The Church speaks its truth on homosexuality - without hostility

I a recent television programme, the former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, paid tribute to Pope John Paul II.

Kissinger had met John Paul during one of the Pope’s visits to the US and asked him why he devoted so much time to issues that made him unpopular in some quarters.

The Pope replied that, whatever about popularity, he felt a duty to speak the truth. “Since then,” Kissinger later reflected, “I have always admired him greatly.”

The truth hurts, the saying goes, but sometimes it is not just the receiver of the message that gets hurt.

Those who speak the truth, or what they believe to be the truth, may find it a costly business.

The Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality is a case in point.

Although the Church is at pains to stress the equal dignity of every person regardless of their sexual orientation, its refusal to accept the homosexual orientation as ‘normal,’ or the practice of homosexual acts as morally justified, has set it on a collision course with modern western culture.

Last week in Canada, the Human Rights Tribunal of British Columbia decided that the Catholic lay organisation, the Knights of Columbus, was within its rights to reject a request by a lesbian couple who wanted to hold a wedding reception on its property.

The knights were entitled to prevent the use of their property for a purpose that contradicted their beliefs. But there was a sting in the tail. The tribunal also held that the knights had offended the “dignity, feelings and self-respect” of the lesbian couple and ordered the payment of a thousand dollars in compensation to each woman.

The Church’s latest norms on the treatment of homosexual people, while challenging, affirm the equal dignity of homosexual people. The document urges those with the responsibility for priestly formation to treat homosexual persons “with respect and sensitivity. Every sign of “unjust discrimination” is to be rejected.

Homosexual people are “called to fulfil God’s will in their lives and to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter”.

However some people might try to spin it, there is no encouragement of hostility towards homosexuals here.

Yet the document reaffirms Catholic teaching that the homosexual orientation is “objectively disordered.”

In assessing candidates for the priesthood, seminary heads are told not to admit to seminary or holy orders those who “are actively homosexual, have deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture.”

Despite the Church’s ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ caveat, it is easy to understand how, in our present culture, many homosexual people will feel hurt at the Church’s understanding of their state. There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly, the Church’s teaching is radically at variance with what many in society presume to be true. Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, one of the document’s signatories, says the view that the homosexual condition would be “a normal condition of the human person”... “absolutely contradicts human anthropology; it contradicts - according to the thinking of the Church - natural law, and that which God himself has impressed on human nature.”

Few people are familiar with authentic Church teaching about sex as a gift from God and a sacrament of the union between the two sexes. And since so few people accept the value of celibacy, how can they understand that the love which the Church has for homosexual people is not compromised by the ‘big ask’ of celibate living?

Secondly, western society is not willing to have a searching debate about homosexuality.

In a feelgood age, to quibble with the validity of a person’s self-definition is an absolute no-no. So to ask questions about the ‘normality’ or otherwise of the homosexual orientation, not withstanding the obvious question which our biology continues to pose, is like questioning racial equality.

HENCE the cultural pressure that is sometimes exerted on parents of homosexual people.

It is not enough that they love and cherish their children unconditionally - they are often pressurised to accept the validity of their child’s lifestyle, sometimes in violation of their deepest beliefs.

Thirdly, academic support for the Church’s position is muted.

In an angry article last Saturday, Senator David Norris sneered at the credentials of one Church expert, Mgr Tony Anatrella, who said homosexuality was “an incomplete and immature part of human sexuality”.

Norris’s characterisation of the priest as “a French Jesuit who is also styled as a ‘psychologist’” was no doubt intended to suggest that he got his doctorate from Pacific Western University. Heaven forbid that he might be eminent in his field.

It is true, however, that the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of ‘mental disorders’ and that most similar bodies have since followed suit.

But is the Church entitled to ask if, to any extent, there was a political or cultural context for this change? Or are medical associations infallible?

One of the leading proponents of the 1973 decision, Dr Robert Spitzer of Columbia University, has since claimed that some homosexual people can and do change their orientation.

May we discuss that in the current climate, I wonder.

Fourthly, anger reigns. The deep-seated tendency to play the man, not the ball, is much in evidence among some of those who claim to speak for homosexual people.

For example, David Norris calls Pope Benedict’s sexuality into question and accuses the Pope of having worn “a swastika on his armband”.

You don’t need to have read many of Pope Benedict’s writings to discover that he and his family were deeply disturbed by Nazism and the young Ratzinger did everything possible to avoid his compulsory service in the Hitler Youth.

But does this matter to Norris? Not a whit, if the slur can go unchallenged. But I wonder if Norris has stopped to consider the pain he may be causing to those homosexual people who, even if they aren’t living in accordance with the Pope’s teaching, do not endorse the demonisation of their Church and would like truly to understand why the Church teaches as it does.

Fifthly, the Church has failed to reach out adequately. Given some of the questionable leadership on offer to homosexual people, it is all the more urgent for the Church to take the lead. But when is it going to happen?

And where is the public face of the Irish Catholic Church’s ministry to homosexual people? Lots of people don’t live in accordance with the Church’s teaching at some point in their lives. But the Church should never stop trying to persuade and encourage.

This document may yet be seen as a good first step.

It reflects the Pope’s conviction that the Church must state its truth without fear or flinching.

But the next phase must be the search, at local level in the Church, for loving dialogue with those whose lifestyle Catholics might not endorse but whose dignity as persons is beyond dispute.

Let us hope that there are courageous leaders, both in the Church and among homosexual people, who see the value of this.