Statement of Religious Right Leaders about Biology-Based Gender Roles as Key to Divine Revelation: "An Approach to God That Biblical Tradition Calls Idolatry"

Because they are fighting for the divine supremacy of heterosexual males, and the belief that heterosexual males are uniquely made in God's image — in the image of a heterosexual God.

This is an approach to God that biblical tradition calls idolatry. 10)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

 

I'm grateful to you readers who shared with us here a link to the "new" statement about gender matters from various religious right leaders. The U.S. Catholic bishops, several of whom are signatories to the statement, have placed the statement on their website, as several of you noted here yesterday. I read the response of Francis DeBernardo at Bondings 2.0 to this statement yesterday, and then offered my own response on Twitter as I shared Francis DeBernardo's reflections.

More on Gender Complementarity and Catholic Teaching: Michael Mullins and Todd Salzman

Some quotations from articles hot off the (internet) press (for me, at least) that may be of interest to readers of Bilgrimage — these, about the issue of gender complementarity in Catholic thought:

A Reader Writes: "Married People Contribute Many Goods to Society in Addition to Procreating . . . and the Provision of These Goods Is Not Gender-Dependent"

Yesterday, I blogged about the story of Father James Melnick, who was removed from ministry in my home state of Arkansas this past weekend, after our local Catholic bishop, Anthony Taylor, informed the public that he had received credible allegations of "multiple acts of sexual misconduct [by Melnick] with multiple adult victims during the period of less than a year." As I also noted, Melnick is a champion of the "new evangelization" ideology of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a graduate of the Pontifical North American College and has studied at the John Paul II Institute.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "The Bodies Become Fully United at, Well, to Be Blunt, Ejaculation in the Vagina"

At the Little Catholic Bubble blog site, Bethany writes,

The bodies become fully united at, well, to be blunt, ejaculation in the vagina, thus fulfilling the necessary requirements to allow the potential of reproduction to take place.

Catholic Moral Theologian Lisa Fullam: An Argument for a Catholic Moral Obligation to Support Civil Marriage for Same-Sex Couples

At Bondings 2.0, Catholic moral theologian Lisa Fullam takes a careful look at the U.S. Catholic Bishops' argument that Catholics must oppose civil marriage for same-sex couples. She concludes that, in fact, Catholics appear to have a strong moral obligation to support civil marriage for same-sex couples.

Sister Teresa Forcades on the Incarnation and Holy Family: "To Appear in the World, God Didn't Need a Heterosexual Couple"

Benedictine Sister Teresa Forcades, in an interview with Joana Grenzner for Pikara Magazine, by way of Iglesia Descalza:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Women Responding to Arrows-and-Holes Theology of Catholic Right

I just wrote, 

It's imperative that we look carefully at who's inventing many of the "scientific" theories designed to put women and LGBTI people in their places in the divine-natural scheme of things. And it's imperative that we ask why those who are shopping around this junk science are doing so, and whose self-interest the pseudo-science serves.

Amanda Marcotte on Bizarre Christian Right Theories Influencing American Politics: More on Need for Conversation Between Religion and Science

Yet another indicator of the importance of fashioning our theological views in fruitful dialogue with science--with real science and not the junk science that increasingly passes for scientific truth in much of the American religious right: as Amanda Marcotte notes, 

Catholics of the Right, Sarah Bailey Pulliam on Gay Rights vs. Religious Rights, and Arrows and Holes: The Argument in a Nutshell

As Barbara has just wisely noted in response to my posting about Edward Hu and his theology of arrows and holes earlier today: "That's the dumbest thing I've heard yet!" 

Catholics of the Right Respond to Sarah Bailey Pulliam on Gay Rights vs. Religious Rights: "Arrow and Hole Is Natural. And Hole/Hole Not"

"[A]rrow and hole is natural.
And hole/hole not.
"

"Hole/hole is 'we decide'. And arrow/arrow is going against the design."

"Male and Female He Created Them": The Theology of Gender Complementarity and the Biological Fact of Intersex

"Male and female he created them": what could be simpler? The idea that the neat, binary arrangement of . . . everything . . . into complementary genders is perhaps the most important thing the Christian tradition has to say to the world has become a mantra of contemporary right-wing Christians, including many Catholics. The mantra is not merely an observation about how these believers imagine the world is made: it's a command. It's an order to . . . everyone . . . to submit to their idea of how the world is to be arranged. Or else.

Valerie Tarico on Southern Baptists' New Marketing Strategy: Pitting Churches Against Moral Arc of History

I've said before, and I keep thinking, that the top leaders of the Catholic church have made a cynical, calculated decision to write off the majority of Catholics in the developed sector of the world for crude market-driven reasons.  At the urging of the super-rich handlers to whom the pope, the Curia, and the bishops answer more than anyone else these days, the leaders of the Catholic church are seeking to rebrand Catholicism as true blue old-time religion that appeals to the current growth market of Christianity in the developing parts of the globe.

Every Sperm Sacred, Every Ovum Holy: A Brief Theological Addendum

It occurs to me to add a few specific theological notes to the primer I offered readers earlier today, re: some traditional (and, for many of us, highly antiquated) Catholic notions of human sexuality and reproduction that have been trotting unexpectedly across the public stage in recent days due to the heated debate about contraceptive coverage in insurance plans.  I have thought to add this brief theological addendum to what I posted earlier because of the insightful and valuable comments of several readers about the philosophical-theological basis on which traditional Catholic notions of natural law theology rest.

Every Sperm Sacred, Every Ovum Holy: A Primer on "Catholic" Sexual Ethics for Non-Catholic Readers

A brief postcript to what I just wrote about the Catholic bishops, the Republicans, and making Martha jump: as I just said, 

Christian Right Bashes Gays with Trinitarian Language: An Analogy That Falls Flat on Its Face

And just when I think I've read the damn' stupidest observation about religion and morality imaginable, along comes something like this: Jim Burroway notes, at Box Turtle Bulletin, that Focus on the Family's director for family formation studies Glenn Stanton recently held forth on the theme of the Trinity, marriage, and homosexuality.  Stanton's essay is on Focus on the Family's Marriage and Relationships webpage.

A Reader Writes: You Clearly Don't Understand--Hammers Go with Nails

A reader writes: 

Try again. Lifelong Catholic here, engaged, and I have done a good amount of study on the theology of the body. The Church tells engaged and married couples that every marital act needs to be open to life. Men are not supposed to ejaculate outside of the marital act. Every sexual encounter between married people is supposed to end in/involve the marital embrace--vaginal intercourse. The Church DOES have a problem marrying a couple who will contracept or only ever have non-vaginal intercourse. If the couple does so anyway? It's on their souls. (Trust me: being married in the Catholic Church does not mean you're Catholic. I know far too many people who are married in the Church because their families are Catholic or because they were baptized Catholic but who do not practice the faith, who have no intent to follow Church teaching.)

USCCB Pushes NFP (Again), and They're Wrong. IMHO

In several of the discussion threads here lately, readers and I have talked back and forth about the proliferating use of bizarre acronyms that characterize the right wing of American Catholicism today.  To my mind, this growing use of our little in-house code jargon is a measure of how cultic American Catholicism in general is becoming--how countercultural in a cut-off, beside-the-point, inward-turned way--as the center keeps moving rightwards in our church.  

Conservative Catholic and Evangelical Preoccupation with Gender, and Ironic Subversion of Gender-Based Orthodoxies

Jim McCrea has forwarded a group of his e-friends an interesting essay by a blogger who calls herself Pentimento, and who writes at the Vox Nova site about the sola skirtura controversy now swirling around in certain Catholic circles.  (And who knew?  Who knew that a half century after Vatican II called us to creative dialectic engagement with secular culture, the portentous issue on some American Catholic plates AD 2011 would be to assure that Catholic women wear the kind of skirts Our Blessed Mother used to wear?

Robert McClory on Danger of Turning Metaphor Into Law

I've long contended that one of the most pernicious confusions that religious believers with a fundamentalist bent introduce into public discourse about religious issues is this: they take what is metaphorical, and they try to freeze the metaphor.  To absolutize it.  To make the analogical into a litmus test of absolute truth rather than a metaphor pointing in imperfect, halting human language to what transcends language.

New Scientific Findings Confirm Catholic Magisterial Teachings about Sex? Semen as "Better Gift Than Chocolate" for Women

This is one of the crazy corners of American scientific research about which I'll freely admit I know next to nothing.  I first became aware that this field of research--re: the male-female union-cementing properties of semen--existed, when a proponent of the theology of the body logged onto a Commonweal thread some months ago to argue that new research shows that women crave semen (as it were), since a good dose of semen in their vagina gives them an upper-type experience unparalleled anywhere else in nature.