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EXCERPT
THE CATHOLIC THING
Behind all
this lies another bit of legerdemain, namely
an appeal to “lived experience” as a guide
to dealing with present debates. In a
sense, of course, lived experience is an
important component of any individual
life. But so is the accumulated “lived
experience” of our tradition, or we’re all
just making it up – to suit ourselves – as
we go along.
Early
Christianity notably learned much from
Greco-Roman philosophies in addition to its
Jewish heritage. But as I documented
years ago in a lengthy essay, even the great
philosophers of classical Athens frowned on
homosexual acts.
So why is
it that now, 2000+ years into Christian
“lived experience” (plus another 1400 years
of the Mosaic Law), LGBT “witnesses” are so
important as to overthrow a millennia-long,
unbroken moral tradition?
Perhaps
it’s simplistic to see this as merely a
surrender to the decadent sexual
inclinations of the present. But
what’s simple is, often enough, true.
As here.
Decadence
is always with us in a fallen world.
But acceptance, even celebration of
decadence, is a rarity. Those decadent
Renaissance popes that people, Catholic and
not, are happy to deplore had at least one
virtue: they didn’t try to claim that their
sexual sins were justified by their lived
experience, let alone a joyful and more
mature understanding of what the Holy Spirit
desires us to see and do now.
A Church
that continues to encourage todos, todos,
todos to believe that what it is impossible
to accept is already halfway to being
accepted is doing them a disservice.
Both in confirming people in error and in
confusing the rest of us.
It’s worth
noticing that it was months after Pope
Francis issued his 2023 declaration Fiducia
supplicans on blessing homosexual and other
couples in “irregular unions” that the
German bishops announced their intention to
do so formally. We learned just last
week that, as a result, in 2024 a letter was
sent to the Germans, “warning that such
blessings could be interpreted as the
legitimization of unions incompatible with
Church doctrine.”
So, we have
this chain of events: a document allowing
gay blessings, then a letter from the
prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship,
Cardinal Fernandez, (who had earlier issued
the document) to the German bishops saying
they can’t be formalized without
contradicting Church doctrine, and now a
report by a Synodal study group that a
“paradigm shift” is needed because of [LGBT]
“lived experience.”
Even
non-Catholics once used to say that “at
least Catholics know what they believe.” Do
we anymore?
Only Pope
Leo is in a position to sort out this
devilish confusion, which he cannot ignore. |
