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For Catholics, the question of same-sex
marriage
has been
characterized, by the Vatican
and others, as a conflict between Church and State.
This, I believe, conveniently obscures a much
deeper rift within the Catholic Church:
the conflict between what the Church hierarchy teaches,
and what
the
Catholic faithful believe, particularly with respect to sexual ethics. The recent Ipsos-Reid poll amply bears out
the fact: 50% of Canadian Catholics
interviewed approved of same sex marriage;
this, despite several recent and well-publicized
condemnations
by the Vatican
and several Canadian bishops.
How has the Church arrived at
this state of
affairs? It has come about, I believe,
from a
misunderstanding, and misapplication, of the notion of infallibility. In the early Church, there was a sense that
the teaching Church and the believing Church together made up the Church
of Christ, and that this
Church was
protected from substantial error by the Holy Spirit precisely because
its two
components listened to each other. But
by the time this concept came to be codified in the first Vatican
Council, the
guidance Christ had promised his Church had come to be narrowly
understood as a
shield (infallibility) that protected the hierarchy (and especially the
pope)
from teaching error. The role of the body of Catholic believers in
keeping the
Church faithful to Christ was muted, or altogether ignored. Successive
popes
have gone on to expand their claims to infallibility, and consequently
found it
ever more difficult to correct the errors of their predecessors. This has become an intellectual blind alley,
from which no pope or Council, to date, has had the courage to
extricate the
Church.
Nowhere does this problem
become more hurtful that
in
matters of sexual ethics. (Why the
celibate hierarchy is so singularly exercised about this area of
morality,
while it is often silent about more egregious forms of immorality and
inhumanity, is a question whose analysis could fill volumes!) The still unresolved debate around artificial
birth control is perhaps the clearest example, both of the split within
the
Church, and the harm that continues to be done by it.
Throughout the 1960’s, and ever since,
Catholics have been trying to urge upon the hierarchy the necessity of
coming
to terms with the devastating human, social, and ecological
consequences of the
official Church position, to no avail. Pope Paul VI went so far as to
create a
Commission that included lay people to study this question, but when
the
Commissioners presented a report favoring a relaxation of the ban on
birth
control, they were disbanded and the report buried, all on the grounds
that a
change in teaching would call in question the “infallibility” of Paul’s
predecessors. As a result, the official
Church continues to proscribe birth control to this day, while the vast
majority of married Catholics, having taken a conscientious look at
their own
life situation (and the intellectual poverty of the official teaching)
are
limiting their family size, by whatever methods seem effective to them,
in good
conscience.
There is only one way out
of this dead end. The teaching Church
(bishops and pope) has to
once again become a listening Church. It
needs to listen to what the faithful actually think and believe, as
opposed to
what the hierarchy has decided they ought to believe.
Because the consensus of the faithful is
really the only valid guidance that the hierarchy has as it strives to
articulate the meaning of the good news of Christ for the world of the
21st
century. No pope or bishop has ever
imagined (or at least claimed) that he has received direct personal
inspiration
from on high. In a very real sense, the Church can only teach what the
Church
already believes. It comes down to a
question of conscientiously trying to “read the signs of the times”, as
Vatican
II so felicitously recommended. But
reading the signs of the times is not the prerogative of any bishop or
pope; it is a process available to all,
and indeed necessary for all to exercise, because any claim to moral
action
depends on it. It is simply another way
of describing conscience.
Nowhere is the
necessity for Church leaders to
become
listeners more critical than in matters of sexual ethics.
To the rest of the world, and to most
Catholics, it has become self-evident that if the celibate hierarchy is
going
to have anything meaningful to say to the world about sexual ethics,
they must
first listen with great care to the life experience of the sexually
active
laity. Until they do so, they will
continue to see their credibility as teachers and leaders erode, and
the
faithful will continue to be embarrassed by the kind of factually
inaccurate
and emotionally distorted condemnations that have so far characterized
the
hierarchy’s input into the debate about same-sex marriage.
Stan Kutz is a retired employee of the
Toronto
Catholic
District School Board, and a former president of the Catholic
Principals’
Council of Ontario. He holds a Doctorate in Moral
Theology from
the University
of Munich.
__________//_________
Note: The
above was written at the time the
(Liberal) government was passing legislation permitting same-sex
marriage. Although that issue is no longer
of concern
to most people, it remains a stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy. It seems to me the analysis I have provided
remains relevant in explaining the current situation.
Stan
Kutz, July, 2008 |