More on "Theory" v. "theory"

Little "t" theory must also be attentive to human experience--present as well as past.  Otherwise it becomes "Theory" in the sense of a self-contained, impregnable, and ultimately sterile system so out of touch with human reality as to be useless.  Consider this passage from Jesuit scholar John Mahoney's magisterial book The Making of Moral Theology:  A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford, 1987):

At any stage in history all that is available to the Church is its continual meditation on the Word of God in the light of contemporary experience and of the knowledge and insights into reality which it possesses at the time.  To be faithful to that set of circumstances . . . is the charge and challenge which Christ has given to his Church.  But if there is a historical shift, through improvement in scholarship or knowledge, or through an entry of society into a significantly different age, then what that same fidelity requires of the Church is that it respond to the historical shift, such that it might be not only mistaken but also unfaithful in declining to do so. (Page 327.)

I wonder whether much religious-moral opposition to same-sex unions--including that of the magisterium of the Church--doesn't partake much more of Theory than of theory.  I have pursued this matter elsewhere--in chapter 4 of my book Under God?, which is titled "Christians, the Bible, and Same-Sex Unions".

Michael P.