Gay Marriage: A New Christian Response

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Dave

Gay Marriage: A New Christian Response
By Dave Kovacs

Since everyone* is talking about Barack Obama’s affirmation of gay marriage** today, I suppose I should say something about it. First, I am going to suggest that people of faith ought to radically re-think the issue from scratch. This is as true of conservatives as of liberals. Then I am going to suggest that when President Obama’s comments are taken in context, he might actually have a good idea.

(*That is, everyone except people being attacked by predator drones, or by predatory lenders, or who are victims of other injustices).
(**Really, I don’t like the term “gay marriage” since no marriage license application asks your sexual preference. Homosexuals have always been allowed to get married, just as long as it was to people of the opposite gender. But since the parlance of the times must win, I will concede and use the term “gay marriage” in this post in the usual sense).

Part I: The traditional argument against gay marriage.
The old argument goes something like this. Things have purposes and proper ends. The proper end of the sexual act is procreation. Homosexual acts can not result in procreation. Therefore, homosexual acts are morally problematic. Since marriage is the proper place for sexual acts, homosexuals can not get married.

It is worth noting that at the Second Vatican Council, it was hotly debated whether the section of Gaudium Et Spes dealing with family life should invoke the claim that the proper end of marriage is procreation. It was a narrow vote, but the decision was that the old scholastic distinction between “primary” and “secondary” ends of marriage was no longer useful.

Part II: Where I try to save teleology while questioning the traditional argument.
I’m a (subversive) Thomist, so I like teleology (the claim that things have purposes and proper ends).

But it is a basic principle that we come to know the proper function and end of a thing by observing what that thing does in the most general way. That is, what characterizes it? The proper end of a bird is to fly because, as we see every day, birds are basically understood as flying creatures. The proper end of a knife is to cut stuff because knives are cutting instruments.

But it seems that the sexual act, while capable of procreation, is not usually understood as “the procreating act.” There is a reason couples make love even when not trying to conceive. If we thought of the sexual act primarily in terms of procreation it would be, at the least, unromantic. Worse, it would call into question why we expect parents to love each other.

Nor should we be so base as to say that the proper end of sexuality is merely genital stimulation and pleasure. Rather, let us say that, if we observe human sexuality in its best forms, it serves as a basis for self-giving. It is the means by which two people grow in trust, love, affection, and absolute self-giving.

Part III: Why not?
Is there any reason that homosexuals should not be able to participate in this sort of self-giving love?

If sexuality, as I described it above, is what I think it is, then it is also ultimately a spiritual act. Lovers, in finding each other, can find God. For Christians believe that God, in purest terms, is complete self-giving. The message of Christ on the Cross is one of absolute self-giving and total self-sacrifice. When we love, whether in sexual union or in caritas, we are following Christ, we are finding God.

So why should homosexuals be denied this spiritual experience?

Part IV: The “official” argument is self-contradicting.
The official argument of Church officials, for some time, has been that homosexuals are, by reason of their identity, called to celibacy. To refuse to be celibate, for a homosexual, is supposedly sinful.

Celibacy, meanwhile, is seen in Church tradition and current practice as something someone freely takes up in a special way to enhance one’s love affair with God. This is noble and can be found in most of the world’s religions.

But there is a tension: If the homosexual is required to be celibate on pain of sin, then how can it be said that his celibacy is truly free? The homosexual who chooses to be celibate on pain of sin isn’t choosing out of freedom in the virtuous way a priest chooses celibacy. No such merit can be said to exist in such a case.

So the official argument seems self-contradictory.

Part V: Toward a new Christian Response.
I am not here going to suggest a rush to legalize, either in secular law or Canon law, same-sex marriage. My reasons for hesitating are given below. Instead, I am going to suggest that the Christian response is to completely rethink sexuality and to open ourselves toward homosexuals in a radical way.

We must purge our language of terms that are causing homosexuals to have feelings of shame or guilt. We see this when clergymen declare that homosexuals have a “war on marriage.” There is no homosexual war on marriage. In fact, many homosexuals are trying to embrace marriage for the same reasons any lovers do.

We must examine for ourselves, in our own lives, how we treat and view homosexuals. We must open ourselves to them the way Jesus Christ would. Nay, we must treat them with the tender compassion with which Jesus Christ does treat them and all of us.

Part VI: Why a top-down law is not the solution.
Today Obama said he thinks homosexuals should be able to get married; more importantly, he said he thinks it is an issue that should be worked out by the states. I think he is right on both counts.

Recently, Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that the Supreme Court made a serious error in even hearing the Roe v. Wade trial. It wasn’t that their decision was flawed: It was that they should have let the issue work itself out in the states and local courts. Her belief is that in the long run the outcome would have been the same but that the subsequent culture war that it caused would not have happened.

I think there is an analogue here. We live in a country where right wing neoconservatives have already made people very suspicious of the government whenever it steps into controversial social territory. Rather than exacerbate that, the Federal Government does well to express vocal support for same-sex marriage (this includes removing barriers to it that are imposed on the states) but to let states work this out over the coming generation.

Those who wish to move this forward may serve their time best, not in political battles, but in social ones. Are we opposing church initiatives to discriminate and harm homosexuals? Are we being vocal about our tolerance, love and compassion? Are we stating publicly that we don’t believe, as some clergy do, that homosexuality is equivalent to a war on marriage?

Once we change the minds and hearts of people that way, I expect the question of how homosexuals express their love (in ways analogous to how heterosexuals currently do) will resolve itself.

As always, the mission of the Christian is the struggle to find ways to live justly and kindly in a world on the brink of collapse. But that collapse is not one that homosexuals are perpetrating.

Views expressed herein are my own and may or may not be shared by other blog contributors.

Kingdom and Communion

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Jeff

I just read this wonderful article by Tomothy Radcliffe, a Dominican, titled “Overcoming Discord in the Church.” It’s a wonderful article that rightfully argues that the divisions we feel in the Church between left and right are problematic and must be addressed. Radcliffe begins, again rightly, by arguing that the terms “right” and “left” are part of the problem, because they are terms imposed on the Church by modernity. Right identifies the conservation or traditionalist, and left identifies the progressive, anti-traditionalist. Yet, as Radcliffe notes “this supposes an opposition between tradition and innovation which is alien to the Catholic Church.”

He says the real struggle in the Church is between Kingdom Catholics and Communion Catholics. Kingdom Catholics look forward to the coming kingdom and seek out in the Spirit’s working in the world. Communion Catholics, on the other hand, hold to rebuilding and maintaining the inner life of the Church. Both Kingdom Catholics and Communion Catholics feel a sense of loss: Kingdom Catholics because the promises of Vatican II were never realized or have been rescinded (as with the recent translation of the liturgy), and Communion Catholics feel that Vatican II was a betrayal of the heart of the Church.

Radcliffe is calling all Catholics to overcome that division — for the heart of the Church is its engagement with the outside. It is Peter AND Paul, Roman AND Catholic.

I find the article very enlightening and promising of the future for the Church. St, Thomas Aquinas recognized that it was by delving into the tradition that we could find innovative ways for resolving new problems. His choice to be a mendicant was one expression of this innovative traditionalism. And he, too, like the Kingdom Catholics of Vatican II was ostracized and marginalized for it. And the same reasoning explains why I feel at home neither in modern philosophy or the traditional philosophy of medieval scholars and yet, why I find both places reminiscent of home.

Thomas was subversive in exactly the same way that Radcliffe is calling us to be subversive today — to speak in our own words and not in the imposed language of modernity, but to communicate with that larger, outside world.

October 13, 1962

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Dave

October 13, 1962

On October 13, 1962 something happened that would revolutionize Catholicism forever.

To understand this revolution, we need to begin by understanding Catholic life in the Western world as it had stood since the time of the French Revolution. It is not the case that Catholic life had always been like this, but as things developed it became very easy to believe that it had been such since the early Church. That mistaken notion was the background of a revolution.

Catholicism, beginning after the French Revolution, and even more so after the Second World War, had become marked by a set of rules. Adherence to those rules is what made you Catholic. Violating certain rules, such as ones about remarriage, was enough to exclude you from the title Catholic.

The rules did not have to make a great deal of sense so long as they were obeyed. Consider the fact that both abortion and eating meat on Friday were mortal sins. Whatever the theology was behind the venial and mortal sin distinction, all the mattered to the laity (and indeed, to most priests) was that the rules were followed; if they were not, Confession was mandatory. These were the days when Protestants were heretics; Jews were prayed for on Good Friday; attending non-Catholic religious services was forbidden; the Index of Banned Books was the moral norm for literature; and Catholic families were obliged to have as many children as possible.

This isn’t to say that the religion was superficial. Many Catholics practiced a great piety based on their deep devotion to God and to living the spiritual life. Those Catholics who went to First Fridays, said the Rosary daily, joined spiritual confraternities, and so forth were often motivated by a deep desire for a union with God. However, the Catholic understanding of that union was, largely, one in which the union was achieved by a specific set of customs and observances.

Moreover, most Catholics gave little thought to how those customs arose or when the rules came to be. It was assumed that Catholicism had always been this way and always would be. In fact, the Council of Trent seemed to solidify some of this in its apparent proclamation that the liturgy, newly codified and exemplified by the Tridentine Mass, would be the liturgy of the Church forever with no alterations.

Then there was the grand centralization of power that took place at the First Vatican Council (1869-1870). In a move which has been difficult for the ecumenical movement ever since, the Pope became infallible. The expectation at that time was that the Vatican Council would be the last council: No additional councils were needed since any future decisions could be decided and resolved by the single man who occupied the papacy.

This explains some of the shock when Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council. Apparently, additional councils were possible. Nevertheless, when the Bishops of the world showed up in October, 1962, the expectation was that the Roman Curia would hand on some list of delegates from their own ranks to be rubber stamped by the Bishops, who would then return home to tell the faithful that everything was basically the same while the Curia went about some mild and superficial business of discussing arcane subjects pertaining to modern Biblical scholarship and how to promote Marian devotion.

The Catholic world and its history took a sharp turn on October 13, 1962, when the Bishops were expected to vote on who would serve on the various conciliar committees. The Curia had already prepared a list of candidates from their own ranks who would make up the lead roles and shape the major documents. Then something unexpected happened.

Two Cardinals by the names of Frings and Lienart refused to accept the list of potential candidates. They demanded that voting be postponed for a day while the Bishops would all get to know each other, and that the next day they would submit their own proposed names for each committee.

At that point the Council no longer belonged to the Curia. The Old Guard would not be calling all the shots. The Council now belonged to the Bishops, to the pastors of the dioceses throughout the world, to the people who had intimate experience with the needs of Catholics whom they had seen experience hardships from birth to death.

What resulted was a Church where rules were less important than authentic spiritual growth.

A great deal of literature has been written about the effects of the Council, in particular about what happened to the unique sense of Catholic identity so strong before the Council and now lost in a strange ambiguity. No one can deny that today Catholic identity is a term that often reminds us of a teenager trying to adjust to a changing voice, a new school and badly fitting clothes while also asserting his independence. My goal here is not to critique what happened; those who are interested might read Andrew Greeley’s fine book, written from his perspective as a professionally trained sociologist, The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council.

Instead I wish to propose that we begin meditating on the Council. We ought to read its documents, but, with an eye toward proper critical methodology, we also ought to understand the world in which they were written. We can begin by understanding the revolution that began on October 13, 1962, when the two Cardinals asserted the right to make the council truly ecumenical, truly representative of the whole Church.

It is my contention that the Council invites and challenges us, as Catholics, to confront the world in new, dynamic ways. It was not a refutation of custom, but it was a relaxing of rules-based mentality. It was not a burying of the past, but an acknowledgment of the future. It was neither triumphalist nor self-abasing, it was instead humble and open to the Holy Spirit. Unlike other councils, it was neither authoritarian nor condemnatory; it was instead understanding and compassionate.

Because the goal of the Subversive Thomist blog is to find ways to live justly and with loving kindness in a world that so often seems to be on the brink of collapse, it is my intention to spend some time reflecting on the Council, its history and its documents. Therefore, for the next four weeks, my Thursday blog post will focus on the Council. Each week I will consider something from Vatican II that still challenges us today, with my central guideposts being the four Constitutions of the Council.

Pope John seemed to have realized that there were many problems facing the modern world; indeed, it sometimes looked like a world on the brink of collapse. I believe he gave us the Council, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, to help Christians find new, innovative and dynamic ways to go forward with hope, to live the spirit of Christ in the modern age. These ways were not to usurp the old, but they would complement them and bring out the best from our past.

I hope some readers will join me for the journey.

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

Tag Archives: Vatican II