Recently, the Bishop of Lexington, Kentucky, Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., addressed hundreds of L.G.B.T. Catholics and their supporters who were meeting in Chicago at a New Ways Ministry national symposium, telling them, “Your presence and your persistence in the Church is an inspiration for me and for many.”
Bishop Stowe accepted the group’s invitation because of a desire to engage in dialogue with Catholics who do not always feel welcome in the church. Bishop Stowe is certainly not the first Bishop to address a gathering of gay and lesbian Catholics.
Surely, for far too long, the Church turned a blind eye to the hateful rhetoric of many Catholics about homosexuals. A change of attitude among Catholics is long overdue.
Certainly, in recent times, there has been a clear shift in the relationship between the Church and the L.G.B.T. community. Support for pro-L.G.B.T. causes, including same-sex marriage, has risen sharply among Catholics in recent years.
Support for same-sex marriage among U.S. Catholics closely tracks support among the country at large. Part of that support appears to be the result of the increased visibility of gay and lesbian Americans. More people know a family member or friend who identifies as gay or lesbian and are thus more sympathetic to causes they support.
Still, polls that show Catholics who attend Mass weekly support same-sex marriage at lower rates than Catholics who attend Mass less frequently.
But, the past few decades have seen a sharp increase in the number of Americans who personally know L.G.B.T. people. And American Bishops have emphasized different aspects Church teaching in their outreach to L.G.B.T. Catholics and their families.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark told an L.G.B.T. Catholic group that they would be “very welcome” to organize a pilgrimage to the cathedral in his city. Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, a delegate to the pope’s global meeting of bishops discussing family issues, said in 2015 that he meets with gay Catholics to understand their perspective and that gay Catholics in relationships could rely on their consciences when it comes to the question of receiving Communion.
Despite these shifting views, advocates for L.G.B.T. people say the Church can still feel “unwelcoming”.
By "unwelcoming", I assume they mean that Church teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” has not changed, and the Vatican reaffirmed its ban on Priests with “deeply-seated homosexual tendencies” as recently as last December. Some also point to policies that prohibit gays and lesbians from holding leadership positions in parishes and to the termination of openly gay and lesbian employees from Catholic schools and other institutions.
For quite some time, it has seemed very clear to me that the LGBT is not looking for a “welcoming” attitude by the Church.
Rather, the LGBT community will not be satisfied until the Church affirms that homosexuality is not disordered, that its practice in whatever form is not a violation of Natural Law and that same-sex unions are morally equivalent to Sacramental Marriages.
For all their words and gestures of acceptance or tolerance of the gay community, the Bishops know that there remain both Biblical and doctrinal prohibitions regarding homosexuality that can never be compromised without abandoning true allegiance to the Christian Faith. Yet, these same Bishops never engage the gay community in communicating that the Church can never and will never be able to provide homosexuals with the approbation of their lifestyles they are demanding.
So I ask myself: what is the end game of the Bishops’ dalliance with the gay community? Are they simply being patronizing? Manipulative? Pandering? What?
Granted, one (not even the Church itself) can never judge whether a person is morally culpable or responsible for personal sinfulness. That belongs to the individual in his or her encounter with the Lord within the cathedral of human conscience. If the LGBT were honest about their desire for dialogue with the Church, they would accept this as the final milestone on the road of encounter with the Catholic Faith.
But the gay community is looking for something more: approval of the gay lifestyle as morally equivalent to heterosexuality.
That can and will never happen.
And until the Bishops are clear and unequivocal on this point, all their words and gestures, all the hugs and smiles, are empty and shallow. In the end, the dialogue will be forever frustrated by the truth, that annoying virtue which cuts cleanly between what is good and evil, what is right and wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment