Originally appeared June 15, 1995, in the Windy City Times.
We need constantly to remind ourselves that the chief opposition to gay equality is religious. In the here and now, that means primarily fundamentalist Protestantism and the Catholic hierarchy.
We may conduct much of our liberation efforts in the political sphere or even the "cultural" sphere, but always undergirding those and slowing our progress is the moral/religious sphere. If we could hasten the pace of change there, our overall progress would accelerate, in fact, would be assured.
In that light, it is fascinating to catch the Catholic church in mid-transition on an important moral issue that has some historical and doctrinal parallels to our own: anti-semitism.
No one can doubt that the New Testament contains anti-semitic passages and explicit condemnations of "the Jews." There are far more, and more specific, anti-Jewish references in the New Testament than there are anti-gay texts in the Old and New Testaments combined.
Perhaps the best known and most bizarre is in the gospel named for Matthew which says that when a crowd of Jews shouted to Pilate that he should crucify Jesus, they added gratuitously, "His blood be on us and on our children." Historically this is preposterous, but there it is "holy writ."
The gospel named for John is even more insistently and vehemently anti-semitic. A few examples: "And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus." "This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him." "I know that you (Jews) are of your father the devil." "The Jews took up stones again to stone him." "The Jews assured him (Pilate), 'We have a law and by the law he ought to die.'" "They (Jews) cried out 'away with him, away with him, crucify him.'"
Other writings of the early church fathers are littered with condemnations of Jews, Jewish customs, Jewish beliefs. And the Christian hierarchy and its flock acted on that hostility for centuries through inquisitions, expropriations, displacements, slaughters, and pogroms, all coming to an appalling height in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Hitler himself allegedly told a delegation of church leaders that he was merely putting into practice what the Christian churches had preached for nearly two thousand years.
Malcolm Hay's pioneering book, "The Foot of Pride: Europe and the Jews" is still a useful place to start in learning the full story.
But the moral revulsion against the Holocaust was so strong that many decent people felt a need to rethink the texts that appeared to lead to such a result. Watching them do so can help provide a model for how similar changes will come about on gay issues.
Last March 23 [1995], the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, delivered a remarkable lecture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem called "Antisemism: the Historical Legacy and the Continuing Challenge for Christians."
The speech is a fascinating attempt to cope with and evade the fact of Christian anti-semitism and its roots in ancient Christian writings. Bernardin draws on historical research, modern Catholic teaching, and current Biblical interpretation, emphasizing the original contexts of the texts, all to de-emphasize their significance.
To begin with, Bernardin drives a wedge between the texts and their plain, literal meaning by asserting that "There are texts that remain open to anti-Judaic interpretation." He refers to "what many consider to be problematic New Testament texts," and he notes that "John" is "the most problematic of all New Testament books in its outlook toward the Jews and Judaism."
Later he goes further, saying that "it is not certain that any of these texts themselves can be legitimately termed antisemitic or even anti-Judaic...." Note the words that produce wriggle room: certain, themselves, legitimately.
Second, carefully citing church documents, he usually refers to "forms of racism, including anti-semitism" and calls anti-semitism "the most tragic form that racist ideology has assumed in our century."
But those documents are an attempt to exonerate the church for its religious persecution by pretending that the motivation was something other than the unwillingness of Jews to accept the central Christian doctrine-that Jesus was the messiah. Bernardin does go a bit further, acknowledging a theological element, but he cautiously downplays what he is doing. And he avoids writing of "Christian anti-semitism," preferring to speak of "antisemitism in a Christian context."
Third, Bernardin frankly says, "Retranslation ... and reinterpretation certainly are to be included among the goals we pursue in the effort at eradicating antisemitism."
We could call this the "Where there's a will, there's a way" school of Biblical interpretation. Nowhere else does Bernardin quite so openly acknowledge the moral impetus behind the effort to find other, more innocuous meanings for these texts.
Among the techniques of reinterpretation he suggests are emphasizing the limited original context and denying the general application of the texts. Another is attributing their form to "polemical" aims, that is, deliberate exaggeration or distortion. Elsewhere he flatly if tacitly denies that Jesus ever said that the Jews are "children of the devil." He does this by approvingly quoting a scholar who says the words are "an affirmation which is placed on the lips of Jesus." That is, "placed" illegitimately, by someone else.
Bernardin also argues that anti-semitism does not begin with Christianity. Since there were pre-existing anti-semitic influences, then anti-semitism was no necessary part of church doctrine, he asserts. So if anti-semitism became part of Christianity, then Christianity was also a victim rather than a perpetrator.
Bernardin comes close to saying just this when he quotes the Pope speaking of Catholic "acquiescence ... to intolerance and the weakness of so many of [the church's] sons and daughters who sullied her face." In other words, Catholicism was not guilty, only Catholics.
Two years ago, writing in "Theological Studies," John Noonan traced earlier Catholic doctrinal changes on marriage, slavery, religious freedom, and lending money at interest. Clearly the Catholic church is now changing on anti-semitism even as we watch.
So we know the Catholic church will find a way to change its position on homosexuality when it finally feels morally compelled to do so. Our task is to seize the moral high ground and press our moral case with gentle but relentless pressure.