And so they start losing the magic, the veneration, the adoration. And the clearest sign of the death of love is that those tremulous kisses disappear … If those slow, deliberate, tremulous kisses are lacking, it can indicate that love has ceased to be a meeting of two who admire each other, contemplate each other, adore each other, and they have become the sum of two egoists who mutually use each other to relieve their primary needs and to calm their nerves.”
He wrote: “A couple with a lot of sex, a lot of sexual satisfaction, but few kisses as persons, or with kisses that don’t say anything, with each sexual union, the tomb of love; they start creating routine, tiredness, and boredom, until one of the two finds something more human, an environment more beautiful, another love in earnest, and the story is ended.”
In his efforts to help couples retain the fervour of their early passion, Fernández also offers advice on how to kiss well, and he warns them of the “true enemies of the kiss” that must be avoided, such as bad breath.
Such a problem, he says, can be solved “by taking precautions by brushing one’s teeth and chewing a few coffee beans, or rinsing with baking soda; and if it is more serious and persistent it is solved by visiting the dentist or checking the digestive system”.
He continues: “It can also be the perfume that one of the two uses; or an annoying smell that is solved by showering more often, or by changing clothes more often.
“It can be the annoying moustache, which could be trimmed a little more so that you do not have to avoid it so much.
“It can also be the position of the body, and between the two they could discover what the most comfortable position is for them both. And it can also be the manner of kissing, that for one of the two does not please him so much.
“There are women who prefer a slow and delicate kiss, but their partner puts too much motion and speed into it. And it also happens that one of the two is very tense and presses his lips too hard. He releases his tensions, but she feels like she is being drilled in the mouth.
“All these things, which seem very superficial, are just examples of something very concrete and very important: the long apprenticeship of love; the long path that leads to a true kiss; a path consisting of respect, delicacy, passion, and realism.”
In the 26-page book, Fernández is also conscious that too much kissing can result in couples feeling “almost nothing” and suggest that they instead attempt to grow in intimacy by shared activities and meals.
The book mentions “Jesus” on just one occasion, “Christ” on six occasions, “God” 28 times and “sex” a total of 13 times.
In a letter welcoming Archbishop Fernández to his new position, Pope Francis complained that the dicastery had at times pursued “doctrinal errors” over “promoting theological knowledge” and said: “What I expect from you is certainly something very different.”
The Holy Father said: “I ask you as prefect to dedicate your personal commitment in a more direct way to the main purpose of the dicastery, which is ‘guarding the faith’.”
He said the dicastery “should express that the Church ‘encourages the charism of theologians and their theological research efforts’ as long as ‘they are not content with a desk theology,’ with ‘a cold, hard logic that seeks to dominate everything.’ It will always be true that reality is superior to the idea.”
Archbishop Fernández is a prolific theological writer who drafted Evangelii Gaudium, the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis. He was also heavily involved in the 2014 and 2105 synods on the family later in the drafting of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s 2016 apostolic exhortation on love in the family.
Although the document was controversial for its ambiguous position on Communion for divorced and remarried couples, it was also unusual for its sexual candour.
It described erotic sex between married couples as a “gift from God”, and declared that the “pursuit of pleasure” in the bedroom deepened the relationships of spouses and made them feel that their lives were turning out “good and happy”.
Erotic love was a “specifically human manifestation of sexuality”, the document said, adding that through their sex lives married couples learned to understand the meaning of their bodies as a gift to each other.
Couples were encouraged to welcome “with sincere and joyful gratitude the physical expressions of love found in a caress, an embrace, a kiss and sexual union”.
“In no way … can we consider the erotic dimension of love simply as a permissible evil or a burden to be tolerated for the good of the family. Rather, it must be seen as gift from God that enriches the relationship of the spouses.”
From 2008 to 2009, Archbishop Fernández served as the dean of the faculty of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and as the president of the Argentine Theological Society.
As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Franics attempted to promote him in 2009 as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.
Fernández was unable to take the oath of office for two years, however, following objections to his appointment from Vatican officials who expressed concerns about the orthodoxy of some of his scholarship.
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