#324: What Are We Supposed To Think?

EXCERPT:
What am I supposed to think when I get e-mail from the right-wing evangelical site OneNewsNow running the headline Support for “Gay” Rights Rising Among Catholics? Am I supposed to think Catholics think differently from other Americans? Am I supposed to think they differ with their own hierarchy? Am I supposed to think this is a bad thing?

The story beneath the headline was not much more helpful. It reported on the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) releasing what it claims to be “The most comprehensive portrait of Catholic attitudes on gay and lesbian issues assembled to date.” The report finds Catholics more supportive of gay rights than the general public and other Christians. Specifically, it reports that among Catholics:

• 73% favor legislation to protect homosexuals against workplace discrimination.
• 63% favor legislation allowing homosexuals in military.
• 60% favor legislation allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children.
• Only 22% oppose all legal recognitions of same-sex couples (for example: civil unions or same-sex civil marriage)

At the same time, Catholics expressed highly negative opinions of their own hierarchy’s performance: only 39% give the official church high marks in its handling of homosexuality, and 70% agree that messages from churches contribute (either a little or a lot) to suicides by homosexuals.

The initial impression the coverage gives is that something is amiss here, that Catholics are out of step. In fact, Dr. Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI, opines:

It may come as a surprise to many that rank-and-file Catholics are more supportive of rights for gays and lesbians than other Christians and the public.

And OneNewsNow’s Charlie Butts reports Jones noting that “A gap exists between the Vatican and Catholic Bishops… and rank-and-file Catholics.”

Really? Is that what we’re supposed to think?

For me, the statistics beg for a clear-eyed interpretation rather than distortion.

It seems to me that, in order to measure any supposed “gap” between the hierarchy and the rank-and-file, we need to start by comparing the statistics above with official church positions. Here they are, drawn from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and from statements by the Vatican and the US Bishops:

1. Homosexual orientation is most often experienced as given and discovered,not chosen--and is not in itself morally wrong or sinful.

2. Given the inherent dignity of every human person, the Church teaches that homosexual persons, like everyone else, should not suffer from prejudice against their basic human rights.”

3. Violence in speech or action against homosexuals “deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.”

4. “Every sign of discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

5. Nothing in the Bible or Catholic teaching can be used to justify prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward homosexual persons.

Of course, Catholic moral teaching also finds no justification for homosexual acts. But the moral objections are essentially the same as the Church’s objections to masturbation, artificial contraception, pre-marital sex, adultery, coitus interruptus, oral and anal sex, etc.—namely, that only marital procreative sex is morally legitimate. Everything else violates natural law.

In other words, official Catholic morality opposes all those acts but not the people who perform them. Such opposition therefore provides no grounds for treating those people differently from anyone else--and that goes for homosexuals as well as for all the others!