Sexuality & homosexuality
Callahan, Sidney
OF SEVERAL HINDS SIDNEY CALLAHAN SEXUALITY & HOMOSEXUALITY The church's Gordian knot Resolved: However provoked, no Christian will use the word "homophobia" or "patriarchy" in heated...
...OF SEVERAL HINDS SIDNEY CALLAHAN SEXUALITY & HOMOSEXUALITY The church's Gordian knot Resolved: However provoked, no Christian will use the word "homophobia" or "patriarchy" in heated debate over sex...
...The current test case is the Vatican's "notification" to Jeannine Gramick, S.S.N.D., and Robert Nugent, S.D.S., that they are permanently barred from further pastoral work with homosexual persons...
...This latest condemnation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) sets off a firecracker-like string of questions...
...Homosexuals have a right and a need "to receive the gospel message in its purity and entirety...
...But, Rome declares, it is erroneous to mislead gays by neglecting the teaching that homosexuality is an objective disorder that predisposes a person to intrinsically evil acts...
...Was this request for internal assent, which goes beyond the requirement of obedient conformity to church teaching, a chilling effort to coerce conscience...
...Despite their careful obedience, they are being punished for a private dissent of conscience...
...Of course, as More's friends and enemies knew, in his heart of hearts More did not approve of King Henry VIII's divorce and elevation to the headship of the English church...
...I can't...
...Their joint ministry of writing, teaching, and building bridges to gay Catholics has been judged to be insufficiently condemnatory of the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts...
...No person should legally or morally be punished for his or her private thoughts, only for an action that breaks the law...
...Almost certainly, since as Thomas More (1478-1535) explained to his inquisitors, silence implies consent...
...And I would bet my bottom dollar that in their heart of hearts Nugent and Gramick do not give internal assent to the whole of the church's current teachings on homosexuality...
...Who knows, they may even have had a pro-cedurally adequate hearing, but the largCommonweal ¥ September 10,1999...
...The investigation and negotiations dragged on for two decades and concluded when the CDF requested written statements of internal assent to the church's teaching on homosexuality...
...Gramick refused and Nugent's nuanced statement of assent was rejected as unacceptable...
...Gramick and Nugent are found guilty of ambiguity for overemphasizing the church's positive teachings on homosexuality, that is, that the homosexual condition is not in itself sinful, that homosexuals must be accorded full civil rights, and that homosexuals possess human dignity as children of God and must be pastorally cared for...
...Was the CDF's appraisal of the work of Gramick and Nugent fair...
Vol. 126 • September 1999 • No. 15
