Catholics are better than their theology

The AJC editorial columnist I most admire is Jay Bookman, and I have often quoted him or shared his insights on this blog.   Last week, he took on a subject that deserves wider consideration.   I begin with this quotation from his Sept. 24, 2014 column, "'I Do' Means You're Done."

"The Catholic Church does incalculable good, providing immeasurable comfot -- material as well as spiritual -- to so many.  But it contradicts and undercuts that mission when it fails to recognize what more and more parishioners do:  that gay people deserve the same dignity as everyone else . . ."

What prompted Bookman to write this was a gratuitous act of unconsciouable hypocrisy necessitated by putting orthodoxy ahead of humanity.   In Lewistown, Montana (population 5,900), two gay men, who had been in a committed relationship for more than three decades, got married -- not to make a statement or defy convention, but simply because:  "We're just two old men" (73 and 66) who don't want any confusion or challenge about beneficiaries, health care proxies and hospital visitation rights in their old age.

They had long been active members of the local Catholic church, and their relationship was no secret.  They were mainstays of the church choir;  one of them had been on the church council.   But once word of their quiet marriage reached the priests, they were told that they could no longer sing in the choir, take communion, or perform any official functions in the church.   The only remedy would be for them to get a divorce and stop living together.

None of this seemed to matter to the church as long as a blind eye could be turned to the truth.   Once it became known that they were married, that had to change -- because it went against church teachings.   A growing number of gay teachers in Catholic schools have been fired after they got married.

Andrew Sullivan is a leading gay marriage advocate and a practicing Roman Catholic who says that stories such as this make it increasingly difficult for him to reconcile those two positions.  He wrote in his influential blog:  

"There is only so much inhumanity that a church can be seen to represent before its own members lose faith in it."

This must be difficult for Pope Francis.   So much that he has done would indicate that he is opposed to such inhumanity;  but he is also expected to uphold the church doctrines and avoid a split in the global congregation of over a billion people.    Let's hope he finds a way out of this dilemma -- and soon.    If anyone can do it, Francis is the man.

Ralph