At my son's UMC church in Houston, a group has submitted a petition to the pastor that he prayerfully consider a full-throated denunciation of homosexuality from the pulpit, followed by a seven-part sermon series on why it's wrong, and then a polling of the congregation to make sure that they really understand now that it's wrong, wrong, wrong. My own denomination had a controversy a few years ago because even though it does not authorise gay marriage, two pastors had done so in defiance of this and were up for discipline. Many denominations are still wrangling, and it does seem to be the "final straw" issue for people to leave churches and start split-offs. The Catholics are having a long simmering controversy and a subgroup of trad Catholics are clearly regarding this as a central issue that requires...well a seven-party sermon series or something, I guess. Those Catholics who regard this as a central controversy point to statistics that show that 40% or so of the clergy is gay, and the worry is that they will "vote gay" as well.
But do we think that percentage was very different in the Good Olde Days? Hasn't a convent always been a place for a pious young woman who did not want to marry for "hidden" reasons, and the priesthood the same? And didn't many (I think the current estimate is 50% even over a lifetime) keep their vows of chastity just the same? There have been terrible scandals certainly. St. John's Seminary in Massachusetts was notorious for a few decades for advantage-taking of young seminarians and open homosexuality.
Look, I believe a gay marriage is invalid in the church. I am against ordination of gays who would, as above "vote gay" and teach against the faith. I'm not all that fond of gay marriage in society (though I have had gay friends who were married), but can put up with it because not everyone agrees with me and we have to live by laws of consent.
But there is no sane reading of scripture, or the church fathers, or the great Christian writers of history like Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley that places homosexuality at the center. I believe the scriptures teach against it and think the counterarguments smack of rationalisation rather than conviction, but really, it's not mentioned that much.
Nor do I buy the argument that every age of the Church has its pivot points and this is ours, so it is elevated by us in opposition because it was elevated to importance by others. This is the hour! Nor that the entire validity of scripture is being attacked by this doctrine more than any other. Umm...divorce? Isn't that a lot more common? I used to hear similar things about not allowing the occult to reach our children in the 80s. Don't let them introduce yoga to your child's school! (For the record, I believe yoga does have some bad spiritual influence. But why do we imagine a few third-graders doing a Salute to the Sun is somehow much more powerful than our apparently ineffective years of Sunday School?) When I came up among the Jesus People everything was focussed on the Last Days, and I still know people with that focus. In the last decade I have seen it claimed that antiracism is the center of the Gospel. The pastor at a church we used to go to claims on his site that nonviolence is the center of the gospel.
Full immersion. Concern for the marginalised. Prohibition. Blue laws. Go back far enough and people were excommunicated over "wrong" ways of calculating the date of Easter, or cutting the tonsure. Oh yes, these were very big deals. Bishops would be dispatched to Ireland or wherever with the sole purpose of making them get back into line.
This Gospel seems to have many centers, and I cannot escape the suspicion that over and over again, people are not examining themselves and seeing that they are elevating a personal impression, even a feeling, swollen out of proportion and calling it God's priority as well. I recall a poll, Pew I think, from over a decade ago that there is 8% of the population whose main reason for opposing one or another gay right/entitlement/preference was that they found the contemplation of the acts they committed disgusting. That's not a theological reason. James Dobson used to play to that group on his radio show by telling parents to send the children out of the room and then reading detailed descriptions of what happened in bathhouses. If you know that they commit homosexual acts, why do you need to know more? Doesn't it say that it is your interest that is unhealthy? I know some of that 8%, who in the discussion have to quickly get to their feelings of disgust. I have to believe they are overrepresented in the groups submitting petitions. Plenty of sincere people, sure. But why is there no internal check on this, no encouragement to self-examination.
An additional thought. (I have no numbers. I admit it is an impression.) In this area a lot of the startup evangelical churches since the 1970s, especially of the more fundamentalist and political variety, have beens started by ex-Catholics, especially French Catholics. That's just the demography here, sure. But I wonder how much of the energy comes from charismatic males who believe, sometimes quite openly, that the church needs to be run by manly men. Did they strike out on their own because they perceived that this was not the case in the mainstream denominations? They certainly have a lot of men-being-men programs. And if this is the case, wouldn't that be strongest among Catholics? I am thinking of a half-dozen guys I know, all Vietnam-era veterans, all zeroing in quickly on the priestly abuse of boys scandals (even though it turns out there were similar numbers in other churches and synagogues, in Scouts, in Little League, at Y camps, etc, the Catholics still get the notice), all quite enjoyably regular guys who talk hunting, and muscle cars, and building stuff. A welcome relief, but are they overrepresented in who left the church, especially the Catholic church? Where my son is in Texas, this petitioning group is strongly CEO-infused. There's a whole Sunday School class that has been meeting for decades and electing officers who believe they should be able to demad that the congregation go in particular directions. If the UMC won't do what they want they seem eager to leave and join groups that they think will do what they want. The history of Protestant splits suggests otherwise, but maybe...Are they resentful that their type didn't seem to get to run the places they left behind?
Well, that's rather prejudicial of me, I admit, and I suspect I will be modifying the idea over time as people point things out to me or challenge some of the assertions. Go right ahead.
9 comments:
"Father Brown"
"I told you that heresies and false doctrines had become common and conversational; that everybody was used to them; that nobody really noticed them. Did you think I meant Communism when I said that? Why, it was just the other way. You were all as nervous as cats about Communism; and you watched Craken like a wolf. Of course. Communism is a heresy; but it isn’t a heresy that you people take for granted. It is Capitalism you take for granted; or rather the vices of Capitalism disguised as a dead Darwinism. Do you recall what you were all saying in the Common Room, about life being only a scramble, and nature demanding the survival of the fittest, and how it doesn’t matter whether the poor are paid justly or not? Why, that is the heresy that you have grown accustomed to, my friends; and it’s every bit as much a heresy as Communism."
Which is not to say that preaching sexual misconduct doesn't have deadly consequences--it does.
But I think the current push to preach the goodness of homosexuality is a side effect of a deeper collapse.
Catholic sexual ethics are based at least as much on Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas as on anything that is actually in scripture. It's a sophisticated argument that I've been considering for many years now. I think it's wrong, but it's hard to say exactly why it's wrong. I thought I had worked out an answer, but on deeper study I realized that Augustine's writing on the problem of evil disabled the line of thought I was advancing.
On the other hand, because it's not scripture and none of the philosophers -- not even the canonized saints -- could speak ex cathedra, there's nothing heretical about dissenting from it. I might make another stab at it sometime.
Scripture is a witness to truth, not the source of it. Ideas don't have to be in Scripture in order to be true; they just have to be in agreement with what is in Scripture. And if they are, then dissenting from them is every bit as bad as contradicting Scripture itself. So the question boils down to :"Are the philosophers in agreement with Scripture or not?"
I have taught Sunday School for many years. A few years ago I had a girl in my class, about 11 or 12 years old, whose parents made sure she had a very sheltered life: Christian school, only G-rated movies, careful control of her books, etc, etc.
One day she blurted out in the middle of class, “What is all this ‘gay’ stuff, anyway? I hear this all the time at school: ‘He’s so gay,’ or ‘That’s just gay,’ that kind of thing. I have no idea what they’re talking about. What does it all mean, anyway?”
I was trying to think of a discreet way to explain it, but before I could say anything, another girl simply said, “Oh, that’s when boys only like other boys.” The first girl got very quiet, and you could almost hear the gears going round, as she tried to process this. After a minute or so, she exclaimed, “Oh, gross!”
What struck me was that she had no idea of the specific details of what a gay relationship would entail, and she had not been taught that it was wrong – in fact, had not be taught anything about it. But, she instinctively, intrinsically, came to the conclusion that it was not just wrong, but ‘gross.’
I learned about such things in the traditional way, that is to say, on the street corner. My initial response was similar: “They do WHAT? That’s disgusting!” As much as I try to be tolerant and accepting, I find it hard to get over that initial impression.
You say that finding something disgusting is not a good theological reason to oppose it, but I wonder if that is true. If God has written his law on our hearts, is a response like this a reflection of our own innate understanding of God’s law? Not every possible sin is discussed in detail in the Bible, so maybe our natural response to something like homosexuality is something we should not dismiss.
@G. Poulin:
The saints especially thought they were in alignment with Scripture; obviously Aristotle never considered the question. There is definitely an interpretation of Scripture that aligns with them, but it isn't the only possible one.
One area where I think they might be wrong is in the analysis that sexuality has -- and always has -- reproduction as a primary good without which it is not fully good. Clearly no one is attempting to enforce that universally; married couples past the age of procreation are not discouraged from sex because it can no longer lead to reproduction, but are encouraged to continue to 'pay the marital debt' in order to actualize the other goods Aquinas identifies (unity of the married in a spiritual way, and yes, physical pleasure).
Thus, at least some versions of sex without the possibility of reproduction are still considered fully good. Yet it seems as if Augustine's privation argument would mean that the privation of the primary good would make the act evil; and Aquinas' refinement seems to suggest that the absence of the primary good makes those forms indefensible. That seems like an error in the analysis.
But again, these are great thinkers and their argument is careful and subtle. It requires a lot of thought to challenge, and I would not rush into it.
@ Uncle Bill - there's something to that, as James pointed out about a character in King Lear at his own site a few years ago. https://idontknowbut.blogspot.com/2020/11/thanks.html
But many of us, particularly girls, felt similar disgust at learning about the sexual act between males and females.
I wonder why people always feel the need to seek comfort in formalizing matters like this. generally speaking, I object to being informed about someone else's sexuality as if it's a subject that demands public consideration. It doesn't, if I'm not emotionally involved with them in that way. You go your way, I'll go my way, don't f*** with me. That's easy enough, isn't it?
Someone mentioned 'Father Brown', but to my mind, this whole thing has become so ridiculous it really deserves its own verse in 'Father William.'
As for the Scriptural references, I often wish there was another book, the Book of Minding Your Own Business, preaching cautions against over-sharing and over-attending, if you now what I mean.
Oversharing and undersharing can both bring problems. They are on a continuum. I don't see either as a sin per se, though either could be driven by some other motive such as narcissism or lack of fellow-feeling.
There is also a humorous contradiction in both. People who overshare are sometimes concealing something, so they flood the market to make sure everyone is sick of hearing about them and asks no further. CS Lewis seems remarkably, sometimes even embarrassingly candid about his inner spiritual faults. Yet his friends called his autobiography Surprised By Joy "Suppressed By Jack."
People who undershare are appalled that this prompts others to look more closely at their words and behavior, as we also have varying needs to know the safety of those around us, and the person trying to be invisible may be the greatest danger present. Not all curiosity of others is unhealthy.
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