Same-Sex Couples as Parents: Passages for Thought

[This is just the beginning ... a kind of prolegemenon to what is to come.]

The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still.  Since the Bible cannot err, it follows as a necessary consequence that anyone takes an erroneous and heretical position who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.

With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth--whenever its true meaning is understood.  But I believe that nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify.  Hence if in expounding the Bible one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error.  Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. . . .

--Galileo Galilei, Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1615), in Discoveries and Opinions of Galielo 175, 181 (Stillman Drake tr. 1957).  See Ernan McMullin, "Galileo on Science and Scripture," in Peter Machamer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Galileo 271 (1998).

The two types of authority that concern us here (authority to govern and authority to teach) are, of course, distinct and can be discussed separately.  In the Roman Catholic Church, however, we find that they are often intermingled, and sometimes even confused with each other.  Over the centuries governing power has often been used (and misused) to bolster teaching authority.  Such an approach can easily amount to little more than "we are right because we are in charge" or "we give orders, not explanations."  Bernard Hoose, "Authority in the Church," 63 Theological Studies 107 (2002).  See also Bernard Hoose, Authority in Roman Catholicism (2002); Bernard Hoose, ed., Authority in the Roman Catholic Church (2002).

Some Catholics concede that the church admits the principle of doctrinal development, but they accuse [John] Noonan, in Richard John Neuhaus's words, of too often equating development with "a change, or even a reversal, of doctrine."  At a recent meeting of the Catholic Common Ground initiative, Noonan and theologian Avery Dulles had a polite, but sharp, exchange on the subject, with Noonan again insisting that "the record is replete with mistakes--the faithful can't just accept everything that comes from Rome as though God had authorized it."  John T. McGreevy, "A Case of Doctrinal Development:  John T. Noonan--Jurist, Historian, Author, Sage," Commonweal, Nov. 12, 2000, at 12, 17.  See also Thomas P. Rausch, SJ, Reconciling Faith and Reason 45-46 (2000):  "A presentation of the Catholic tradition able to acknowledge not just development, but also change in the doctrinal tradition is a more honest one."  Cf. Robert McClory, Faithful Dissenters:  Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church (2000).

Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, a professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from 1956 to 1992 and now a professor of theology at Boston College, writes:  [T]he hierarchical structure of the church is such that there have always been those who were authorized to act and speak "in the name of the church," and in her name have proclaimed the church's doctrine, enacted its laws and determined its official policy.  The I.T.C. text recognizes the possibility that what was done "in the name of the church" could have been done "in contradiction to the Gospel." . . .  [O]bviously, it is only members of the hierarchy who have been authorized to act and speak "in the name of the church," and only they could be meant as those who, in doing so, have acted in contradiction to the Gospel. . . .  [Those] things in the history of the church that call for repentance and a request for forgiveness are the official policies and practices that were established or sanctioned by those who were authorized to act and speak in the name of the church, but that were objectively "in contradiction to the Gospel." . . .  What is needed is the frank recognition that some official policies and practices of the church have been objectively in contradiction to the Gospel and have caused harm to many people.  Francis A. Sullivan, SJ, "The Papal Apology," America, April 8, 2000, at 17, 19, 22.

A principled rejection of gay sexuality, whether put forward by the church or any other sector of society, is morally indefensible.  It has the same status today as arguments for the inferiority of women.  To remain stuck in that position, as the church for the time being seems likely to do, is not only unfortunate:  it makes the church collaborate in continuing forms of domination.  To put it even more strongly:  it makes the church collaborate in sin.  Robert N. Bellah, "Foreword" to Richard L. Smith, AIDS, Gays and the American Catholic Church xii-xiii (1994).

If one doubts whether real communion implies dissent, imagine a church where dissent had been rendered unthinkable, impermissible, or inexpressible.  Would such a church be likely to resemble the interpersonal, vital, ever-deepening, always outstretching encounter of hearts and minds that is communion?  Or would it be more likely to resemble the bureaucracy of a government, the conformity of a corporation, the discipline of an army, of even the ideological unanimity of a totalitarian political movement? Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, "Dissent and Communion," Commonweal, Nov. 18, 1994, reprinted in Patrick Jordan & Paul Baumann, eds., Commonweal Confronts the Century:  Liberal Convictions, Catholic Tradition 324, 326-11 (1999).

These modern sensibilities affect the way in which we think about the institutions of Christianity, whose vocation clearly sets them apart from bureaucratic structures and from the mechanisms of standardization which are the province of large public administrations.  The nature of Christian institutions ought to favor relationships based on equality and brotherhood/sisterhood and to value attitudes that welcome and liberate. . . .

The democratic spirit builds a new relationship to the truth.  The Church is to proclaim the Gospel in a relevant way.  It is not sufficient to insist that the church is not a democracy, even if that statement is correct.  Integration into the Church in a democratic society leads to a new relation to authority and a different manner of proclaiming the Gospel.  What is required is a certain degree of participation and a careful listening to all the voices that want to be heard.  Nothing can be imposed simply by authority:  there is no single word.  [Rien ne s'impose d'autorit‚ et il n'y a pas de parole unique.]  From a statement issued in 2000 by the Assembly of (Catholic) Bishops of Quebec, which appears pages 1-3 of the Winter 2000 issue of the Canadian journal The Ecumenist.  Some more:

For our contemporaries, truth may come from tradition, but it is also the fruit of their own work of exploration.  It is received, but it is also discovered.  It may remain beyond us, but it comes to us by way of the subject's own activity on a personal journey.  In this view, tradition and teaching may have a role to play in a person's pursuits, in the quest of a subject.  Tradition and teaching are not imposed as a kind of final or definitive word, but function as memory, reference points and markers or as a word which questions and confronts one's own discoveries, a word which evokes a response from the subject.  Statements from tradition are critiqued before being taken up by the subject.  Tradition no longer represents a catalogue of timeless, ready-made answers from which one has only to pick and choose. . .

Tradition is not first and foremost a source for answers.  It puts us in dialogue with the quests and pursuits of individuals from the past, who, in given situations, produced a given faith-filled meaning.  Conceived of in this way, tradition no longer elicits a negative response from many of our contemporaries who see in it something other than an authority which short-circuits our own attempts at discovery by providing, in advance, answers to all our questions, both now and in the future.  Better yet, understood in this way, tradition allows the subject to shift her centre of concern outside the self and enter into a fruitful dialogue with other points of view which find expression in tradition.