FROM SEX TO SECT? A response to Paul Griffiths
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
FROM SEX TO SECT? A response to Paul Griffiths Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Hhe Catholic Church speaks clearly and succinctly of marriage. Marriage is "a covenant by which a man and a woman...
...This covenant may be difficult to carry out, but it is not rare that many strive to meet its conditions...
...Better to pull out with the hope that disentangling a noble idea of marriage from a degraded one will enhance the noble, Catholic one...
...whether in particular cases to advocate the mirroring of the church's moral teaching in the state's law...
...The view that seems to lurk between the lines of his argument is one of Catholic sectarianism...
...This strategy, Griffiths proposes, will make the Catholic idea of marriage more appealing to Catholics and perhaps attractive and inspiring to others as well...
...Customs and cultures vary around the world, but with the notable exception of polygamy, most religious traditions share these strictures or something closely resembling them...
...Griffiths writes, "It is...
...Was it ever thus...
...And at least in the United States, many Christian churches, along with Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu communities, continue to hold standards like those in canon 1055 as the end point for which husbands and wives should strive, as many do...
...even those of the Catholic Church-after all, it is only during the last century that moral theology affirmed sexual pleasure as a legitimate dimension of marital intercourse...
...Withdrawal from public debate on the definition of marriage, or any other publicly contested issue is the gesture of sectarians-a perennial temptation of certain Protestant groups, and now of some Catholics, both right and left, as well as the newly self-styled "orthodox Catholics...
...Good people may be tempted by the sectarian view underlying Grif-fiths's proposal, but I do not think it is catholic or Catholic...
...This understanding of marriage can fail of accomplishment and always has-adultery, domestic violence and spousal abuse, abortion, and child neglect and abandonment have long been with us...
...Though a high divorce rate indicates that permanence is at issue, we should not assume that the gender of the marital partners is...
...This is not to say that at some point Americans would support legal provision for domestic partnerships in order to remove barriers that currently prevent same-sex couples, and others sharing a household, from supporting and caring for one another...
...Though this may be a rigorous teaching, Catholics share it with other Christian churches and with other faith traditions...
...Furthermore, Griffiths is not simply arguing that Catholics stand aside and allow the law to change, but that "it is possible for Catholics to support laws legalizing same-sex unions...
...Currently 57 percent of Americans want a Federal Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman (Wirthin...
...The Incarnation is one of Catholicism's essential teachings...
...0merican culture certainly has its vulgar hot spots...
...But at least at this point in time, the Catholic moral view is already mirrored in civil law...
...Prudence is called for...
...Catholic bishops to wage a campaign against same-sex marriage in light of the clerical sexual-abuse scandal-a different issue certainly, but a matter that has seriously eroded episcopal credibility...
...civil law that is the end point of Griffiths's proposition...
...Yet, at the same time, shifts in legal and cultural practices have increased the prevalence of marital friendship as well as child-care and protection...
...But "profoundly pagan...
...Marriage is "a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of offspring" (canon 1055...
...Indeed, distinctions should be made...
...Well yes, but we now live, he claims, in a "profoundly pagan" United States, and must make our way in a context where "civil marriage law...is rapidly changing in Europe and North America [Canada]," and it is best that Catholics withdraw from the public argument about this...
...What can he be thinking of...
...It is a big church, and we may well diverge on matters involving political prudence and public policy...
...Griffiths may not like the way Americans, or his fellow Catholics, practice their religion, or, for that matter, the citizens of his native England (who may well be pagan), but why throw in the towel in a polity where there is general agreement about the fundamentals of marriage...
...sexual display is one, so is vehicular display, and so too various forms of political and theological posturing...
...Furthermore, efforts to change the definition of marriage through the courts rather than legislatures suggest that many advocates of same-sex unions do not expect that this view will soon change by popular demand...
...The noble idea of Catholic marriage should be lived out by all of us called to that states-lived out in public and private, in political debate and cultural representation...
...Furthermore, we should see in our fellow Christians, in Jews, Muslims, and Hindus as well as many who call themselves secular, people striving to fulfill "a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of offspring...
...Let me offer the following conjecture...
...And then, what evidence is there that "the body politic is deeply divided about the question of marriage," at least in the United States...
...Aren't those irreconcilables rather the phantom of a desire to set Catholics apart...
...But isn't this just the sort of fault he finds in the CDF document-a "lack of modesty about its own predictive powers...
...Griffiths has usually seemed a reasonable man...
...In fact, shouldn't we ask for political prudence on the part of those who advocate changing the legal definition of marriage...
...33 percent are in favor (Time/CNN...
...Attitudes change and so do behaviors...
...60 percent are opposed to same-sex marriages...
...It is a legitimate question, however, whether it would be prudent for some U.S...
...Notwithstanding his reluctant but laborious contestation of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's imprudent command to Catholic politicians to oppose legalizing same-sex unions, is it same-sex unions or U.S...
...Compared to what...
...In these circumstances, the Catholic teaching on marriage seems to him so unique, so rare that it is unreasonable to expect non-Catholics to accept our reasoning in this matter, at least as far as civil law goes...
...Thus, Paul Griffiths seems to me mistaken in his claim that the Catholic view of marriage is so markedly different from that of others that political prudence counsels that Catholics not insist it be reflected in civil law...
...No doubt, its accomplishment falls short today as divorce rates attest...
...indeed, a sacramental understanding of marriage rests upon it (an understanding oddly wanting in Griffiths's argument...
...But this is not marriage or the equivalent of marriage as commonly understood...
...Yes, we are all sinners as Griffiths rightly reminds us and we all struggle to live our faith in a broken world...
...Such an understanding requires an engagement with the world that we live in, not the one we wished we lived in...
...Griffiths's proposal seems to me not only imprudent, but oddly out of sync with the current political climate...
...Their common understanding is that marriage is lifelong, that husband and wife are fulfilled in marital friendship, and that children will come of this relationship to be loved, cherished, and raised into decent human beings...
...Indeed, the analogy he draws to female circumcision and the imprudence of a minority trying to ban it in a society where it is practiced suggests the perspective of a believer who sees himself besieged in a culture that is contemptible and unredeemable...
...To whom...
...Though his watchword is political prudence, what is prudent about a scenario in which Catholics stand apart from or even work against the views of most of their fellow Christians, and other faith communities, indeed against their own views...
...On the contrary, current civil law reflects the view of most religious traditions, including the Catholic one, if not in their fullness, then in their general understanding...
...always an exercise of prudence...
...In any case, the "irreconcilable differences" he perceives between Catholics and others are not real, or so I have argued...
Vol. 130 • October 2003 • No. 18
