The following is my reply to Dave N., who kindly left a couple of commentaries on my post, titled, "LGBTs" in San Francisco up in arms against Archbishop Niederauer , my latest reply was too long for the comm box, so here it is. His thoughts are in red italics. Thank you kindly for your patience and attention.
The things you claim I characterized as "ridiculous" ... I didn't.
I didn't said you said it. I attributed it to the "post-modernist peanut gallery." You should not feel accused, unless of course, you are sitting with them. Are you?
What I DID say was ridiculous is the assertion that same-gender couples, including some I know that have been in committed relationships for over 20 years, were and are driven by the same lustful, self-indulgent, destructive drives that the gang-rapists of Sodom were. And that is what the Catechism requires one to believe if its reference to the Sodom story is to make any sense. And that view of the Sodom story is not just that of "some isolated 20th-century exegetes" ... it is quite clearly what the story is about. And when it comes to the NT, I'm not sure a Catholic should be quite so dismissive of scholarly views of the USCCB and NAB translators, either.
Again, I'm not dismissing outright the interpretations of some -and I reemphasize, some 20th century exegetes regarding these Bible verses. Again, theirs is not the only scholarly interpretation, there are others in the 20th, 21st and even before that also bear on the question. And again I repeat, the Catholic Moral position is not solely based on those verses alone as you allege, but is bigger, vaster if you will, and includes non-theological claims as derived from Natural Law, which is the morality that can be discovered by reason acting alone.
As for US civil law, theological arguments aren't really relevant (as per the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment), nor is your desire to avoid being "outcasts."
I don't mind being an outcast as defined by the dominant pagan culture. I do, however, defend my civil rights to believe, assemble, and petition my representatives whenever and however I like and I will not surrender those rights, and I will defend those rights come hell and high water.
Nor is this a debate about "theological arguments", but really about if a nation, founded on the bedrock of Natural Law Morality can in fact survive without such bedrock. That Catholic Moral Theology and Natural Law philosophy have convergent aims, well that's true, but one doesn't need to be a Catholic - or indeed a believer - to recognize, ellucidate, and apply Natural Law morality to policy. The "progressive" attempt to reduce the argument for traditional marriage to one of irrelevant theology is a fallacy.
Yet, there is an implied argument here that is seldom addressed by same-sex marriage advocates when they rail against "theological arguments" and it is not that they oppose that the governments recognize the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Christ. What they oppose is that the *moral demands* of the Gospel be recognized and applied by governments and this, very selectively, for they would agree in principle that feeding those who can't feed themselves, or extending health care to those who can't afford it, or caring for the elderly and the infirm are convergent moral demands made in the Gospel to which all can agree.
No, the opposition by homosexualists against Gospel morality is aimed specifically against any words in the teaching of Christ that can be remotedly interpreted as indicating a "big picture" anthropology of human beings having a nature gifted with attributes oriented toward a supernatural end, a morality that includes the entirety of our bodily and spiritual beings that sanctifies our objective reality as sexual beings. Homosexualists reject a "whole package" reception of the Gospel, by affirming a view of total sexual autonomy aover and against the view of holistic approach to human nature transmitted in the Gospel. This is the principal - if not the sole - "theological view" the homosexualist reject when they say "don't you impose your morality on me" as they go ahead imposing theirs upon others, by government imposition when at all possible.
The fact is that if federal, state, and local governments eventually come to recognize civil marriages for same-gender couples, that won't make you any more or less an outcast than you already are.
Nice flourish, but wrong argument, for the injection into policy and law of the homosexualist worldview necessarily delegitimizes the defenders of traditional marriage and of natural law morality and undervalue their views.
Trying to wage that war by fighting to maintain/pass laws that negatively impact those that you disagree with is an inappropriate and counterproductive choice of a battlefield.
This noble aspiration should cut both ways, shouldn't? But it doesn't in practice, as we've been getting the sharp edge of the blade nowadays.
And as for bigotry -- Merriam-Webster defines intolerant as follows: "unwilling to grant or share social, political, or professional rights: bigoted."
Yes, funny you mention that, because I traced and reflected on the "tolerance" definition game in chronological order here, here, and here.
Modern lexicographers and semanticists should be forgiven for formulating definitions useful to the needs of those who fight the imposition of certain morality upon themselves, while imposing their upon others, using the coercive power of the state whenever possible. Perhaps they had racism and the Civil Rights movement in mind when they redid the lexicon, unsuspecting that the definition would be seized by others whose cause have nothing to do with racial bigotry and discrimination.
People should respect the right of Catholics to make their theological case as to why they believe same-gender relationships are always wrong, and enforce their conclusions on their own members as they see fit. But when you try to deprive same-gender couples of legal rights, benefits, and protections granted to straight married couples, using the worst sorts of negative stereotypes to make your case, you actually have moved into an area where the term "bigoted" quite literally applies.
The Gospel has social implications. We have always understood that, that's why we invented hospitals, demythologized the practice of medicine, organize the state to feed the hungry and protect the poor and infirm from arbitrary action and so on and so forth. We understand that morality is accesible by reason acting alone and that the conclusions of this Natural Law morality converge with that of revealed morality and as such, in the public arena in a free society, we have both the right and the obligation to pursue virtue in social practice, in economics, in legislation, etc. We are not going to be corralled into our churches as if these were reservations where we can practice our subculture "safely" and without "damaging" any one else. Our message is for all and as laymen, it is our vocation to pursue it without apology.
As for me being a bigot, I'll leave that judgment to those who know me best: my wife, and my confessor.
Thank you, Dave N., for commenting here in Vivificat and may the Lord bless you richly.
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3 comments:
I appreciate the thoughtful response, and regret I simply don't have the time to respond in kind. But I did want to just touch on three points.
(1) I am aware that the Catholic position is "not solely based on those verses alone." But it is, quite clearly, based on those verses in part ... and occurring at the very beginning of the Catechism's discussion of homosexuality suggests they play a significant part. Regardless, I find disturbing ANY suggestion that same-gender couples are driven by the same destructive, lustful needs for self-gratification as the gang-rapists of Sodom. And I reject the notion that that is an isolated interpretation of the Sodom story; one simply needs to read the text.
(2) The first principle of natural law is to "to do good and avoid evil." And while people like Aquinas believed one could start there and use reason to develop a fuller concept of "Natural Law," subjective biases creep in at every turn. Natural Law writings of people like Robert George -- as brilliant as he is -- always strike me as traditionalist Christian dogma stripped of any references to God, mixed together with unsubstantiated assumptions about what good and evil means in a practical sense, mixed with distortions of what the various sciences have to say about the healthfulness of same-gender couples and their families. In short, such arguments appear to be contrived efforts to come up with a pseudo-rational argument that supports traditionalist Christian dogma on this topic. If I were to define good and evil strictly in terms of what the sciences have shown to be involved in building good, healthy, happy, productive families, I would end up with a "Natural Law" conclusion that totally disagrees with yours.
(3) As for the legal issues involved, I simply have a hard time seeing how the rights of Catholics to live their lives as they wish are impacted by granting same-gender couples the same benefits and rights afforded to married straight couples. It is much clearer -- since I have seen it first hand in the lives of people I care about -- just how much tangible damage is done to same-gender couples and their families by traditionalist marriage laws.
@Dave N and I appreciate your kind tone and earnest conversation. Believe me, it is refreshing. Since it's Christmas Eve, my reply will be brief:
1)Yes, you're correct that those verses form an integral part of the moral evaluation of same-sex activity on the part of the Catholic Church. The thing is that your reading assumes that what the sacred writer condemned was the violent, involuntary nature of the attempt act (the "gang rape") but otherwise considered voluntary, "loving" same-sex activity as good, morally neutral, or left unaddressed. Contemporary, contextual interpretation of the verses reveal that the sacred writer considered all kinds of same-sex activity as morally reprehensible and that the attempted rape by the Sodom merrymakers was simply an aggravated instance.
The Catholic Church, in continuity with Jewish teaching, also found same-sex activity as morally reprehensible, and then borrowed the concept of the entelechy of human acts - those performed with a full moral conscience - to explain why same-sex activity is objectively evil in itself, aside from the intentions of the participants.
The removal of homosexuality's designation as a mental illness - by political, not scientific reasons - in the 1970's impacted the mind of exegetes who then separated the moral evaluation of the same-sex activity from the intention of the participants, turning the evaluation relative and situational; this is the understanding you accept. But by so doing, these exegetes imported and projected a bias onto the text that was foreign to the mind of the original writer and to the received Catholic moral teaching. As a consequence, I question the accuracy of the interpretation, and the intention of these exegetes, when it comes to these verses.
2) Natural Law writing is susceptible to the critique you propose. Yet, the Founding Fathers inherited this thought from 16th century Jesuits and Franciscans who were intent on convincing the conquistadors that the Native Americans and the Africans were human beings endowed with souls, and therefore also endowed with an inviolable dignity. Through Locke and Rosseau, Natural Law thought entered the main current of the American Revolution and led Jefferson - who had her daughter educated by nuns - to write the Declaration of Independence. Hence, Natural Law philosophy took unexpected turns in the general intercourse of mankind and in our Nation's formation.
Finally, the happiness proposed by Natural Law doesn't consists of emotional happiness attained by one's release of, and surrender to passion - any passion, often aided by prescribed amounts of anti-depressants - but by the practice of virtue, a life of good habits attained through the practice of right actions informed by right intentions. For a Christian, the goal is Eternal Beatitude, as natural virtue is set afire by supernatural virtue.
May we all attain both kinds of virtue this Christmas Day.
+JMJ,
Theo
Dear Teofilo,
I just wanted to wish you a Blessed and Holy Christmas in the company of the Child Jesus, Our Lady and Saint Joseph. May your soul be filled with the Majestic and celestial harmonies that the Angels sang at Bethlehem.
Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to His People on Earth !
Thank you for a year of spiritually enhancing posts.
in Amor Christi,
Anne
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