Fr. Reese’s: “Right or Rite, Civil Discussion in Order”

On April 16^th of this year, I had the occasion to respond to Fr. Thomas Reese’s essay published in Commonweal Magazine concerning his thoughts about reforming the Vatican. [HERE] Today, I take this occasion to respond to his May 20^th posting in the Washington Post-Newsweek weblog entry or “Right or Rite, Civil Discussion in Order”. [HERE] Fr. Reese has taken this recent opportunity to address the California Supreme Court decision In Re Marriage Cases that was handed down a few days ago. I am convinced that he intended that his posting be a conciliatory one in which reason rather than emotion or partisan perspective determine the outcome of the debate on same-sex marriage. I concur with his approach. Having said that, I must offer some additional thoughts to those he has offered regarding this “emotion filled issue.”

For those of us who have the responsibilities incumbent on Holy Orders, I think a few more words need to be proposed in order to assist the faithful and all people of good will on this “emotion filled issue.” The fact that it is emotion filled does not exclude the pressing need to address the “issue” with reason, compassion, and truth.

Fr. Reese is correct in asserting that for almost two thousand years Christians—and most others—have held that any sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman to be sinful or wrong. The fact that people did engage in such activities did not make them virtuous or right.

The fact that we in the United States and other cultures around the world respect the separation of Church and state, as Fr. Reese states, does not mean that moral and rational argument is prohibited from the debates that take place in the public square. Moreover, he has asserted that “the desire to free private moral decisions from state control” has led to the legalization not only of divorce, birth control, and hetero- and homosexual relations. But it has also led to the wanton taking of innocent human life through abortion. I have criticized in the past and criticize here today that magical formula of Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter from Casey, which has fueled these “moral decisions” that, in fact, are not private but have had and continue to have mammoth public implications. But we must not forget that this tragic and problematic Casey formulation that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and the mystery of human life” fortifies the core of Lawrence which fortifies the core of Goodrich which reinforces the core of In Re Marriage Cases. It may well be that, as Fr. Reese suggests, “homosexuality is an orientation that is not chosen.” The fact that some citizens, as Fr. Reese further indicates, have changed their view on homosexuality and “celebrate these relationships as Christian marriages” does not make them marriages or admirable relationships. It is also true that over the course of the law’s development, extenuating circumstances have been used to restrict the ability of the State to sanction other human conduct, but this does not make the other problematic human conduct acceptable either. While the motivation that prompts a person to do something that is considered wrong may be better understood today with advances in the biological, sociological, and medical sciences (i.e., it is beyond a person’s control), the conduct itself does not become a model for virtuous human existence that must receive the protection of the state and its law.

For those interested in Catholic teachings that should still be heard by the faithful and all people of good will, might we consider what Pope Pius XI stated in his 1930 encyclical letter Casti Connubii about the nature of marriage:

For each individual marriage, inasmuch as it is a conjugal union of a particular man and woman, arises only from the free consent of each of the spouses; and this free act of the will, by which each party hands over and accepts those rights proper to the state of marriage, is so necessary to constitute true marriage that it cannot be supplied by any human power.

If some readers might think that Fr. Reese is looking for flexibility in interpreting the meaning of these words of Pius XI, he does not seem to, for he acknowledges that the Church (although he says “Catholic hierarchy”) does not sanction ecclesial or state-sponsored homosexual marriage nor sex outside of marriage, given the definition of marriage.

But the faithful and all people of good will need to take stock of several other matters crucial to evaluating the rightness and wrongness of same-sex unions. For example, in the 1983 Charter of the Rights of the Family approved by Pope John Paul II, it is clear that “the family is based on marriage, that intimate union of life in complementarity between a man and a woman which is constituted in the freely contracted and publicly expressed indissoluble bond of matrimony and is open to the transmission of life.” In furtherance of this point, the Pontifical Council for the Family noted in 2000 that, “With regard to the recent legislative attempts to make the family and de facto unions equivalent, including homosexual unions (it is good to keep in mind that their juridical recognition is the first step toward their equivalency),  members of parliament should be reminded about their grave responsibility to oppose them, for ‘lawmakers, and in particular Catholic members of parliaments, should not favor this type of legislation with their vote because it is contrary to the common good and the truth about man and thus truly unjust’.” Indeed, the Council concluded that making homosexual relations the equivalent of marriage is “much more grave” for this would be “contrary to common sense.”

The efforts of the Pontifical Council for the Family were later reinforced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons and approved by Pope John Paul II in 2003. While this document [HERE] merits careful consideration, its conclusion encapsulates the Church’s teaching that must not be forgotten:

The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.

While I take comfort in Fr. Reese’s reminding us that courts have stated that churches would not be required to perform marriages between same sex partners, the movement to make such unions an issue of the protection and advancement of “civil rights” and “constitutional rights” places the future of these consoling words into question. I recall the difficulty that Thomas More had with another “marriage” even though he was assured that his silence would be sufficient to protect him. It did not. When the State or those who influence its decision making take a different view, the well-formed consciences of its citizens are threatened when their consciences do not conform to the will of the State that is intent on mandating uniformity. As Christopher Dawson has reminded us, even the democratic state may not be satisfied with “passive obedience” when it demands of its citizens “full co-operation from the cradle to the grave.”

I share Fr. Reese’s view that the California court’s decision in In Re Marriage Cases (and I hasten to add in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health) was unwise. But, both decisions went beyond merely being unwise: they were and are wrong. And, if it takes a constitutional amendment, state or federal, to rectify these mistaken judicial opinions, so be it! Fr. Reese suggests that this “issue” (of same-sex marriage) should be dealt with by state legislatures, “not by the courts or referendums.” I wish I could share his optimism about this, but in fact the work of state legislatures has been compromised when the will of the people, as has happened in Massachusetts in the call for a constitutional convention to reiterate the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, has been stymied by the legislature.

Fr. Reese notes that “Homosexual relationships exist in American society in not insignificant numbers.” I am not sure what insignificant means here, but I shall put the best interpretation on what Fr. Reese says for the time being. But I must add that even if they do exist “in not insignificant numbers”, that does not make them relationships meriting the moniker of “marriage.” If the alternative were true, then sooner or later any relationship, and those who lobby for its cause and legal protection, will want the same rights, privileges, and protections of the law. And for those who question this point, I refer them to the current legal debate that is ongoing in the Texas courts regarding the polygamist relationship. When our apartment buildings, our suburban tract homes, our pup tents, and any other shelter of modest of generous proportions is filled with “unmarried couples”—hetero- or homosexual—what will happen to our future posterity as a people, as a nation, as the human race?

Like Fr. Reese, I would not only prefer to reserve the word “marriage” for the union of one man and one woman. I would insist on it, and “it is worth fighting over.” Not in the streets and not with threats or bullying, but with reason and, if am permitted, with prayers. It is not foolish for anyone to expend his, her, or its “political capital” on this issue. After all, this is what democracy and the rule of law are about. While I agree that abortion, hunger, war, education, health care, etc. are issues of great importance, I would also include the question of marriage which Fr. Reese has deleted from the list. He suggests that “money and resources that would have gone to pro-life work are being siphoned off to oppose gay marriage” and this seems, from his perspective, to be awkward. I wonder what other issues that are important to people also “siphon off” limited resources that could be used elsewhere in other political and legal debates? To place a monetary value on any issue seems to me to substitute democracy and the noble work of a virtuous people and their society with a utilitarian calculus. I, too, agree that those who are most civil will win the day, but I do not think that civility requires the silencing of civil tongues that are motivated not by the problematic language of Casey but by the objective moral order that has for centuries been at the heart of Christian public life and public discourse.    RJA sj