The biweekly “Soho Masses” in London were celebrated for the “pastoral care” of homosexual Catholics, said the archdiocese, but as the English Catholic journalist William Oddie wrote in the Catholic Herald a couple of years ago, “It is now clear beyond peradventure that those who attend the Masses are nearly all what the archdiocese calls ‘non-celibate gay people’ who intend to continue to defy Catholic teaching. . . . The whole ethos of the Soho Masses is a committed denial of this teaching.”
The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has now closed it down and transferred the work of pastoral care to another church, while giving the church in Soho to the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the English branch of the group the pope established for Anglican converts. (Our Lady of the Assumption,the archbishop notes, is the church at which John Henry Newman first heard Mass.) Even though “the situation of people with same-sex attraction has changed both socially and in civil law,” the archdiocese explained,
the principles of the pastoral care to be offered by the Church and the Church’s teaching on matters of sexual morality have not. First among the principles of pastoral care is the innate dignity of every person and the respect in which they must be held. Also, of great importance, is the teaching of the Church that a person must not be identified by their sexual orientation. The moral teaching of the Church is that the proper use of our sexual faculty is within a marriage, between a man and a woman, open to the procreation and nurturing of new human life.
The Church is changing the arrangement for two reasons, the official statement continued:
The first is to recall that the original aim of this pastoral provision at Warwick Street was to enable people with same-sex attraction ‘to enter more fully into the life of the Church’ ‘specifically within the existing parish structures’ (Diocese of Westminster press statement 2 Feb 2007). The second is the importance of recognising that there is a distinction to be made between the pastoral care of a particular group and the regular celebration of the Mass.
The Mass is always to retain its essential character as the highest prayer of the whole Church. This ‘universal’ character of the Mass is to be nurtured and clearly expressed in the manner of every celebration. The purpose of all pastoral care, on the other hand, is to encourage and enable people, especially those who are in difficult circumstances, to come to participate fully and worthily in the celebration of the Mass in the midst of the whole Church, the people summoned by the Lord to give him, together, worthy service and praise.
The effect is to reassert the teaching of the Church without being too direct about it. That “must not be identified by their sexual orientation,” for example, also means “must not identify themselves by their sexual orientation,” which is to say, must not assume they can or must act upon their desires.
You are not first a homosexual, the archdiocese is saying to the people who attended that Mass. You are first and primarily a human being, and therefore someone called to chastity, and the proper expressions of your sexuality are defined and limited and do not include homosexual practice. Being homosexual is only the personal context in which you are called to be chaste, as being heterosexual is the context for most people. But it is not an identity that brings with it a way of life.
The assumption that “I am X, therefore I must do X” is the default one, even among Catholics, for reasons all of us can understand since most of us assume it when explaining our own actions. “I’m just a cranky old man” is a version, as is “I’m just not patient” and “I suppose I’m just too selfish to . . . “. The homosexual person has better reason to assume it than the cranky, impatient, and selfish, because his desires feel so natural and seem the same as everyone else’s only directed to somewhat different subjects. But still, as the archdiocese has said, you are not your sexual orientation.
January 2nd, 2013 | 4:56 pm
I’d imagine coming out as a chaste person with same-sex attraction would still be rather difficult in many to most places. You kind of get pushed on both sides. Many orthodox Catholics, in my experience, would still prefer chaste SSA people never admit they are SSA. Whereas secular society believes chastity is wrong and, particularly for men, psychologically unhealthy. So may desire to “help you” by getting you to abandon chastity.
January 2nd, 2013 | 5:06 pm
It’s damaging for ANYONE to derive his principal identity from feelings of sexual attraction. We are so much more than that.
January 2nd, 2013 | 8:05 pm
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
The Church doesn’t see people who are “people first” and “just happen” to be men or women. It sees being male or female as essential to identity. Nor does it see men who “just happen” to be heterosexual and women who “just happen” to be heterosexual.
Here’s a fairly typical criticism of gay people I found Googling the phrase “define themselves by their sexuality.”
Now, imagine a typical married man or married woman saying, “Whom I am attracted to as a partner has nothing to do with who I am as a person.” Imagine a husband saying that to his wife, or a wife saying it to her husband!
January 3rd, 2013 | 2:24 am
David Nickol Now, imagine a typical married man or married woman saying, “Whom I am attracted to as a partner has nothing to do with who I am as a person.” Imagine a husband saying that to his wife, or a wife saying it to her husband!
Your tone is as if it’s unthinkable, but I do say something like that to my wife from time to time — closer to his sentiment, I think, than his words: I insist that the people I am attracted to as a partner do not limit me as a person. I say it in the context that love involves choice, not just passion, that a person feel attraction to more than one person, in different degrees, and that mere attraction is distinct from lust. In this context, my wife doesn’t find my statement offensive in the least. Quite the opposite.
She even likes my example: Monica Bellucci is a beautiful woman, as are Italian women in general. That hardly means I must place pin up in my office a poster of her as Mary Magdalene, let alone leave my wife and our children so as to shack up with Snooki. Yet many people in our culture lionize precisely that sort of behavior, by both homosexuals and heterosexuals: it’s okay to leave your dependents as long as it means you’re being true to yourself.
January 3rd, 2013 | 4:56 am
It seems unfair to punish gays/lesbians who are thought to be sexually active for acting against church teaching, when more than 90% of straight Catholics use birth control, also against church teaching, and yet they are not punished.
January 3rd, 2013 | 7:46 am
Cafeteria Catholics tend to ignore these passages from the Cathecism of the Catholic Church:
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
January 3rd, 2013 | 9:27 am
My post of January 2nd, 2013 | 8:05 pm was written to complete some thoughts that for some reason did not make it through. I hope I will be permitted to briefly state those thoughts to put the above post in context.
First, “homosexual person” is the identity, it seems to me, of a man with “deep seated homosexual tendencies” who wants to enter the priesthood, or be a coach, or serve in the armed forces—all of which the Vatican opposes even for the most determinedly chaste. Although one might say, “You are not to identify as a homosexual person because you have deep seated homosexual tendencies any more than you identify as a cranky person if you have deep seated cranky tendencies,” but a cranky person who succeeds in suppressing his crankiness is not, according to the Church, a cranky person, whereas a perfectly chaste homosexual person who does not even self-identify as a homosexual person is still, in the eyes of the Church, a homosexual person when it comes to the priesthood. See, for example, Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.
Second, in response to Terrye Newkirk I said that human gender and sexuality are extraordinarily important, and I think the overwhelming majority of people do derive their principal identity from their gender and sexuality, and the Church expects them to. Certainly (as I said in my post above) happily married people do. (“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.”)
Third, homosexual persons are not seen by the Church merely as people who have certain tendencies that, if resisted, are irrelevant. They are seen as lacking “affective maturity” which renders them unsuitable for a number of important roles because they are not able “to relate correctly to both men and women” and have “a true sense of spiritual fatherhood.”
January 3rd, 2013 | 10:05 am
I insist that the people I am attracted to as a partner do not limit me as a person.
Jack Perry,
Imagine you were to wake up tomorrow morning, and by some miracle, you had a woman’s body and were physically attracted to men. Would you not feel that something absolutely fundamental had changed? I could do my job equally well as a woman. I could still live in my apartment and shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. There are many things that could remain unchanged. But I can’t help but feel it would be absolutely devastating to my sense of self.
Defining yourself by gender or sexual orientation does not mean taking a stereotype and running rampant with it. in order to be a “real” heterosexual man, it is not necessary to hang pin-ups all over the place, be promiscuous, go hunting, watch as much football as possible, and never ask for directions when driving. I think I am on very solid ground with those who agree with the Catholic (and Christian) view that being male or female is absolutely fundamental to most people’s identity, and the same goes for heterosexuality.
January 3rd, 2013 | 10:32 am
publius,
Do you think it is a worse sin for a committed, loving, supportive same-sex couple to have a sexual relationship, or for a couple who married in the Catholic Church to use artificial contraception? I think a very strong case could be made (in Catholic thought) that two people who are fertile and deliberately render themselves or their acts infertile to have sex are doing a more “defiant” thing than two people who are infertile and choose to have sex anyway. The married couple is trashing a gift that they have been given. They are also, it seems to me, violating their wedding vows and committing sacrilege against the sacrament of matrimony.
It seems to me there is a double standard in the Catholic Church when it comes to contraception and homosexuality. Few if any Catholics really expect married people not to use contraception, and of course we know that most married Catholics do use contraception. This, for some reason, is tolerable. But the idea that two people of the same gender will have sex with each other is intolerable.
I really don’t understand this, but it seems that for many Catholics (even those surveyed who attend Mass weekly or more), the Church’s teachings on contraception may be disregarded, but the Church’s teachings on homosexuality may not be questioned. And yet Catholic teaching on sexuality is—or seems to me—all of a piece. It is very difficult to make Catholic arguments against homosexuality if Church teachings about contraception (and premarital sex) are to be left intact.
January 3rd, 2013 | 1:19 pm
“Now, imagine a typical married man or married woman saying, “Whom I am attracted to as a partner has nothing to do with who I am as a person.” Imagine a husband saying that to his wife, or a wife saying it to her husband”
In the first place marriage is privileged in having the recognized right to have sex, just as police are privileged in having the recognized right to incarcerate, soldiers in having the recognized right to make war, and teachers in having the recognized right to unpaid child labor. These privileges come from the nature of their respective vocations; and just as police represent the regulation of law enforcement marriage represent the regulation of sex.
In the second place married people have sworn vows to each other in the Church.
January 3rd, 2013 | 2:17 pm
@crystal, Where is the punishment? Those gays may still attend mass at any Catholic church as can those who use artificial birth control, not to mention all the rest of us sinners.
January 3rd, 2013 | 3:04 pm
Mike Melendez,
One gets the impression that married Catholics who quietly use contraception without anyone knowing are tacitly accepted as Catholics in good standing with the Church, in spite of the Church’s teachings against contraception. It is made very clear, however, that those living quietly in same-sex relationships are most definitely not, and can never be, accepted as Catholics in good standing.
I think it would cause a sensation if any American bishop issued a statement that any married Catholics in his diocese using contraceptives must refrain from communion and any planning to get married must not cohabit and must solemnly swear not to use contraceptives after they were married, or they could not be married in the Church. I think liberal Catholics might grumble if a bishop declared no one in his diocese in a same-sex relationship was eligible to receive communion.
Even conservative Catholics complain that the bishops do not speak out and that priests never preach sermons against contraception.
As I said, this is my impression. Am I really mistaken?
January 3rd, 2013 | 4:16 pm
In the first place marriage is privileged in having the recognized right to have sex . . . . In the second place married people have sworn vows to each other in the Church.
jason taylor,
I don’t see how this is a problem for the point I am making, which is that the Catholic Church explicitly endorses viewing gender as a fundamental part of one’s identity, and implicitly endorses viewing a heterosexual orientation as a fundamental part of one’s orientation. The vocation of most men is to be fathers and husbands, and the vocation of most women is to be wives and mothers. Sacramental marriage requires sexual intercourse. The Church doesn’t say, “Embrace your heterosexual orientation,” simply because it has not had a name for most of the Church’s history and even now is the norm and need not be spoken. Even priests are called “father” and required to be “spiritual fathers.” The Church constantly emphasizes how important gender and heterosexuality are for all of its members. It just doesn’t use the word heterosexuality.
My point is that it is foolish to say people should not define themselves by their gender and sexual orientation. Almost everyone does, and they are expected to. If I argued that because heterosexuals define themselves by their orientation, and consequently homosexuals should as well, there would of course be Catholic objections. But what people mean when they say it is wrong or misguided to define oneself by one’s sexual orientation is that is wrong for homosexuals. It is pretty much required of heterosexuals.
January 3rd, 2013 | 8:49 pm
Hello David,
I think it would cause a sensation if any American bishop issued a statement that any married Catholics in his diocese using contraceptives must refrain from communion and any planning to get married must not cohabit and must solemnly swear not to use contraceptives after they were married, or they could not be married in the Church.
That would be a laudable thing. Not that our bishops have been very courageous about speaking out sexual sins – of whatever sort – since 1968 (if indeed not before). It is not surprising that many Catholics contracept when no one in the Church ever bothers to teach about it, or provide the reasoning for the teaching.
In fact, I know couples who have been told by pastors that they may not marry in the Church until they cease cohabiting. And the pastors will insist on instruction on the Church’s teaching on sex within marriage. There are *some* in the Church who take this sort of thing seriously.
I think liberal Catholics might grumble if a bishop declared no one in his diocese in a same-sex relationship was eligible to receive communion.
We’ve just seen exactly how one major metropolitan ordinary deals with just this situation: When one of his priests denied communion to a woman who had presented herself and her lesbian lover, Cardinal Donald Wuerl disavowed the action and suspended his priest. And yes, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by liberals in the area. They couldn’t take it out on the cardinal, so they took it out on the priest (and, in a few cases, bashed the cardinal anyway, by association).
Of course, whether a priest should give communion to a communicant known to him as being in grave sin is distinct from whether they should receive in the first place. But the rule is clear on the latter, even if many bishops are too afraid to speak out on the subject, let alone proclaim the rule (or enforce it).
January 4th, 2013 | 9:29 am
When one of his priests denied communion to a woman who had presented herself and her lesbian lover, Cardinal Donald Wuerl disavowed the action and suspended his priest.
Richard M,
To be fair to all sides, it was an extraordinarily bizarre and messy affair, and the woman who was denied communion in my opinion acted very badly and vindictively in the wake of the incident. But the priest who denied her communion was not acting in accordance with canon law, and he was not suspended.
January 4th, 2013 | 11:42 am
Hello David,
Fr. Guarnizo is actually incardinated to the archdiocese of Moscow, so there’s a limit to what Wuerl could do to him.
But Wuerl did suspend his faculties to provide the sacraments in the archdiocese of Washington, and so his time as a priest at his Gaithersburg parish came to an end.
I do agree with you here: it was an extraordinarily bizarre and messy affair.
January 4th, 2013 | 3:45 pm
David Nickol,
This one was called in by same-sex attracted Catholics, who felt left out of these gatherings, because they were chaste. You might want to see this.
http://protectthepope.com/?p=6250
Homosexuals are not completely barred from the priesthood. They are given a probationary period, to see if they can live the life.
You are right that spiritual fatherhood is important to the priesthood. In the sense that Christ is the bridegroom, the church is the bride. The feminity of the church includes it’s male members as well.
We are all feminine in relation to God, regardless of biological sex.
This distinction between Christ and church, male and female, keeps the faith from slipping into dualism where opposites are the same or the infinite diversity of creation is reduced to bland sameness.
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