A rchive Date
[ 19-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Vatican ]
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[A line between love and hate
Few debates are more heated than the one over homosexual rights - and right at the centre of the maelstrom are the policies of the Roman Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II
By R. CORT KIRKWOOD-- Ottawa Sun
July 19, 2000
Assisted by the liberal news media, enemies of the Catholic Church have painted it as an institution that hates those who do not heed its teachings, especially Catholics who trespass them.
The latest two groups to suffer this hatred, we are told, are homosexuals, because the Pope will not change (as if he could) Church teaching on their erotopathic behaviour, and divorced Catholics who remarry, who may not receive Holy Communion.
Recently, the Church reaffirmed teachings on both subjects, which appear unrelated. Yet they are tightly lashed to the same theological pier. Before explaining why, a few observations are worth rehearsing.
In the papers and on television news, Church teachings are always made to sound like an unreasonable, anachronistic creed from the 12th century, not sound theology informed by faith and reason.
On the homosexual question, for instance, the litany against Rome has become a hackneyed refrain. "Loving monogamous relationships" and "unions" are frustrated by "hate" and "bigotry" and "intolerance."
Why does the Church hate homosexuals, goes the familiar question. Well, it doesn't. And it does not teach that Christians should hate them. Hateful men don't clean up the filth of dying AIDS patients, as John Cardinal O'Connor did.
The Church simply says sexual intimacy must be reserved for marriage. Church teaching on human sexuality is theologically and morally profound, and John Paul II has written eloquently on the matter, explaining at painstaking length why sex must be reserved for marriage.
You would never know that from listening to the homosexuals and their friends in the media because they do not understand the nature and purpose of sexuality. But that's one for a different day.
On to divorced and remarried Catholics; why can't they receive Holy Communion? This is a question even non-Catholics who sympathize with Church teachings might ask.
The answer is that the Church does not recognize legal divorce as the end of a valid marriage.
That means a man or woman who remarries without benefit of a declaration of nullity is committing the mortal sin of adultery, which violates the Sixth Commandment.
Those who are aware they are stained by mortal sin may not receive Holy Communion until they confess to a priest, receive absolution and resolve not to sin again.
Thus, divorced and remarried Catholics are forbidden from receiving Holy Communion. Those who do so commit another sin.
For non-Catholics and even some nominal Catholics, Holy Communion is but a symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper. But faithful Catholics believe Christ is fully present in the eucharistic wafer they consume.
This is one reason, by the way, faithful Catholics were justly outraged when homosexuals committed the apotheosis of sacrilege at St. Patrick's Cathedral a few years back: They defiled Christ by throwing Him to the floor.
This brings us back to the question of why the teaching on divorced Catholics is related to the teaching on homosexuals.
Valid marriage
The former, like the latter, is really a teaching on sexuality; i.e., only a man and woman united in a valid marriage may partake of sexual intimacy. A divorced Catholic who remarries commits a sin every bit as serious as two homosexuals in a "monogamous relationship."
Both attacks on Church teaching strike at one of the most substantial theological differences between the Church of Rome and others that permit divorce and remarriage, and even permit or encourage homosexual "unions."
The Catholic Church is the one church still teaching, and emphatically so, that sexual activity is the rightful preserve of a validly married man and woman.
Enemies of the Church know if they destroy that one teaching, they will undermine Church dogma on other matters: Abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization and everything else that goes to the heart of what it means to be a faithful Catholic.
That would be the undoing of the Church, the goal of not just Rome's temporal foes, but of he who stands behind them.
Kirkwood writes on U.S. affairs for the Sun. Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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