French Bishops and Gay Marriage

The French Bishops are currently firing up a campaign against the forthcoming legislation on gay marriage. They are calling for a thorough debate of the issues, which indeed would be a salutary thing. But they are not calling for open discussion. Rather a managed debate among Catholics takes the form of a catechesis or a provision of pastoral guidelines in which the basic position taken by the bishops cannot be put in question and in which gay or dissident voices are not heard. 

The bishops may come to regret their call for a debate, for it has inspired some responses in the wide open field of democratic discussion. These the bishops regard as the pressure of a shrill lobby.

A good contribution was made in Le Monde on 6 November 2012 by Professors William Marx and Gilles Philippe, who simply list various positions taken by the bishops and by the Vatican on gay rights issues. They show clearly the bishops are committed to positions that go far beyond their current objection to gay marriage. In 1991 the bishops said that a society the ¨claims to recognize homosexuality as something normal" is "sick". "At best, in the ideal world of which the church dreams, homosexuals, condemned to continence, would never declare themselves publicly and would live in the most total solitude and the most complete mendacity".

The two professors correctly remark that the bishops appeal to democracy when it suits them but have no intention of practicing it in their own sphere.

Among the weapons of the rightwing catholic fight against gay marriage are posters warning not to let "homos" adopt children and quotations from a confused young man who converted to catholicism after psychoanalysis and  sees homosexual orientation as a "wound" (see www.araigneedudesert.fr). The social constructionist views of Michel Foucault and others are invoked as signs that the identity of male and female is under attack; "sexual difference" has become a sacred value that those advocating gay marriage are said to be trampling on. 

While the French bishops are far more intelligent and courteous than their Spanish, Scottish, and US counterparts, their performance remains dismal, because of their fear of open discussion and their refusal to hear the voices of gay people and their families. The atmosphere of the catholic discussion on gay marriage, in the absence of any forum permitting these voices to be heard, is that of a sect or a cult. 

Comments

[evagrius]

Can you expect any rational discussion about gay marriage etc; from a group of men who can't even discuss married priests?

[Colleen Kochivar-Baker]

How in the world can one expect a legitimate discussion of gay marriage from a cast of celibates who are 50% closeted gay? My God they would have to deny their own lives and their own decisions. Nothing changes until this changes.

[me]

Gay marriage is impossible for Catholics to accept. It is contrary to divine revelation.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Catholic ethics are based on natural law and reason more than on specifics of divine revelation. But if you want to argue against gay marriage based on the Bible, what do you make of the covenant between David and Jonathan? Lots of Catholic gays have adopted it as a model for the faithful friendship they wish to cultivate and to see honored by society.

[Shane]

On a different but not unrelated note, the abortion debate has suddenly flared up again after the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar and has prompted calls to legislate for the X case. Can I ask: what is your opinion on this? Are you pro-choice?

[Romanus]

In a comment on the internet page of the renowned Jesuit magazine Études, I make the point that this magazine seems now, in 2012, to be regressing from a position expressed in its pages in 1999 against the so-called lack of "alterity" homosexuals are accused of in mainstream French catholicism. http://www.revue-etudes.com/Societe/_Mariage_homosexuel__homoparentalite_et_tentation_de_la_toute-puissance/45/15026

Territorial Prelature Mission de France Vicar general Arnault Favart says he was moved by the suffering expressed by the parents of a gay florist he met at a wedding : "I discovered how much words and attitudes of the Church had wounded them" http://catholique-mission-de-france.cef.fr/pages/pistes/une/une.html

[Spirit of Vatican II]

I applaud your Etudes comment, to which I tried to add the following, but the combox is locked:

Je suis consterné par le délire religieux qui s'est déchaîné contre les projets de mariage civil pour les conjoints du même sexe; que l'on fasse si grand cas dans le camp "catho" (à distinguer de Catholique) des propos confus et malsains d'un Philippe Arino me semble pitoyable et opportuniste; ceci dit, un article comme celui de Dominique Fernandez et al. dans Le Monde nov. 18-19, 2012 me semble esquiver le débat rationnel pourtant si favorable aux revendications gaies.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Shane, I am cautiously pro-choice, and I think the ostrich mentality of the Irish killed this woman. Let us take the blame.

Do you have any access to the Irish Ecclesiastical Records discussions of the morality of hunger strikes in 1920 at the time of McSwiney?

[Minix Ahern]

It's like reading again the two famous novels of Dr. Jose Rizal of the Philippines. In his Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo he was showing how church officials and men meddle with the decisions of the government. I hope that the famous Father Damaso is not the same with the French Bishops.

[James M.]

"The atmosphere of the catholic discussion on gay marriage, in the absence of any forum permitting these voices to be heard, is that of a sect or a cult."

## The atmosphere of the CC is that of a cult. A harsh thing to say, admittedly, but if true, it needs saying. To be precise, it has many of the distinctive features of Fundamentalism.

It is constructing enemies for itself, by treating gay Catholic Christians as "the other". When it shows enmity to gay Catholics, it is unsurprising that other gay people should regard the CC, and the Christ of Catholics, as their enemy. It is dishonouring the Name of God, by acting in a very unChristian, all too secular, fashion. The Catholic mind is not terribly good at noticing such ironies, or not nowadays. Partly because it is not informed by the Bible; but that is another topic.

One irony is that, by making Catholicism less attractive, the CC encourages people to be all the more aware of their identity as gay: to be grateful that there is more to them than Catholicism (a nice inversion of the teaching of the 1986 Letter).

This is a good way of tempting people to leave the CC altogether - & is what a lot of Catholics seem to want. That would be very convenient - for to love others, means caring for them, not having nothing to do with them. This is another sign of the sectarian mentality that now afflicts parts of the Church.