"Good-faith learning and the fear of God"

A wonderful 2005 (!) article by James Alison, originally appearing in the book Opening Up: Speaking Out in the Church.

Absolutely worth reading in its entirety - note the amazing amount of care Alison takes here! - but here is the kernel of his argument, my bolding:

Currently the Church, including its gay and lesbian members, finds itself in a situation where there is a serious conflict between two elements of Catholic doctrine which hadn’t appeared to be in conflict before, but which for a few years now have been producing a very strong disturbance in the life of many of the faithful. The two elements are as follows: on the one hand the Church’s traditional teaching about Original Sin and Grace, and on the other, the traditional teaching about sexual acts between people of the same sex.

The first element is well known. The Church teaches that at the Fall, and therefore in the real living out of all of us, our human nature was very seriously damaged, but that this damage did not destroy our human nature. The distinction is important. If our nature had been destroyed,that is, if we are radically depraved, as is taught by some of the churches which are heirs to the Protestant Reformation, then salvation would come to us as something without any continuity with our nature, with our past, and there would be no organic continuity between “who I was” before accepting salvation and “who I will turn out to be” when all is revealed. However, since our nature was seriously damaged, but continues to be human nature, salvation does reach us in the form of a process of the perfecting of our nature. As a result of this, “who I will turn out to be” has, according to the most traditional Catholic teaching, reaffirmed at the Council of Trent, an organic continuity with “who I was”.

Thus, what is normal within the living of the Catholic faith, what is normal in the process of growth in grace, is always starting from where one is, knowing that no part of human desire or living out is intrinsically evil, that is to say, incapable of being ordered or healed, only capable of being wiped out. Nevertheless, all our desire is damaged in the way we receive it and live it out: it is seriously distorted. But we can trust that even what is most base within a person’s life is capable of being transformed into something which will be a reflection of the divine splendour. What is normal, then in Catholic anthropology, is to regard no human desire, heavily distorted or addicted to evils of various types though it may be, as a radically perverse entity but rather to see it as something which can in principle be returned to flowing towards what is good.

This, I should say, is an essential part of the Catholic Faith. Without this, the whole of Catholic teaching concerning grace, mercy, forgiveness and the sacraments would have to be altered radically. Furthermore, it seems to be part of that sensus fidei which Catholics have as an instinct that we understand that the mercy of the Church consists above all, and always, in starting from where one is, and not causing an obstacle to grace by insisting that one has to become something else before being able to receive grace.

The second element in this conflict is the teaching about sexual acts between people of the same sex. Until fairly recently it did not appear that there was a conflict between this teaching and the doctrine of Original Sin and grace, since the teaching about sexual acts was just that: a teaching about acts and nothing else. It was taught that what were forbidden were any sexual acts whatsoever between people of the same sex, with different reasons brought forth, in different periods, to justify the prohibition. However, what all the reasons took for granted was that such acts would be a perversion of a human nature which tended of itself, and always, towards what we would nowadays call some form of “heterosexuality”. In prohibiting the acts, nothing was being said about the condition or being of the person, and it was understood that the prohibition didn’t affect the being of the person, only the acts. That is to say, it used to be possible to say in good conscience to a person who had engaged in such acts that they should desist, and instead seek their flourishing, which they would only achieve if their desire were to return to its normal river bed. It was, for example, normal to suggest to young men who had confessed acts or thoughts of this nature that they should hurry up and get married so as to be cured. At a time when “gay” hadn’t yet been invented, and there were only “sodomitical acts”, there didn’t seem to be a conflict between the teachings about grace and about those acts.

The problem is that over the last several decades these two teachings do appear to have entered into conflict. And the reason is a change in society which has come upon us all, Catholics or not. The change consists in the ever increased recognition during the second half of the twentieth century that it is really not possible to make such a clear-cut distinction between acts and being as had been traditional. That is to say, it seems that there exist some people, a minority which occurs more or less regularly in all societies and cultures, as well as in the groupings of other animals, who just are “like that”. This doesn’t appear to be an individual aberration, but it just appears to be the case that there is a class of people with the common and recognisable characteristic of a lasting and stable emotional and erotic attraction towards the members of their own sex. At the same time, it seems to be the case that if you remove from the psychological profiles of a hundred people only the detail concerning each one’s sexual orientation, there is absolutely nothing in the profiles which would allow you to indicate in a regular and accurate way what the orientation corresponding to the profile in fact is. That is to say, the presence of an orientation towards a person of the same sex does not appear to bring along with it any emotional or psychological configuration, even less any deformation, which is not found equally among people of the majority orientation.

The conflict between the two elements of Christian teaching raises its head, then, because while the discussion was about acts and not being, it was thought possible to say to someone at the same time “Don’t do that!” and “Flourish, brother!” because it was thought that the acts didn’t flow from what the brother was. However, it has become ever more problematic to bring together in the same phrase “Don’t do that!” and “Flourish brother!”, since if it is understood that someone is just “like that” then in part, at least, his flourishing will be discovered starting from what he is.

Now this conflict is by no means a merely academic matter. It is lived, very intensely, by many young people for whom working out whether it is a matter of “I’m just like this, and so I must be this in the richest way possible” or whether it is rather a matter of “I’m not like this, but I suffer from very grave temptations which in some way I must overcome” is a gravely tortured experience. Evidence suggests that more and more young people are overcoming this conflict by working out that they just are “like that”, and it is starting from this that they are going to risk constructing a life.

Faced with these conflicts, the Vatican Congregations decided to respond. If they conceded that “being like that” is simply part of nature, which is to say, part of God’s creative project, then it is evident that the acts which flow from that way of being could not be intrinsically evil, but that they might be good or bad according to their use and circumstances, as is the case with heterosexual acts. So, they were faced with one of two possibilities: either we recognise that “being like that” is neutral, which means, in the case of everything created, positive, in which case the absolute prohibition of the acts falls; or we deny that “being like that” exists, except as a defect of a radically heterosexual being, and because of this the traditional absolute prohibition of the acts can be maintained.

Please notice that there are two logical barriers which the ecclesiastical argument cannot jump without falsifying it’s own doctrine. The first is this: The Church cannot say “Well, being that way is normal, something neutral or positive, the Church respects it and welcomes it. The Church only prohibits the acts which flow from it”. This position would lack logic in postulating intrinsically evil acts which flow from a neutral or positive being. And this would go against the principle of Catholic morals which states that acts flow from being – agere sequitur esse. The second barrier is this: the Church cannot say of the homosexual inclination that it is a desire which is in itself intrinsically evil, since to say this would be to fall into the heresy of claiming that there is some part of being human which is essentially depraved – that is, which cannot be transformed, only covered over.

Faced with these two barriers, ecclesiastical logic did a backward double-flip worthy of an Olympic gymnast so as to arrive at the following formulation: “The homosexual inclination, though not itself a sin, constitutes a tendency towards behaviour that is intrinsically evil, and must therefore be considered objectively disordered.” With this phrase, the Vatican Congregations sought to maintain the absolute prohibition of the acts without describing the desire as intrinsically evil. Nevertheless the price of this definition is very high. It obliges its defenders to insist that the homosexual inclination, independently of any acts flowing from it, is something objectively disordered. And the kind of objectivity they have in mind is deduced not from what can be known through experience, but is an a priori which depends on the Church’s teaching concerning marriage. That is to say, the a priori of the intrinsic heterosexuality of all human beings. In other words, from the presupposition of the intrinsic heterosexuality of all human beings, it is deduced that the person whose inclination is towards those of the same sex is a defective heterosexual.

Well, let us not delude ourselves here. This characterisation of the gay or lesbian person as a defective heterosexual is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the prohibition, as the authors indicate with the “must be considered” of their phrase. The problem is that, for the characterisation to work properly within the doctrine of original sin and grace, it would have to be the case that the life of grace would lead the gay or lesbian person to become heterosexual in the degree of his or her growth in grace. That is to say, in the degree to which grace makes us more patient, faithful, generous, capable of being good Samaritans, less prisoners of anger, of rivalry and of resentment, just so would it have to change the gender of the persons towards whom we are principally attracted. The problem is that such changes do not seem to take place in a regular and trustworthy way, even amongst the United States groups which promote them with significant funds and publicity. As the senior representatives of such groups indicate: at most, and in some cases, a change in behaviour is produced, but the fundamental structures of desire continue to be towards persons of the same sex. [3]

This then is the conflict: for the prohibition of the acts to correspond to the true being of the person, the inclination has to be characterised as something objectively disordered. However, since the inclination doesn’t alter, unlike desires which are recognisably vicious, the gay or lesbian person would have a desire which is, in fact, intrinsically evil, an element of radical depravity in their desire. And we would have stepped outside Catholic anthropology. Or, on the other hand, the same-sex inclination is simply something that is, in which case grace will bring it to a flourishing starting from where it is, and with this we would have to work out which acts are appropriate or not, according to the circumstances, and we will have stepped outside the absolute prohibition passed on to us by tradition.

What I want to underline here is that this is a conflict between elements of Catholic doctrine lived by many people. That is to say: when people say to gay and lesbian people “You should just be obedient to the teaching of the Church” it is no frivolity to reply “Sure, but which one? To the uninterrupted teaching about grace and original sin? Or to the recent characterization which the Vatican Congregations now consider necessary in order to maintain the traditional prohibition? Because both together, at the moment it’s not clear how that can be done.” And since all parties to the discussion are in agreement that the teaching on Grace is the most important, the conflict is reduced to one concerning the characterization. Either it is true to affirm that the homosexual inclination is objectively disordered, or it is not.

That is to say, one side has got it wrong, and one side has got it right. And the field of possible error is in the area of what really is. The whole argument turns on the veracity or otherwise of the characterization of what is. Either being gay is a defective form of being heterosexual, or it is simply a thing that just is that way.

And this brings us to the next step. If it were the case that the homosexual inclination truly were a disfiguration of a fundamentally heterosexual structure of desire, then there would be no conflict between the two teachings. There would only be a conflict between the truth and the grave disfiguration of desire in people who don’t want to recognise their perversity, a very deeply rooted conflict, of course. However, if it were the case that the homosexual inclination is simply a thing that just is “like that”, and is not a disfiguration of anything, in that case the official characterization, and along with it the absolute prohibition, is false. And the deeply rooted conflict would be one between the truth and the grave disfiguration of the intelligence and desire of the forces which do not want to recognise this emerging truth.

There are so many problems with the Church's current understanding that these defects in logic show up everywhere.   And not only in the teaching on homosexuality;  I've heard people claim that 90% of the Western Catholic population (and some similarly high percentage - I've read 78% - worldwide) is "living in mortal sin," because these people do not agree with their Church on the matter of birth control.  And it's obvious that the current teaching on homosexuality is inseparable from the Church's teaching on "generativity."

Clearly, those who want to maintain these teachings are willing to go to almost any length to do so, rather than to look at the teachings themselves to see where the Church might have gone wrong - or might need to adjust given present-day realities.  It seems utterly crystal clear to me that every single problem instantly goes away once you teach that "lifelong monogamy" is the actual core of the teaching.

And "lifelong monogamy" brings along with it some very key things:

• It's a "type" of the faithfulness to God which is, as far as I can tell, the central teaching of Scripture; this is by far the most important factor, but there are others, too.
• It teaches and inculcates this faithfulness and the value of stability
• And "stability" is, we believe, the best possible foundation for the procreation and raising of children
• It offers a path to emotional and psychological depth - AKA "flourishing."

This is not to disagree, either, with the obvious fact that in some cases divorce is the best solution; we aren't going to replace one form of absolutism with another. "Lifelong monogamy" is the ideal - just as "faithfulness to God" is the ideal.   It's Scriptural, too.

There are a couple of good (and feminist!) arguments for the Catholic teaching on birth control, I concede. 

• First, it does remind people that sex is not a toy or a game - but a means to procreate, and to bind monogamous couples together.   It shouldn't be used lightly or carelessly - and especially not to the detriment of one member of the couple.  But don't faithfulness to God, and "lifelong monogamy," also cover all that?
• Second, it could help make people more aware of their own acts and actions, which is usually a good thing for a wide variety of reasons.   Of course, women are almost always well aware of the possible ramifications of sex - so this is mainly a teaching for men.
• Third, it nullifies any possible dangers from hormones and implants - all of which are dangers for women only and not for men; there are other highly reliable birth control methods, though.  And there are "non-generative" sexual acts also.

But again:  "lifelong monogamy" - and other Christian teachings, such as those found in 1 Corinthians 13 (for instance) - cover all those issues.   Birth control rode in on the shirttails of the marked decrease in infant mortality, and in the mortality of women in childbirth; the Church is, I'm sure, very much in favor of these latter facts.

The Doctor Angelicus is not in

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under the "Homosexuality" entry; my bold:

The most influential formulation of natural law theory was made by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Integrating an Aristotelian approach with Christian theology, Aquinas emphasized the centrality of certain human goods, including marriage and procreation. While Aquinas did not write much about same-sex sexual relations, he did write at length about various sex acts as sins. For Aquinas, sexuality that was within the bounds of marriage and which helped to further what he saw as the distinctive goods of marriage, mainly love, companionship, and legitimate offspring, was permissible, and even good. Aquinas did not argue that procreation was a necessary part of moral or just sex; married couples could enjoy sex without the motive of having children, and sex in marriages where one or both partners is sterile (perhaps because the woman is postmenopausal) is also potentially just (given a motive of expressing love). So far Aquinas' view actually need not rule out homosexual sex. For example, a Thomist could embrace same-sex marriage, and then apply the same reasoning, simply seeing the couple as a reproductively sterile, yet still fully loving and companionate union.

Aquinas, in a significant move, adds a requirement that for any given sex act to be moral it must be of a generative kind. The only way that this can be achieved is via vaginal intercourse. That is, since only the emission of semen in a vagina can result in natural reproduction, only sex acts of that type are generative, even if a given sex act does not lead to reproduction, and even if it is impossible due to infertility. The consequence of this addition is to rule out the possibility, of course, that homosexual sex could ever be moral (even if done within a loving marriage), in addition to forbidding any non-vaginal sex for opposite-sex married couples. What is the justification for this important addition? This question is made all the more pressing in that Aquinas does allow that how broad moral rules apply to individuals may vary considerably, since the nature of persons also varies to some extent. That is, since Aquinas allows that individual natures vary, one could simply argue that one is, by nature, emotionally and physically attracted to persons of one's own gender, and hence to pursue same-sex relationships is ‘natural’ (Sullivan, 1995). Unfortunately, Aquinas does not spell out a justification for this generative requirement.

It's a house of cards, I tell you....

Why there's no sodomy in Sodom

Here's what Ken Collins - a Disciples of Christ pastor with no apparent gay axe to grind at all - has to say as he attempts to rescue the church from its own insanity.  Obviously, this project is going to be next to impossible, but let's give it a go anyway.

He calls his article "The Rescue of Lot."  Here's the intro; my bolding throughout:

The story of the destruction of Sodom and its sister city of Gomorrah is of compelling interest today because of the current debate in the churches over homosexuality. In the course of this debate, these two chapters of Genesis have been degraded from a story of God’s justice and providence to a diatribe against specific sexual acts, rendering the story repugnant and useless for any other spiritual purpose. Our intent here is not to formulate a position on sexual morality, but to rescue this Bible text from the crossfire of dispute, restoring its original theological significance and devotional value. 

He discusses the story and its current interpretation - then offers a "fresh look," summing up the opening section of the story this way:

God and the two angels came to Abraham in the heat of the day (mid-afternoon), ate a large meal which required extensive preparation (the main course was on the hoof), and had a lengthy conversation. Then the two angels set out for Sodom on foot and arrived there at dusk the same day. Later on in Genesis 19:13, the angels explain to Lot that they have been sent to Sodom to destroy the city. It is obvious that the investigation was completed and the fate of the cities determined before the angels were dispatched. The angels were not sent on a fact-finding mission, they were sent to execute a sentence. Therefore the conversation between God and Abraham could not have had any effect upon the fate of Lot and his family or the people of the city of Sodom. The purpose of the conversation was to educate Abraham about righteousness and justice, as God stated in Genesis 18:19.

Here's where things get good.  In a section titled "What Does it Mean to 'Know' Someone?," Collins begins:

The traditional interpretation of this story is that the phrase “that we may know them” means that the men of the city desired to rape the angels who were guests in Lot’s house. The Hebrew word translated “know” in the above text can either mean “be acquainted with” or “have sexual intercourse with,” so both are possible translations at this preliminary stage. Because of tradition, and because an alternative interpretation of this passage is lacking, most modern language Bibles interpret this word as indicating rape. However it must be pointed out that in the 936 occurrences of this Hebrew word in the Old Testament, “know” with the meaning of sexual intercourse only occurs about a dozen times, and then it only describes marital sex. Those who interpret the Hebrew word “know” in this verse to mean homosexual rape should have a lot of explaining to do. Normally when an interpretation depends upon one word having a unique, unlikely and unprecedented meaning, most scholars are inclined to discard the interpretation as contrived and as serving some unspoken purpose of its proponents. In this case, the fact that this is the traditional interpretation spares its advocates a lot of work.

 
Collins believes, instead, that since Lot is a newcomer to the city, and:

Since the strangers entered the city at dusk in an era with limited artificial lighting and went straight to a foreigner’s house, it is much more reasonable to believe that the entire male population of the city would be interested in cross-examining potential spies about their intentions in town. Thus the men of the city have a stronger motivation for wanting to “get to know” the strangers than they do for wanting to rape them. The story reads more logically and plausibly if we interpret the men of Sodom as belligerently desiring to interview suspected spies. 

He later notes that "the only reason for maintaining that “know” means “rape” is a desire to preserve the perceived purpose of the story." 

He continues:

Therefore the title of the story is not “The Sin of Sodom”; rather it is “The Rescue of Lot.” God already knew there were less than ten righteous people in town and sent the angels to remove the few righteous who were there so that it could be destroyed without unfairly punishing anyone. The fate of the city was sealed before the events of Chapter 18. God’s rescue of Lot taught Abraham about divine justice. The difficulties involved in the rescue are related as a consolation for righteous people who are in difficult straits. 

In the next section, "The Difficulties of Persisting in Error," Collins writes:

If the traditional view of homosexual rape is accepted, then we are puzzled as to why Lot would address an angry rapacious homosexual mob as “brothers” —especially considering the usage of this word in the Old Testament. Also we are confronted with a very uncomfortable moral problem: Lot’s offer of his virgin daughters as a substitute can then only be construed as permission for the mob to gang-rape them! (It is obvious that the daughters were “acquainted with” their father and their fiancés, so the word “know” in this verse must refer to marital intercourse. Thus we are informed that the daughters are virgins.) Earlier, God stated that His purpose in this story was to show God’s righteousness and justice. According to the traditional interpretation, the men of Sodom threatened Lot’s guests with homosexual rape, but were prevented from doing so by the angels’ intervention. The traditional view also has it that Lot offered his daughters for a gang-rape by an angry mob, but this offer was never taken up. Therefore, the traditional view would have us believe that the men of Sodom were spectacularly destroyed for a crime they planned but did not commit, whereas Lot was mercifully spared despite the fact that he also planned an uncommitted crime! This does not square with God’s purpose in the incident, which was to demonstrate righteousness and justice! The traditionalist’s only way out is to assert that gang-raping women was of no import in that age; an assertion which flies in the face of the evidence in archaeology and in other parts of the Pentateuch. All the traditional view could demonstrate is that Abraham’s friendship with God got his nephew Lot over a rough spot... that is, connections in the right places are more important than a moral character. In addition, Lot’s action in allegedly volunteering his daughters as a substitute for the men in the gang rape is irrational: how could anyone who lived in an exclusively homosexual community, as Lot is reputed to have done, be so naive as to offer girls to homosexuals intent upon raping men? Lot’s offer is not only immoral, it is demented! The traditional interpretation presupposes that Lot came from a culture that severely deprecates homosexuality and exacts spectacular, even cruel penalties for it; yet in his attempt to avoid it, he betrays total ignorance on the most superficial level of the nature of the offense. Many commentators who advocate the sexual interpretation of this story confess that they are at a loss to explain Lot’s conduct. The liberals explain it away by alleging a second class status for women. Not only are they flagrantly reading twenty-first century social concerns into the distant past, their theory is flatly contradicted by God’s insistence in Genesis 20-21 that the heir of the promise to Abraham be born of the proper mother. The conservatives explain it by avowing that homosexuality is such a horrible sin, that offering one’s daughters for rape (otherwise a serious crime) becomes virtuous in comparison. Some even interpret it as a sex education lecture: a graphic demonstration of how the men should direct their sex drives! This desperate argumentation is repulsive even to its advocates. 

And let's remember, too, that "the alleged “sin of Sodom” never took place!"

Finally, Collins writes:

....at the end of the story, we find a summary of what it was about: the Rescue of Lot. In rescuing Lot, God remembered Abraham’s desire that the innocent not perish in the punishment of the wicked. It is true that some innocent people did perish, but only because they took matters into their own hands and disobeyed. God’s righteousness and justice are demonstrated by the rescue, which was God’s purpose for the story from the very beginning. 

He then adds a few "Puzzles for Eisegetes":

A few questions for those who still hold to the traditional “homosexual rape” theory:

• Why didn’t the angels make an effort to seek ten righteous people?
• Why did God allow the angels to judge the city contrary to His promise to do it Himself?
• Why did the women of Sodom die in the destruction?
• If the altercation at the door caused the destruction to be unleashed, why did the people of Gomorrah and the other neighboring towns die?
• If the men of the city were destroyed because they wanted to rape the angels, why wasn’t Lot destroyed for offering his daughters for rape?
• How does the story demonstrate God’s righteousness and not just simple favoritism?
• Why was Sodom destroyed if the men of the city never committed the alleged sin?
• Why would God’s angels prefer to spend the night in the street since in doing so they would be blatantly tempting the men to sin?
• Why would God send His angels to entrap people into sinning?
• If God’s discipline and control over His angels is so lax, what hope does this story give us?
• If the angels destroyed the city in reaction to the mob’s alleged rape attempt, why did they wait until the next morning to do it? If they were waiting for a prearranged time, it means that the time of the destruction (as well as the destruction itself) was set before the angels were dispatched.

And finally argues "Why the Current Interpretation Must be Abandoned With Alacrity":

It is clear that the traditional “homosexual rape” theory involves too many theological difficulties and presents us with too many discrepancies and contradictions. We are given a haphazard God who plays favorites; we are given holy angels who follow orders so loosely they should have been placed on probation; we see a man rescued for “righteousness” whose character is as questionable as the criminals from whom he is rescued. This murky mess cannot be explained away by asserting that there were lower moral standards in the distant past or that the writer had an unenlightened concept of God—the mess is caused by the interpreter, not the text. The traditional interpretation is theologically defective because of its characterization of a haphazard God. It is morally offensive because some crooks get punished and others get off because they have friends on the outside. It is scripturally unsound, because it requires conduct on the part of God’s representatives that other parts of the Bible assure us is impossible. It is logically inconsistent because it requires people to react absurdly and ignores chronology. It is intellectually dishonest because it inserts the interpreter’s meaning instead of extracting the author’s meaning. It is, from a literary standpoint, unwarranted because it ignores parts of the story in interpreting other parts. The traditional “homosexual rape” theory must therefore be discarded as theologically defective, morally offensive, scripturally unsound, logically inconsistent, intellectually dishonest, and unwarranted.

So how about it, Church?   Do you want to persist in this inanity so that you can  maintain your anti-gay teachings?   Is loathing of homosexuality so very important to your theology (so to speak) that you end up presenting a picture of an insane, irrational, morally offensive God - at a time when the church instead needs to show why it should continue to exist at all?

Give it all some thought, how about it?

Ask a simple question.....

It's amazing how a simple question like "Why isn't lesbianism condemned in Scripture?" so utterly mortifies and flummoxes people who appear to have a very dearly-held stake in "the eternal truth of the Biblical condemnation of homosexuality."  Not that this affects them personally, of course - or at all, in any way.

Ultimately, it always turns out to be about enabling the church in its idiocies.  It's about propping up a rotten structure - because people have some sort of intellectual (ha!) or emotional reason for wanting to keep it propped up.  (Wait till I get to the thing about Aquinas.)   It's mostly just supremely lazy and incurious.

The worst thing is that every 5 years or so we have to say the same exact things over again, because a new generation hasn't heard the discussion before.  Not that this stops arrogant 23-year-olds from being experts on the matter, of course.

Various responses I've received, over the years:

• "You are misinformed.  Look at blah blah blah...."  Ignorant about Greek words appearing in "blah blah blah....", and unaware of translation issues besides.
• "Romans 1!  No wiggle room at all there!"  Well, maybe - except that for the first four centuries, the writers on Romans 1 - including Doctor of the Church Augustine of Hippo - believed the Romans 1 reference had to do with women engaging in anal sex with men.   It's not till we get to the hideous, vicious John Chrysostom - who sent the church off on an incredibly destructive tear in not a few ways - that this verse is read to have anything to do with  lesbianism.  In any case, I'd hardly call one (possible) reference out of 30,000 Biblical verses determinative.  
• "There's not a single positive mention of homosexual relations anywhere in Scripture!"   Aside from being completely off-topic, it's also true that the Bible doesn't care much for dogs, either.  And?
• In re: Leviticus 18 and 20:  "Well, the men were supposed to pass this information along to the women."  (This has been by far my favorite so far.)
• In re: Paul:  "I took a college course; you need to buy the textbook to understand this issue."
• "You know, it's bad to intentionally misrepresent Scripture" - followed immediately by a tacit admission that I wasn't "intentionally misrepresenting Scripture" at all:
• "Since pedophilia isn't condemned in Scripture, are we then to assume that behavior set is acceptable?"  (Amazing how often this smear argument shows up, too.  And truly amazing how people can't seem to address the actual issue.)
• "You don't really believe that these writers approved of lesbianism, do you?"  Well, no; Maimonides - while recognizing that Torah doesn't condemn lesbianism (which is, you know, the issue at hand) believed women could and should be flogged for it, for "disobedience to their husbands."   I believe he and others also argued that lesbianism was covered under Levitucus 18:3 "You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."  Bit of a stretch there, I'd say, and just a tad bit vague - particularly for an alleged death-penalty offense.  In any case, the facts remain:  no condemnation of lesbianism in the 613 Mitzvot.  Why?  Well:
• "Yawn.  That's just legalistic."   As if Torah had nothing to do with, you know, law.
• Oh, here's another favorite:  "It doesn't matter what it says; what matters is what it means."  Precisely - which brings us back to the initial question:  What does it mean that lesbianism isn't condemned in Scripture?   Didn't you understand the first time I asked it that that is the question?  Think, think, poor anti-gay Christians!

Like I said:  ask a simple question....

What's bizarre, to me, is that nobody seems to be in the least curious about this honking huge lacuna in the Church's sources for its "teachings."   Because, you know, it's actually, literally true that a lesbian looking at the Bible sees nothing at all  that has anything to do with her - and this is not just a rhetorical pose.  It's literal and real - and somehow still, we're all supposed to cheerily just go right along with this idiotic charade.  It's nothing short of astounding, really. 

Ladies and Germs, I'm honestly afraid that the Emperor has no clothes.

(Look for much more in this series to come.  Sorry.)

"....the very thing on which we have based our whole life."

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity:

"There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest – what we now call investment – is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong.  Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed in forbidding interest (or 'usury' as they called it), they could not forsee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said.  That is a question I cannot decide on.  I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not.  This is where we want the Christian economist.  But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilisations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life."

One law for me, another for thee

While we're on the subject of Duck King Phil Robertson and his opinions about the Biblical sin of homosexuality, let's take a quick look at Luke 16:14-18:

14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. 15 And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.[a] 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.

18 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Does anybody in the Evangelical world pay any attention at all to this passage?   Do Evangelical eyes skip right over these words, as they read?  

Adultery's one of the Big Ten, you know - and punishable by death in the Law, too. There are, I'm sure, millions of divorced and remarried Christians; isn't it strange that they don't seem to hold themselves to their own Biblical standards - yet insist that gay people are subject to them?

How about it, all you morally lax Evangelicals out there?   And you, too, Roman Catholic Church, with your polite "annulment" granted to the rich, powerful, or important - or when it happens to suit you?

Inquiring minds want to know.  If I didn't know better, I'd surely be thinking of this as the rankest hypocrisy....

Is it Ethical to be Catholic? Queer Perspectives (1 of 15)

Here's James Alison on the topic, who seems a bit nonplussed by the question itself! He's been involved with religion for too long, obviously; he doesn't understand in what low regard the Christian church is held by gay people too many to number.

There are around 6-8 separate 10-minute JA videos, all of which can be found together here - but things seem to be out of order somehow, or perhaps it represents the debate back-and-forth format. I haven't figured it out yet, anyway - but I'm still listening myself. This conference seems to have happened fairly recently (EDIT: it was in 2006; JA has written about this previously); the videos were posted in June of this year. I really like the "undoer of knots" thing - something I'd never heard about before....



(EDIT 2: I've just finished watching JA's part of this discussion; it was very beautiful. Now the first "respondent" is speaking; he's upset that JA did not actually address the question itself - but of course, the question itself was not in any way well-defined, and - in my opinion - was framed merely for shallow and sarcastic shock value: to turn the church's claims of morality on itself. The respondent, Vincent Pizzuto, argues that JA does not recognize that there are other forms of Catholicism - and then does the same thing himself, by focusing only on Rome. Well, I'm still listening, though, so maybe there'll be more and better coming.)

(EDIT 3: Respondent 2, Julie Henderson, is now speaking. Actually it's clear that all these perspectives are valuable; however, Henderson's contention that Alison's approach is "irresponsible" and that he's "not living up to the challenge" is ridiculous, considering all he's written, done, and said about this issue. I find her argument to be immature, to be honest - but then, she is immature; she's a sophomore in college. Likewise, Pizzuto's argument that the Catholic Church is unethical because it hasn't "addressed the real problem" that led to the abuse of children - while not ever articulating what this "real problem" actually is - is half-baked. But I do understand - of course! - the anger.

What's really interesting to me is, actually, that James Alison found relief in his embrace of Catholicism - which tells you how awful his fundamentalist background must have been for him. Of course, this may have something to do with his English background, and the fact that Catholics have definitely been seen as second-class citizens in that country, even (I think) within his lifetime; perhaps empathy was the result of that kind of suffering.)

"Unbinding the Gay Conscience"

Another article by James Alison at Courage.org.uk. (Thanks to Christopher at Bending the Rule.)

I'm tired, tired, tired of the "Church and the gays" issue. I really don't want to talk about it anymore, but unfortunately, on it goes - and I'm in it whether I like it or not. (For instance, I wrote this post a few days ago, about the worldwide rise in IQ scores, and was left a trackback to an article claiming that this was proof against the "sexual orientation is immutable" argument. I probably shouldn't have followed the link, I admit, but here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about - we're in this whether we like it or not, and whether we discuss it or not. This is also what James Alison talks about here.)

The article is quite brilliant, and it does perfectly describe the unbelievable push-pull, the contradictory whirlpool of instruction and scolding and belittling that the world, and especially the Church, manifest towards gay people. One the one side, we are told we have to be celibate (this is the Catholic view); on the other, we are told we need to "change" (these are the Evangelicals). I should add that in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church, these sides seem to co-exist at once, and also seem to swap arguments whenever the mood strikes. That's the old Via Media, for you!

I wish sometimes I had never gone back to the Church, because it is by far the least healthy atmosphere I could possibly have put myself into. I'm losing interest in it now, in fact, and don't really want to go to services anymore; I've stopped going to midweek eucharist and prayers. I was bothered by prejudice and hatred while out of the Church, but inside it there is true insanity:

Let me say first that in an ideal world, Peter would realise that he had been given the power to bind and loose specifically so as to be able to open heaven to the gentiles. He would pronounce those words ‘God has shown me that I should not call any human profane or impure’2, and gay people would find themselves with unbound conscience as brothers and sisters in the Church on the same footing as everyone else-as sons and daughters and heirs.

But in fact, it seems to me that we find ourselves in a strange moment in that story from Acts 10. We find ourselves in the tiny gap after Peter has preached to us about Jesus, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and power3, after we have believed that message, and so realise that Jesus is Good News for us, and after the Holy Spirit has come down upon us, so that we are beginning to live the life of loved children and are able to speak well of God4. But we find ourselves in the tiny space before Peter has found it in him to declare ‘’Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ’5.

If you want a reality check on this, then consider the current teaching of the Vatican Congregations: ‘the homosexual inclination, though not itself a sin, constitutes a tendency towards behaviour that is intrinsically evil, and therefore must be considered objectively disordered’. If you read that phrase in the light of the passage from Acts which I have just recalled, you can see quite clearly that it is a piece of backsliding. Where Peter said, ‘God has shown me that I should not call any human profane or unclean’, his modern minions say, ‘While it is true that gay people are not profane or unclean, they must in fact be considered to be so’.

So, we find ourselves living at a time of Petrine backsliding from the Gospel, and yet beginning to be aware that the reception of the Good News, and our own unbinding does not come from Peter, but from God, and that Peter later on gets to understand and confirm this. This is a perfectly understandable biblical pattern which we can inhabit while we wait for Peter.

Now I would like to examine the binding and the unbinding. What does it look like? The first step is to look at what being ‘bound’ means. A bound conscience is one which cannot go this way or that, forward or backwards, is paralysed, scandalized. In that sense it is a form of living death, and those afflicted by it are living dead, and many of us are or have been such people. For example: we are familiar with the notion of a ‘double-bind’ or a ‘Catch 22 situation’. A bound conscience is a sense of being formed by a double-bind or a series of double binds. For instance: ‘My command is that you should love-but your love is sick’; or, ‘You should just go away and die-but it is forbidden to kill yourself’; or ‘The only acceptable way for me to live is a celibate life, but if they knew who I really was, they wouldn’t allow me to join’, or ‘Of course you can join, but you mustn’t say who you really are’; or ‘You cannot be gay, but you must be honest’. Many of us have been inducted into such patterns of desire over time. They classically follow the form, ‘Imitate me, do not imitate me’. If you find yourself drawn towards someone, and yet the underlying message is, ‘Be like me, do not be like me’, you will be scandalised, eventually you will judder to a halt, unable to move forwards or backwards.

What I would like to suggest is that in all these cases we are dealing with a self that has been formed by being given contradictory desires without being given any ability to discern where they might appropriately be applied. In other words, two instructions are received as on the same level as each other, pointing in two different directions at once, and the result is paralysis. This is what σκάνδαλον-skandalon-refers to in the New Testament-scandal, or stumbling block. Someone who is scandalised is someone who is paralysed into an inability to move. And the undoing of σκάνδαλα-skandala – which means the unbinding of double binds that do not allow people to be, is what the Gospel is supposed to be about.

I wonder how long I'll be able to feel favorable towards the Church; I wonder if my current malaise is temporary or permanent. I do need some sort of spiritual support from somewhere, but this might not be it.

James Alison. Again.

I use the argument quite often that lesbianism is not forbidden anywhere in the Bible, and so neither, quite obviously, is "homosexuality" per se. That nobody in the Christian world - including Augustine and Clement of Alexandria, both of whom wrote on Romans 1 - read this passage as referring to lesbianism, until Chrysostom. That therefore the passages that we get hit over the head with constantly (all 4 of them!) refer to something else entirely. I first read about this in the article "A Catholic reading of Romans 1," by James Alison, a Catholic priest in Ireland. It's a discussion of the general assumption of what the "text plainly says," or doesn't say. Read the whole thing, as they say.

But I'm not going to argue about lesbianism this time. This time I'm interested in the όι Ίουδαιοι [hoi Ioudaioi] question: the issue of how to understand Gospel passages that refer to "the Jews" - and more generally, the issue of how modern people can read and understand Scripture. Here's what James Alison has to say on the subject:

According to the official teaching body of the Catholic Church, Catholic readers of the Scripture have a positive duty to avoid certain sorts of what the authorities call ‘actualization’ of the texts, by which they mean reading ancient texts as referring in a straightforward way to modern realities. I will read you what they say, and please remember that this is rather more than an opinion. This is the official teaching of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, at the very least an authorized Catholic source of guidance for how to read the Scriptures, in their 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church:

‘Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity, such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation, anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women. Particular attention is necessary ... to avoid absolutely any actualization of certain texts of the New Testament which could provoke or reinforce unfavourable attitudes to the Jewish people.’2

The list which the Commission gives is deliberately not exhaustive, but it has the advantage of taking on vastly the most important of any possible improper actualization, which is that related to the translation of the words όι Ίουδαιοι [hoi Ioudaioi], especially where they are used in St John’s Gospel. I ask you to consider quite clearly what this instruction means. It means that anyone who translates the words όι Ίουδαιοι literally as ‘the Jews’ and interprets this to refer to the whole Jewish people, now or at any time in the past, is translating it and interpreting it less accurately, and certainly less in communion with the Church, than someone who translates it less literally as something like ‘the Jewish authorities’, or ‘the local authorities’ who were of course, like almost everyone in St John’s Gospel, Jewish.

Now, given how vitally important the Jewish people and the relation between the Jewish people and the Church has been in the development of Christian Doctrine, if we are urged to avoid absolutely any actualization of the text, then the following statement must, a fortiori, be at the very least perfectly reasonable, if not actually highly recommended, as a guide to a properly Catholic reading of a passage dealing with something rather less important. Here it is: given the possibility of a restricted ancient meaning in a text which does not transfer readily into modern categories, or the possibility of one which leaps straight and expansively into modern categories and has had effects contrary to charity on the modern people so categorized, one should prefer the ancient reading to the actualized one.

Isn't this instruction clear? And BTW, doesn't this lead in an authentically Christian direction? Why, then, this endless dispute? This is "the official teaching of the Catholic Church," and yet it's like pulling teeth to get anybody to pay any attention to it.

Secular people simply scoff when this issue comes up; they don't take what the Bible says literally in any case, or even very seriously, and think that the dispute is simply over a cultural code in the ancient world. They're right. But I do take the Bible seriously, if not literally, because this is where our faith originates. I want to understand what's being said, and to be taken seriously when I argue about it.

U.K. Evangelicals

Courage U.K. is akin to Exodus in the U.S., I gather - except that they've given up trying to "convert" gay people, because of its founder's empirical experiences trying to do so. Here's an excerpt from a 2003 article that describes the conclusions they've come to:

After ten years, however, six spent running residential discipleship courses, followed by years of weekly group meetings, it was increasingly clear that however repentant people were, and however much dedication and effort they put into seeking change, none were really ‘successful’ in the long term in ‘dealing with the deeper issues’. This is not to say that people gained no benefit! Many matured greatly. A few married (though their same-sex attractions remain an ongoing issue for them). But the kind of change everyone really hoped for – to re-orientate and reach a point where their struggle with being gay was over – remained elusive. We never saw the fruit we longed for.

.....

... the word celibacy is not to be found anywhere in the Bible. The idea of ‘renouncing marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven’ was introduced by Jesus (Matthew 19:12) and supported by Paul (1 Corinthians 7:7). But they are clear: singleness is a gift. In fact, insistence upon celibacy has no biblical support.

Nevertheless the Church still demands celibacy for all unmarried people. Under this pressure, I’ve seen many folk become seriously disillusioned over the years. Some became deeply depressed and hopeless, even suicidal; others embraced a more ‘liberal’ theology and sought gay relationships. Some just lost their faith altogether – a tragic conclusion that I found heart-breaking, as a pastor committed to helping people find their hope in Christ.

In contrast, I saw that those who began, on their own initiative, to embrace the possibility of a gay relationship, benefited greatly. Common to all was an underlying longing for companionship and intimacy – a heart-longing, not merely a craving to pursue gay sex! So I realised that to dismiss erotic intimacy between gay men merely as the pursuit of lust was to seriously misjudge the situation. Gay relationships, entered into sincerely, with mutual commitment, provide value and a sense of belonging. And when Christ has central place, people’s morale – above all their hope in God – recovers.

So folks: let's assume, given what James Alison has said in re the issue of lesbianism in Romans 1, that faithful one-to-one relationships of any healthy type are acceptable and pleasing in God's sight. That what the Holy One abhors is exploitation of others (which is evident throughout the Bible when it speaks of economics); degrading use and abuse of another for one's own sexual pleasure; the absence of love and care in relationships with others; and the exercise of pure power over other people. This includes, of course, gay relationships that meet this description.

In addition, God forgives those who repent of any such actions, gay or straight, and welcomes them as Prodigal sons and daughters, with tears of joy and a feast. Homoesxuality is not, and never has been, an "abomination." Exploitation is the abomination.

James Alison

Per James Alison, in re: Romans 1 (For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ...): lesbianism is not, in fact, forbidden anywhere in the Bible:

A quick show of hands in any English-speaking country nowadays would probably agree to the following statement: ‘This quite clearly refers to lesbianism. That is the obvious meaning of the words. To deny that this refers to lesbianism is the sort of thing that you would expect from a clever-clogs biblical exegete with an ideological axe to grind.’ Well, all I’d like to say at this point is that we have several commentaries on these words dating from the centuries between the writing of this text and the preaching of St John Chrysostom at the end of the fourth century. None of them read the passage as referring to lesbianism. Both St Augustine and Clement of Alexandria interpreted it straightforwardly as meaning women having anal intercourse with members of the other sex. Chrysostom was in fact the first Church Father of whom we have record to read the passage as having anything to do with lesbianism.

Now, my first point is this: irrespective of who is closer to the mark as to what St Paul was referring to, one thing is irrefutable: what modern readers claim to be ‘the obvious meaning of the text’ was not obvious to Saint Augustine, who has for many centuries enjoyed the status of being a particularly authoritative reader of Scripture. Therefore there can be no claim that there has been an uninterrupted witness to the text being read as having to do with lesbianism. There hasn’t. It has been perfectly normal for long stretches of time to read this passage in the Catholic Church without seeing St Paul as saying anything to do with lesbianism. This means that no Catholic is under any obligation to read this passage as having something to do with lesbianism. Furthermore, it is a perfectly respectable position for a Catholic to take that there is no reference to lesbianism in Holy Scripture, given that the only candidate for a reference is one whose ‘obvious meaning’ was taken, for several hundred years, to be something quite else.

And if lesbianism is not condemned, then neither is "homosexuality" per se. There is some Biblical issue with some sort of male sexual activity, but we don't know exactly what, since the word translated as "homosexuality" in Timothy and Corinthians was made up by Paul and nobody knows exactly what it means. In any case, it definitely refers to men, specifically. (I read someplace that a gay Orthodox Jew argues that the verb in Leviticus translates as "do not do to," rather than as "do not do with." Therefore the argument follows that this prohibition is against exploitative sex; sex done to somebody else, for one's own pleasure. It refers to sexual slavery, IOW. I'll try to find this reference and post it.)

In addition:

My second point is slightly more positive. According to the official teaching body of the Catholic Church, Catholic readers of the Scripture have a positive duty to avoid certain sorts of what the authorities call ‘actualization’ of the texts, by which they mean reading ancient texts as referring in a straightforward way to modern realities. I will read you what they say, and please remember that this is rather more than an opinion. This is the official teaching of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, at the very least an authorized Catholic source of guidance for how to read the Scriptures, in their 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church:

‘Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity, such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation, anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women. Particular attention is necessary ... to avoid absolutely any actualization of certain texts of the New Testament which could provoke or reinforce unfavourable attitudes to the Jewish people.’2

The list which the Commission gives is deliberately not exhaustive, but it has the advantage of taking on vastly the most important of any possible improper actualization, which is that related to the translation of the words όι Ίουδαιοι [hoi Ioudaioi], especially where they are used in St John’s Gospel. I ask you to consider quite clearly what this instruction means. It means that anyone who translates the words όι Ίουδαιοι literally as ‘the Jews’ and interprets this to refer to the whole Jewish people, now or at any time in the past, is translating it and interpreting it less accurately, and certainly less in communion with the Church, than someone who translates it less literally as something like ‘the Jewish authorities’, or ‘the local authorities’ who were of course, like almost everyone in St John’s Gospel, Jewish.

Now, given how vitally important the Jewish people and the relation between the Jewish people and the Church has been in the development of Christian Doctrine, if we are urged to avoid absolutely any actualization of the text, then the following statement must, a fortiori, be at the very least perfectly reasonable, if not actually highly recommended, as a guide to a properly Catholic reading of a passage dealing with something rather less important. Here it is: given the possibility of a restricted ancient meaning in a text which does not transfer readily into modern categories, or the possibility of one which leaps straight and expansively into modern categories and has had effects contrary to charity on the modern people so categorized, one should prefer the ancient reading to the actualized one.

Come on, folks. Let's get over this by now.