Andrew Sullivan is apoplectic. “If the guiding mantra of the
last Pope was ‘Be Not Afraid!’, the lodestar of the current one is,
arguably, the opposite,” Sullivan asserts. Not one to content himself with
smirking when lying presents another opportunity for righteous
indignation, Sullivan also accuses Benedict XVI of passing
malicious sentence on the life and work of heroic priests like New
York’s Fr. Mychal Judge, who was killed by falling debris while
comforting others in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on
9/11/01.
What’s giving Sullivan the vapors is the November 29 release by
the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education of an
“Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of
Vocations Regarding Persons with Homosexual Tendencies.” In plain
English, the document says that if the question is “Can gay men be
good priests?” the answer is, “Sometimes not.”
To fathom Sullivan’s indignation, you have to understand his
role as a self-appointed arbiter of gay culture. It also helps to
know that on the heels of the aforementioned Instruction, a French
psychologist and Jesuit priest writing in the Vatican’s daily newspaper had the
temerity to claim that homosexuality “does not represent a social
value” or a moral virtue.
Context alone cannot explain Sullivan’s spleen, which is also
fueled by fear and illogic. To react the way he’s doing, you have
to reduce personhood in all its glorious complexity to nothing more
than sexual orientation. You also have to libel both the dead and
the living by suggesting that any number of Catholic priests were
and are dedicated solely to homosexual activism. Pretend, if you
can, that Fr. Judge was killed at a gay rights rally on the steps
of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Forget his heroism and his much-loved
ministry as a fire department chaplain. Forget that Pope John Paul
II accepted the posthumous gift of Fr. Judge’s fire helmet at a
ceremony in the Vatican. And forget that Christian refusal to
endorse homosexual activity goes back at least as far as Saint
Paul’s first-century letters to the young church, which themselves
echo parts of Leviticus and Genesis.
You’ll need professional help, but if you can swim past the
Shrieking Eels and scale the Cliffs of Insanity, you may begin to
approach the operatic (inconceivable?) heights from which Sullivan
and like-minded columnists heap fire and rain on the head of a
well-known German Shepherd. If you then suppose, as Sullivan does,
that you’re swordsman enough to “do him left-handed,” then my
advice to you is what Dread Pirate Roberts told Inigo Montoya: Get
used to disappointment.
William Saletan of Slate supplements Sullivan’s hot
indignation with his own cold fury in a clever but seriously flawed
essay titled “Gland Inquisitor.”
Advising homosexual candidates for the Catholic priesthood that
“the church won’t settle for your self-restraint, even with God’s
help,” Saletan dismisses any defense of Vatican policy based on the
idea that sexual abuse and cover-up scandals in the church prove
same-sex attraction is “too dangerous to tolerate.” Were that the
argument actually being made, Saletan would be correct. But it’s a
straw man.
Of the pope, Saletan writes, “even if you buy the argument that
the abuse stemmed from homosexuality rather than pedophilia and
sexual segregation — I don’t — it doesn’t explain why
[then-Cardinal Ratzinger] targeted gay inclinations in 1986, long
before the scandal exploded.”
Interesting verb choice, that “targeted.” It implies that the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been trying to
remake human nature since the current pope had his desk there 19
years ago. But part of the 1986 letter that Saletan did not quote
reads, “the phenomenon of homosexuality, complex as it is, and with
its many consequences for society and ecclesial life, is a proper
focus for the Church’s pastoral care.”
While noting that a homosexual inclination “must be seen as an
objective disorder,” the letter also takes pains to note that “the
particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin.”
Those critics inclined to dismiss such moral pronouncements as
the suspect mutterings of celibate men do not often realize that
John Paul II developed an entire theology of the body, and wrote
more wisely of orgasm and its significance than technicians like
Dr. Ruth and actress/author Kim Catrall ever will.
As well-known Catholic blogger Amy Welborn dryly observes, “The problem is not, in simple terms,
the homosexual priest. The problem is priests who don’t believe
what the Catholic Church teaches on sexuality, who don’t preach it,
who don’t witness to it in the confessional, and who don’t live it
in their private lives.” Moreover, she continues, “What is missing from Saletan’s
piece, of course, and what makes it a waste of time, is the lack of
attention to Catholic teaching on sexuality, and what that
means.”
Religion reporter Terry Mattingly seconds her
point, while adding that as pedophilia continues to grab headlines,
“the hard questions are linked to male priests and teen-aged
boys.”
Evidence for Mattingly’s claim was documented in a
first-of-its-kind national study commissioned by U.S. Catholic
Bishops and released in February of 2004.
To the extent that there is a continuing crisis in the church,
then, it’s not the one that occupies charter members of that
chattering class whom Mark Shea pithily describes as the “Pelvic
Left.” Moreover, and for the record, the pope is trying to fix the
problem.
Benedict XVI always keeps a weather eye on the liturgical
calendar. By authorizing the recent Instruction on the memorial of
Charles Borromeo, “patron of seminaries,” and releasing it early in
Advent — the start of the church year — Benedict telegraphed both
the character of the document and its primary audience. The
Instruction is a new year’s resolution.
Benedict also appears to have taken a page from the playbook of
Ignatius Loyola and other soldier-saints: he is, in effect, sending
in the marines.
As the John Paul generation of pious young priests comes to the
fore, the pope means to remind them that “always faithful” was a
Catholic saying long before it was appropriated by the
Leathernecks. Were more priests to remember that, the world would
be a better place. That’s good advice for Excitable Andy and the
Pelvic Left, too, because the longstanding, indeed evergreen,
descriptor of choice for any Catholic priest isn’t “gay” or
“straight,” it’s “Christian.”
