Our better angels


The gay Catholic group Dignity has come under fire from some Catholic bloggers, including the Curt Jester , for having its annual Gay Pride Mass celebrated by two female priests. Much as I oppose the Roman Catholic restriction of its priesthood to those with Y chromosomes, I have to admit that it seems folly to believe that one is actually receiving a validly-administered Roman Catholic sacrament from someone who claims to be a priest yet is outside of the apostolic succession. (But perhaps these two "womanpriests," who apparently were ordained by "womanbishops," trace their ordination back to someone in the mainline ... I'm not familiar with the details.)

In any case, the Curt Jester took the occasion to accuse Dignity of hypocrisy for opposing the Church's teaching on homosexual acts while embracing its teaching about ministry to homosexual persons. First, quoting from Dignity USA's FAQ:

Neither Scripture nor Tradition nor natural law theory nor human science nor personal experience convincingly supports official Catholic teaching about the immorality of homogenital acts. Accordingly, and after much soul-searching, many gay and lesbian Catholics have formed consciences that differ from official Church teaching and have entered into homosexual relationships. In this respect they are exactly like the many married Catholic couples who cannot accept the official teaching on contraception.

Then the Curt Jester's comment:

Of course they like to quote from Church documents that rightly teach about how those with same-sex attraction are to be treated. So if a Catholic went against Church teaching and decided his conscience allowed him to treat homosexuals as an "object of violent malice in speech or in action" I doubt they would consider this a valid following of conscience that "differ from official Church teaching." The following of a conscience formed outside of the Church if it proves anything, proves too much.

I thought this line of argument was worth pondering. Is it true that if you embrace any principles, values, or precepts of an organization with which you disagree in other areas, you are left without a leg to stand on? In for a penny, in for a pound?

Only if you want to deny that some principles, values, and precepts can ever be held to be more fundamental than others. Dignity is claiming that the Church is staying true to itself in the teaching on the treatment of homosexual persons, but has lost its way in the teaching on homosexual acts. Specifically, the claim is that Christian teachings about love are more central than Christian teachings about sex.

Now, this can be disputed. But I think it's certainly a meaningful claim. If it's not the case that some teachings are more fundamental than others, I don't see how the Catholic church finds a mechanism for revising its teachings on adherents of other religions. The logic for the Vatican II documents proclaiming tolerance and promoting dialogue with those of other faiths, and decrying the parts of Church history that have produced persecution of Jews specifically, is that previous generations allowed what is peripheral to overwhelm what is central. Christian love and Christian hope should be the guide in the theology of religions, rather than dogma about the boundaries of the body of Christ and the sacramental processes by which grace is bestowed.

And of course we see in nearly all episodes of progress in social justice that people have made claims about what is central and what is peripheral, seeking to correct teaching on the latter in accordance with the former. Christian teaching about slavery, to take a famous example, turned 180 degrees in the first half of the nineteenth century in most of the world under the pressure of just this kind of selectivity. While establishment Christians argued that the explicit example of the patriarchs, the return of Philemon to his owner, and Paul's admonition that slaves should obey their masters, not to mention long-standing tradition about the relationship of the races, should determine the Christian position on slavery, reform-minded Christians sought to turn attention toward the example of Jesus and the value of universal love. Applying such love as widely as possible is simply the most important feature of Christianity, and it is incompatible with the ownership of human beings.

And when Martin Luther King claimed the authority of the Constitution, the Declaration, the Emancipation Proclamation, and many other sacred American documents in his argument for civil rights for blacks, was he being hypocritical because he failed to treat the segregation statutes (or the regulations regarding parade permits and lawful assembly) with the same deference? No -- he argued that the latter were not in harmony with the former. And the way to resolve the inconsistency is to reform them in accordance with the central principles of American democracy -- freedom, equal rights, representation in government, and so forth -- as set out in the documents he cites with approval.

I happen to agree with Dignity that the Christian teaching on love should be at the heart of the Christian conscience, and that whatever the position on sexual behavior, it is secondary. But even if I did not, I'd recognize that they are making a self-consistent and meaningful claim, one that is in no way negated by their selectivity.

The Curt Jester suggests that in order to be consistent, Dignity should respect the conscience of those who respond with violence or malice to homosexual persons -- but this is clearly nonsense even without the attempted reductio ad absurdum. Non-malevolence is so obviously central to Christian teaching that we suspect any conscience that fails to be formed in this direction of failing to be Christian at all. We do not have the same response, I'll wager, to those whose conscience informs them differently than Church teaching prescribes about what sex acts are permissible in a loving adult relationship, or about the use of contraception, or about the role of women in the Church, or about whether abortion should be safe and legal. The Church argues that its positions on these matters are reflective of the core of Christian teaching and belief; others argue that the Church is mistaken in this claim, and seek to call on those core principles to make their point.

No matter what side you're on, I hope it's clear that no cause like theirs is an all-or-nothing proposition. Indeed, there's little hope for progress or reform in any direction if we can't embrace (what we take to be) the fundamental values of our institutions, along with specific acts that reflect them, while seeking to change (what we take to be) secondary principles and acts to bring them into the embrace of our beloved community's better angels.

Posted: Mon - June 11, 2007 at 07:32 PM         |

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