I recommend the new article by Jonathan Munn – Catholicism: Not a church for anyone. The issue of inclusiveness is actually linked in the minds of many on the bandwagon with homosexuality. No one who is reasonable doubts that it is wrong to discriminate against people of races other than our own and those whose exclusion is caused by factors beyond their control. The Church has always been full of Saints who devoted their lives to educating the children of poor families, and to looking after the sick and homeless.
Homosexuality is no longer a matter of private lives and persons faced with God and their consciences. It is no longer even a matter of making a moral judgement of intimate acts between two consenting adults. It may be wrong for most of us, or unnatural, but it only affects the persons concerned. We have all to answer to God for our acts and what we do with our lives.
The big problem is that, like feminism, it has become an ideology. I personally tend to view the notion of ideology as a set of ideas or a discourse that disables the use of critical reasoning and personal thought, bringing its adepts into a conformity pattern or making them jump onto a bandwagon. This is obscurantism at its worst, going far beyond pseudo-religious superstition in the middle ages or in any other historical period including our own.
If inclusiveness means giving in to ideology and the abolition of critical thought and rationality, giving in to domination so that the whole goes to the other extreme, then it is not possible. Homosexuality might be tolerated when it is a matter of people’s private lives, and I certainly would not see them treated like Oscar Wilde in Victorian England. There needs to be a pastoral approach at a level of persons. One might go as far as saying that if two persons of the same sex want a formalised relationship sealed by a legal contract that gives them similar civil rights to those of married heterosexual couples, there seems to be no problem. There are serious ethical issues like children and families, but we are dealing with a world which for the most part does not recognise any influence of Christianity or the Church over it.
Obviously, trying to involve anything other than a male / female couple in a sacramental marriage would be like using banana juice for the Eucharist or diesel fuel oil instead of water for baptism. There will be a problem when priests are arrested, taken to court and imprisoned for refusing a “sacramental” marriage to a homosexual couple. The priest’s right to his conscience is violated – one extreme to the other!
One great difficulty in our times is that words no longer have their plain and traditional meaning. They have become euphemisms and hidden meanings are attached. Before we use words in reflections about important and divisive issues, we need to look at our use of language and words. It would not be the first time that differences in the understanding of words has caused schisms and divisions in the Church.
I continue to advocate a via media between this kind of “liberalism” that is not liberal or concerned for other people’s freedom and the kind of conservatism that is intolerant or concerned for truths and certitudes before persons. We live in a dangerous world, and Christianity is destroying itself in these dialectics and dualisms. There is very little left in the middle!
The Blue Flower 
Dear Anthony,
i think you’ve got it all wrong. Why must homosexual love, art, literature and relationships remain a hidden private affair, whislt heterosexual love is celebrated, publicised, fostered and omnipresent? is there to be no space allowed for those for whom homosexuality is not at all unnatural, but, au contraire, quite natural? Must this minority hang forever its head in shame or pretend to be heterosexual, for ”appearances sake”? What is unnatural, it seems to me, is not homosexuality, which is found in nearly all species and amongst all peoples of all tiems, but rather, unnatural is the need and desire to hide this phenomenon away. That leads to stigmatisation, intolerance, fear of the unknown, self-hate and persecution. I am sorry to see that for quite some time now you seem to be contributing to, rather than countering, the supprssion of gay people.
In Christo,
Bert
You are mistaken – I am not contributing to the suppression of gay people, but the ideology that some hold. One intolerance replaces its opposite like Soviet Communism replaced Nazism in East Germany after the war. Is that what we want?
Dear Anthony,
How can you be so sure that it is ontologically impossible for two people of the same sex to be sacramentally married, when St Paul tells us that “in Christ there is no male nor female”?
I am not sure that it is possible, but I am not aware of any good argument that it is not possible.
Regards,
Stephen
Personally, I have no cogent argument any more than for the question of ordaining women. Churches have always taught that marriages can only be heterosexual. I could put myself at variance with church (RC, Anglican, Orthodox, Protestant, etc.) teachings, but then all hell would be let loose in the comment boxes, so I won’t discuss it on the blog.
Thanks for an interesting blog. In this matter I agree with you that homosexuality in our time has become an ideology (in fact a religion for some), which political homosexuals try to force on the Church. But it is too easy to say that it is a private matter, in which the Church should not make moral judgements. As long as it is political incorrect to ask questions about the psychological causes of homosexuality, and as long our current civilisation promote such primitive views of sexuality as seen everywhere in popular culture of today, the Church will have the right of questioning the legitimation of any homosexual relationship. It is a question of the nature of sin and sexuality and not least the relationship between the two. Lust and sexuality is not the same, and for the same reason the Church takes issues on contraception seriously.
Br. Daniel
Thank you for your courteous style, but I am not going to go into this subject, but I will say that if the Church wants to do something, it must have power to coerce through the civil authority and start putting people in prison, etc. It is for the Church to convince the civil authority by persuasion or force… I must at this point forbid any further discussion of homosexuality on pain of closing the comment box.
I think that the issue that Fr Anthony was dealing with was not the present fixations expressed in the comment box, but the real issue of ideology and the fact that once something does become doctrinaire it losses its sense of balance and becomes increasingly closed-minded; all polite conversation ceases. I have often expressed to Fr Anthony that, for me, one of the strengths of old-fashioned Anglo-Catholicism was its ability to present the Catholic Faith without the need to persecute others or demand mindless obedience. Unfortunately, with the growth of ideologies, expressed often rather hypocritically as “inclusiveness” we find that this aspect of Anglicanism seems to have been cast aside. It is very sad indeed.