Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage. Matthew Levering

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СКАЧАТЬ Schindler, “Liturgy and the Integrity of Cosmic Order,” 295. See also Schindler, “Catholic Theology, Gender, and the Future of Western Civilization.”

      70. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 89.

      71. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 91.

      72. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 93.

      73. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 93. See also Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 29.

      74. See for example Farley, Just Love; Salzman and Lawler, The Sexual Person. The Catholic biblical scholar John J. Collins has advanced this same basic thesis in his chapter on sexuality in his What Are Biblical Values? For a much richer analysis, see Collin, Le mariage Chrétien. The biblical material has been accurately surveyed by Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice. For a succinct summary of Scripture’s consistent perspective on homosexual acts, see Kuby, The Global Sexual Revolution, 193–94.

      75. Harrington and Keenan, Paul and Virtue Ethics, 208. Keenan is identified as the “principal writer” for the chapter of the book from which this quotation is drawn (see Paul and Virtue Ethics, xiii).

      76. Harrington and Keenan, Paul and Virtue Ethics, 208.

      77. Keenan testified in favor of Massachusetts’s early (successful) effort to adopt same-sex marriage. See also the direction of Stephen J. Pope’s “The Magisterium’s Arguments against ‘Same-Sex Marriage’”; and Cahill, “Same-Sex Marriage and Catholicism.” Gerard Jacobitz contends, “If sexual orientation is an essential dimension of the human person, if it is not so much what a person is but who a person is, then it simply cannot be disordered” (Jacobitz, “Seminary, Priesthood, and the Vatican’s Homosexual Dilemma,” 98). This is to misunderstand the meaning of “disordered” in the technical language of Catholic moral theology. Humans, as body-soul unities, are ordered intrinsically to certain ends as constitutive of human flourishing (whether or not we consciously desire these ends). When we experience desires or commit actions that contradict our intrinsic ordering, these desires or actions are called “disordered.” See also Christopher Wolfe’s helpful “Homosexuality and the Church.” For a representative defense of the moral goodness of homosexual acts in the context of stable same-sex relationships, see Salzman and Lawler, Sexual Ethics, chapters 2 and 5. For further discussion, see my chapter on chastity (and the sources cited therein) in my Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, and Tushnet, “O Tell Me the Truth About Love,” 26–31. From a Protestant perspective aligned with Tushnet’s, see Hill, Washed and Waiting. By contrast, for a rejection of the Church’s teaching on the grounds that the experience (understood in a particular way) of sexually active homosexual persons must be affirmed and celebrated as integral to their identity and well-being, see Gumbleton, “A Call to Listen.”

      78. Martin, Building a Bridge, 16. For a cognate discussion, see Alison, “Following the Still Small Voice.” O’Gorman writes, “Many of the women I have met during my lesbian and gay ministry are vulnerable because of the hostility they have experienced from our church and our culture. They are criticized or condemned because all too frequently others see them as engaging in deviant sexual activity. Heterosexuals have often been fixated on this—as though being gay is only about having sex. But it is much deeper than that. . . . [I]t is really all about identity. It is about who I am at my core, the center of my being. It is as deep as questions about who I am as a woman or a man.” (O’Gorman and Perkins, Living True, 59). I accept that homosexual orientation is often found at the “core” and “center,” but homosexual acts are not thereby mandated or justified, for reasons I discuss more fully in my book on temperance. For further explorations in “queer” theology, see Cornwall, Controversies in Queer Theology; Méndez-Montoya, “Eucharistic Imagination.”

      79. Arguably, even changing Scripture and Tradition would not solve the problem, which ultimately is rooted in our created sexual bodies that bestow unique privileges upon male-female couples. On this point, see Fastiggi, “Human Equality and Non-discrimination,” 9. See also Girgis, Anderson, and George, What Is Marriage?, 87: “Whatever the state says . . . no same-sex or group relationship will include organic bodily union, or find its inherent fulfillment in procreation, or require, quite apart from the partners’ personal preferences, what these two features demand: permanent and exclusive commitment.”

      80. Martin, Building a Bridge, 18. Later in his book, Martin notes that “there are many reasons why almost no gay clergy, and almost no gay and lesbian members of religious orders, are public about their sexuality” (Building a Bridge, 42). One reason that Martin does not name, however, is that talking about one’s sexuality is not something that people generally do unless they are seeking to act upon their sexual desires. People who have taken a vow of celibacy or who have received the sacrament of marriage do not need to go around talking publicly “about their sexuality” (Building a Bridge, 42.), unless perhaps their job involves concretely instructing others in the practice of chastity.

      81. David Cloutier pinpoints a fundamental element of the current situation: “The existence of sexual nature is dead; what we have left is sexual energy that we can direct in creative ways. What constitutes good sexual desire is its creativity. It has no inherent purpose other than exploration and intensification of emotions and bodily prowess” (Cloutier, Love, Reason, and God’s Story, 99). Cloutier is here responding to Grosz, “Refiguring Lesbian Desire,” 278.

      82. Guroian, The Orthodox Reality, 125. Guroian goes on to explain, “Marriage is a sacrament of love but not just any sort of love. This love union is founded and grounded in God’s will, in his creative act of making humankind as male and female so that, through their love for each other and their sexual union, they may be united ‘in one flesh’” (Guroian, The Orthodox Reality, 129). He notes that when marriage is seen to depend solely on mutual love and consent (with no other criteria), then it becomes formless. As he says, “it is easy to imagine that the sorts of changes in marriage law and tax codes that the supporters of same-sex marriage have won may eventually have to be extended to other same-sex households that are not homosexual. How can the state possibly discriminate—or even ask the questions needed to discriminate—between homosexual and heterosexual couples of the same sex that come to get licensed? How can the state differentiate one love from another? If marriage is no longer defined as strictly between a man and a woman, why shouldn’t widows or widowers or brothers or sisters who live together for mutual assistance and economic reasons be granted licenses for domestic partnerships with all the legal benefits and protections now accorded to married couples?” (Guroian, The Orthodox Reality, 130). See also the contention of Adriano Oliva, O.P. in his L’amicizia più grande that for Thomas Aquinas the essence of marriage does not include the sexual act. Numerous scholars have responded, showing that this claim (which is ludicrous on its face) rests upon profound misunderstandings. See for example Blankenhorn et al., “Aquinas and Homosexuality,” and Casanova and Serrano del Pozo, “Being and Operation of Mary’s Marriage.”

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