also I think it would be fairer to quote him in full on homosexuality. what he said was "the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct", not "this teaching is no longer correct". you can obviously hold the former and not the latter, as long as you think there is some other correct basis for the teaching. he does want a "fundamental revision" of the doctrine, but it's not exactly clear that he means approval of homosexual acts by that.
This is the full quote of Cardinal Hollerich addressing the intrinsically disordered act of sodomy. "I believe that this is false. But I also believe that here we are thinking further about the teaching. So, as the Pope has said in the past, this can lead to a change in teaching.
So I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct. What one formerly condemned was sodomy. One thought at that time that in the sperm of the man, the whole child was kept. And one has simply transferred this to homosexual men.
But there is no homosexuality at all in the New Testament. There is only discussion of homosexual acts, which were to some extent pagan cultic acts. That was naturally forbidden. I believe it is time for us to make a revision in the foundation [Grundrevision: “ground revision,” or “foundation revision”] of the teaching."
and to entirely complete the context, the question he was responding to was the following: "How do you get around the Church’s teaching that homosexuality is sin?"
When the Cardinal answered “I believe that this is false” to the question “how do you get around the Church’s teaching that homosexuality is sin”, does he believe 1) the need to get around the Church’s teaching is false or 2) that the Church’s teach itself is false?
I think it's even possible that he meant that the interviewer had falsely described the teaching, since homosexuality is not a sin, but homosexual acts.
If we actually relied on sociological-scientific foundations in order to follow the law, we would be in a sad mess indeed, since those foundations change as quickly as a generation passes away (one changes them as a garment is changed and here I am thinking specifically of infant onesies).
If sodomy is sinful, then there is no reason for homosexual relationships to be exclusive, since exclusivity is based in the nature of physical love. Jealousy between friends is trying to possess a person, which is sinful. So therefore, there is no analogue to matrimony in the world of friendship. Best friends can make no claim on each other, since there is no mutual self gift. Indeed, not even a josephite marriage claims permanence. Friendship is maintained not by vows but by continuing to choose to remain.
Exclusivity, permanence, and procreation are the exclusive domain of marriage based on sexual intercourse, which biologically and theologically is between one man and one woman.
Why do I know that, but his eminence and half the German Church do not? Or why is his eminence looking for a new theology when I can fit it in a medium sized comment?
Didn’t pope John Paul II provide that foundational revision?? The theology of the whats-it? Or heck how about Detrich Von hilderbrand or fellow Jesuit chuck gallaher?
"The Japanese say: It is white, but maybe it is also black. You can combine opposites in Japan without changing your point of view.” How absurd! Does this explain Pope Francis' thinking?
"The Japanese" say no such thing of course. Some Japanese people, and also people from many other countries, espouse this idea and also other people have other ideas.
Dialectic dualism is not absurd, so long as it is merely dialectic. If you were to describe gray to someone who had never seen it, you might say that it is black but also white. Most of the debates people have is because they are only speaking about one side of the dialectic. People arguing about gun control or liturgy or punishing criminals are both right, up until they propose solutions that do not take into account the way in which their opponents are right. People get self-righteous because they think that their opponent is saying that they are wrong when they know that they are right. They are right, but so are their opponents.
It is true that marriage is the institutionalization of procreation, and therefore marriage between people for reasons other than parenthood is absurd. But people do get married for other reasons: money, power, companionship, etc.
It is very hard to explain why a 70 year old childless man can marry a 70 year old childless woman, with no intention of procreation or adoption, but a 30 year old man cannot marry a 30 year old man. The answer is that the old couple shouldn't get married, but they are allowed to by canon law, so why not the younger couple? If the old couple are allowed an absurd marriage to account for human weakness, then why not the young couple?
So at the edge case, trying to solve the dialectic leads to contradiction, and it always does. If you try to synthesize any dialectic, you get contradiction. So the Church holds the dialectic in tension: marriage is all about child-rearing and marriage is about companionship. The old couple can get married (but shouldn't) because maybe there will be an Abraham and Sarah pregnancy at age 90. Maybe they will adopt and raise a child. The 70 year old woman could be a mother (though probably won't be). But the young couple must remain friends and companions because neither can be a mother.
The potential motherhood of a woman who will probably never be a mother seems like a weak reason to forbid marriage to two men, and it would be, but it is a strong enough reason to permit marriage of a couple who really shouldn't get married. But when the dialectic collapses and people celebrate the marriage of the old couple as "finally finding your companion" then we are back to a contradiction. Matrimony is parenthood. Matrimony is companionship. Matrimony must never be not-parenthood. Matrimony must never be not-companionship.
Father I have been finding your comments on issues surrounding marriage and sexual morality reliably enlightening over the past several months. Thanks for contributing here!
I sort of wonder how often Cdl. Hollerich left the Sophia campus when he lived there. When I was living there with a host family (as a high school student), my host mom spoke somewhat disparagingly of their previous host student, who had gone to Sophia. "Four years later, her Japanese hasn't improved at all. You can get through Sophia taking only classes in English. Going to Sophia is not really like going to university in Japan." It's got a reputation for turning out excellent English speakers, which is unusual in Japan, but my impression from her was that it's kind of an expat bubble. The kind of place where non-Japanese can get away with making statements like Cdl. Hollerich's (to other non-Japanese anyway) and get away with it because "they lived in Japan, so they know what they're talking about."
Probably the only folks who would say "maybe white is also black" are, like, some truly devout Zen Buddhists. Most Japanese that I've interacted with are kind of secular liberal tolerant types, except with a strong emphasis on the community/family over the individual. (My host mom rejected a boyfriend of my adult host sister, and sister eventually broke up with him after some tearful fights with mom.) Their morality is also pretty collectivist - if it's good for the community, it's the right thing to do and you're bad and selfish if you oppose it. But discouragement of individual choice and conscience isn't at all the same as not believing in good and evil.
The one thing I'd observe is that there's a stronger optimism about fundamental human nature being perfectible/improvable if you show enough love and acceptance. There's a common trope in Asian literature of a defeated rival becoming an essential friend and supporter, and people generally do seem to believe that there are no truly evil people, just misguided or misunderstood. (Actual quote from my host mom: "Putin has a mother, too! Why doesn't she just make her son stop?") This optimism has deep roots - it goes all the way back to Confucius' disciple Mencius and permeates not just Japanese culture but all the cultures throughout Asia that were ever in China's sphere of influence.
tl;dr Cdl. Hollerich's claim doesn't really hold up to my experiences in Japan.
I'm glad that the Church is addressing the issue of homosexuality. I have no experience of it myself in close family but a good friend of mine whose child I have known since he was born in 1995, has the issue. From his earliest days he was very 'gay'. A happy, vibrant, carefree child, but just very 'gay'. His parents didn't try to 'straight' him but didn't encourage him to be gay either, but now he is happy in a long term gay relationship and its a difficult thing to deal with as a Catholic parent. On this personal level, I'm supportive of the Church doing a deep dive into the traditional teaching, to have an understanding of Liam and the one life he has to lead.
The problem is not that he has a close relationship with a man. The problem only comes up when there is any suggestion that this relationship is like marriage. People only compare the two because they do not understand marriage. Catholic parents should love their son and be friendly with his friends. They should not attend a wedding or any other mockery of matrimony. This is difficult and is a similar issue that parents are facing with children insisting that they use the wrong pronouns. There is always a temptation to go along for the sake of peace, but we must speak the truth.
The issue is that our culture utterly failed this family and their son. The idea of sexual identity essentialism is one that the Church should push back against. The traditional, unchanging teaching of the Church is that any unfruitful sexual acts are sinful. This is what is referred to Biblically and in the Church as sodomy. This category doesn't differentiate between what sex the participants in the act are. I think if we reclaim this understanding - and sexual identity essentialism is prevalent across all of our cultural divides, being probably even more prevalent among "conservatives" - we can treat someone like Liam as a person and not as this "other thing." He's simply been lied to by our culture, that certain desires tell him something essential about who he is. The answer for anyone in that position (and for us all) is to live the radical call of the Gospel. True freedom is only found in denying our disordered desires, whatever they happen to be.
I mostly agree with what you are saying but with caution on two points:
1. Fruitfulness is not the measure of sexual morality. Sex has the purpose of procreation but also the purpose of binding together parents and making the very difficult job of co-parenting easier. But the unitive act must be the act that is procreative, even if because of circumstances it is not even potentially fruitful (age, hysterectomy, time of the month, etc.) It matters that the parents engage in the same act that created their children or in the case of adoptive parents it is still the same act that creates children.
2. The essentialism point is true, but it is also true that some people have homosexual desires and others just don't. Of course this does not capture all of a person's identity as the culture would have it, but it must surely be a different experience in life to be attracted to the same sex. It would complicate friendships and work relationships. There is a reason why the Church teaches that homosexual men should not be ordained priests. Some people (especially women) with these desires will eventually have their desire for children outweigh the vagaries of lust and happily enter a true marriage for the sake of being a mother or father. But other people are simply never going to have this desire. It is our culture's obsession with coupling up and romance that is problematic here. The idea that a person can never be happy without finding their soulmate is such a lie. It implies that the homosexual person is somehow destined to live a defective life if they would be faithful to the truth. Once they make peace with not having a single soulmate, they can realize that they are free to do a thousand other very meaningful things which parents are simply not able to do.
I agree with you for the most part. However, I would push back slightly with your first point and emphasize that fruitfulness is at the root level what determines the morality of a sexual act. The primary end of sexuality is procreation. This is not to denigrate the other aspects of our sexuality, but that they are only properly understood in a hierarchy of goods. I think it goes without saying that we can see everywhere the destructive effects of the distortion of sexuality's telos.
To your second point, everyone has a unique experience with different struggles and desires, but essentialism ends up creating a whole different class of person based on disordered desire. I think we gain much by discarding it. I don't think it's a settled teaching of the Church that men who struggle or have struggled with sodomy should not be ordained. It may be especially prudent at this point in history to not do so, and obviously if allowed, it would have to be on a prudential basis just like any candidate for ordination.
I 100% agree about our overly romanticized view of human sexuality. By denying essentialism, we open up the possibilities for a person who struggles with that sin. Many may be called to live celibate lives, some may decide to marry. Essentialism and the overly romantic ideal seem to me to be deeply related. Why not discard both?
We actually agree, I think, on the first point, but I am making a subtle distinction. There is an incorrect view that has become popularized that puts procreative and unitive ends as equal purposes of sex, but if that were true, then it becomes very difficult to explain why a homosexual couple is not allowed to pursue the unitive end just because they cannot pursue the procreative. So it must be wrong, despite sometimes even being implied by Church documents. You are right to reject it.
The older idea says that the procreative end is the only proper use of sex and everything else is subordinate. This is closer to the truth, but it does not explain why a couple would still have sex during infertile periods when using NFP or why a couple would have sex after the age of 40. In this view, a couple should not have sex in those times, but we allow for it out of human weakness. However, if that were correct, then this too would support sodomy and birth control. It would not be hard to imagine a homosexual couple who understands that properly speaking they should not do anything sexual, but out of human weakness they do it anyway. Indeed, this same reasoning has been used to justify masturbation. The belief is that sexual pleasure is a necessary part of human life, and therefore a person is justified in seeking this pleasure outside of procreation so long as they admit that they do so illogically but out of weakness.
I am saying that the end of sex is not procreation but parenthood. Parenthood consists of two aspects: procreation and education. Education here is used to encompass all raising of children including throughout their adulthood. While the procreative use of sex is biologically evident, what does sex have to do with caring for children? Children need their parents to stay bonded. Divorce is very harmful for children. Therefore, God designed sex to keep a mother and father together through all the problems of a lifelong relationship.
In any friendship, it is healthy to spend time apart or together according to how the friends feel. We leave even some best friends behind us and see them after years apart. This is why friendship is better than marriage. There is no jealousy because there cannot be unfaithfulness. We must never betray a friend, but we can say goodbye to them according to life's circumstances. Immature children promise to be BFFs, but adults happily say goodbye to people who have been important in their lives, perhaps not expecting to see them again before heaven.
But this must not happen to parents. Parents must stay together despite everything: changes in personality, maturing, job opportunities, etc. Not for their own sake, but for the sake of their children. And they must not only stay together as a kind of rule, but happily. Therefore, the so-called unitive end of marriage is no romantic finding of a soulmate. It is using the body as it was designed to hold together what would naturally drift apart. Only in parenthood is there a reason to force unity rather than let a relationship take its natural course. How is unity forced? The mutual and exclusive self-gift of the bodies. Here is an action that can end arguments and remind the couple that they love each other when words are no longer working.
In any other vocation, sexual desire is something to mature beyond, but in marriage the couple uses it to conquer the selfishness that could cause divorce, to the detriment of the education of children. And this is equally true of adoptive parents as it is of biological parents, equally true in the fertile times and the infertile times, and equally true of grandparents and great-grandparents for whom procreation is far in the past. Sex is not just an accepted venial sin, but an important part of being co-parents. In this way the purpose of sex is always parenthood and there is no justification for sodomy or other impurities, but there is an explanation for why infertile sex can actually be good.
To the second point, yes it is an official teaching of the Church that men who struggle with same-sex attraction should not be priests. Yes, there is much ignoring of this teaching, but it is both an official teaching and a good practice. A priest needs to have the desire to be a father in order to be a good priest, and the desire to be a father without a mother is not a true desire to be a father. Though there may be little difference in immature men who are simply struggling with lust of whatever kind, there is a great difference in the overcoming of ordered versus disordered sexual desire. As he matures, a man goes from desiring to marry for selfish motives to considering what life as a father would have been like to finding as a spiritual father the fulfillment of what he gave up.
A man with disordered attraction can only reject it, not have it mature. Sometimes men have a transient same-sex attraction that is based in fear of women but which goes away. The Church does allow such men to enter the seminary if they have been free of the same-sex attraction for a few years. But there are other men who seem to have a disordered desire that is genetic or deeply psychological. Is this part of their essence? It is certainly part of who they are. Even where he is able to maintain chaste celibacy (sadly too uncommon among such men), it will always be something bad that he has rejected. He may be excellent at liturgy or a scholar of canon law, he may become a saint, but without the seeds of desire to form a family with a woman, he can never become a father.
One example of where this problem becomes evident is in how some priests and bishops handled sexual abuse of children. It is a sign of a lack of fatherhood that the bishops were more sympathetic to the weakness of the abusers than the pain of the abused. A father has a deep-seated desire to defend his children, especially the most vulnerable. Were all of the bishops who badly handled such cases homosexuals? No, some were just careerists and some were just stupid. But it was the presence of the homosexual ones that created a culture where the sexual abuse of children was a "weakness" rather than a reason to throw someone off a cliff with a millstone around his neck.
I think we're essentially agreeing on the first point as well. It would be a mistake to separate procreation, marriage, and parenthood. These are interwoven in our understanding of sexuality. I do however fail to see how this distinction of making parenthood the end of sex does away with the potential distortion of justifying unfruitful sexual acts. For example, I could see a justification being made for acts such as mutual masturbation between spouses. We would, of course, say that it is disordered, but I don't think it necessarily follows from the logic.
I still think the strongest argument is for recognizing procreation as the chief end with the unitive element as being subordinate to it. This provides the most satisfying answer for why the person in an unfertile state can still participate in the good of sex. It is ultimately declaring and participating in the profound truth that God is the author of life with each of our sexual acts. We cannot create life, but we can choose to cooperate with God in being open to his working. This is the same for the elderly couple or the young couple struggling with infertility. If we properly understand the hierarchy of goods related to sex, we see that by denying the primary end, we cannot properly achieve any of the subordinate ends.
Again, I think we're basically agreeing (and I know we're trying to come to the same conclusion), but maybe are seeing different pitfalls.
In regards to the second point, can you provide a reference to that teaching? I'm not asking cynically, but I would be genuinely interested to read it. I can certainly understand it being a prudential choice (especially in our current circumstances) that these men would be excluded. But, I don't think that the Church teachings that someone with a certain temptation is intrinsically unfit for the priesthood. Now, I'm not advocation for such persons to be admitted to the priesthood. I think it's a deeply prudential decision. We've experienced what poor discernment in forming and admitting men to the priesthood has done in recent history (and all of it really).
I do think that you are wrong to say that a man with disordered desire has to only reject it. As St. Thomas would argue, evil is a privation of good. In that way, any disordered desire needs to be properly understood and re-ordered to the good. I don't see how someone who experiences a disordered desire in terms of sodomy becomes incapable of doing so. I also fail to see how this would prohibit said person from becoming a spiritual father. Obviously, spiritual fatherhood and physical fatherhood are related by analogy, but remain distinct. I think it stretches the analogy too far to say that by lacking a physical desire for procreation one cannot be a spiritual father
My issue with this line of thinking is it creates this other class of person - "The Homosexual." In reality, it's a completely fabricated social construct of the last ~150 years. We see the ridiculousness of this in projecting this modern construct backwards throughout history. There have always been sodomites, but the homosexual is a modern invention.
This thinking actually created the permissive atmosphere in the Church that you justly bemoan. The excessively materialist outlook on sin (trying to find a genetic or purely psychological cause) is at the bedrock of the moral scandals among the clergy. "Father just needs to be shuffled around or see the right therapist." It leaves us unable to call a spade a spade and provide a holistic, loving, and just response.
Is there another class of person "the austist"? We are all defined by our positive and negative characteristics. No, there were not categories before the 19th century, but autism, alcoholism, BPD, and homosexuality did exist. I have seen men who never experienced attraction to women. "Conversion therapy" is a mistake with such people. They are too defined by the genetic/psychological experience. They may become saints, but they would never be good husbands.
Our psychology is affected by our life experience. Our physical desires are part of our life experience. To have experienced the desire for procreation as opposed to simply the desire for companionship will create a different psychology, which will affect the ability to be a spiritual father, to be protective of a flock. I do not know what it is about the deep-seated homosexual desire that fails to grow into spiritual fatherhood, but I have seen it in a few older priests who never speak about their parishioners the way I feel about mine. The modern mistake might be that what a homosexual man sees in other men is the same thing that a heterosexual man sees in women. A person can be broken, and everyone is broken in various ways. Whether the sinful desire comes about because of genetics or a history of sin, a person who denies it is not the same as a person who never had it.
I would say that the strongest argument for parenthood being the purpose of sex is that it has the advantage of being true from an evolutionary standpoint. Sex developed not only for the purpose of procreation but also for the purpose of holding on to a father to provide even for adopted children. If you say that the unitive element is subordinate to the procreation, then it seems to me that then couples who are purposefully trying not to procreate, such as a couple using NFP to space their children, would not have the unitive element.
Your point about married parents engaging in certain acts is well made, but I think it leads to the casuistry of Christopher West. It is sufficient to say that a married couple should discover between themselves what acts actually unify them and restore their love for each other. It certainly is true that some acts are completely lacking in dignity and therefore are beyond the pale. Other acts exist in a gray area where lines are best drawn by each couple though loving dialogue about what is desired and respectful. There are many acts which a couple can do during the fertile period when they are avoiding pregnancy, such as kissing and cuddling. That these are sexual acts is clear from the fact that they would be sins for an unmarried person, but it would not be correct to say that all sexuality must be excluded by the couple unless they are going to do a procreative act. I think that such times can even be helpful for couples to expand their understanding of what constitutes sexuality beyond the simple orgasm-seeking that husbands tend toward. Once a few categories of acts are entirely excluded, it is not possible to say that such and such a thing is disordered without going way too far into the specifics which should not even be discussed except between the couple themselves.
Lord, protect us from errant Cardinals.
Sounds like the most likely next pope if the next pope is European.
based cardinal
also I think it would be fairer to quote him in full on homosexuality. what he said was "the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct", not "this teaching is no longer correct". you can obviously hold the former and not the latter, as long as you think there is some other correct basis for the teaching. he does want a "fundamental revision" of the doctrine, but it's not exactly clear that he means approval of homosexual acts by that.
If only there were a word for members of the Society of Jesus who deploy clever but unsound reasoning to bamboozle people.
there is a word, I have been using it this whole time
it's based
Yeah, we noticed. It's really, really boring.
the collective "we" of trad Pillar subscribers has noticed me, I feel important now
I’m not a trad.
This is the full quote of Cardinal Hollerich addressing the intrinsically disordered act of sodomy. "I believe that this is false. But I also believe that here we are thinking further about the teaching. So, as the Pope has said in the past, this can lead to a change in teaching.
So I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct. What one formerly condemned was sodomy. One thought at that time that in the sperm of the man, the whole child was kept. And one has simply transferred this to homosexual men.
But there is no homosexuality at all in the New Testament. There is only discussion of homosexual acts, which were to some extent pagan cultic acts. That was naturally forbidden. I believe it is time for us to make a revision in the foundation [Grundrevision: “ground revision,” or “foundation revision”] of the teaching."
and to entirely complete the context, the question he was responding to was the following: "How do you get around the Church’s teaching that homosexuality is sin?"
When the Cardinal answered “I believe that this is false” to the question “how do you get around the Church’s teaching that homosexuality is sin”, does he believe 1) the need to get around the Church’s teaching is false or 2) that the Church’s teach itself is false?
Either interpretation fits.
I think it's even possible that he meant that the interviewer had falsely described the teaching, since homosexuality is not a sin, but homosexual acts.
Interesting.
If we actually relied on sociological-scientific foundations in order to follow the law, we would be in a sad mess indeed, since those foundations change as quickly as a generation passes away (one changes them as a garment is changed and here I am thinking specifically of infant onesies).
Quite an evocative image.
Does anyone else watch the Pillar comments just to see what this lady has to say? Hi, Bridget. You seem like a gem.
So you do agree that sodomy is a sin? Just checking for when the goal posts move again.
homosexual acts are sinful, yes.
Is this a teaching of the Church that can change as Cardinal Hollerich suggests?
could the teaching that homosexual acts are sinful change? no, I don't think so.
If sodomy is sinful, then there is no reason for homosexual relationships to be exclusive, since exclusivity is based in the nature of physical love. Jealousy between friends is trying to possess a person, which is sinful. So therefore, there is no analogue to matrimony in the world of friendship. Best friends can make no claim on each other, since there is no mutual self gift. Indeed, not even a josephite marriage claims permanence. Friendship is maintained not by vows but by continuing to choose to remain.
Exclusivity, permanence, and procreation are the exclusive domain of marriage based on sexual intercourse, which biologically and theologically is between one man and one woman.
Why do I know that, but his eminence and half the German Church do not? Or why is his eminence looking for a new theology when I can fit it in a medium sized comment?
Didn’t pope John Paul II provide that foundational revision?? The theology of the whats-it? Or heck how about Detrich Von hilderbrand or fellow Jesuit chuck gallaher?
"The Japanese say: It is white, but maybe it is also black. You can combine opposites in Japan without changing your point of view.” How absurd! Does this explain Pope Francis' thinking?
I don't know, but while pondering this question I discovered the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.
"The Japanese" say no such thing of course. Some Japanese people, and also people from many other countries, espouse this idea and also other people have other ideas.
Dialectic dualism is not absurd, so long as it is merely dialectic. If you were to describe gray to someone who had never seen it, you might say that it is black but also white. Most of the debates people have is because they are only speaking about one side of the dialectic. People arguing about gun control or liturgy or punishing criminals are both right, up until they propose solutions that do not take into account the way in which their opponents are right. People get self-righteous because they think that their opponent is saying that they are wrong when they know that they are right. They are right, but so are their opponents.
It is true that marriage is the institutionalization of procreation, and therefore marriage between people for reasons other than parenthood is absurd. But people do get married for other reasons: money, power, companionship, etc.
It is very hard to explain why a 70 year old childless man can marry a 70 year old childless woman, with no intention of procreation or adoption, but a 30 year old man cannot marry a 30 year old man. The answer is that the old couple shouldn't get married, but they are allowed to by canon law, so why not the younger couple? If the old couple are allowed an absurd marriage to account for human weakness, then why not the young couple?
So at the edge case, trying to solve the dialectic leads to contradiction, and it always does. If you try to synthesize any dialectic, you get contradiction. So the Church holds the dialectic in tension: marriage is all about child-rearing and marriage is about companionship. The old couple can get married (but shouldn't) because maybe there will be an Abraham and Sarah pregnancy at age 90. Maybe they will adopt and raise a child. The 70 year old woman could be a mother (though probably won't be). But the young couple must remain friends and companions because neither can be a mother.
The potential motherhood of a woman who will probably never be a mother seems like a weak reason to forbid marriage to two men, and it would be, but it is a strong enough reason to permit marriage of a couple who really shouldn't get married. But when the dialectic collapses and people celebrate the marriage of the old couple as "finally finding your companion" then we are back to a contradiction. Matrimony is parenthood. Matrimony is companionship. Matrimony must never be not-parenthood. Matrimony must never be not-companionship.
Father I have been finding your comments on issues surrounding marriage and sexual morality reliably enlightening over the past several months. Thanks for contributing here!
I sort of wonder how often Cdl. Hollerich left the Sophia campus when he lived there. When I was living there with a host family (as a high school student), my host mom spoke somewhat disparagingly of their previous host student, who had gone to Sophia. "Four years later, her Japanese hasn't improved at all. You can get through Sophia taking only classes in English. Going to Sophia is not really like going to university in Japan." It's got a reputation for turning out excellent English speakers, which is unusual in Japan, but my impression from her was that it's kind of an expat bubble. The kind of place where non-Japanese can get away with making statements like Cdl. Hollerich's (to other non-Japanese anyway) and get away with it because "they lived in Japan, so they know what they're talking about."
Probably the only folks who would say "maybe white is also black" are, like, some truly devout Zen Buddhists. Most Japanese that I've interacted with are kind of secular liberal tolerant types, except with a strong emphasis on the community/family over the individual. (My host mom rejected a boyfriend of my adult host sister, and sister eventually broke up with him after some tearful fights with mom.) Their morality is also pretty collectivist - if it's good for the community, it's the right thing to do and you're bad and selfish if you oppose it. But discouragement of individual choice and conscience isn't at all the same as not believing in good and evil.
The one thing I'd observe is that there's a stronger optimism about fundamental human nature being perfectible/improvable if you show enough love and acceptance. There's a common trope in Asian literature of a defeated rival becoming an essential friend and supporter, and people generally do seem to believe that there are no truly evil people, just misguided or misunderstood. (Actual quote from my host mom: "Putin has a mother, too! Why doesn't she just make her son stop?") This optimism has deep roots - it goes all the way back to Confucius' disciple Mencius and permeates not just Japanese culture but all the cultures throughout Asia that were ever in China's sphere of influence.
tl;dr Cdl. Hollerich's claim doesn't really hold up to my experiences in Japan.
I'm glad that the Church is addressing the issue of homosexuality. I have no experience of it myself in close family but a good friend of mine whose child I have known since he was born in 1995, has the issue. From his earliest days he was very 'gay'. A happy, vibrant, carefree child, but just very 'gay'. His parents didn't try to 'straight' him but didn't encourage him to be gay either, but now he is happy in a long term gay relationship and its a difficult thing to deal with as a Catholic parent. On this personal level, I'm supportive of the Church doing a deep dive into the traditional teaching, to have an understanding of Liam and the one life he has to lead.
The problem is not that he has a close relationship with a man. The problem only comes up when there is any suggestion that this relationship is like marriage. People only compare the two because they do not understand marriage. Catholic parents should love their son and be friendly with his friends. They should not attend a wedding or any other mockery of matrimony. This is difficult and is a similar issue that parents are facing with children insisting that they use the wrong pronouns. There is always a temptation to go along for the sake of peace, but we must speak the truth.
The issue is that our culture utterly failed this family and their son. The idea of sexual identity essentialism is one that the Church should push back against. The traditional, unchanging teaching of the Church is that any unfruitful sexual acts are sinful. This is what is referred to Biblically and in the Church as sodomy. This category doesn't differentiate between what sex the participants in the act are. I think if we reclaim this understanding - and sexual identity essentialism is prevalent across all of our cultural divides, being probably even more prevalent among "conservatives" - we can treat someone like Liam as a person and not as this "other thing." He's simply been lied to by our culture, that certain desires tell him something essential about who he is. The answer for anyone in that position (and for us all) is to live the radical call of the Gospel. True freedom is only found in denying our disordered desires, whatever they happen to be.
I mostly agree with what you are saying but with caution on two points:
1. Fruitfulness is not the measure of sexual morality. Sex has the purpose of procreation but also the purpose of binding together parents and making the very difficult job of co-parenting easier. But the unitive act must be the act that is procreative, even if because of circumstances it is not even potentially fruitful (age, hysterectomy, time of the month, etc.) It matters that the parents engage in the same act that created their children or in the case of adoptive parents it is still the same act that creates children.
2. The essentialism point is true, but it is also true that some people have homosexual desires and others just don't. Of course this does not capture all of a person's identity as the culture would have it, but it must surely be a different experience in life to be attracted to the same sex. It would complicate friendships and work relationships. There is a reason why the Church teaches that homosexual men should not be ordained priests. Some people (especially women) with these desires will eventually have their desire for children outweigh the vagaries of lust and happily enter a true marriage for the sake of being a mother or father. But other people are simply never going to have this desire. It is our culture's obsession with coupling up and romance that is problematic here. The idea that a person can never be happy without finding their soulmate is such a lie. It implies that the homosexual person is somehow destined to live a defective life if they would be faithful to the truth. Once they make peace with not having a single soulmate, they can realize that they are free to do a thousand other very meaningful things which parents are simply not able to do.
I agree with you for the most part. However, I would push back slightly with your first point and emphasize that fruitfulness is at the root level what determines the morality of a sexual act. The primary end of sexuality is procreation. This is not to denigrate the other aspects of our sexuality, but that they are only properly understood in a hierarchy of goods. I think it goes without saying that we can see everywhere the destructive effects of the distortion of sexuality's telos.
To your second point, everyone has a unique experience with different struggles and desires, but essentialism ends up creating a whole different class of person based on disordered desire. I think we gain much by discarding it. I don't think it's a settled teaching of the Church that men who struggle or have struggled with sodomy should not be ordained. It may be especially prudent at this point in history to not do so, and obviously if allowed, it would have to be on a prudential basis just like any candidate for ordination.
I 100% agree about our overly romanticized view of human sexuality. By denying essentialism, we open up the possibilities for a person who struggles with that sin. Many may be called to live celibate lives, some may decide to marry. Essentialism and the overly romantic ideal seem to me to be deeply related. Why not discard both?
We actually agree, I think, on the first point, but I am making a subtle distinction. There is an incorrect view that has become popularized that puts procreative and unitive ends as equal purposes of sex, but if that were true, then it becomes very difficult to explain why a homosexual couple is not allowed to pursue the unitive end just because they cannot pursue the procreative. So it must be wrong, despite sometimes even being implied by Church documents. You are right to reject it.
The older idea says that the procreative end is the only proper use of sex and everything else is subordinate. This is closer to the truth, but it does not explain why a couple would still have sex during infertile periods when using NFP or why a couple would have sex after the age of 40. In this view, a couple should not have sex in those times, but we allow for it out of human weakness. However, if that were correct, then this too would support sodomy and birth control. It would not be hard to imagine a homosexual couple who understands that properly speaking they should not do anything sexual, but out of human weakness they do it anyway. Indeed, this same reasoning has been used to justify masturbation. The belief is that sexual pleasure is a necessary part of human life, and therefore a person is justified in seeking this pleasure outside of procreation so long as they admit that they do so illogically but out of weakness.
I am saying that the end of sex is not procreation but parenthood. Parenthood consists of two aspects: procreation and education. Education here is used to encompass all raising of children including throughout their adulthood. While the procreative use of sex is biologically evident, what does sex have to do with caring for children? Children need their parents to stay bonded. Divorce is very harmful for children. Therefore, God designed sex to keep a mother and father together through all the problems of a lifelong relationship.
In any friendship, it is healthy to spend time apart or together according to how the friends feel. We leave even some best friends behind us and see them after years apart. This is why friendship is better than marriage. There is no jealousy because there cannot be unfaithfulness. We must never betray a friend, but we can say goodbye to them according to life's circumstances. Immature children promise to be BFFs, but adults happily say goodbye to people who have been important in their lives, perhaps not expecting to see them again before heaven.
But this must not happen to parents. Parents must stay together despite everything: changes in personality, maturing, job opportunities, etc. Not for their own sake, but for the sake of their children. And they must not only stay together as a kind of rule, but happily. Therefore, the so-called unitive end of marriage is no romantic finding of a soulmate. It is using the body as it was designed to hold together what would naturally drift apart. Only in parenthood is there a reason to force unity rather than let a relationship take its natural course. How is unity forced? The mutual and exclusive self-gift of the bodies. Here is an action that can end arguments and remind the couple that they love each other when words are no longer working.
In any other vocation, sexual desire is something to mature beyond, but in marriage the couple uses it to conquer the selfishness that could cause divorce, to the detriment of the education of children. And this is equally true of adoptive parents as it is of biological parents, equally true in the fertile times and the infertile times, and equally true of grandparents and great-grandparents for whom procreation is far in the past. Sex is not just an accepted venial sin, but an important part of being co-parents. In this way the purpose of sex is always parenthood and there is no justification for sodomy or other impurities, but there is an explanation for why infertile sex can actually be good.
To the second point, yes it is an official teaching of the Church that men who struggle with same-sex attraction should not be priests. Yes, there is much ignoring of this teaching, but it is both an official teaching and a good practice. A priest needs to have the desire to be a father in order to be a good priest, and the desire to be a father without a mother is not a true desire to be a father. Though there may be little difference in immature men who are simply struggling with lust of whatever kind, there is a great difference in the overcoming of ordered versus disordered sexual desire. As he matures, a man goes from desiring to marry for selfish motives to considering what life as a father would have been like to finding as a spiritual father the fulfillment of what he gave up.
A man with disordered attraction can only reject it, not have it mature. Sometimes men have a transient same-sex attraction that is based in fear of women but which goes away. The Church does allow such men to enter the seminary if they have been free of the same-sex attraction for a few years. But there are other men who seem to have a disordered desire that is genetic or deeply psychological. Is this part of their essence? It is certainly part of who they are. Even where he is able to maintain chaste celibacy (sadly too uncommon among such men), it will always be something bad that he has rejected. He may be excellent at liturgy or a scholar of canon law, he may become a saint, but without the seeds of desire to form a family with a woman, he can never become a father.
One example of where this problem becomes evident is in how some priests and bishops handled sexual abuse of children. It is a sign of a lack of fatherhood that the bishops were more sympathetic to the weakness of the abusers than the pain of the abused. A father has a deep-seated desire to defend his children, especially the most vulnerable. Were all of the bishops who badly handled such cases homosexuals? No, some were just careerists and some were just stupid. But it was the presence of the homosexual ones that created a culture where the sexual abuse of children was a "weakness" rather than a reason to throw someone off a cliff with a millstone around his neck.
I think we're essentially agreeing on the first point as well. It would be a mistake to separate procreation, marriage, and parenthood. These are interwoven in our understanding of sexuality. I do however fail to see how this distinction of making parenthood the end of sex does away with the potential distortion of justifying unfruitful sexual acts. For example, I could see a justification being made for acts such as mutual masturbation between spouses. We would, of course, say that it is disordered, but I don't think it necessarily follows from the logic.
I still think the strongest argument is for recognizing procreation as the chief end with the unitive element as being subordinate to it. This provides the most satisfying answer for why the person in an unfertile state can still participate in the good of sex. It is ultimately declaring and participating in the profound truth that God is the author of life with each of our sexual acts. We cannot create life, but we can choose to cooperate with God in being open to his working. This is the same for the elderly couple or the young couple struggling with infertility. If we properly understand the hierarchy of goods related to sex, we see that by denying the primary end, we cannot properly achieve any of the subordinate ends.
Again, I think we're basically agreeing (and I know we're trying to come to the same conclusion), but maybe are seeing different pitfalls.
In regards to the second point, can you provide a reference to that teaching? I'm not asking cynically, but I would be genuinely interested to read it. I can certainly understand it being a prudential choice (especially in our current circumstances) that these men would be excluded. But, I don't think that the Church teachings that someone with a certain temptation is intrinsically unfit for the priesthood. Now, I'm not advocation for such persons to be admitted to the priesthood. I think it's a deeply prudential decision. We've experienced what poor discernment in forming and admitting men to the priesthood has done in recent history (and all of it really).
I do think that you are wrong to say that a man with disordered desire has to only reject it. As St. Thomas would argue, evil is a privation of good. In that way, any disordered desire needs to be properly understood and re-ordered to the good. I don't see how someone who experiences a disordered desire in terms of sodomy becomes incapable of doing so. I also fail to see how this would prohibit said person from becoming a spiritual father. Obviously, spiritual fatherhood and physical fatherhood are related by analogy, but remain distinct. I think it stretches the analogy too far to say that by lacking a physical desire for procreation one cannot be a spiritual father
My issue with this line of thinking is it creates this other class of person - "The Homosexual." In reality, it's a completely fabricated social construct of the last ~150 years. We see the ridiculousness of this in projecting this modern construct backwards throughout history. There have always been sodomites, but the homosexual is a modern invention.
This thinking actually created the permissive atmosphere in the Church that you justly bemoan. The excessively materialist outlook on sin (trying to find a genetic or purely psychological cause) is at the bedrock of the moral scandals among the clergy. "Father just needs to be shuffled around or see the right therapist." It leaves us unable to call a spade a spade and provide a holistic, loving, and just response.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20051104_istruzione_en.html
Is there another class of person "the austist"? We are all defined by our positive and negative characteristics. No, there were not categories before the 19th century, but autism, alcoholism, BPD, and homosexuality did exist. I have seen men who never experienced attraction to women. "Conversion therapy" is a mistake with such people. They are too defined by the genetic/psychological experience. They may become saints, but they would never be good husbands.
Our psychology is affected by our life experience. Our physical desires are part of our life experience. To have experienced the desire for procreation as opposed to simply the desire for companionship will create a different psychology, which will affect the ability to be a spiritual father, to be protective of a flock. I do not know what it is about the deep-seated homosexual desire that fails to grow into spiritual fatherhood, but I have seen it in a few older priests who never speak about their parishioners the way I feel about mine. The modern mistake might be that what a homosexual man sees in other men is the same thing that a heterosexual man sees in women. A person can be broken, and everyone is broken in various ways. Whether the sinful desire comes about because of genetics or a history of sin, a person who denies it is not the same as a person who never had it.
I would say that the strongest argument for parenthood being the purpose of sex is that it has the advantage of being true from an evolutionary standpoint. Sex developed not only for the purpose of procreation but also for the purpose of holding on to a father to provide even for adopted children. If you say that the unitive element is subordinate to the procreation, then it seems to me that then couples who are purposefully trying not to procreate, such as a couple using NFP to space their children, would not have the unitive element.
Your point about married parents engaging in certain acts is well made, but I think it leads to the casuistry of Christopher West. It is sufficient to say that a married couple should discover between themselves what acts actually unify them and restore their love for each other. It certainly is true that some acts are completely lacking in dignity and therefore are beyond the pale. Other acts exist in a gray area where lines are best drawn by each couple though loving dialogue about what is desired and respectful. There are many acts which a couple can do during the fertile period when they are avoiding pregnancy, such as kissing and cuddling. That these are sexual acts is clear from the fact that they would be sins for an unmarried person, but it would not be correct to say that all sexuality must be excluded by the couple unless they are going to do a procreative act. I think that such times can even be helpful for couples to expand their understanding of what constitutes sexuality beyond the simple orgasm-seeking that husbands tend toward. Once a few categories of acts are entirely excluded, it is not possible to say that such and such a thing is disordered without going way too far into the specifics which should not even be discussed except between the couple themselves.