An Intrinsic Moral Evil

So, there you have it, the new pope is Benedict XVI.

In some respects, I think people are overreacting to the choice. “He’s a Nazi!” exclaimed someone at work this morning, ignoring or unaware that membership in the Hitler Youth was mandatory and that the future pontiff was in fact drafted into the German army, from which he eventually deserted. “He’s just a corporate Pope,” commented another, meaning he was “promoted” because he’s been there forever. (Incidentally, I thought this was an odd, insightful comment, coming as it did from a senior investment banker.)

Many in the gay community are experiencing a collective shudder; we know he’s not a fan. But lumping him in with vitriolic homophobes of the Fred Phelps variety isn’t constructive to our cause, either. We must address him objectively, as we would have him address us.

To his credit, he wrote in 1986, “It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation…The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected.”

That concession of “intrinsic dignity” is a small plot of common ground from which we can begin to work. While it remains an echo of the emotionally abusive “love the sinner, hate the sin” doctrine of American evangelicalism, it’s still a comparatively moderate statement.

More recently, the former Cardinal commented, “To create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.”

To my mind, the problem with this statement lies not with its opposition to gay marriage, but with the inclusion of the word “legal.” On the issue of marriage, religious beliefs should have no bearing on what is legal, and vice versa. A secular couple married in the United States by a judge counts as “married” in the eyes of the government, but not in the church. We will probably never get the Catholic Church to accept same-sex marriages as a sacramental rite, as a basic tenet of their belief is that sex is for the purpose of procreation. As a matter of civil rights, church approval on the issue of same-sex marriage is irrelevant. The Catholic Church disapproves of capital punishment now, but you don’t see the federal government scrambling to comply.

Most troubling was another comment he made in the same 1986 interview cited above, where he said, “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

That’s a tougher challenge.

Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” We know our truths. We know that our identity was not chosen, but rather accepted. We know that what draws us is neither evil nor perversion nor base lust, but rather love as it is known in a universal manner. Do lust, evil and perversion exist? Certainly, and they are aberrations that know no sexual identity. Our own life experiences have taught us that feelings of profound love and commitment between people of the same gender are real and possible and valid. The side of truth is the side of God. We must trust the wisdom and boundless compassion of the Almighty, and trust also that in His time, in His way, he will reveal His truths to those who will listen.