When I originally read Michael Sean Winter’s enthusiastic review at National Catholic Reporter, I determined to read this “important book” for myself. I have just done so, and disagree fundamentally with his assessment. I read it at a sitting, within a couple of hours - and that’s not because I was riveted. On the contrary - it’s just a very slight book, small in size, and slight in achievement.
He claims to have found something new to say in attempting to bridge the gap between Catholic teaching, and the experience of rejection and exclusion perceived or experienced by so many gay and lesbian Catholics in the Church. He does nothing of the kind - all he does is to present the orthodox teaching as it is, albeit with an attempt to sound welcoming and sympathetic. There is no attempt at all to consider for a moment even the possibility that the teaching might be simply flawed - for either heterosexuals or homosexuals, simply labelling masturbation, artificial contraception, and sex before marriage as self-evidently gravely sinful. That may be the judgement of the Catechism, but is not a verdict with which most ordinary lay Catholics would agree.
Throughout, there is a repeated assertion that God’s purpose for genital sexual activity is procreation - and that is the reason for the infamous labelling of “the homosexual inclination” as disordered, as not ordered to God’s purpose. At one point, and one point only, he notes that “Some would see procreation as a partial purpose but not an exclusive purpose nor necessarily the ultimate purpose of sexuality” - but continues “that would take us into another reflection, which we cannot enter here”. Why ever not? That “other reflection” goes to the heart of the matter: the real - life experience of ordinary Catholics, who unlike celibate priests, have direct personal experience of sexual reality, is precisely that procreation is not, in fact the exclusive, nor indeed the primary, purpose of their sexual expression - or for their reasons for marrying.
The claim for book on its back cover is that he is responding to Benedict’s call to express teaching “in the context of today’s studies of sexuality and anthropology” - but shows no evidence at all of paying any attention to actual scientific knowledge about sexuality, or anthropology beyond the abstract, theological anthropology - there is no awareness of empirical observations in social anthropology, biology of sex beyond the simplistic argument from plumbing, or of the findings of psychologists about human sexuality and sexual development.
He states that the Church must be not only a teacher, but also a learner, and needs to listen to the voices of gay and lesbian people - but gives no indication at all that he has learned from any of the notable gay/lesbian/queer Catholic theologians grappling with these issues, or even that they exist (nor does he acknowledge the existence of a substantial proportion of moral theologians who believe strongly that the teaching as a whole, and in particular its insistence on the primacy of procreation, is urgently in need of fundamental revision).
In presenting Catholic teaching on homosexuality, he makes some attempt to position it within the broader context of human sexuality as a whole - but studiously avoids the even broader context of Catholic teaching in its entirety, with its respect for conscience, or on the notable point that there are degrees of importance in the different levels of teaching - and that sexuality is on a relatively low level.
There is only one point at which I thought he might be headed in a direction that could be new and useful - but instead, he used it to make the tired, invalid and widely discredited connection between homosexuality in the priesthood and clerical sexual abuse, to endorse the CDF ruling that men with “deep - seated homosexual tendencies” are not suitable for priesthood. Introducing that discussion, he refers to a carefully executed 1972 psychological study of American priests which found “A large proportion of the priests in this cross-sectional sample has not developed to sexual maturity” , and “Underdeveloped ,men have not passed through all the stages of growth to what is recognized as adult and mature behaviour. They look like adults, but on the inside, they still struggle with the challenges of a previous level of development. The undeveloped have not successfully passed through adolescence”. Cameli’s response to this is, “That failure to pass through adolescence suggests to me a very real possibility of an incomplete formation of sexual identity”.
To this I would add that the reasons behind that failure of formation must surely lie in the culture and methods of training that applied in seminaries then, and in earlier years, Those same culture and methods of training were even more responsible for a complete failure to offer proper training and guidance in the nature of human sexuality and psychological development, leaving so many priests of that generation grossly deficient in sexual understanding - even where they were able to successfully negotiate adolescence. Popes Benedict and John Paul II, and so many of the others who were writing the sexual rules in Humanae Vitae, Persona Humana, and Problema Homosexualitatis will have been of that or earlier generations. Cameli himself was ordained in 1969.
It shows.
Related articles
- “Catholic Teaching on Homosexuality”
- How Quest is Promoting LGBT Catholic Integrity
- Gay Priests: The Challenge of Honesty
- Christie’s Ban on Conversion Therapy Supported by Catholic Teaching
- The Catholic Heterosexual Lobby
- Catholic Teaching on Homosexuality (Book Review) (questgaycatholic.org.uk)
- Scary Hallowe’en Reads? Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
Insisting that the purpose of marriage and sexuality is procreation of children is not good Catholic theology. Humanae vitae recognized the unity of a married couple as an equal valid purpose of marriage.
Agreed, John. I was seriously angry reading this, but on balance, I’m actually pleased that I bought it - on a “know your enemy” basis. There’s a whole lot more that needs to be said in response to his garbage, much more than could be put into a review. But it needs to be said. I may use his book as a convenient jumping off point for a series of posts on the detail of the many contradictions he inadvertently exposes in CDF doctrine.
There are many contradictions in CDF doctrine, enough to raise a question whether we can trust any of it. Please take that on and good luck with it, seriously.
I laugh when I hear many on the conservative side over here think that MSW is a flaming progressive. One read of any of his columns will indicate the contrary.