Well, it didn’t take long for the fizz to go out of the optimism bottle Pope Benedict uncorked early this week in Portugal, did it? On Wednesday, the pope calls for a return to Vatican II’s insistence that dialogue with (and learning from) the culture in which it finds itself is integral to the church’s mission. Benedict quoted Paul VI, who stated that “the church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it finds itself.”
That’s one face of Benedict we’ve seen this week.
But the following day, Benedict changed the mask, and we saw that other face—you know, the one that likes to say no, no, no, no when the world, in fact, respectfully requests dialogue with him and other church leaders.
Especially about matters of sexual ethics, where there’s a huge divide between what layfolks, who actually live within the culture to which the gospel is being proclaimed, and what Catholic pastoral leaders, who don’t live in that culture, think about matters sexual.
Yesterday, the pope informed us that threats to the one-man-one-woman-for-life definition of marriage are among the “most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good” to be encountered in the world today.
Dialogue on Wednesday. Dictation on Thursday.
Is this the path to the reform the Catholic church so desperately needs? To many of us, it seems the continued dictation that permits no dialogue rather puts the lie to the claim that our church leaders value dialogue as a path to reform.
Encapsulating the split identity of the current pope when it comes to questions about dialogue and about moving rhetoric in the direction of action, Joe Feuerherd’s “Morning Briefing” column at National Catholic Reporter today opens with the headline, “Pope in Portugal Stresses Need for Dialogue.”
Then it moves on, three headlines down, to the following title: “Pope Decries Gay Marriage.”
And there we have it, in a nutshell: the impossible predicament of the Catholic church at present, with its leader calling for respectful dialogue on Wednesday, and then slamming gay marriage the following day, while a huge number of Catholics reject the biologistic natural-law teaching of the magisterium about sexual ethics, and have been calling for dialogue about that issue since the late 1960s.
And when the Catholic country in which he is making this slam is poised to enact gay marriage.
Perhaps the split in Benedict’s identity wouldn’t be so dismally painful to observe if he approached the issue of gay marriage in the following (eminently pastoral) way: I uphold magisterial teaching that marriage is always to be about one man and one woman joined for life, who must engage exclusively in sexual acts open to procreation if they seek my blessing. And I grant that many of those to whom I deliver this teaching do not accept it, and I welcome dialogue with the faithful about the gap between what is taught and what is received, since the reception of doctrine is essential to authentic teaching of doctrine.
But that’s not how the present pope approaches the issue of gay marriage. He does not merely reiterate the magisterial message about sexual morality that is repudiated by a large majority of Catholics in the west. Instead, he ups the ante and proclaims same-sex marriage an incomparable threat to civilization as it now stands. With absolutely no evidence for his claim.
Which has pernicious and clearly discernible effects on the minority community he is targeting. Which opens that community to vile attacks from “religious” people who applaud this message, and from anyone at all seeking to attack the gay community for any reason whatsoever.
And so it appears that many of us who had taken a modicum of comfort from the “optimistic” message of Wednesday now find ourselves back where we have always been on Thursday. Looking for the fizz of optimism someplace other, anyplace other, than the Catholic church.
Since the optimism bottle there continues to be as flat as a flitter.
The photo is an AP photo of Benedict declaring gay marriage an incomparable threat to civilization at the shrine of Fatima. Note the fit between the papal couture and the shrine's decor. Fabulous, isn't it?
