Pope Benedict and the Homos

The Pope's remarks in his book-length interview Light of the World will not make gay people in the Church happy or make gay people happy with the Church. He re-iterates the standard teaching that sexuality is ordered toward the procreation of children within marriage. Anything which does not flow toward that end is, in Catholic parlance, dis-ordered. No surprise. It's basically the same reason why artificial birth control is not ok.

A big part of what makes the issue so hot is the idea of sexual orientation, and of sexual orientation as being central to personal identity. To my knowledge, this relatively recent set of concepts has little or no history, not only in Catholicism, but in cultural thinking about sex prior to the 19th century West. The Church has responded by invoking the distinction between person and act, the famous "sin and sinner" distinction. For the homosexual person, this disordered inclination is a burden and a trial, and while expressing the inclination is wrong, the person deserves the ordinary respect due to anyone. It makes sense on an intellectual level --it's how most of us tolerate most other human beings, after all-- but it's hard to accept psychologically if you are on the receiving end of the rejection and your sexuality feels central to your identity. Mine does.

Eve Tushnet, an orthodox Catholic, and therefore celibate, lesbian does not dispute the Pope's teaching but does fault him on sharing an assumption about homosexuality with, ironically, secular liberalism, the ideology that Benedict finds most problematic, far more than Islam, for instance. I'll let her speak for herself, but the jist of it is that homosexual people don't want just a set of particular physical actions, but hunger for a specific kind of human relationship. And neither the Pope nor The World seem to get that.

What I have found unacceptable is to believe that when I care deeply for another man and express that love physically, the best I have to offer, in a way, it is essentially deformed. Very hard to maintain much self-respect in that kind of paradigm, try as you might. I am a male and I have a typically male form of sexuality. I like to look, for example. But my sexuality is not about particular acts of organs with other organs. At base, it is about a certain kind of connection that includes physical engagement. And the orthodox teaching is that that physical engagement violates whatever good there is in the connection. I cannot buy that, in good conscience. As I have said before, my sexual misdeeds come from the fact that I am human, not that I am gay.

What Benedict does say, very clearly, is that homosexual priests are a bad idea, that the sexual orientation and the sacramental role are incompatible. He says that gay men have a skewed relationship to both sexes which makes pastoral care problematic. And since gays are supposed to be celibate anyway, as a condition of morality, it makes the sacrificial element in celibacy superfluous.

And in his least charming response, when confronted with the reality of homosexuals in the priesthood and monastic life, he describes it as "one of the miseries of the Church." I tracked down the German original and the word he used is "Nöte" (with an umlaut over the O, which may not reproduce on Blogger). It means "hardships".  Clearly something he would rather not have to put up with.

On a case by case basis, you can argue with him for sure. I can't see that either Franciscan Mychal Judge or Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins were bad priests at all. But to be somewhat consistent, I would have to say that he has a genuine concern if the celibate priesthood becomes publicly identified as a homosexual caste and if "gay culture" becomes the standard for clerical or religious life. I think that an all-male priesthood is crucial to the survival and identity of Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But if all the males, or most, are homosexual...That is much the impression many people have now. Straight men, that is to say, regular and ordinary men, would stay away. As they do from any profession once it becomes feminized.