What is 'mere' sex anyway?

I hear that Pope Benedict XVI is to issue an encyclical on erotic love.
As the bishop said to the actress, I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t waaaaiiiitttt. After all, he is an experienced practitioner in the field, a man who knows first-hand what erotic love is all about.
In fact, we are told that he is not the sole author of this document. Apparently he wrote only the first half himself, the second section being inherited from Pope John Paul, who also had plenty to say on the subject. Well, that’s two experts who are involved then.
But, wait, there’s more. No doubt also drawing on a vast reservoir of direct experience, various cardinals and Vatican departments have contributed a series of additions, deletions and corrections to the document. Ergo, it’s just gotta be perfectly, magnificently, unimpeachably right in every flawless respect! Sure, there’s a whole goddam think tank of the best minds in the Holy Sea behind it…
I know, I know. I’m labouring the point. I’m being disrespectful. But it really does seem preposterous to me that a cabal of celibates could presume to lecture us all, on something that they themselves are expressly forbidden from experiencing. The fact is that, while these guys may know plenty about caring and sharing and all of that palaver, and good luck to them on that score, they know absolutely nothing about erotic love. Zilch. But apparently that’s no hindrance to taking a position.
Thus, the Pope told pilgrims in the Vatican audience hall last week that erotic love risked being “degraded to mere sex, or merchandise, if it did not have a balancing component of spiritual or divine love.” Now there is nothing new in this suggestion, nothing new at all. It points towards the same old notion that the various churches and religions, or the majority of them anyway, have been peddling for years, that the sacrament of matrimony or its equivalent is necessary to provide the agape (the divine or unconditional love) that validates eros (erotic or sexual love) – and therefore that sex outside marriage is inferior and sinful.
But this ‘teaser’ for the encyclical got me thinking about this question: what is ‘mere sex’? Or to put it another way, why is sex described as ‘mere’ by the Pope? Well, as someone who has been an active and regular participant for at least a few years now, I can say that I have never in all my rambles or preambles experienced ‘mere’ sex.
Underlying this phrase is an anti-sex prejudice, pure and simple. The implication is that it is impossible for two people who have never met before to come together and share a night of sex that is infused with the tenderest feelings of love, appreciation and respect for one another. But this is not true. In fact I believe that the 'impossible' happens all the time – that love and respect can be present, on a very real and emotional level in a first, and even an only, sexual encounter.
Which is not to say that sex, mere or otherwise, is always saturated with feelings of love and respect. It depends entirely on the individuals involved. It depends on how open each one of us, who engages in an act of sexual intimacy, is to the vulnerability and humanity of his or her partner. It depends not on whether this is the first time we make love with a particular person, or the last, but on the empathy and feeling we bring to that engagement. It depends on how much we think of the other person, how considerate we are of their needs, how completely we give ourselves to the exchange, how much we love their very mortality, their flesh, their skin – and so on. There are no rules. We can achieve a state of sexual grace anywhere, at any time, with anyone, if we are fortunate enough to find ourselves in good and loving hands. Even, of course (and this doesn’t go without saying!), as often happens, with people to whom we might just happen to be married…
It is equally true, however, that sex within marriage is often crucially lacking in everything that might make it more than what the Pope describes as ‘mere’ sex. In other words, marriage has nothing to do with whether an act of sex is also an act of love – or not. Most people who have lived out there in the real world know that, but it does no harm to repeat it every now and then all the same. Just so the Pope doesn’t confuse things…