Killing Credibility: How Catholics Undermine the Church's Teachings

For years now the Catholic Church’s teachings on same sex attraction have been falling upon deaf ears. As Catholics, we are quick to point to the secular culture and decry the deterioration of morals so evident in our television and media. This cultural decline is very real and certainly has not helped the cause of traditional values, but to place all the blame there is a straw man argument.

When Catholics argue against same sex unions in the public sphere there is an inherent, yet confusing lack of credibility to our claims. It took me many years to put my finger on just why that is. From the time I was in Catholic school as a child I could quote what the Bible and the Catechism teach about same sex unions, but there has always seemed to be a hollow ring to those arguments.

The truth of the matter lies in the scope and scale of the Church’s teaching on sexuality. When we discuss same sex attraction and same sex unions we are only scratching the surface of a much more broad and rich teaching on the purpose of sexuality. Yes, the Church teaches that to act upon the impulses of same sex attraction is sinful because that is not what sex was designed for. As true as that may be it is unfortunately, the only carnal sin that most Catholics are willing to publicly decry. Meanwhile, many of those same Catholics are willing to turn a blind eye to their friends and family who engage in all sorts of other carnal sins: adultery, fornication, masturbation, divorce and remarriage, etc. That is cherry picking. It is the equivalent of lambasting someone for stealing a gold watch while simultaneously sheltering a friend of yours who has stolen a diamond necklace. It is hypocritical.  

The truth of the matter is that Christians destroyed marriage many years before the status of civil marriage was extended to include same sex unions. The sexual revolution tore sexuality into a thousand pieces and has left future generations like ours to try to make sense of a shattered picture. Many argue that it was during the 1970’s with no fault divorce that this downward trend began; but faithful Catholics would point to the Lambeth Conference of 1930 as the true catalyst.

The ideas put forth at this conference started the ball rolling in mainstream Protestantism for the acceptance of contraception. From the moment that sex was separated from it’s natural ends, the procreative (and unitive) bond between spouses, the lid was off Pandora’s Box. Rather than having pleasure as a means and procreative unity as the ends; we were able to make pleasure the end and the means subjective. Once pleasure became the end goal then there was practically nothing off limits in the pursuit of sexual pleasure - sodomy being just one item on a tragically long list. To single out same sex unions generations later and try to paint them as the culprit is not only incorrect – it’s insincere.

Imagine that you went to visit the Eiffel Tower but kept your head down as you approached it and immediately ducked into the restroom. Now imagine that you spent your entire afternoon in the restroom of the Eiffel Tower, thoroughly examining and investigating each urinal, stall and sink. As you leave, you march briskly back to your hotel without a single backward glance, coming and going without ever actually glimpsing the tower itself. You would walk away from that experience thinking that the Eiffel Tower was disgusting, smelly and dirty. But would your perspective of the Eiffel Tower be an accurate one? Of course not. You only viewed one small portion of the Eiffel Tower. Bathrooms are a necessary part of the design of any public place (as unpleasant as they may be), but they are not the main attraction. Likewise, same sex attraction is just one necessary part of the Church’s teachings on sexuality but it’s not the main attraction. When viewed in isolation it is difficult to understand for the average lay person.

If we as Catholics only ever criticize same sex unions then of course the secular world is going to believe that we are prejudiced and bigoted. Until we can just as readily speak out against living together before marriage, adultery, civil divorce and all the rest, then we are playing right into all of those ‘Christian bigot’ stereotypes that we so greatly loath. There are many faithful Catholics who do a great job in this regard; if you are one of them then kudos to you. But for the rest of us (I know I struggle with this as well), we are hurting the credibility of the Church’s teaching. The true victims of this error are those who suffer from same sex attraction. The fullness of Truth rests in the Church that Christ founded. When we live lives that alienate certain groups of people from this Truth, the mistake is not theirs’. The true culpability rests squarely upon our shoulders.