Gay Rights?

[M.SIGGA]

There are not more gay people now than there have ever been. Society seems to be more excepting now so more folks are deciding to ''come out'', but there isn't a gay population boom like a baby boom. The only reason I all-of-the-sudden know three gay people is b/c three guys I knew in high school just decided to come out - and they said they were gay all along, but just scared and quiet about it.

Since the Church, which is the only institution that matters, will never recognize gay marriage, I don't understand why there is always an argument about whether or not it will be legalized. The word marriage cannot exist outside the relationship between a man and a woman b/c two peeps of the same sex can't ''marry'' and become one, and naturally procreate.

BTW heterosexual Civil Marriages in the U.S. are fueling Gay Marriage Rights folks b/c those are already sham. There is a 50% divorce rate and 5 nights a week you can see perfect strangers compete, have premarital affairs, and then marry perfect strangers on almost every TV channel. I don't support the idea of gay marriage, but I honestly don't think gay marriages will make this nation's moral situation any worse.

Rename the law to "Bill Allowing Same Sex People to Get a Legal Certificate Entitling Insurance Money and Property Transfer on Death" instead of "Bill Legalizing Gay Marriage" and everyone will be happy. If the prob is still with the Church, I don't understand why folks don't just leave and try to start a new one like folks did in the past.

[phatcatholic]

phatpham,

could someone help me respond to this article? its definitely relative to our topic. a friend of mine, who is gay, sent me this and i have yet to respond to her.

How the Vatican Can Change

By Paul Varnell

Originally appeared in two parts in the Chicago Free Press, Sept. 27 and Oct. 4, 2000.

WILL THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY ever change its position opposing homosexuality?

No doubt most gays, including Catholic gays, cheerfully ignore Vatican doctrine on the subject. But the issue is significant for all of us because the Catholic hierarchy is an important political and social pressure group. If it stopped condemning homosexuality, that would greatly help our efforts to achieve legal and social equality.

Current Vatican doctrine holds that homosexuality violates "natural law" because it involves the use of sexual organs in a way that is not open to the possibility of creating new life. Hence it is a misuse of those body parts.

For exactly the same reasons, the Vatican opposes all oral and anal sex, masturbation and the use of condoms -- because those actions also use the sexual organs in ways that cannot create life.

Or so everyone always thought. But now, astonishingly, it turns out that the Vatican allows condoms under certain circumstances.

So if the Vatican says that the "proper" use of sexual organs is not quite the moral absolute we all thought, those who wish to alter the Vatican's position on gay sex will examine the argument carefully.

Last April, Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau of the Pontifical Council for the Family published a little-noticed article in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano entitled, "Prophylactics or Family Values? Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS."

The article came to public attention only after it was discussed in the Jesuit magazine America (Sept. 23).

In his article, Suaudeau explained, "The use of condoms had particularly good results" for halting the transmission of AIDS in Uganda generally and by prostitutes in Thailand.

"The use of prophylactics in these circumstances," i.e., where AIDS is widespread, "is actually a 'lesser evil'" than not using condoms and allowing a fatal disease to spread through a sexually active population.

So some moral goods override the "natural law" imperative that every sexual

behavior must have the possibility of creating human life.

Is this shift, as the Scripps Howard News Service called it, "a theological U-turn"?

Oh, no, not at all, Suaudeau said; he was simply explaining his church's position.

"I don't understand why people want to interpret what I stated clearly in my

article," he told the New York Times. "But there is no change in church teaching."

That's his story and he's sticking with it.

But when a committee of the National Council of Catholic Bishops proposed in 1988 that AIDS education efforts "could include accurate information about

prophylactic devices ... as a means of preventing AIDS," the Vatican pounced.

Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the office of doctrinal purity stated, "To seek the solution to the disease in the promotion of the use of prophylactics is..., above all, unacceptable from a moral point of view."

Bishop Anthony Bosco who drafted the 1988 Catholic bishops' statement said he felt vindicated by Suaudeau's article.

"This proves to me that maybe the logic that led me to that conclusion follows from sound moral principles," Bosco said.

Now if the Vatican can "explain" or "develop" its position on prophylactics in such a way as to move from prohibiting them to allowing them, can it also "explain" or "develop" its position on other issues such as homosexuality?

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       Can the church also "explain" or "develop" its position on other

issues such as homosexuality?

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Of course it can. How could it do so?

We might get some clues from Catholic church historian John Noonan who published a fascinating article entitled "Development in Moral Doctrine" in the journal Theological Studies (1993).

"That the moral teachings of the Catholic Church have changed over time will, I suppose, be denied by almost no one today," Noonan states flatly.

And he undertakes a rapid historical survey of Catholic doctrine on lending money at interest (usury), marriage, slavery, and religious freedom, showing in each case how the Vatican's position changed and explaining the principles that produced the change.

For instance, lending money at interest was once regarded as a mortal sin, contrary to natural law ("money is barren") and contrary to the Gospel ("Lend freely, expecting nothing in return").

But today no one, not even the Vatican, disapproves of putting money is a savings account to earn interest.

For nearly two millennia, the Vatican taught that it was not sinful to own slaves. After all, the Apostle Paul approved of slavery ("slaves, stay with your masters") and actually returned a runaway slave named Onesimus to his master.

Barely a century ago, in 1890, Pope Leo XIII for the first time denounced slavery as immoral and incompatible "with the brotherhood that unites all men," a brotherhood that had previously escaped notice in Rome.

Similarly, the Vatican long taught that heretics had no religious liberty and governments should execute them, a position supported by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and words attributed to Jesus himself.

Only in 1964 was this position finally repudiated by the Second Vatican Council which announced that the freedom to believe was a sacred human right. A previously undetected right, apparently.

Using such precedents for change, the task now is to develop a strong case for certain human, moral goods such that they too override formerly inviolable Vatican doctrines about the "proper" use of sexual organs.

Clues to the nature of these analogous greater goods (or greater evils to be avoided) might be found by examining the way the Vatican was swayed to change its doctrine in the earlier instances of usury, slavery, marriage, and religious freedom.

The Vatican reversed its long-standing condemnation of lending money at interest in the 16th century when moral theologians shifted the focus of their analysis from the loan itself ("money is barren") to the significance the loan had for the people involved.

The theologians came to realize that the lender lost money on an interest-free loan because he had to forgo the opportunity for a profitable investment he could otherwise make with the money. So he deserved some payment in return for his loss: interest.

In the same way, when the Vatican decides to reverse its position on homosexuality, it will shift the focus of moral analysis from the specific acts to the people involved and the purposes, significance, and effects of the actions for them.

For instance, the Vatican will discover that gay and lesbian couples intend to express and validate their love and affection for each other in the most intense way available to them.

The theologians might even discover that the physical intimacy enhances and

intensifies the couples' affection, mutual regard, bondedness and loyalty.

When the Vatican reversed its position on slavery in 1890, Pope Leo XIII said slavery was incompatible "with the brotherhood that unites all men," a brotherhood that found expression in Jesus' commands to "love one another" and "love your neighbor as yourself."

The Vatican ignored the Apostle Paul's repeated endorsements of slavery (e.g., Eph. 6:5) in favor of his observation, "There is neither slave nor free...; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28) which the Vatican applied more broadly than Paul himself did.

In the same way, the Vatican may decide that to accord homosexuals and their

human desires equal legitimacy with heterosexuals and their desires is a further application of "the brotherhood that unites all men" and an obligation that follows from loving one's neighbor as oneself.

The Vatican could choose to ignore Paul's ignorant comments about homosexuals (in Rom. 1:18-27 he thinks all gays are pagans) in favor of his observation, "There is neither male nor female ... in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28), which can teach that sexual dimorphism is irrelevant in the moral evaluation of love and its expression in human relationships.

In contravention to Jesus' teaching that marriage is permanent and remarriage is adultery, the Vatican has allowed some already married people to remarry. The Apostle Paul himself allowed Christian converts to remarry if their partners did not become Christian and deserted them.

Pope Gregory XIII later allowed converted Catholic slaves to remarry if they did not know whether an absent spouse would also become Catholic. He acted "lest they not persist in their faith." So keeping Catholics "in the faith" can have primacy over a Gospel teaching.

In the same way, if and when enough gays leave Catholicism and gay couples

marry in other churches, choosing love over doctrine, the Vatican will feel forced to reverse its position "lest they not persist in their faith."

This has already started. After the gay Catholic organization Dignity attracted a sizable membership, many Catholic dioceses began to establish official diocesan gay/lesbian organizations to keep gays from joining what they regarded as a heretical sect. These diocesan organizations downplay gay sinfulness where they do not ignore it entirely.

But this very effort to retain gays increases pressure on the Vatican to reverse its position. As church historian John Noonan points out, the Vatican reversed its view of usury when loans and credit became part of everyday commercial life and it was forced to examine "the experience of otherwise decent Christians who were bankers and who claimed that banking was compatible with Christianity."

In the same way, the Vatican will feel, and is now feeling, increased pressure to rethink its view of homosexuality for the same reason-the growing presence in the Catholic church of "otherwise decent Christians" who claim that homosexuality "is compatible with Christianity."

And finally, underlying all is the growing awareness by gays and theologians both of the importance and comprehensiveness of the doctrine of the primacy of individual conscience.

The Second Vatican Council (1964) reversed nearly two millennia of Catholic

dogma by announcing that freedom of belief is a sacred human right that governments must not coerce. And, we can safely add, by the same token even

Catholic doctrine must ultimately yield before it.

thanks,

nick

Edited December 2, 2003 by phatcatholic