Vatican Declares Blessings for Same-Sex Unions ‘Illicit’
It’s not the conclusion that surprises me. It’s the strong language.
The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit because “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
“Absolutely no grounds.”
Not “in any way similar or even remotely analogous.”
That’s strong language. A homosexual union is not even remotely analogous to a marriage — because (I would infer) a marriage is not about love, it’s about procreation. Married people should love one another, but that’s not unique to marriage. Everybody should love everybody. What’s unique to marriage is procreation.
Does this put an end to the question? Of course not. That would imply a view of words, norms and reality that our culture has rejected.
Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the U.S.-based NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice and an advocate for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the church, said she was relieved the Vatican statement wasn’t worse.
She said she interpreted the statement as saying, “You can bless the individuals (in a same-sex union). You just can’t bless the contract.”
“So it’s possible you could have a ritual where the individuals get blessed to be their committed selves.”
Not sure if it says more about me or about the state of the Curia that my first thought is “huh, guess someone won a power struggle– I wonder if blackmail was involved?”
I don’t trust Bergoglio as far as I could throw him, so if the Catholic church says something which agrees with Catholic teaching and disagrees with what you’d expect of an Argentine liberal, I assume something strange has happened behind the scenes.
#onthisrock
It’s not good to know how your laws are made.
Huh. So I was reading Gail Heriot’s amici submission in one of the cases where the Ivies are being sued for discriminating against Asians (equality vs. equity rears its head again!) and there was the passage
| Their actual motivations are much messier. The American poet John Godfrey Saxe wrote in 1869, “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”
Wikiquote says that apparently this is the earliest use of sausages in this context that’s been found yet. It’s possible that the phrase “how the sausage gets made” in my head is due entirely to a random offhand inspiration of a 19th-century poet.
Interesting. I’ve heard the basic idea several times, but never quite in that form.
Of course it is possible for people to be in love with each other. Aside from marriage, procreation, and sexual relations, what would be wrong with people of the same sex being in love with each other? I think that (or something like that) occurs more often than we think it might.
Who is saying it’s wrong for two people to love one another?
Surprise, surprise… the Pope is Catholic.
Robin said “in love” not “love.” When I think of “in love” I generally attribute the attribute of sexual attraction among other things.
Yes, absolutely I very specifically meant “in love.” Usually sexual attraction is associated with that, but it is not necessary. I remember Gore Vidal saying that he and his male partner continued to live together without any sexual relations for a very long time and he attributed the strength of their intimacy precisely to their abstention from sex (at least with each other). Sexual relations between two people in a relationship often wind down in intensity and frequency over time, but the two can still passionately be in love with each other.
The Greeks had the right idea by having different words for love.