Andy Crouch has written a thoughtful essay for Christianity Today highlighting the tension between the celebration of Christmas and the coming age of genetic enhancement. For some reason I can't link to it, but here's an excerpt:
"A Christian might put [the case against genetic enhancement] more plainly: If you no longer see life as a gift, you are no longer able to love.
But I suspect that the most eloquent arguments of columnists and philosophers will be fruitless. Name one technology that human beings have developed but not used. If we were willing to use the awesome and awful technology of nuclear weapons, why would we prevent people from "enhancing" their descendants?
So followers of Christ will have to decide whether to join our culture in its quest for mastery. It's hard to see how we can do so and still celebrate Christmas. To grasp the meaning of that event, early Christians turned to the language of fulfillment. Even in the cradle this baby was "fully" God, they said. But he was also fully human. He lacked nothing essential to the good human life, even in that dark night where the best available technology was fire to heat the water for his birth. He lacked nothing, Luke says, as he grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. He lacked nothing when he died in violent pain in that long-ago age before anesthesia. Even now, we believe, he is still fully embodied, fully human, yet more truly embodied and more truly human than ever before. He has the divine life, the perfect human body that our technology feverishly and vainly seeks to achieve.
Do we want his life? Or do we want technology's alluring facsimile? Are we willing for our children to be less than normal, that they may understand something essential about humility, responsibility, and love?"
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
The article cited in Rick's earlier post states that the Catholic Church supports Australia's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, as well as the prosecution of the preacher who made anti-Islam statements. This strikes me as a remarkable disregard of subsidiarity's import, as well as the Church's own ultimate self-interest. On what basis would the Church cede to the state its authority to define and pursue its own vision of appropriate religious discourse, especially as applied to the expression of the Gospel? If the Church is convinced that its own articulation of differences among religious communities will never run afoul of the modern state's idea of how religious folk should talk about each other, does the Church's support of the law suggest (at least in Australia) a broader abdication of its prophetic role?
Rob
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
William Safire points out that the debate over embryonic stem cell research is bypassing the federal government, as states and universities clamor to follow California's lead and get their share of this 21st century "gold rush." Supporters of the research (like Safire) may hold this out as an example of subsidiarity in action; skeptics (like me) will remind supporters that certain absolutes, such as the sanctity of life, are not be devolved to local communities for redefinition, no matter how enthusiastic our embrace of subsidiarity might be.
Rob
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Two recent news reports (both emanating from the same reporter) offer a bit of insight into the Vatican's efforts to formulate a policy on homosexuals as priests. One states that:
The Vatican has confirmed several times that men with homosexual sexual orientations should not be ordained. The December 2002 bulletin of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments contained a letter signed by Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, who has since retired as the head of the Congregation, which said ordaining such men would be imprudent and "very risky."
A prominent Vatican document dealing with the issue was released as early as 1961. The 1961 document from the Sacred Congregation for Religious prohibits the admission of homosexuals to the diocesan priesthood and religious orders. The document states: "Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination," because priestly ministry would place such persons in "grave danger".
. . . .
Commenting on the coming document which has been more than five years in the making, Bishop Nienstedt said, ""I think it's going to be a balanced document, because the whole question of homosexuality not only has psychological dimensions but also has varying degrees of a person acting out or not acting out." He added, "So the whole question has to be nuanced considerably: 'What is homosexuality?' 'What are the homosexual attractions?' and that sort of thing. I think this document will be helpful because it is going to address those questions."
(Thanks to MOJ reader Jason Adkins for the link.)
The other suggests:
The document on homosexuality has been in the works for more than five years. An early draft of the document took the position that homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood; in its current form, the document takes a more nuanced approach to the whole issue, sources said.
(Thanks to Teresa Collett for the link).
Rob
Teresa Collett offers the following thoughts in response to Michael Perry's and Pat Brennan's earlier posts:
I appreciate the nature of Michael P. and Pat Brennan's engagement with me on the question how the Church should view homosexuality in considering a candidate for ordination and apologize for my delay in responding. Let me answer Michael's comments first. Because I believe sexual identity is intrinsic to human nature and part of the divine plan, I believe as a woman, I image God in a manner different from men and therefore cannot represent Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist. See sec. 26 in Mulieris Dignitatem. This is not, however, because the female is by nature "disordered" or a "misbegotten male," but rather because we image the receptive and generative nature of God - the bride, rather than the bridegroom.
As for there being other characteristics that should disqualify heterosexual candidates for ordination -- without question! Yet that does not establish that the Church should disregard its own teaching that "[The] psychological genesis [of homosexual attraction] remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." It seems a sensible policy that someone with a persistent attraction toward something that is a grave depravity should be disqualified from ordination. However, if you begin from the position that Michael does (that homosexual sexual desire is not disordered in any theologically relevant sense), the policy would be inappropriate.
As for Pat's comments, I agree that we are awaiting magisterial determination and hope nothing I have written suggests the contrary. However the question Michael posed earlier was whether the policy that has been reported to be in effect in some American dioceses and under consideration by the Vatican would be a sin against the men it excluded from ordination (a "sin against the Gospel" in Michael's words). It was in that context that I quoted the provision of section 1849, so I am somewhat confused by Pat's discussion of personal sin and disordered desires. If I understand Pat's point (and I am not certain I do) personal culpability for wrongdoing is not the only reason the Church declines to ordain candidates. Lack of age, lack of maturity, mental illness, and lack of faith are all reasons that do not involve the will of the person, yet disqualify candidates for ordination. Similarly homosexuality need not involve the will of the person, but may be determined by the Vatican to disquality men from ordination.
In the end, I honestly don't know exactly whether I believe the Vatican should adopt this policy, but I am reasonably certain that it is not sinful to do so. I think there are both theological and ontological meanings to be drawn from the fact that we are created as man and woman, and procreation requires our union. What the Holy Father calls the nuptial meaning of the body is denied by homosexuality, and that denial has theological significance.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Teresa Collett provides the following response to Michael Perry's question on the exclusion of homosexuals from the priesthood:
I am uncertain exactly what Michael means by a "sin against the Gospel," but I assume he means something like the definition of sin given by section 1849 of the Catechism: "an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods."
Assuming we have a shared definition of sin, I think the Church would be justified in adopting a policy of excluding men who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward men from ordination to the priesthood because of the nature and function of the ministerial priesthood, which is to act in the person of Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass and in proclaiming Christ's mystery.
While all of us, and therefore every candidate for ordination, will be subject to various temptations (Romans 3:23), the question is whether the Church is justified in seeing disordered sexual desires as grounds for disqualification from ordination. John Paul II has advanced our understanding of how our sexual nature images God in much of his writing, but perhaps most particularly in his book, "Love and Responsibility". While this text primarily focuses on the nature of married love, it provides a deep understanding of the nature of human sexual identity properly ordered. The priest who is to image Christ to his parish, and be a father to his parishioners must have a rightly ordered sense of the gift of generative partnership that is sexual love.
Compounding the theological difficulty of a priest who has an exclusive homosexual orientation, is the practical problems that confront all of us in living a chaste life in contemporary society. By making the choice to live in accordance with God's law for our lives, we should order our lives to avoid occasions of sin. For a man entering the priesthood, his living conditions may (like those of the military) be "spartan, primitive, and characterized by forced intimacy with little or no privacy." It is both unwise and sinful to place people in positions of temptation.
