Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, appointed by Pope Francis, has a softer tone in his opposition to gay marriage, but he lacked a convincing argument this week on CBS’s “Face the Nation” (view clip here, after ad) as he tried to explain the Roman church’s opposition to gay marriage because it’s necessary “to protect mothers and fathers who come together to continue the human race.”
When asked by interviewer Norah O’Donnell about gay parents, he returned to the need for “legislation that supports, protects and upholds those who take the risk to bring children into the world”, but not for gay couples who are raising children, because they are “not bringing children into the world to preserve the human race,” or at least are not bringing children into the world “through their own love,” which is what deserves the state’s protection.
Church representatives had an easier time when they could just declare homosexual relations a sin and be done with it. Instead, the kind of convoluted argument Archbishop Cupich puts forward is going to be increasingly unconvincing as more gay couples become parents, even assuming that one were to accept the view that childbearing is the only legitimate rationale for state-recognized marriage.
38 Comments for “The Catholic Church’s Ongoing Marriage Muddle”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The Catholic Church is in the “muddle” for a single, simple, reason: The Church ignored the distinction that it has long made between religious marriage, on the one hand, and civil law marriage, on the other, a distinction that it makes with respect to other forms of marriage..
The Church, for example, is not in a “muddle” with respect to marriage between a man and a woman. The Church holds to its teaching, without difficulty. Religious marriage (dubbed “Christian marriage” in the Catechism and other teaching documents) is a sacramental bond created by a Christian man and a Christian woman, a bond that cannot be dissolved during the lifetime of the spouses. The Church distinguishes between Christian marriage and civil law marriage in many ways. The Church does not recognize divorce at civil law, for example, and will not, as a result, allow a Christian marriage to be formed between a man and a woman if either has been divorced. Civil law remarriages are, in such cases, considered for religious purposes to create a state of permanent adultery. The Church reserves unto itself the right to dissolve, for religious purposes, valid civil law marriages between a Christian and a non-Christian in certain circumstances (e.g. the “Pauline privilege” and the “Petrine privilege”). The Church does not recognize marriages between non-Christians as “Christian marriage”, for obvious reasons. And so on.
The Church could, without any damage to its teaching about religious marriage, apply the core teaching to same-sex marriage (“Christian marriage is a sacramental bond created by a Christian man and a Christian woman, a bond that cannot be dissolved during the lifetime of the spouses.”) without any muddle whatsoever. Nobody would question the Church about it, any more than anyone questions the right of the Church to refuse to perform or recognize remarriages after divorce.
The Church is in a “muddle” only because it failed to distinguish between two distinct forms of marriage – non-sacramental civil law marriage and sacramental Christian marriage – and meddled into civil law. It has no business doing so in the case of same-sex marriage any more than it does in the case of non-Christians marrying or in the case of civil law divorce. As long as it continues to meddle, it will continue to “muddle”. It is that simple.
I can understand when low-church Protestants end up in the “muddle”, denying that religious marriage is a sacrament as they do. If religious marriage is not sacramental, then the lines between civil law marriage and religious marriage are indistinct, if existing.
But the Catholic Church has no reason to be in a “muddle” at all, except that it ignored its own longstanding teachings concerning the difference between sacramental and non-sacramental marriage, and meddled in the affairs of civil law. I have absolutely no sympathy for the Catholic Bishops. If the Bishops had remained true to the teaching of the Church, they would not be in the fix they are in right now.
posted by Mark Peterson on
This interview was better than the normally fawning questions about gay marriage that Cardinal Dolan receives. But just once, after hearing from a Catholic leader demanding that the state follow church law and deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, I’d like to hear a journalist ask a church leader what they’re recommending be done to the hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians who are already married, and the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of kids being raised by these married parents.
Does the church believe these marriage should be forcibly annulled? Does it believe the kids should be stripped from one of their parents? Based on what they say, I assume the answer to these questions is yes. If so, they at least should be candid. The comments always seem to assume that there aren’t already lots of gay and lesbian married couples.
posted by Houndentenor on
Because if two women can get married it will destroy all heterosexual marriages? That seems to be the argument but when stated directly the absurdity of it is self-evident.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Church representatives had an easier time when they could just declare homosexual relations a sin and be done with it.
If, by “relations”, you mean sexual relations, the Church continues to hold to its teaching that all sexual activity outside of the boundaries of marriage between and man and a woman — including but not limited to sexual relations between two men or two women — is sinful. The moral teachings of the Church with respect to chastity — the “integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” — are both complex and subtle, and (in my view, as an outsider) have much to commend them. The problem — the “muddle”, so to speak — is created not by what the Church teaches its faithful about sexuality, but by the Church’s misstep in conflating the role of sacramental marriage and non-sacramental marriage, and, as a result, “demanding that the state follow church law” (as Mark put it).
Instead, the kind of convoluted argument Archbishop Cupich puts forward is going to be increasingly unconvincing as more gay couples become parents, even assuming that one were to accept the view that childbearing is the only legitimate rationale for state-recognized marriage.
The Catholic Bishops should never have entered the secular fight over same-sex marriage, and have done great damage to the moral authority of the Church with respect to its teaching about chastity (in particular, marital chastity) by doing so. By involving the Church in the fight, the Catholic Bishops set themselves, creating a situation in which the moral teachings of the Church are bound up with the operation and effect of secular laws, when the two are (and should be) distinct.
What happens now (again as Mark began to explore) that same-sex marriage is recognized by civil law? Does the Church, of logical necessity, then have to seek to have the civil law same-sex marriages “annulled”? And if so, does the Church, of logical necessity, then have to seek to have the civil law remarriages after divorce “annulled”? And, by extension, does the Church, of logical necessity, have to seek to have civil law conform to other teachings of the Church regarding chastity, criminalizing fornication, pornography, adultery and other offenses against chastity?
And, by conflating sacramental marriage and non-sacramental marriage, what have the Catholic Bishops done to the Church’s teaching about the unique aspects of sacramental marriage, the marital union of two Christians, in which (according to Church teaching) Christ is present, as present as Christ is in the Eucharist? Does the Church really mean to equate the marriage of two scoffing atheists with the marriage of two Catholics?
The Catholic Bishops had the opportunity to take a path that upheld the unique sacramental nature of Christian marriage and distinguished sacramental marriage from non-sacramental marriage — “to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, to render unto God what is God’s”, so to speak — and it elected not to do so. In my view, it was an enormous mistake.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
A fair number of Catholics — across the spectrum of tradition and politics — that I know have cynically suggested that someone within the Catholic Church pushed harder for it to get involved in the fight against secular gay marriage, mainly to distract from other internal matters — i.e. accusations of sexual abuse and financial misdealings.
Now as a practical matter their is probably not enough internal support within the Church bureaucracy to alter (or as it did with many issues during the Vatican II “clarify” ) its official position with respects to homosexuality.
It is not that the Catholic Church dose not change or clarify its position on any number of moral and ethical issues — see Vatican II –, but that the support within the Church leadership does not really exist, right now.
Frankly, that Vatican II got published was pretty impressive in itself. Vatican II did begin to distance the Church from anti-Semitism, and the practice of “banned” books/films. It also expressed a need for Church and its leaders to get more involved in helping its followers with things like poverty, disease, misery, etc.
So…. (if one wants to try and read the Catholic Church tea leaves), the doctrine remains the same but their is more emphasis on choosing polite language and focusing on compassion.
posted by Jorge on
Church representatives had an easier time when they could just declare homosexual relations a sin and be done with it.
1) Doctrinally, they can.
2) In the US, they haven’t done so for years.
The Catholic Church in the United States has stood in the muddle without doing much for years, but that didn’t do much for the welfare of the gay community except give it one less enemy to worry about. Now that Pope Francis has embraced the mud and asked the Church to do things within the mud, you’re seeing a lot of the discomfort that goes along with performing change and action with your eyes open.
The Church is in a “muddle” only because it failed to distinguish between two distinct forms of marriage – non-sacramental civil law marriage and sacramental Christian marriage – and meddled into civil law. It has no business doing so in the case of same-sex marriage any more than it does in the case of non-Christians marrying or in the case of civil law divorce. As long as it continues to meddle, it will continue to “muddle”. It is that simple.
It is also a cowardly abdication of moral responsibility. The Catholic Church terms itself the “universal” church, the one church for all places and cultures. While it recognizes some rules may be different based on cultural and temporal norms, and while even with gay marriage the Church has some sentiments of respecting the utility of dissenting cultural and temporal norms on sacramental issues, at the end of the day it still considers those issues to be universal. If the Catholic Church considers homosexual relations to be a mortal sin (which it still does), it has a responsibility to teach the world the evidence of such, to oppose it firmly, and to instruct its disciples that “clear and consistent opposition is a duty”.
The safe line between respecting why civil divorce and civil same sex marriage exist in this place and time and standing firm on universal truth to the contrary is very thin and that is why most people do not perceive either Pope Benedict or Pope Francis to recognize it exists theoretically. In practice it may not exist.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
A great gulf exists between witnessing to “universal truth”, on the one hand, and funding and engaging in (directly and through proxies like the KofC and NOM) an expensive, dirty political campaign to influence secular politics, on the other. The Catholic Bishops could have been powerful witnesses to “universal truth”; instead the Catholic Bishops chose to become street fighters in the secular arena.
I have no problem with religions witnessing to “universal truth” as understand it (after all, my religious tradition considers itself, rightly in my view, a “light to the nations”, a role given to it by God and accepted, a role for which it has paid dearly in blood over the millenia), but the Catholic Bishops did not witness or bring light.
The Catholic Bishops got down into the mud with the likes of Brian Brown, ignored the longstanding distinction between sacramental and non-sacramental marriage, and effectively destroyed its own moral authority. It was an enormous blunder, breeding scandal and disrespect both among the faithful and at large, and the Church will pay the price for a long time.
posted by Jim Michaud on
I hear you Tom. I attend a UU church, so I didn’t directly witness this. Here in Maine during the 2009 marriage campaign, the RCC was HEAVILY involved in its defeat. They passed the collection plates specifically for the campaign and encouraged parishioners to watch an anti-gay video right in church. They weren’t nearly as involved in the 2012 referendum, but the damage has been done. There’s been a definite lower level of respect for the RCC. And NOM still haven’t released the donor list for the 2009 campaign.
posted by Mark Peterson on
And the Maine Catholic Church has lost an enormous percentage of their membership (around one-third between 2000 and 2010, http://www.pressherald.com/2013/07/31/here-is-the-church-___-where-are-the-people__2013-07-31/) in part because of its anti-equality operations–opposing both the 2009 marriage bill and the anti-discrimination law.
posted by Jorge on
The Catholic Bishops could have been powerful witnesses to “universal truth”; instead the Catholic Bishops chose to become street fighters in the secular arena.
Street fighting in the secular arena is what evangelicalism is, Tom. That’s perfectly legitimate for a self-styled church. As the late John Cardinal O’Connor wrote about abortion, we can legislate morality.
The mistake I do think the Catholic Church has made politically is being too absolutist in its refusal to cooperate with any promotion of the “gay lifestyle”. This has been a disaster for the promotion of any of its moderate positions on gay rights. Almost every single group that concerns itself with hate crimes, for example, is going to condone something else the Church doesn’t like, so the result is that the conversation steers liberal or conservative. Moderates work much more effectively when they can pick and choose when to battle. But of course Pope John Paul II spoke pretty forcefully against such cafeteria Catholicism.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
As the late John Cardinal O’Connor wrote about abortion, we can legislate morality.
The government is given that power by our Constitution, assuming that by “legislate morality” you mean that the government can enact laws that criminalize or tax behavior that we consider immoral, like murder or theft (in the case of criminalize), or smoking or drinking (in the case of taxation).
But the Constitution also imposes limits on that power when laws interfere with the core freedoms guaranteed to our citizens. In those cases, “moral approbation” is not a legitimate basis, and we cannot legislate morality.
Contraception is a case in which the government cannot interfere with the freedom of individuals to make reproductive choices. Abortion is another case, up to the rather artificially-drawn line of viability. Remarriage after divorce is another. Fornication and sodomy likewise.
And, as it turns out, same-sex marriage also falls into that category, as Justice Scalia noted that it would after Lawrence.
The Catholic Bishops may pine for the days of my youth, when (in Wisconsin, anyway) fornication was a crime, contraception use was criminalized, divorce was rare and difficult to obtain (usually requiring perjury), remarriage after divorce frowned upon as the domain of the wanton, adultery and sodomy, and so on, but those days are gone, in terms of the ability of the government to criminalize such behaviors. It hasn’t been tested yet (to my knowledge, which is limited) but I doubt that the government even has the ability constitutionally to discourage such immoral behavior by selective taxation (e.g. imposing a 10% tax penalty on couples who are divorced or remarried, or a $1,000 surcharge on marriage licenses issued to couples seeking a license to remarry).
The mistake I do think the Catholic Church has made politically is being too absolutist in its refusal to cooperate with any promotion of the “gay lifestyle”. This has been a disaster for the promotion of any of its moderate positions on gay rights. Almost every single group that concerns itself with hate crimes, for example, is going to condone something else the Church doesn’t like, so the result is that the conversation steers liberal or conservative. Moderates work much more effectively when they can pick and choose when to battle. But of course Pope John Paul II spoke pretty forcefully against such cafeteria Catholicism.
This is a thoughtful, and probably correct, argument in terms of the Church’s political failure in recent years. Aligning itself with the Brian Browns and Tony Perkins of the world, the Church blew it, as is evident to everyone except the Catholic Bishops at this point. The Bishops, who are not known for their deft hand in dealing with the laity within the Church, were even more tone-deaf when dealing with the public at large.
But that is not the end of the question, Jorge. The “moderate” path for the Catholic Bishops with respect to same-sex marriage would have been to take a path similar to the path taken with respect to divorce and remarriage after divorce.
The Church does not recognize divorces or remarriages after divorce for religious purposes, but is not hell-bent on conforming the civil law to Catholic religious teaching in those areas. It did just the opposite with respect to same-sex marriage, and funded the anti-marriage amendments.
The Church did not just offer its moral guidance in an attempt to persuade legislation in line with Catholic moral theology, but instead it actively funded, with culpability, NOM and other groups that ran deceptive, scurrilous political campaigns that operated on the margins of legality, to the extent that the campaigns stayed within the boundaries of the law at all.
And even that is not the end of the story. You observe that “Moderates work much more effectively when they can pick and choose when to battle.“.
We’ve certainly seen that in recent years — rather than tackle state-sponsored adultery that is practiced by millions upon millions of straight couples, the Church piled on with respect to same-sex marriage, which affects, at most, a few tens of thousands of gay/lesbian couples.
Why? I don’t know. But the fact that the Church chose to pile on a small, relatively powerless minority, despised by much of the population, rather than tackle the much larger moral problem affecting the majority, suggests that the Church did so out of expediency rather than moral clarity.
It may have been a shrewd political move to “pick the issue” to pile onto the powerless and despised, but in the long run it is going to hurt the Church. In this case, the hierarchy has no clothes, and Americans, who are fair-minded if nothing else, can’t help but notice.
posted by clayton on
Actually the Catholic church does recognize divorce and remarriage as long as the church members have received an annulment from the RCC. Ive probably known a dozen gay men who have gotten them for the benefit of their ex-wives
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Actually the Catholic church does recognize divorce and remarriage as long as the church members have received an annulment from the RCC.
An annulment is a declaration (a “Declaration of Nullity”) that no marriage existed.
The Church does not recognize the civil law divorce, which is irrelevant because no marriage existed to dissolve, and does not consider a subsequent marriage a “remarriage” for the same reason.
In short, a couple cannot be divorced if you are not married, and you cannot be married a second time if you were not married a first time.
The two processes are distinct.
posted by Don on
I think the reason the Catholic Church has chosen the “meddling” position is because that is the role it has played for much of its history. 1500 years of political immersion and 500 years of sporadic secularism in a handful of places is not their calling. The Church effectively kept secular divorce illegal in Ireland until just a few years ago.
While it seems absurd from an American perspective, we’re a blip on their historical radar. Our values have not been the values of the Church.
I just got back from visiting friends in Europe and it was a stark reminder of how different things are there. An Austrian friend checks on his ID card that he’s Catholic. Because they tithe through their taxes withheld from their paychecks. Can you imagine that here? And this is a gay guy. They think it’s weird that someone would check “protestant” much less “atheist.”
How do you get secularism across to a church that has the political clout to get a country to collect its tithes for them? I’m sure it’s not the only one.
I would love to see how religious conservatives would react to taxation if they thought they could get Washington to collect tithes. Maybe the hatred of taxation would dissolve overnight. At the very least, it would make a lot of heads explode.
posted by clayton on
“When asked by interviewer Norah O’Donnell about gay parents, he returned to the need for “legislation that supports, protects and upholds those who take the risk to bring children into the world”, but not for gay couples who are raising children, because they are “not bringing children into the world to preserve the human race,” or at least are not bringing children into the world “through their own love,” which is what deserves the state’s protection.”
So am I to assume from this that Cupich is against marriage for infertile heterosexual couples? They are not bringing children into the world through their love, and therefore, to be logically consistent, Cupich would have to insist that they are not deserving of the state’s protection. For that matter, adoptive parents, whether single or married, straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual, are not deserving of the state’s protection (by Cupich’s line of reasoning), which would suggest that the state has no role in adoption laws.
posted by Jorge on
Because they tithe through their taxes withheld from their paychecks. Can you imagine that here?
(Yes. It’s called compulsory unionization. It’s an artifact of Satanist atheist socialism :P)
The sanitization and automation of traditional values in moderate corporatist society is equally sad on both sides of the globe.
I would love to see how religious conservatives would react to taxation if they thought they could get Washington to collect tithes. Maybe the hatred of taxation would dissolve overnight. At the very least, it would make a lot of heads explode.
Actually, come to think of it, compulsory unionization does result in tithes being collected through your paycheck if you file a religious objection. And unions are more prevalent in the public sector.
I would take it upon myself to search your scalp for wires and diffuse the ticking time bomb in your head, but I understand that you’re taken.
posted by Don on
Terribly cute, Jorge. But no, unions do not get their money from the government. A slight, but terribly important difference. Withholding union dues and paying them directly to the union is not the same because the government is not in the transaction at all.
It is more akin to private health insurance co-pays that most people have. The money is withheld and paid directly to the insurer. The government is completely cut out of the equation. It is my understanding that the Austrian government receives the funds and cuts checks to the various religious institutions.
I’ve never had a problem with union dues. Don’t want to pay them? go work somewhere else. it really is that simple in terms of free market principles. But when the pay is less than you would make after union dues were taken out for the other job – well, cry me a river. Political parties decrying unions or corporations has always been disingenuous to me. They are organizing tools for commerce. Nothing more, nothing less. Claiming either is evil or bad is simply childish. (but your analogy was cute)
posted by Houndentenor on
I have done both union and non-union work in my field and the paltry 2% of my check I pay to the union is more than made up by the far better pay and work conditions on those jobs.
posted by Jorge on
Withholding union dues and paying them directly to the union is not the same because the government is not in the transaction at all.
It is in public sector unions in states that permit union or agency shop contracts. It’s a First Amendment issue (I think that might be true even in cases which involve private sector unions). Like I said, the dues are deducted from my check automatically.
And it’s about that time of year again for me to file my request for a rebate of the portion of my dues that goes to political activities. This past year they denied it on a technicality. There are times when I hate the union movement. It’s nothing more than the fact that there are evil people in every group and there are too many people who shield them from accountability.
It is my understanding that the Austrian government receives the funds and cuts checks to the various religious institutions.
As opposed to, you presume, some form of direct deposit from a gross paycheck to some union account? 1) Why do you presume that? 2) That’s a distinction without a difference.
(but your analogy was cute)
Thank you. It’s hard for me to use satire because people take me seriously. But I do like to find obscure facts that break obvious principles.
posted by Don on
Wait, Jorge. I think I’m just now putting it all together.
You’re a Bush supporter (still) who works for the government, is a member of a government employee union, gay, practicing Catholic, conservative who lives in the New York area?
Wow. Talk about walking/talking contradiction! (Then again, aren’t we all?)
It just took me aback for a second as I pieced together bits of your comments over time. I think you might actually be up for an award of some kind. If politics were the Olympics, you could take home the gold for whatever 15x double back flip/somersaults are.
(just friendly teasing)
posted by George Worthington on
Why are you bothering responding to Jorge?! He’s not known for the brightest posts. Distinguishing fine points are not his strength.
posted by Shadow Chaser on
I am a practicing Catholic, and maybe one day I will get it right.
I fear that the members of the Church hierarchy have painted themselves into a corner and are unwilling to walk across the fresh paint to get out of that corner.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that Catholics in pew have rejected official Church teachings on such issues as same sex marriage, divorce and re-marriage, the priestly ordination of women and married individuals and the ultimate bugaboo, artificial contraception. I suspect that parish priests as well as Religious women and men who staff educational institutions, health care and social service agencies, etc., would like to see the Church change its stands on those contentious issues, issues that they give half-hearted lip service.
Unfortunately for progressive Catholics (sorry Stephen for using the word “progressive”), much of the power in the Church is held by priests-bureaucrats who staff the offices of diocesan chanceries and Vatican congregations. These careerists, sometimes called curialists, care more for the brick-and-mortar Church than they do about the flesh-and-blood men and women who sit in the pews on Sunday and holy days.
Looking at the issue of contraception, Pope Paul VI was persuaded by conservative Church bureaucrats that if the Church changed its stand on birth control, Catholics in the pew would question other Church policies. Unfortunately for Paul VI that is exactly what happened without the change in Church policy. Catholics in the pew made up their own mind about leaving marriages that couldn’t be saved, to choose if and when to have children etc.; sometimes that means leaving a Church that they love. For Paul VI, Humane Vitae, his papal encyclical condemning artificial contraception, pretty much ended his papacy that had so much promise.
I suspect that Pope Francis realizes this. He understands that many Catholics have rejected Church teachings, but still consider themselves to be good Catholics, whether they are non-celibate gay men and lesbians, heterosexual couples co-habitating outside of marriage or just marrying someone who isn’t Catholic in a non-Catholic ceremony.
However, there is a large army of curialist priests at the Vatican and in diocesan office buildings who can hinder any reforms that Francis might want to make. In addition, the men that Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have appointed as bishops and archbishops are committed to upholding Church tradition regardless of the loss of good men an women as members of the Church.
(BTW, in the confessional, most priests seem to be worried about my prayer life, or absence of a prayer life, than my sex life even when I tell them that I am a gay man.)
My fear for the Church that I love is this, if there is no meaningful reform, well, let’s just say this “Will the last Catholic please remember to blow out the candles, turn off the lights and lock the doors on the way out.”
posted by Kosh III on
The elephant in the room is the fact that a substantial chunk of the RCC clergy ARE gay. I know it, you know it, they know it.
posted by Kosh III on
Here the RCC has a small membership and little influence in comparison. The Southern Bigot…..er…Baptist Convention and the Church of Christ are still powerful, though dwindling. They are in cahoots with the TeaNut/Conservative/GOP and regularly bash gays and push for more restrictive punitive legislation. Meanwhile, the folks in the pew are also making up their own minds and ignoring the leadership for the most parr.
Yeah….it’s Stephen’s conservative paradise–why don’t you come live here and presuade your conservative comrades to change.
posted by Houndentenor on
To be fair, a lot of Baptist membership losses have been to mega-churches that are Baptist except in name. (They even use Baptist materials in their churches which is why the Baptist Bookstore rebranded as Lifeway.)
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Hey, trying being Catholic gay and dating a Jewish gay. Plenty of good-old-fashion guilt about one’s spiritual life and commitment to the community to go around…although the priest and the rabbi do not seem to bothered about the gender issue.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Jorge writes:
Quite apart from the distinction between sacramental marriage and civil marriage, I’d say it’s also a “cowardly abdication of moral responsibility” that the Church has always adopted a “sexual sin is sexual sin is sexual sin” position that ignores the differences between same-sex monogamy and same-sex promiscuity (while pretending to uphold intellectual precision and objective moral standards).
In other words, it would NOT be a descent into “the swamp of moral relativism” for the Church to say:
“Monogamous homosexuality inherently falls short of God’s moral ideal of procreative marriage and is always sinful — yet to the extent that it is monogamous, it falls LESS short and is LESS sinful than promiscuous homosexuality. So perhaps Christians should be cautiously supportive of homosexual monogamy, while emphasizing that it lacks the spiritual value of a procreative man/woman marriage.”
And it would appear to me that quite a lot of Catholic bishops, in addition to the current Pope, are prepared to concede the point that the Church DOES “abdicate responsibility” as a moral teacher when it refuses to acknowledge ANY sort of positive value emerging from homosexual relationships.
My shorthand argument for all this is: “Just because procreative man/woman marriage must be uniqely upheld as the Church’s Gold Standard does not justify dismissing same-sex monogamy as a worthless Mud Standard — it CAN be a Bronze Standard or maybe even a Silver Standard, provided that the Church is willing to define boundaries for the behavior of same-sex couples.”
P.S. In case any Catholic theologians reading this complain that devising “Bronze Standard” guidelines for same-sex couples would lack ancient precedent, I’d respond: “So what? The rules of chess TODAY are not identical to what they were a thousand years ago, yet chess players have managed to agree on canonical rules of play. Furthermore, fans of the game sometimes invent their own one-time variations for fun, but the world of chess has not degenerated into chaos — because everyone agrees on what the Standard Rules, and they abide by these rules in international competitions.” In other words, you can revise old rules by thoughtful majority consensus without implying that the NEW rules are any less clear and objective than the old ones.
P.P.S. Regarding the Church’s “meddling” in civil marriage — as a “libertarianish Jeffersonian Deist,” I entirely respect the Church’s right to be involved in the debate over whether and how society ought to legally recognize same-sex couples. The only “deal-killer” for me is when people argue that consensual adult homosexual shenanigans ought to be criminalized — but the Catholic Church now opposes such laws (even though it supported them for as long as it was able to!).
And I would point out to Tom and others that the Church’s current opposition to same-sex civil marriage is consistent with its past opposition to laws restricting the sale of contraceptives and to laws that made civil divorce more easy. The fact that the Church finally threw in the towel and no longer agitates publicly against condoms and no-fault divorce should not mean that they’re obliged to stay out of the debate over SSM.
posted by JohnInCA on
I’m not sure why the church would oppose a “bronze standard”. They already have a gold (celibacy) and silver (marriage). Can’t remember if that comes from Jesus or Paul though… but being celibate was seen as best with sex within a marriage was only second best (and if you lacked the spiritual fortitude to be celibate).
posted by Throbert McGee on
Celibacy as a “gold standard” comes from Paul, not Jesus (nor from mainstream Judaism). I’ve heard different theories as to whether Paul’s preference for celibacy was more influenced here by certain pagan Greek philosophies or by “Essene” Judaism, which was certainly not mainstream.
Then, too, the Catholic Church insists that the most “perfect” heterosexual married couple in history, namely Joseph and Mary, never had sex after Jesus was born, and hence Jesus had no half-siblings.
However, in describing procreative heterosexual marriage as a “gold standard,” I had in mind society as a whole, since even the Vatican admits that most people aren’t “called to celibacy” as Paul allegedly was.
But, yeah, if you’re going to insist that’s NOT a “misuse” of the genitalia to keep them in your pants for your entire life and never have sex at all, then it seems to me a stretch to insist that using the genitals for consensual homosexual pleasure is necessarily Disordered.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Recent developments on the federal cases now pending:
4th Circuit
SOUTH CAROLINA – South Carolina asked the 4th Circuit this week to hold off on hearing the state’s 4th Circuit appeal while the state petitions the Supreme Court for certiorari on a direct appeal. South Carolina’s direct appeal to the Supreme Court has not yet been filed. The state’s petition for cert, if and when filed, has little chance of success. The South Carolina case doesn’t present any issues not presented in the 4th Circuit cases already decided, and the Supreme Court denied cert in the earlier cases. In addition, the Court refused to stay marriage equality in the state on November 20, and marriage licenses have been issued since the stay was lifted, so marriage equality is a fact on the ground. It is just stupid at this point.
10th Circuit
KANSAS – The 10th Circuit declined to hear the challenge to Kansas’ same-sex marriage ban (Marie v. Moser) en banc. Accordingly, the case will be heard by a three-judge panel, and that panel is bound by Kitchen v. Herbert and Bishop v. Smith, earlier 10th Circuit cases invalidating marriage discrimination. Governor Brownback and AG Schmidt may well try for a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court is not likely to grant cert in my view. The Kansas case doesn’t present any issues not presented in the 10th Circuit cases already decided, and the Supreme Court denied cert in the earlier cases. News reports indicate that about 30 of the state’s counties are now issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Marriage equality is happening in Kansas, little by slowly, despite Governor Brownback and AG Schmidt’s efforts to defy the federal court ruling.
11th Circuit
FLORIDA – The 11th Cricuit (Scott v. Brenner>/em>) denied the state’s motion to extend the stay beyond January 5, the date set by the District Court for expiration of the stay. Absent further developments (e.g. a petition for an emergency stay with the Supreme Court), marriage equality will commence in Florida on January 6. Justice Thomas is the emergency motions judge for the 11th Circuit, which could toss a wild card if he acts on his own, but because similar petitions have been referred to the full Court, and the Court has denied the petition in all other cases to date, I doubt that Justice Thomas can throw a monkey wrench. Although I think that the game is all but up at this point and Governor Scott and AG Bondi are playing out the clock, I caution that the 11th Circuit has not yet ruled in any marriage equality case. It is possible that the 11th Circuit, like the 6th Circuit, will rule against marriage equality, and, in such case, Florida may experience a repeat of Michigan’s experience, in which the Governor and AG are seeking to nullify marriages that occurred after the Michigan stay was lifted but before the 6th Circuit ruling.
posted by Tom Scharbacht on
When it rains, it pours:
5th Circuit
MISSISSIPPI – The 5th Circuit decided to have the same three-judge judges hear oral arguments in the three cases before it — Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The court refused to consolidate the cases, and it appears that Mississippi will be heard separately from the Texas and Louisiana cases, which are scheduled for oral argument on January 9. The date for the Mississippi hearing has not been set. The 5th Circuit, as expected, also extended the stay on marriage in Mississippi pending decision of the court. The stay had been scheduled to expire on December 10.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The 5th Circuit scheduled oral argument in the Mississippi case January 9, the same day as oral arguments in the Texas and Louisiana cases. Although the court refused to consolidate the cases, all will be argued on the same day, just about a month away.
posted by Kosh III on
“devising “Bronze Standard” guidelines for same-sex couples would lack ancient precedent”
But there IS long-standing precedent. See Boswell’s “Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe” which details church rites for same sex unions. See also Sts. Sergius and Bacchus.
And there is certainly precedent in Greco-Roman society; the Tomb of Hercules was a popular vacation/wedding destination, (Herc had a lover: Iolus)
posted by Throbert McGee on
Kosh: I’m familiar with Boswell’s book, but (a) his examples of ritually-solemnized SSUs are drawn from the Byzantine/Eastern/Greek Christian tradition, not the Roman Catholic tradition; and (b) there’s no evidence that such SSUs gave the pair license to engage in physical eroticism. Sure, it’s possible that some of the “unioned” monks did fool around with each other discreetly, human nature being what it is — but officially speaking, the union ritual didn’t constitute permission/license for sexual behavior. (At least, Boswell failed to find any evidence that the same-sex couples had, ahem, “marital rights.”)
As to Greco-Roman society — I should’ve said “there is no ancient Christian precedent” — because, obviously, some pagan traditions did honor same-sex couples.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Point 1: I don’t think that anyone here was suggesting that the First Amendment somehow did not apply to the Catholic Church. They clearly made their opinion on marriage equality known and poured lots of money and time into it. I think that maybe, just maybe, some people here were suggesting that their involvement, while legal, had a significant social cost in terms of their standing among Catholics and their own views on marriage and family.
Point 2: Politically, Governor Brownback is probably trying to position himself as some sort of folk hero to die-hard, social conservatives who are still willing to put time and money into opposing marriage equality. I would not be surprised if he runs for higher office, gets a book deal, etc.
Point 3: The Minnesota High School Athletics Association is trying to develop some sort of statewide policy on transgender students participating in school athletics.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
A couple of thoughts:
(1) With respect to the upcoming proceedings in the 5th and 11th Circuits:
In the 11th Circuit (Alabama, Florida, Georgia), I am beginning to believe that that outcome is very likely to be positive. The three-judge panel assigned to the case (Judges Hull, Wison and Jordan) were appointed by Presidents Clinton and Obama, have reputations as judicial moderates, and are considered, by most observers, to be more likely than not to apply Windsor as the overwhelming majority of judges have applied the case to date. The decision not to extend the Florida stay past January 5, although not a decision on the merits, is a clear indication that the panel does not consider the state’s arguments “likely to prevail”. Because the Alabama and Georgia cases have not yet been decided by the District Courts, negative lower court decisions are not an impediment. Absent a Supreme Court order implementing a stay, which is unlikely, marriage equality will come to Florida on January 6.
The situation in the 5th Circuit (Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas) is not as primed for a negative decision as I thought it would be, which is the more interesting development. The three-judge panel appointed to hear the three cases is an interesting mix. Judge Graves, who earlier served as an appointed/elected Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, is known as a judicial moderate, and Judge Prado, who was appointed to the District Court by President Reagan and appointed to the 5th Circuit by President Bush II, while a judicial conservative, is not an “originalist” or doctrinaire social conservative. I think that either could rule for marriage equality. Judge Owen, who served earlier on the Texas Supreme Court, was appointed to the 5h Circuit by President Bush II, and has a well-earned reputation as a hard-core judicial conservative, is almost certainly a lost cause. A 2-1 favorable decision is not out of the question, given the composition of the panel. Given the composition of the 5th Circuit, that is about as much as we could hope for, I think.
(2) With respect to Throbert’s comments:
No one is arguing that the Catholic Bishops should not weigh in on the question of same-sex marriage.
What is being argued is that the Catholic Bishops have shot themselves in the foot by the way in which they weighed into the controversy, reducing the clarity of Church teaching, tarnishing the reputation of the Church, and lessening/discrediting the Chuch as a moral authority for Catholics and other receptive listeners.
While Throbert is correct that the Catholic Bishops of another time opposed legalization of contraception and also fought “no-fault” divorce (the Bishops have never, to my knowledge, engaged in any effort to change laws regarding the availability of remarriage after divorce, which is the closer equivalent to same-sex marriage), the tactics deployed in the fight against marriage equality are of a different quality than the tactics used in the earlier fights.
In those fights (both of which I am old enough to remember personally), the Church spoke up, loudly enough to make their views known to all an sundry. But into those fights, the Church did not “meddle” in the sense that the Catholic Bishops have done this time around. The Church did not surreptitiously create and fund proxy groups like NOM, the Church did not coordinate political campaigns with non-Catholic groups like the Southern Baptists and the Mormons, the Church did not front spokespersons hinging on the irrational, like NOM’s Brian Brown, and the Church did not rely on inherently deceptive “religiously neutral” arguments (e.g. that gay and lesbian parents are less fit than straight parents). The Church did not fund political efforts in the earlier cases, and then cooperate in covering up that funding (the primary reason that NOM has been resisting disclosing donors are that two donors were responsible for about half of the funds NOM received). In short, there was a material qualitative difference between the earlier efforts, which were more or less straightforward expositions of Church moral teaching, and the anti-marriage effort, which was overtly political.
The difference is starkly evident in the recent conference hosted by the Vatican, “he Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium”. The list of invited guests prominently featured NOM’s Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher, and Robert George, Jim Garlow, who headed the Prop 8 effort in California, FRC’s Tony Perkins, ADF’s Alan Sears, and Eric Teetsel, a mover behind the Manhattan declaration. All of these folks are anti-gay political activists. None are theologians or leaders of Protestant ecclesiastical communities, or even active pastors. Politics, politics and more politics is what that conference was about.
I can recall a few months ago, when Pope Francis was lauded as a sign of hope, on IGF and in the media, a Pope who would reign in the American Church’s obsession with gays and lesbians, a Pope who would tone down the rhetoric from the American Bishops, if nothing else. I think that hope was in vain.
posted by Shadow Chaser on
The Catholic Bishops of Ireland recently published a document, 14 pages I think, on their opposition to marriage equality in the upcoming referendum.
Irish voters will have their say of the marriage issue in a referendum that will take place in the spring of 2015. Early polls indicate that supporters of marriage equality outnumber their opponents, two-to-one.
The focus of the Irish bishops’ document centers on their belief that children are best raised by a father and mother. Funny thing, I guess with the scandals going on in Catholic institutions, celibate men and women cannot be trusted to raise children.
Likewise, the bishops seem to ignore the fact that some post-menopausal women would choose to get married. Or that some people do not plan to have children when they get married.
The bishops do say that same sex couples ought to have hospital visitation rights and other rights and responsibilities associated with civil unions (remember them from circa 2004). Unfortunately for the bishops of Ireland, they are a decade late and a dollar short.
I don’t think that the Irish bishops are stupid. They know that the priest-pedophile and Magdalene laundry scandal have destroyed much of the Church’s moral authority in Ireland. Yet they still persist …
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
SHOCKING!