In a surprising move, a typically left-of-center Catholic cardinal is praising the Vatican’s new declaration Dignitas infinita for its approach to LGBT issues. In a recent interview, Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Wilton Gregory said that the new Vatican document, which addresses “gender theory” and transgender genital mutilation surgeries, among other issues, applauded the love with which the Francis pontificate treats those struggling with homosexuality or transgenderism. No, not a false love built on emotional over-sensitivities, but the love of a father (or, more accurately in the case of the Catholic Church, a mother) who seeks the child’s ultimate good, even if the child doesn’t appreciate that particular good.
When asked why Pope Francis hasn’t rewritten the Catholic Church’s age-old moral doctrine to approve of homosexual acts and relationships, Gregory replied: “Well, he can’t if he’s going to be true to the Church’s history and its teaching. He can’t ignore the history of our faith, but he can call us to be respectful of others, but also to invite others to see and to appreciate and to accept the Church’s moral teaching.” Gregory added, “I said the most loving parent, at least in my own experience, but watching it in other situations, listens with the heart of the parent to a child, but it doesn’t believe that the child gets everything they ask for.”
This is, quite frankly, a surprising insight from Gregory and truly drives at the heart of the “pastoral” spirit that so many priests and bishops today seem to elevate above moral clarity. Priests and bishops are, of course, pastors or shepherds of their flocks, tasked with guiding souls to Heaven. It is very much en vogue (though not quite so en vogue as it has been in recent decades) to preach a strange sort of emotional prosperity gospel: Do what makes you happy — and if sin makes you happy, then can it really be sin? Oughtn’t we, after all, appreciate and enjoy the good that God has given us, even if sin has warped and distorted that good almost beyond recognition?
Pastors, shepherds, are to guide their sheep, to keep their flocks safe from ravaging wolves and steep cliffs, not to let their sheep wander where they will because it “feels right” to the sheep. Yet all too often, our shepherds today allow their sheep to graze within inches of the wolf’s jaws, often with some justification such as, “Well, the grass there looks awfully green, and why shouldn’t my sheep enjoy a nice meal?”
This notion seemed to peak last year with the publication of Fiducia supplicans, a Vatican directive touted as permitting certain informal types of blessings for same-sex couples, although subsequent clarification made it clear that only individuals were being blessed, not the relationship between the individuals and certainly not the relationship itself. But the Francis pontificate (both the pope and those closest to him) have insisted on pointing out the “good” that can be found in homosexual relationships: stability, companionship, mutual respect and affection. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Vatican OK With Normalizing the Exception)
What has been often forgotten by those who ought to be pastors in the Church is that these “goods” are but wavering shadows of the true goods God intended for heterosexual relationships, culminating in marriage and family. What the emotional prosperity preachers call a “stable” relationship between two men might better be called “stagnant.” It cannot grow into a marriage; it cannot blossom into a family. What is called “mutual respect” or “mutual affection” is really nothing of the sort. After all, how can one claim to respect or show affection toward another if one’s very lifestyle is contributing to the other’s spiritual decay? If homosexual relationships are, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares, “intrinsically disordered,” can engaging in such a relationship with another really be called a form of love?
Whether he meant to or not, Gregory hit that proverbial nail on the head. Holy Mother Church is not, as her enemies would have us believe, a strict and soulless dictator, merely a cabal of closeted old men devising rules to deny pleasure to the populace. She is, instead, a loving mother, listening with care to her children, showering them with the riches of their Father, and always pointing out to them the right path to tread, even if it seems a difficult or arduous one.
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