The Church and Human Sexuality, Revisited

THE TABLET
THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY
Founded in 1840

December 1, 2007

Editorial

An important distinction must be made about the
content of Catholic teaching and the language used
to present that teaching to a wider public. Words
like “evil” in connection with homosexuality, and
“murder” in connection with abortion, may resonate sweetly
with some of the faithful but will be heard as strident discords
by everyone else. By using such language the Church
brands itself as harsh and unworthy of serious attention.

In so far as Sir Stephen Wall’s criticism of recent church
statements (see page 12) is a criticism of this sort of inflexible
tone, it is timely. The message “watch your language”
is one that needs to be widely heard, not least in the Vatican.
Indeed, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Christian
Unity department at the Vatican, has just publicly attacked
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the insensitive
language it used in its “One True Church” statement
in July this year. This “aroused perplexity and created
discontent” among non-Catholic Churches, with whom he
is, on behalf of the Vatican, trying to improve relations. If
he felt sabotaged, that would be entirely understandable.

Sir Stephen, a senior aide to the former prime minister
who gave up his government job to work for a time as adviser
to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, goes further
than that. He is concerned with content, not just with presentation.
In his article here he argues that the cardinal’s recent
pronouncement stating the Church’s case against the
legal approval of all-female (in effect, lesbian) parentage via
IVF was giving “pre-eminence to its concept of law and disregarding
its duty of love”. This is partly a challenge to the
traditional Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are invariably
seriously sinful. There will be many Catholics who
would go at least some way towards his position on that. But
the cardinal’s essential point was that children need parents
of either sex, and that the proposed legislation ignored that
powerful consideration – as does Sir Stephen. Nor does he
sufficiently acknowledge that his former eminent employer
moved a long way from the language of law to the language
of love in his recent joint statement (with Cardinal
Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh and St Andrews) on abortion.

As to the substance of the teaching, a new and more satisfactory
sexual ethic is unlikely to emerge simply from reversing
the old one. Church leaders must find the courage
to reopen a debate that should range over issues from contraception
to homosexuality – including lesbianism, on which
it appears to have no coherent view at all. Instead, in what
looks with hindsight almost like an attempt to justify the
extreme caricature of the Magisterium in the work of novelist
Philip Pullman – including the controversial new film
The Golden Compass – the Vatican has repeatedly and unjustly
silenced any theologian who tried to begin such a debate.
Sir Stephen’s rebuke that “as a Church beset by scandal
has become less authoritative, so it has become disproportionately
more authoritarian” is well said in this context. Authoritarians
do not listen. The witness of Catholic married
couples of all sorts, as well as Catholic homosexuals of either
sex, needs to be heard. Until the Church’s leaders really understand
what they have to say, they must expect impatient
and frustrated outbursts from even its most loyal members.

[Too read the article, by Steven Wall, to which the editorial refers, click here.  These are the final paragraphs of the article:]

Above all, the Church's approach should be rooted not in power, authority and threat, but in love and understanding and, dare I say it, in acknowledging that it can be wrong or that many of life's most poignant problems raise issues of right and wrong, love and duty, pain and suffering that are not susceptible to simple answers.

The Church portrays itself as the victim of an aggressive secularism. It looks to me, rather, as if the Church is itself in danger of adopting an aggressive fundamentalism and that the secular societies it excoriates demonstrate a tolerance that is often closer to the ideal of Christian charity.

As a lifelong Catholic, I continue to be inspired by the many excellent Catholic men and women, lay and ordained, who live the spirit of the Gospels. I find hope and communion in the celebration of Mass and I believe in striving for reform from within. It is in that spirit that I hope that the window of fresh air that was Vatican II can be prised open once again.