Hiding The Truth is not Pastoral

Mark Shea wades into the recent controversy about Cardinal Marx's suggestion that perhaps the Church may in certain individual cases come up with some sort of blessing to be applied to same sex unions. (There's some dispute as to what Cardinal Marx meant, with initial reports suggesting he proposed a standard approach to blessing such unions and clarification from his spokesmen suggesting that he was more ambiguous, but that ambiguity does not come into Shea's piece so I won't bring it up here further.)

Shea proposes nothing definite, but argues that the cardinal may be onto something because the presence of same sex marriages will be an established fact that the Church must deal with, and failure to do so will, he argues, result in rejection by many younger people who support same sex marriage in large numbers. It's a long post, but I'll try to quote the key sections below:

[H]ow do the people who are currently shouting denunciations at Cdl. Marx propose the Church proceed in a world where, like it or not, gay unions are here to stay? Put bluntly, if they do not want some kind of blessing on gay people, would they prefer the Church devise a curse for them?

My guess is no. Very well then, my question is this: what do we want to do, as Catholics committed to the evangelization of the entire world, including gay people? What concrete course of action do we propose for the Church to engage the here-to-stay, not going anywhere, immovable, staring-us-in-the-face sociological fact of a world which not only has gay unions, but has a rising generation of people, gay and straight, who have absolutely no problem with gay unions and who are increasingly alienated from a Church that does, in fact, appear to them to curse gay people? (We’re talking roughly 75% of Millennials here.)

If you say (as I suspect most of Cdl. Marx’s critics do) that the Church should simply do nothing, then at least be aware that “nothing” will, in fact, be read as rejection, not as nothing–by that 75% of Millennials. Mark you, I’m not talking about gay unions per se. I’m simply talking about the mere existence of gay people and the straight people who care about them.
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If the message the Church is sending to every gay person on the planet–and to their straight Millennial friend–is “You are rejected” then it will be only the most extraordinary and motivated person who persists in seeking Jesus in the face of such rejection. And make no mistake, the most zealous and vocal Catholics are typically the ones sending just that message to gays and the straight people who love them. Indeed, they send it even to gay people who have committed to live in chastity and celibacy. I cannot count the number of times I have seen gay Catholics I know–faithful, chaste, celibate ones–spoken of as sinister fifth columnists within the Church and regarded with suspicion simply because they are open, frank, and honest that they are sexually attracted to people of the same sex.
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I think the entire “burn heretics, not make converts” approach to the Catholic life is radically wrong and foreign to the mind of Christ. So I return to my question: what do we propose about evangelizing people in a world where gay unions–and an entire generation of people who do not even see a problem with them–are already an established sociological fact?
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Jesus didn’t tell the centurion, “Get out of my sight, slaveowner!” He commended him for the progress in grace he had made. He didn’t tell the Samaritan woman to depart from him. He met her where she was and helped her take a step toward faith in him. At no point, does he order her to go home and break it off with her fifth husband.

I suspect something similar is where the Church will wind up with gay unions. Gay people, like everybody else, will come to the Church for spiritual help sooner or later because the Holy Spirit cannot be denied and gay humans, like all humans, hunger for God. And when they do, real shepherds are not going to slap their faces and send them away any more than Jesus slapped the centurion for daring to approach him while still owning other human beings. Shepherds are going to meet them where they are in all the complexity of their lives.

This will offend Puritans, whose first and last impulse is always to drive the impure away from Fortress Katolicus. But it seems to me that the Church is pretty much bound to take this route. It will not mean sacramentalizing gay unions. Rather, it will mean finding some way to help gay people take steps toward Jesus (who is the only one who can untangle the human heart) where they are.
[You can read the full post here.]

Now I think it's important to say that Mark is right that there is a faction within the Church which is so suspicious of people who are gay (in the sense of being consistently sexually attracted to those of the same sex, regardless of whether they act sexually on those attractions) that they do indeed attack even faithful gay Catholic writers who write about ways for people who are gay to live chastely according to the Church's teachings. This is a problem. Christ came to being salvation to all who are willing to follow Him, and that includes people who are gay. We must have a welcoming place within the Church for those who are living according to the Church's teachings under difficult circumstances: those who are gay, those who are divorced, those who are unwillingly single, those who struggle to follow the Church's teachings within their marriages.

However, there's another problem which Shea's 'will we bless them or curse them?' dichotomy fails to address. There are many within the Church who believe that while perhaps the Church's official, on paper teachings on issues such as contraception, gay marriage, and divorce cannot change, that the Church can route around those teachings in her practice. Cardinal Marx seems to some degree to be aligning himself with this allegedly pastoral approach, in which the Church loudly affirms the good aspects of such things while never mentioning that by the way they are against God's law. The proposal that the Church perhaps in some cases offer some sort of non-sacramental blessing for same sex unions must necessarily be seen as participating in this kind of "let's pretend the Church's teachings don't exist" exercise.

The Church's job is in fact more difficult that Shea seems to acknowledge. Yes, a large and increasing percentage of the culture are not only accepting of same sex marriage but ready to reject as a bigot anyone who does not accept it. The Church has a divine mission to reach everyone with Christ's message: gay or straight, pro or anti same sex marriage. And yet the Church also has a duty not to conceal and obfuscate God's law. The Church cannot offer a blessing ceremony for civil marriages that follow the breakup of a valid marriage, nor can it offer a blessing ceremony for same sex couples. There might be those who would argue the Church should offer a blessing ceremony of sorts for same sex couples who are committing to live together chastely, and indeed there is nothing immoral about sharing a roof with someone who you love but are not able to sleep with. But because of our current cultural moment it seems particularly imprudent to offer something that would look so very much like a winking approval for a sexual relationship. We must be honest with ourselves: Many of those who find proposals such as Cardinal Marx's appealing are indeed looking for a tacit approval of sexual relationships that the Church considers wrong. Under the guise of being pastoral, what is actually being sought here is a change in practice if not yet of doctrine.

Jesus does not just accompany us where we are. He also calls us to do hard things. To see this we need look no further than the story of the rich young man, the young man who said he followed all the commandments and on whom Jesus looked with love. What does Jesus do then? Ask the young man to do something even harder: sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me. And when the young man goes away sad, Jesus lets him go. He doesn't hold a blessing ceremony for the young man's attachment to riches.

This is the thing which all factions within the Church can forget too often. Jesus asks us to do hard things. He asks us to love people who seem unlovable to us. He asks us to give up things we love. He asks us to abide by God's law even when it seems impossible. He asks us to give up much in order to follow him. And in return, he offers us God's love and eternal life. This is hard, hard stuff which should not leave anyone feeling self satisfied. If you feel you're a great Christian, you're probably doing it wrong. And this is what those who are so eager to label themselves "pastoral" these days need to remember. That Jesus was willing to talk to anyone, to eat with anyone, to love anyone, but that he also called us all to take up our cross and follow Him.