US Bishops on Ministry to Gays

There’s a memorable poem by Paul Durcan that goes something like this:

.

“At the close of their October meeting in Maynooth today,

“The Irish Bishops decreed that colour photography would henceforth be forbidden.

“‘Life’, their Lordships declared, ‘is essentially a matter of black and white.

‘Colour photography obscures this basic fact.’”

.

These lines floated into my mind as I read the US Bishops’ recent documents concerning the legitimate and illegitimate expressions of love. Any solemn expression of the teaching mission of the episcopate must have something of value in it, and indeed the bishops’ document on ministry to gays does signal a careful, responsible respect for love and for life. However, it is “fatally flawed”, as one observer has commented, by its assessment of homosexual sexual orientation itself. Apart from that, faced with the phenomenon of love between husband and wife, in one document, and between two persons of the same sex, in the other document, the bishops focus so much on possible behavior they disapprove of – contraception and homosexual relations – that they risk coming across as destructive and even cynical in their attitude to love in practice.  Now of course the Bishops’ explicit target is not love, but what neocaths call “condomistic” and “sodomitical” sexual acts. Nonetheless, in their excessive worry about the proliferation of such acts their message comes across as expressing a suspicion of love itself – that is, human sexual love between two sexual human beings.

.

Consider my friends Olivier and Marco, who having lived together for ten years, “tied the knot” in a civil ceremony in Paris this spring, or my friends John and Peter who did the same in London this September. To both couples I sent my warmest congratulations, admiring and envying their ability to create loving relationships, which have manifestly been a blessing for them and for all who know them. More and more, such joyful occasions are becoming a normal part of life, and civilized people know how to respond appropriately, just as they would to a wedding or to the birth of a child.

.

The bishops disapprove of this response. If one of these couples asked a priest for a blessing, in private, the bishops would presumably say that this request should be turned down, as collusion in evil. Their document offers no encouragement to Olivier and Marco, John and Peter, no basis for the least recognition of their love or their achievement and not even a single gracious pastoral word of respect for their freedom of conscience.

.

Refusal of recognition is a way of dehumanizing the other. It is the foundation of the abuse of children, deprived of parental love and understanding. The episcopal document can be read as implying something even worse than refusal of human recognition. It appears to be speaking words of firm condemnation – certainly that is the only part of the document that is likely to be heard, and to be trumpeted and broadcast by the neocaths. The bishops have preempted any attempt to vindicate the human qualities of these couples and their love by measuring them against a dogmatic yardstick. And the yardstick is a rather crude one, consisting in repetition of two or three mantras: homosexuality is disordered, homosexual acts are immoral, there cannot be anything like gay marriage.

.

In practice, does this not amount to a declaration of war on love?

.

One can understand the bishops’ nervousness about “gay marriage”. While it can be argued that gay couples share analogically in some of the blessings of marriage, and while laws to protect their civil liberty to spend their lives together should be welcomed, it may well be going too far, too fast, to call such unions “marriage”. In vitro fertilization of lesbian mothers by male donors is another very questionable development. Adoption by same-sex couples should be practiced only when suitable heterosexual married couples are not available. One’s conservative instincts revolt against many things that look like unwise social engineering.

.

Had the bishops opened a debate on these issues their document might have enjoyed a warm reception. As it is, the only comes from the vocal neocath minority (notably John Heard and Amy Welborn; the comments elicited by the latter on her website should give pause to bishops and priests who have cultivated this homophobic culture). Of course the more extreme Catholic fringe thinks that the bishops’ routine denunciation of homophobic violence is a sell-out (http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idarticle=6481). There is a wacky group calling itself the Catholic Medical Association who have been the most vocal in pushing the bishops into the strange psychology now advanced: http://www.bettnet.com/blog/index.php/comments/us_bishops_homosexuality_statement_fatally_flawed. It seems that the bishops takes such crank organizations seriously. Meanwhile, mainstream Catholics, psychiatrists and gay groups have panned the document, and the ordinary clergy have expressed no interest.

.

The NCR zoomed in on the fatal flaw – the incorrect account of homosexual orientation – in their editorial of Nov 24: “That science and human experience generally say otherwise is of little concern, apparently, though the bishops were clear they weren’t suggesting that homosexuals are required to change. This time, too, the bishops, while acknowledging that those with homosexual tendencies should seek supportive friendships, advise homosexuals to be quiet about their inclinations in church... It is difficult to figure out how to approach these documents. They are products of some realm so removed from the real lives of the faithful one has to wonder why any group of busy men administering a church would bother. They ignore science, human experience and the groups they attempt to characterize. The documents are not only embarrassing but insulting and degrading to those the bishops are charged to lead. The saddest thing is that the valuable insights the bishops have into the deficiencies and influences of the wider culture get buried.”

.

Jeff Mirus, who is one of the phalanx of bloggers I call neocaths, has saluted the document as “a model of Catholic clarity, a significant step forward from so many statements on so many topics which have profoundly troubled faithful Catholics over the past thirty years. Unlike the highly controversial and doctrinally weak Always Our Children statement, issued by the Administrative Committee in 1997, the 2006 guidelines provide all that is best in Catholic tradition, combining doctrinal precision and pastoral sensitivity in the context of a very clear presentation of human sexuality in the light of natural law.” Au contraire, Always Our Children was distinguished by a warm pastoral tone. The new document comes across as a cold bureaucratic exercise, even as designed to be ignored. Its authors must have felt hemmed in by Vatican pressures. A sign that the document lacks pastoral value is the fact that no gays or lesbians were consulted. A non-empirical document can hardly be praised for pastoral sensitivity. Contradictorily, the document urges pastors to listen to the experiences and needs of gay people – a contradiction arising no doubt from the fact that the document was put together by a committee.

.

The stress on doctrinal clarity or doctrinal purity in documents on sex is probably misguided. Sexuality and sexual ethics are a matter of prudence and wisdom, generosity and love – human and moral virtues, not doctrinal refinements. A priori dogmatic maps of sexuality  tend to foreclose reception of empirical information coming from the biological and human sciences and tend to make dialogue with real flesh and blood human beings impossible.

.

Here are the subtitles in the first section, entitled “General Principles”:

.

1. Respecting Human Dignity

.

Its well-meaning remarks about respecting gays notwithstanding, the document fails to respect the dignity of gays, in that it refuses to dialogue with them and seeks to muzzle their voices (for the silencing techniques, see http://astro.temple.edu/~arcc/gramick.htm). Nor is there any evidence that the bishops have sustained any serious dialogue with the parents of gays, on whom untold suffering has been inflicted by their teachings. Here is what one such parent wrote:

.

The Catholic bishops’ latest regressive statement on homosexuality is a sad commentary. It betrays unprecedented levels of institutionalized self-rejection. It is no secret to Catholics or non-Catholics that significant numbers of Catholic priests, bishops and beyond are homosexual persons. Their persistent inability to fundamentally love themselves lies at the heart of their twisted policies regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) persons. But we will not allow their problem to become our problem. We Catholic families of well-adjusted, functional, out-of-the-closet GLBT adult children and grandchildren reject out of hand the bishops’ notion that any human person is automatically called to celibacy and silence by virtue of his or her sexual orientation. We know from real-life experience that homosexuality is a normal variation of the God-given gift of human sexuality. It is a gift that our adult children are called to express lovingly and responsibly. (Georgia Mueller, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Nov. 17)

.

2. The Place of Sexuality in God’s Plan

.

The thesis that homosexuality has no place in God’s plan is redolent of the heresy of Manicheanism: “they are not well in their wits to whom anything that Thou has created is displeasing” (Augustine). “Always Our Children” more wisely and humanely spoke of sexuality as a divine gift, with specific application to the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians. “The purpose of sexual desire is the draw man and woman together in the bond of marriage” say the present bishops, with the apparent implication that the psychosexual affectivity of gays and lesbians has no purpose.

.

3. Homosexual Acts Cannot Fulfill the Natural Ends of Human Sexuality

.

They have indeed no procreative purpose, but they can play a unitive role, which is one of the natural ends of human sexuality; consultation with non-self-hating gays and lesbians would have shed light on this; meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that the procreative end cannot be fulfilled by many heterosexual acts either. When the bishops report St. Paul’s notion that homosexual acts arise from idolatry – omitting to mention that he also claims that homosexual desire itself arises from idolatry – the bishops leave natural law reasoning behind and come close to biblical fundamentalism (following the regrettable lead of Persona Humana 1975, which also quotes the Pauline text).

.

4. Homosexual Inclination Is Not Itself a Sin

.

Prima facie, this statement is as offensive as saying that being black or being born Jewish is not itself a sin. To equate the entire sexuality of gays and lesbians with what in heterosexuals is disordered concupiscence, sexual desire not subordinated to love, is “about as bad as it gets” in terms of devaluing another human being. Even sublimation of sexuality in a loving relationship is not countenanced in this text. “Persons with homosexual inclinations” are cursed with an evil disposition, for which however they cannot be blamed since they did not choose it. The bishops defend church teaching against a straw-man misinterpretation, the idea that it implies that everything about gays and lesbians is disordered – no, they say, not everything, just their sexuality is disordered. That is exactly like saying that not everything about blacks is disordered, just their race. The bishops deny that there is any validity in the parallel between gays/lesbians and blacks of Jews – but fail to give any convincing evidence against it.

.

5. Therapy for Homosexual Inclinations?

.

The bishops flout mainstream psychological orthodoxy by given equal credibility to flaky and abusive movements like NARTH and the ex-gay cults; as Michael Bayly notes, the bizarre phrase “same-sex attraction disorder” is taken over from NARTH by the group “Courage”, a sort of Alcoholics Anonymous for “sufferers from SSA disorder”; and “Courage” is the only association for Catholic gays to which the US bishops have given their approval (and the group loudest in praise of the present document). See http://thewildreed.blogspot.com/2006/10/vatican-stance-on-gay-priests-signals.html.

.

It should be noted that in speaking of objective disorderedness the bishops are not remaining on a transcendental metaphysical level, but are descending to the empirical level of human psychology, as their discussion of “therapy” shows. They are in direct contradiction to majority psychological opinion not only in the USA but in all developed countries. They may subscribe to the christianist conspiracy theory that the APA’s removal of homosexuality from the list of mental disorders was in response to political lobbying and had no scientific justification. In thus pooh-poohing psychiatric orthodoxy the bishops may be charging toward a contemporary equivalent of the Galileo affair.

.

Bruce Williams OP argues that “objective disorder” refers only to homosexual concupiscence, the disordered desire for certain sexual acts; but the bishops clearly speak of the homosexual orientation as such as disordered, and contemplate the possibility of therapy not for concupiscence but for homosexuality as such.

.

The bishops speak of “persons with a homosexual inclination or tendency” – it is doubtful if any such persons exist. There are persons with a homosexual orientation in exactly the same sense as there are persons with a heterosexual orientation. There are also bisexual persons, who are often considered to be primarily of one orientation or the other. The failure of the bishops to advert to orientation (in contrast to Persona Humana) puts their discussion at a distance from the empirical realities from the start.

.

The human texture of affection and sexuality, whether hetero- or homosexual does not lend itself to this kind of bureaucratic handling. At no point does the document convincingly show insight into the lives of normal gays and lesbians.

.

6. Necessity for Training in Virtue

.

You cannot train people unless you attempt to understand them; in any case it is animals who are trained, people are educated. You cannot educate anyone if you begin by muzzling them and misinforming them.

.

7. Necessity of Friendship and Community

.

If the bishops recognized homophile friendship as a positive thing, that would be in accord with the best Catholic tradition. They do grudgingly admit this, in the most unattractive language: “A homosexual person can have an abiding relationship with another homosexual [sic] without genital sexual expression.” But the novel doctrine that homosexual orientation is objectively disordered has queered the pitch on them here.

.

8. Growth in Holiness

.

Holiness based on self-hatred and a manichean vision of sex has produced its fruits for all to see in an abusive clerical culture. Many gays and lesbians could give church preachers lessons on the meaning of human friendship; they could also give them lessons on the nature of “friendship with God.”

.

9. Cultural Obstacles

.

There are blessings as well as banes in modern culture; but a church that has given up on the prophetic task of reading the signs of the times cannot discern where the blessings lie. Scattershot denunciation of relativism, denial of objective norms and hedonism is a poor substitute for dialogue with gays and listening to their moral witness. Let it not be forgotten that bishops throughout history have been the principal agents of having gays executed or imprisoned and have never stood for their most basic human or civil rights. To fail to learn the lesson or repentance and modesty such a devastating track record implies is to invite further scandals.

.

When the bishops indulge in biblical fundamentalism, I wonder do they know their bedfellows? They should look at the responses generated by the following utterance of Rev. Oliver Thomas in “USA Today”  (http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/when_religion_l.html#23):

.

“The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you’re powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it’s likely to be.”

.

The responses were, in fact, murderous, for the Bible, in fact, advocates the murder of gays. The bishops need theological advice on the hermeneutics of Scripture. Note that one cannot have serious theology without open discussion.

.

The long string of pastoral recommendations are not accompanied by an account of what the church is already actually doing. Reaction from those who have actually seen ministry to gays and lesbians in action, and are not just sketching notional possibilities in the manner of George Bush’s plans for reforming Iraq, are scathing: http://www.thetaskforce.org/media/release.cfm?releaseID=991. Practical suggestions for improvement of ongoing activities would make sense, but in reality the relation between mother church and her gay/lesbian children is now so riddled with obscurantism and double-talk that the pastoral recommendations can only be regarded as more bureaucratic posturing, like recommendations on getting Catholics to stop using artificial contraception – a matter that the laity have taken into their own hands.

.

The neocaths who are pushing bishops to issue such documents and who rave and drool over them when they are at last published should remember that the cultivation of error can have deadly effects. The Church may stand responsible for millions of deaths from the AIDS epidemic, as one of the main reasons that many people have not used condoms is the moral pressure of the encyclical Humanae Vitae combined with the objective collusion between the Church and retrograde elements in African sexual culture (as well as its explicit alliances with Muslim fundamentalism on issues of reproduction, sexual ethics and blocking of same-sex civil unions.) Now the Vatican is “thinking” about allowing the use of condoms by bona fide married couples – http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,1954759,00.html. Perhaps it is time for the bishops to cease obsessing about Romans 1 and start reflecting anew on Matthew 23.

.

While the present document does not honor the teaching office of the Bishops, this should not be used to discredit their worthier utterances. Here is what they say on torture:

.

“Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear. It degrades everyone involved – policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation’s most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable. Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now – without exceptions”.

.

There is only one problem with this document – it is only 79 words long, where 79 pages are required.

.

I wonder could this constant discussion of “homosexuality” be an unconscious strategy of the churches to avoid having to face more painful matters? The last four years have inflicted terrible agony on the people of Iraq and terrible guilt on all the nations involved in the US/UK led misadventure (including Ireland and Japan). Where is the healing, illuminating, united Christian voice on this?

.

I think it is time for the leaders of all churches to lead their people in “preempting” the judgment by donning sackloth and ashes, in mourning and repentance, as in ancient Israel.

.

After the dust of this horrible affair has settled all will need the balm of forgiveness – Iraqis for Iraqis, Iraqis for their Western false friends, Palestinians for Israelis and vice versa. We need now to accept the posture of suppliants for forgiveness – forgiveness from those we have injured, those we have tortured or allowed to be tortured (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1970086,00.html), and forgiveness from the Lord. That would be an infinitely more valuable sign of Christian witness and leadership than all this wrangling about sexual ethics.

.

Joseph S. O'Leary

Comments

[RC Fr. Andy]

Well, I disagree with this entire post. I find the document clear, persuasive and, as opposed to much of what filters down from USCCB, useful for parish ministry. I see how you reached your conclusions, though. In your mind it is Catholic doctrine which needs to be converted by the authoritative voice of practicing homosexuals. Certainly, you understand, we "neocaths" believe the reverse is what's needed.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Fr Andy: we have two authorities, two opposing claims; what is needed, then, is dialogue.

[RC Fr. Andy]

Yes, dialogue is absolutely necessary. However, to expect the hierarchy to be silent on the issues while such dialogue continues is unrealistic. The dialogue will continue, hopefully, until Our Lord returns. In the meantime, the Bishops have a duty to be shepherds AND teachers.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Yes, the dialogue is continuing, though the bishops do not advert to it explicitly in their document. I agree, however, with the woman who said that the document, within this wide dialogical context, is a regressive step, whereas "Always Our Children" was a progressive step. In dialogical processes I suppose that progressive steps count for more in the long run than regressive ones? When we see bishops pawning their authority to such freakish groups as NARTH we must interpret that as a moment of defensiveness or panic and look forward to seeing wiser counsels prevail.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

"In your mind it is Catholic doctrine which needs to be converted by the authoritative voice of practicing homosexuals."

This is not quite accurate. The voices calling for a development in Catholic teaching and pastoral practice on this front include also those of moral theologians, psychologists, and the relatives of gays and lesbians. Moreover, some of the upholders of alleged biblical condemnation of "homosexuality" are themselves sexually active gays, e. g. Ted Haggard. (Indeed it might be the case that most of those calling for development are not gay at all and that most of those resisting it are closet gays!)

[Stefan]

Thanks for the brilliant post. How long will it take the Catholic Church to find openess and honesty in her approach to this part of Gods creation ? 1000 years or - probably too optimistic - 500 years ? When will the relativistic teaching based on some Bible verses end?

[Mark]

Wonderful post.

I wonder how the bishops reflections on the wantingness of homosexual acts affects their judgments about the intimacies of heterosexual marriage.

This is silly, but I nevertheless think the posing of questions such as these is here relevant:

1. Is there something wrong, say, with a husband intending a clitoral and/or vaginal orgasm for his wife that does not happen concurrently with vaginal penetration by his penis?

2. Is there something wrong with the husband's use of a hand/dido/vibrator to stimulate the his wife's clitoris or anal cavity, while he is simultaneously penetrating her vagina with his penis, intending a full openness to the unitive and procreative goods of marriage?

Is there something wrong with anal, oral and/or manual stimulation as a foreplay or integral activity of a whole prolonged intimate experience that intends to temporally conclude with an unfettered seminal discharge during vaginal penetration?

[Mark]

The silliness continues:

4. If the conjugal couple knows that the husband has a relatively short refactory period, is there something wrong with the wife's manual or oral stimulation of her husband to sexual climax, in a whole intimacy experience that will as one part or as a temporal conclusion include vaginal penetration by penis, with a "full openness" to unity and procreation?