The Vatican declared March 15 that the Catholic Church won’t bless same-sex unions since God “cannot bless sin.”
The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response to a question about whether Catholic clergy have the authority to bless gay unions. The answer, contained in a two-page explanation published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, was “negative.”
The explanation distinguished between the church’s welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it upheld, but not their “unions.” It argued that such unions are not part of God’s plan and that any sacramental recognition of them could be confused with marriage.
(Nicole Winfield. “Vatican bars gay union blessing, says God ‘can’t bless sin.'” Associated Press. March 15, 2021.)
If you find this mixed message difficult to understand, I will try to delineate the difference in the Vatican's acceptance of gays and its denial of marriage. Notice the reference to God's plan and the church's justification of blessing.
The Vatican says …
Gay people must be treated with dignity and respect, but gay sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching says that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and woman and part of God’s “plan” intended for the sake of creating new life.
Since gay unions aren’t intended to be part of that “plan,” they can’t be blessed by the church.
And, here's where the explanation gets sticky …
The presence of positive elements in such relationships are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, yet the church cannot “justify” these relationships and render them “legitimate objects of an ecclesial (pertaining to a church) blessing,” since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.”
God “does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him.”
"For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”
Pope Francis has endorsed providing gay couples with legal protections in same-sex unions, but that was in reference to the civil sphere, not within the church. Those comments were made during a 2019 interview with a Mexican broadcaster, Televisa, but were censored by the Vatican until they appeared in a documentary last year.
In speaking of the LGBTQ community, Francis has used the phrase “sexual orientation,” an acknowledgment of the general scientific belief that sexual preference is the result of a combination of environmental, emotional, hormonal and biological factors. Yet, Monday’s decree also uses the phrase “sexual inclination,” which suggests that sexuality is a choice, counter to what most studies have found.
My Confusion
Here is where I have trouble with the Catholic decree. Why does religious marriage always have to be in recognition of creating new life? As a senior citizen, I see people getting married for many other reasons – finance, companionship, convenience, and love (without sex and procreation as vital concerns … for obvious reasons). Are not these needs legitimate concerns for today's church?
And, most troubling, why must every time someone mentions “gays” or “homosexuals” people immediately think of sexual relations? No person with any (or many) sexual preferences should be so reduced based on their sexual preferences. Being known as “heterosexual” does not elicit such feelings. Who can deny the obvious stigma and the jump to judgments of sexual behaviors?
The Rev. Bryan Massingale, a highly respected theologian who taught for many years at Marquette University and now serves as professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University began a recent lecture with these words …
“I come to this conversation as a Black, gay priest and theologian. I am informed not only by my sexuality, my faith, and my study of the Church’s ethical beliefs, but also by the traditions of Black freedom struggles in the US, struggles which, at their core, are matters of the soul and the spirit …
“This is what happens when people use only that part of my (or your) identity that makes them comfortable, while bracketing the other concerns and facets that are integral to who we are. For example, even though I spend my life dealing with race and racism, in LGBTI settings most people do not want to deal with that; they want to deal only with my writings and thoughts on sexuality – the 'sex stuff.'
“But for my emotional and spiritual health I cannot, and for my moral and ethical integrity I will not, bracket my 'Black' self in order to be 'gay,' so you can take what makes you comfortable. You have to take all of me, or none of me. I don’t want to spend my energies building a church or world where only part of me is welcomed, valued, and loved. Because if you accept only part of me, then you are not accepting me!
“Moreover, if you aren’t willing to accept all of me, then you aren’t serious about LGBTQI inclusion and equality. Because as the African American lesbian, poet and activist, Audre Lorde, reminded us, many LGBTQI persons cannot engage in single-issue struggles because we do not live single-issue lives.”
(Bryan N. Massingale. “The Challenge of Idolatry for LGBTI Ministry.” dignityusa.org. Panel: The Theological Mandate for LGBTI Justice Work. Global Network of Rainbow Catholics. July 04, 2019.)
In my frame of reference, God's real plan is love above all else. The church justifying the plan that being gay is a sin is more deeply rooted in ecclesial history than in adherence to God's understanding about sexual preference. Otherwise, why would their more recent understandings of “homosexual orientation” as not being sinful, in and of itself, be held?
“I didn't do this to ‘come out.’ But to let God’s love for us all to ‘come forth.’”
– Rev Byran N. Massingale
What Does the Bible Actually Say?
So, the Bible says this and that about homosexuality. Here are commonly cited passages that support the sinful nature of being gay. Julie Mack, who writes for the Kalamazoo Gazette, shares revealing information on these Bible verses. Consider the following.
Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13
The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament has two references condemning homosexuality: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (Leviticus 18:22) and "If a man lies with a man as one lies with woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).
While condemnations of gay sex are unequivocal in Leviticus, it also is part of a long list of Jewish laws, some of which are not followed by Christians today. For instance, Leviticus bans tattoos, pork and shellfish, offers the proper rules for selling a slave and says a "foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born." Leviticus also advocates the death penalty for adultery.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:10
Paul writes in Corinthians: "Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."
In Timothy, Paul writes: "The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching."
However, in both passages, there is debate about the terms now translated as referring to gays. "The ambiguous word is often translated 'sodomites' but there's no equivalent in Greek or Hebrew," said Mary Rose D'Angelo, a biblical scholar at Notre Dame. "The word malakos means something like 'softy' and refers to liking sex too much." Even assuming that Paul is referring to homosexuality in these passages, there is dispute about exactly what he's condemning and why.
"Many scholars think that Paul is arguing against grown men having sex with adolescent boys and/or against men who are forced into the non-dominant position," said Kelly Murphy, a biblical scholar at Central Michigan University. "Of course, these ideas are clearly related to the idea of gender held in the ancient world: men were superior to women, and it would be shameful for a man to act like a woman."
Many theologians say this is the key passage on homosexuality in the New Testament. Paul writes: "God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."
Jeff Weima, an expert on the New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, is among those who say this passage is a clear, unambiguous condemnation of homosexual activity. "The text of Romans 1:26-27 is quite clear about the prohibition of same-sex activity for both men and women," Weima said.
Not so fast, say others. "The passage does seem to say that all same-sex relationships are unnatural," Murphy said. "But then we have to remember that Paul and the world Paul lived in did not understand gender the same way that we do today, and also that Paul is using that example to lead up to his argument against worshipping idols.
"Opinions are split about whether Paul is upset about heterosexual people having same-sex relations or about pederasty -- but the larger point is that worshipping idols instead of God leads to mistakes in morality," she said.
John Fitzgerald, an expert in the New Testament who teaches at Notre Dame, said that parsing the words of each text isn't the only challenge. "Although biblical scholars disagree about the meaning of some of the biblical texts ... the real differences emerge in how these texts are to be interpreted and applied in our own time," Fitzgerald said.
Differing views on same-sex relationships in Christianity reflect "different assumptions and different interpretative approaches" to the Bible, he said.
Another point made by Fitzgerald and other theologians: Although homosexuality is singled out by some today as an especially vile sin, the Bible tends to lump it with other sins, such as greed and gossiping. "In the history of Christianity in the West, there has been a recurring tendency to place greater emphasis on sexual sins than on other kinds," Fitzgerald said. "That greater emphasis is clearly evident in today's world."
Julie Mack. “The 6 Bible verses on homosexuality, and differing interpretations.” Michigan Live. Julie Mack | jmack1@mlive.com. January 20, 2019.)
I freely admit that I have written in this very blog that religious denominations and their officials should have to right to deny performing a marriage ceremony for whomever they deem does not follow the creeds of their particular sect. I understand devotion to certain principles of union and the sanctity of the marriage vows.
However, years later and after much more research and contemplation, I feel gay marriage has often been denied for beliefs of exclusion based on misinterpretations and misunderstandings. The judgmental denial centers on the sexual nature of the union and not upon love shared between two human beings.
And, now I see that the warning of homosexual perversion in biblical references is directed toward heterosexuals engaged in homosexual prostitution and in homosexual sex outside of marriage. And the denial is even seated in a basic objection to the wasting of male semen, an act that goes against the procreative ethic of sex. (I seem to remember being on the warning end of a similar taboo “wasting” activity and told: “Do that too much and you'll need glasses.”)
For me, the bottom line on judging any so-called sin as the basis for the denial of marriage is open to hypocrisy. Now, (1) sex is commonly accepted outside of marriage; (2) sex is not considered exclusively God's “plan” for procreation; and (3) considering not blessing gay unions because they are “sinful” and in need of reparative therapy – seeking to change their sexual orientation – actually denies God's plan that I believe includes the love of man for man and woman for woman.
I am not Catholic, and this entry is not meant to be an attack on anyone's religious beliefs, but shouldn't a religion that includes a large percentage of gay priests be a little more considerate of exactly what is the “sin” it claims it does not condone?
There is a giant, unsustainable paradox in a church that bans priests with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and officially teaches that gay men are “objectively disordered” and inherently disposed toward “intrinsic moral evil” when, in fact, that church is actually composed, in ways very few other institutions are, of gay men.
“In the United States, however, where there are 37,000 priests, no independent study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent. The consensus in my own research over the past few months converged on around 30 to 40 percent among parish priests and considerably more than that — as many as 60 percent or higher — among religious orders like the Franciscans or the Jesuits.”
(Andrew Sullivan. “The Gay Church.” Intelligencer. Nymag.com. January 21, 2019.)
Father James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College, comments about a much-needed shift in attitude that reflects the reality of the priesthood …
"It's an empirical fact that lots of men are gay who are priests. And they are very good priests. I would also observe that the numbers of gay men and women in the church ministry is probably larger than the general population, precisely because they are not seeking marriage."
(Elizabeth Flock. “Catholic Priests: It's 'Empirical Fact' That Many Clergy Are Gay.” U.S. News. July 29, 2013.)
Maybe a good place to start coming to terms with reality is within the church itself. Why not allow priests and sisters to marry? I think doing so would solve a lot of so-called “sinful” problems and would allow much-needed blessings of love … not to mention permitting marriage would also be a “coming to Jesus moment” for the church itself.
“There's a wide range of statistics out there on gay priests. 30 percent are gay, 30 percent are straight, and 30 percent are in denial."
– Father Gary Meier, a gay, St. Louis-based Catholic clergymen
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