After my brother, Jonathan's, request for a non "pro-gay activist" acknowledgement of the separation of homosexuality and pedophilia I have been doing research. Several post's I shall be 'pinning up' here will deal with different sources for this information, as well as expressions of positive support from many professional organizations, eduactional facilities and fine intellectuals with plenty of credentials supporting the beliefs of the gay community that we are not active, criminally or otherwise, in the horrific abuse of children by some Catholic priests. We will also see Catholic theologians who find that the Church's own language brings sharply inot question a prohibition on committed same sex loving relationships and gay marrriage.
I hope that my reprint of this article here will be seen as the non-profit attempt to eduacate readers and not misuse of the writing of others. You may clickk on the blog title to take you to the original site.
The Vatican, Theologians, and Same-Sex Marriage
By Francis DeBernardo
The American Catholic, Farmington, Connecticut April 2003
"A union between a man and woman is the only true one in God's eyes," Pope John Paul II said during his message to the Pontifical conference on Families held in the Philippines in January this year. A family, he added, is “certainly not that inauthentic one based on individual egoism. Experience has shown that such a 'caricature' has no future and cannot give future to any society."
These most recent remarks from the pontiff are the latest example of several statements condemning same-sex marriage that have issued from the Vatican and from the mouth of the pope himself over the past few years. Opposition from the Catholic hierarchy has grown more vocal as the worldwide movement for gay and lesbian rights has made some strides in gaining recognition for same-sex couples. Most recently Belgium has granted equal recognition for lesbian/gay couples, and the European Union has urged its members to enact similar legislation. In the U.S., Vermont is the only state in the union that does so, yet many other local governments have been granting some benefits for domestic partnerships—a “lite” version of same-sex marriages.
It would be a mistake, however, to view this clash as simply a battle between Catholics and gay rights political groups. While the pope holds up the heterosexual standard of marriage as the only acceptable norm, theologians within the Church have been challenging many of the assumptions upon which this standard is based. Support for the approval of same-sex marriage is not simply a position of the secular gay-rights movement, but of a growing group of moral theologians in the U.S.
The Church hierarchy’s opposition to same-sex marriage is based more on its marriage teaching than on its teaching about lesbian/gay people, though the two areas are intimately related. The definition of marriage is found both in canon law and the Catechism: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of the offspring” (#1601). The Catechism goes on to state, “the vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes” (#1603).
Relevant themes that emerge from these quotations are that procreation is an essential part of marriage and that gender complementarity is the only natural combination of partners. Both of these principles would eliminate same-sex couples from the definition of marriage. In fact, the Catechism’s review of Church teaching on homosexuality states that homosexual acts “...are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” The Catechism doesn’t state a policy about same-sex marriage. A negative policy automatically follows because of a disapproval of sexual activity between people of the same sex. This disapproval flows from the elements of complementarity and procreation.
It is exactly these two elements in the Church’s teaching on marriage, however, which theologians have been finding problematic. Complementarity is based on the idea that men and women have distinct “essences” and that they need each other for completion. Complementarity is at the basis of much of Catholic thinking about the sexes and also about the Church. The bride and bridegroom metaphor for the Church governs some important policy in Catholicism, including the ban on women’s ordination. If men and women have different essences given to them by nature, then they have different social roles that they need to fulfill. More importantly, only the proper gender can perform each one’s distinct roles.
The Catechism explains complementarity this way: “Man and woman were made ‘for each other’—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a community of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate’ to the other, for they are equal as persons...and complementary as masculine and feminine (#372)...Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life” (#2333). The Catechism uses Scriptural references to support this view of complementarity, most notably the Genesis story—“male and female he created them.”
Since the 1970s, theologians influenced by feminist thought have challenged complementarity because of its sexist bias. Rosemary Radford Ruether explained that complementarity “demands the continued dependency and underdevelopment of women in order to validate the thesis that two kinds of personalities exist by nature in males and females and which are each partial expressions of some larger whole. Such a view can allow neither men nor women to be whole persons who can develop both their active and their affective sides.”
More recently, Susan Ross, a theologian at Loyola University, Chicago, has pointed out that much of John Paul II’s view of women, marriage, Mary, and the Church, are deeply rooted in the idea of gender complementarity. She points out that this view is based on a narrow interpretation of Scriptures, and has not taken into account the advances made in historical criticism or the natural and social sciences. She argues that the concept of complementarity does not allow for the myriad possibilities of relationships of love which fill the world: parents and children share love, friends share love with other friends, and siblings share love with siblings. She argues that a more familial model of love is needed.
Mutuality in relationships, instead of complementarity, is the antidote that feminist theologians have offered as a model for love. Mutuality stresses equality between partners, each one sharing the gifts they have received as individuals. These theologians argue that the change in gender roles that has taken place in society and in the Church, and the resultant awareness of gender oppression, call for a more just conception of partnership than the one that gender complementarity offers.
Intimately connected to the idea of gender complementarity in Catholic teaching is the role of procreation in marriage. For obvious biological reasons, it is probably the largest obstacle to Catholic approval of same-sex marriage. The Catechism states: “The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the good of marriage and the future of the family” (#2363).
Yet, according to Yale theologian Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, the procreative element of marriage has been eroded by Church teaching itself. She points out that with the allowance of natural family planning methods in Humanae Vitae, the Church has not kept procreation as an indispensable requirement of all sexual activity. By allowing heterosexual couples to regulate their sexual activity with their fertility cycles, Catholic teaching, in fact, has acknowledged that the reproductive element is not as important as it once was. Why, she asks, does the hierarchy hold out the procreative norm as a reason to ban homosexual marriage when it doesn’t require that all heterosexual marital acts be open to procreation?
Historically, the place of reproduction in marriage has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the early Christian days, heavily under the influence of Stoic philosophical values, reproduction was seen as the only moral justification for sexual union. The unitive factor, i.e., bringing the couple closer to each other, was later accepted as an important factor in marriage, but seen as a secondary purpose. The Second Vatican Council elevated the unitive factor to an equal status with the procreative element. Some theologians saw this as an important development in understanding marriage, emphasizing that the unitive function may be more important than the procreative element.
Sister Farley is one theologian who has argued that the important guidepost for developing an ethic for marriage is the quality of the relationship. Principles such as free-consent of the partners, equality between partners, a sense of commitment, and permanency, she argues, provide a better basis for evaluating the good in a partnership than the Church’s current teaching with its heavy biological emphasis. For example, one of the principles she argues for is that a couple’s relationship does not have to be procreative, but should be generative. In other words, the issue is not whether the couple’s marriage results in procreation, but that their relationship produce integration in the partners so that they can be creative in their lives for the good of the larger community.
Finally, another area of theological discussion is the need to affirm gay/lesbian relationships. John McNeill, a psychotherapist and moral theologian, was the first Catholic scholar to raise this issue in his landmark treatise, The Church and the Homosexual, originally published in 1976. Through scriptural interpretation, a re-evaluation of the moral tradition on sexuality, and psychological insights and evidence, McNeill showed that, in justice, the Church needed to abandon its traditional opposition to committed, sexually active lesbian or gay relationships.
McNeill proposed that “The same moral norms should be applied in judging the sexual behavior of a true homosexual as we ordinarily apply to heterosexual activity.” Additionally, he made the perhaps more challenging proposal that “there is the possibility of morally good homosexual relationships and that the love which unites the partners in such a relationship, rather than alienating them from God, can be judged as uniting them more closely.” In 1976, discussion of same-sex marriage was non-existent, yet though that vocabulary was not used, in effect, McNeill was proposing a theology of marriage for lesbian/gay people.
Since that time, other theologians have followed suit. They argue that since the Church has developed a new understanding of homosexuality as a God-given state, then the Church needs to make accommodations for this type of love. Often they will use evidence and testimony from lesbian/gay people about their experience of the goodness of their committed relationships to support their view.
More importantly, lesbian/gay theologians themselves have contributed to the dialogue about marriage and sexuality which has been flourishing in the Church. These contributions have emphasized that assumptions about lesbian/gay people as promiscuous, unstable, immature, and selfish are not true.
Like many lesbian/gay issues, the issue of same-sex marriage is connected to other issues in the Church. Whether or not to allow same-sex marriage is connected not only to issues of justice and equality for lesbian/gay people, but also, more fundamentally, to questions of the definition of marriage itself, the role of the family, and the definition of sexuality. Continued discussion of this topic will certainly be a growing pain for the Church, but one that will help us examine some of our biggest fears, our greatest joys, and our most intimate needs for connection.
These most recent remarks from the pontiff are the latest example of several statements condemning same-sex marriage that have issued from the Vatican and from the mouth of the pope himself over the past few years. Opposition from the Catholic hierarchy has grown more vocal as the worldwide movement for gay and lesbian rights has made some strides in gaining recognition for same-sex couples. Most recently Belgium has granted equal recognition for lesbian/gay couples, and the European Union has urged its members to enact similar legislation. In the U.S., Vermont is the only state in the union that does so, yet many other local governments have been granting some benefits for domestic partnerships—a “lite” version of same-sex marriages.It would be a mistake, however, to view this clash as simply a battle between Catholics and gay rights political groups. While the pope holds up the heterosexual standard of marriage as the only acceptable norm, theologians within the Church have been challenging many of the assumptions upon which this standard is based. Support for the approval of same-sex marriage is not simply a position of the secular gay-rights movement, but of a growing group of moral theologians in the U.S.
The Church hierarchy’s opposition to same-sex marriage is based more on its marriage teaching than on its teaching about lesbian/gay people, though the two areas are intimately related. The definition of marriage is found both in canon law and the Catechism: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of the offspring” (#1601). The Catechism goes on to state, “the vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes” (#1603).
Relevant themes that emerge from these quotations are that procreation is an essential part of marriage and that gender complementarity is the only natural combination of partners. Both of these principles would eliminate same-sex couples from the definition of marriage. In fact, the Catechism’s review of Church teaching on homosexuality states that homosexual acts “...are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” The Catechism doesn’t state a policy about same-sex marriage. A negative policy automatically follows because of a disapproval of sexual activity between people of the same sex. This disapproval flows from the elements of complementarity and procreation.
It is exactly these two elements in the Church’s teaching on marriage, however, which theologians have been finding problematic. Complementarity is based on the idea that men and women have distinct “essences” and that they need each other for completion. Complementarity is at the basis of much of Catholic thinking about the sexes and also about the Church. The bride and bridegroom metaphor for the Church governs some important policy in Catholicism, including the ban on women’s ordination. If men and women have different essences given to them by nature, then they have different social roles that they need to fulfill. More importantly, only the proper gender can perform each one’s distinct roles.
The Catechism explains complementarity this way: “Man and woman were made ‘for each other’—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a community of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate’ to the other, for they are equal as persons...and complementary as masculine and feminine (#372)...Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life” (#2333). The Catechism uses Scriptural references to support this view of complementarity, most notably the Genesis story—“male and female he created them.”
Since the 1970s, theologians influenced by feminist thought have challenged complementarity because of its sexist bias. Rosemary Radford Ruether explained that complementarity “demands the continued dependency and underdevelopment of women in order to validate the thesis that two kinds of personalities exist by nature in males and females and which are each partial expressions of some larger whole. Such a view can allow neither men nor women to be whole persons who can develop both their active and their affective sides.”
More recently, Susan Ross, a theologian at Loyola University, Chicago, has pointed out that much of John Paul II’s view of women, marriage, Mary, and the Church, are deeply rooted in the idea of gender complementarity. She points out that this view is based on a narrow interpretation of Scriptures, and has not taken into account the advances made in historical criticism or the natural and social sciences. She argues that the concept of complementarity does not allow for the myriad possibilities of relationships of love which fill the world: parents and children share love, friends share love with other friends, and siblings share love with siblings. She argues that a more familial model of love is needed.
Mutuality in relationships, instead of complementarity, is the antidote that feminist theologians have offered as a model for love. Mutuality stresses equality between partners, each one sharing the gifts they have received as individuals. These theologians argue that the change in gender roles that has taken place in society and in the Church, and the resultant awareness of gender oppression, call for a more just conception of partnership than the one that gender complementarity offers.
Intimately connected to the idea of gender complementarity in Catholic teaching is the role of procreation in marriage. For obvious biological reasons, it is probably the largest obstacle to Catholic approval of same-sex marriage. The Catechism states: “The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the good of marriage and the future of the family” (#2363).
Yet, according to Yale theologian Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, the procreative element of marriage has been eroded by Church teaching itself. She points out that with the allowance of natural family planning methods in Humanae Vitae, the Church has not kept procreation as an indispensable requirement of all sexual activity. By allowing heterosexual couples to regulate their sexual activity with their fertility cycles, Catholic teaching, in fact, has acknowledged that the reproductive element is not as important as it once was. Why, she asks, does the hierarchy hold out the procreative norm as a reason to ban homosexual marriage when it doesn’t require that all heterosexual marital acts be open to procreation?
Historically, the place of reproduction in marriage has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the early Christian days, heavily under the influence of Stoic philosophical values, reproduction was seen as the only moral justification for sexual union. The unitive factor, i.e., bringing the couple closer to each other, was later accepted as an important factor in marriage, but seen as a secondary purpose. The Second Vatican Council elevated the unitive factor to an equal status with the procreative element. Some theologians saw this as an important development in understanding marriage, emphasizing that the unitive function may be more important than the procreative element.
Sister Farley is one theologian who has argued that the important guidepost for developing an ethic for marriage is the quality of the relationship. Principles such as free-consent of the partners, equality between partners, a sense of commitment, and permanency, she argues, provide a better basis for evaluating the good in a partnership than the Church’s current teaching with its heavy biological emphasis. For example, one of the principles she argues for is that a couple’s relationship does not have to be procreative, but should be generative. In other words, the issue is not whether the couple’s marriage results in procreation, but that their relationship produce integration in the partners so that they can be creative in their lives for the good of the larger community.
Finally, another area of theological discussion is the need to affirm gay/lesbian relationships. John McNeill, a psychotherapist and moral theologian, was the first Catholic scholar to raise this issue in his landmark treatise, The Church and the Homosexual, originally published in 1976. Through scriptural interpretation, a re-evaluation of the moral tradition on sexuality, and psychological insights and evidence, McNeill showed that, in justice, the Church needed to abandon its traditional opposition to committed, sexually active lesbian or gay relationships.
McNeill proposed that “The same moral norms should be applied in judging the sexual behavior of a true homosexual as we ordinarily apply to heterosexual activity.” Additionally, he made the perhaps more challenging proposal that “there is the possibility of morally good homosexual relationships and that the love which unites the partners in such a relationship, rather than alienating them from God, can be judged as uniting them more closely.” In 1976, discussion of same-sex marriage was non-existent, yet though that vocabulary was not used, in effect, McNeill was proposing a theology of marriage for lesbian/gay people.
Since that time, other theologians have followed suit. They argue that since the Church has developed a new understanding of homosexuality as a God-given state, then the Church needs to make accommodations for this type of love. Often they will use evidence and testimony from lesbian/gay people about their experience of the goodness of their committed relationships to support their view.
More importantly, lesbian/gay theologians themselves have contributed to the dialogue about marriage and sexuality which has been flourishing in the Church. These contributions have emphasized that assumptions about lesbian/gay people as promiscuous, unstable, immature, and selfish are not true.
Like many lesbian/gay issues, the issue of same-sex marriage is connected to other issues in the Church. Whether or not to allow same-sex marriage is connected not only to issues of justice and equality for lesbian/gay people, but also, more fundamentally, to questions of the definition of marriage itself, the role of the family, and the definition of sexuality. Continued discussion of this topic will certainly be a growing pain for the Church, but one that will help us examine some of our biggest fears, our greatest joys, and our most intimate needs for connection.
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