Post-Obergefell.

This morning you get unformed notes, because I have stuff to do and lately a bad habit of never sitting down at all to write anything because I don't have it all put together in my head.

1. I'm aware that there's a substantial bloc of thoughtful Catholics who would peg this as the wrong attitude, and I fully admit that they might be right, but my primary feeling towards the issue of SSM on the national level has been, for years, for better or worse: Look people, this is going to happen. Might as well learn to deal with it now. And by "deal with it," by the way, I don't mean "accept SSM in all its okayness," but "resume the work of loving our neighbor, and speaking the truth about the human condition with word and action, in a society where we are a distinct religious minority with respect to this issue."

2. Also, I can't help but wonder if the Right as a whole and Catholics as a group had entertained the idea of civil unions a long time ago, which were apparently inconceivable back in the day but all of a sudden seemed like a much more reasonable idea as soon as SSM looked like it had a shot of gaining real support, we would already have learned quite a bit about living as said religious minority.

3. Tl;dr: I believe that the American public's shared civic understanding of the purpose and meaning of marriage diverged from the sacramental understanding two or three generations ago. The main difference is that before, it was possible for Christians to pretend otherwise.

Corollary to (1) and (2) and (3): I am aware that this attitude made me significantly less-than-fervent in the efforts to forestall acceptance. I am aware that I promoted a pragmatism that left no room for hope. I think I made the minimum effort that a voting, Mass-going Catholic should make, no more. Failure of hope? Probably. Premature pragmatism? Yes. Rooted, at least partly, in a desire to be seen as a Voice of Reason by everybody? Yes. I have taken it to confession, this very morning, that I closed my mind to more defense-minded, hope-minded people and arguments, that I spoke reasonably (I like to think) as a means to the end of seeming reasonable. Lord have mercy on me, on us all.

4. Yet, here we are, and I have renounced my imperfections in the advocacy of pragmatism, but I don't actually reject the pragmatism itself. Consequently, my emotional reaction to the outcome of Obergefell is, for better or worse: Now that we've gotten that over with, we can get on with the real work. And by "real work" I mean the stuff that the Christian Church is good at, which is many things, but which is emphatically not trusting in governments to maintain the culture to our specifications.

5. In other words, we are back to personal conversion and spreading the Good News, which sounds as if it is increasingly ironically named the Good News, but which in fact is not ironic at all, which means that we are at a bit of a linguistic disadvantage here in the affluent West. We have to be, I don't know, speakers of a kind of creole. And really, has it ever made sense to try to convince the dominant culture to conform to Christian standards of behavior while declining to preach, first, Christ crucified?

Corollary to (5): I believe we are now able to admit that we are in the position of the early Church in places like Rome or maybe the missionary church in places like the British Isles. We are a religious minority that has one understanding of the purpose and meaning of marriage (of human nature, really), living in a civic society that holds an understanding that is mutually exclusive with ours. We hope to worship without fear, and also we hope to make of all disciples. We have an advantage of being less miniscule in number; but we also have a new disadvantage, namely, that almost everyone around us has heard quite enough, thank you, of an extremely garbled version of our message.

6. Speaking of garbling the message. Probably because of what has been going on in my home archdiocese, I am feeling a bit like the institutional Church is reaping what many of her priests and bishops have sown for fifty-odd years. Let me put my attitude in context, again in full disclosure: I'm disgusted with our archdiocesan leadership. Our credibility as an institution has been squandered on coverups, and promises that we have now all put it behind us, and then more coverups. The archdiocesan child protection policy is apparently little more than what in a different context we call "security theater." It would indeed be good for us all to sacrifice some convenience to secure real protection of vulnerable people. Sadly, here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, I have a strong impression that while ordinary folks are waiting barefoot in a long line to be frisked, the VIPs are letting each other past the line through the side door. Who will listen to us now on issues of marriage and the family? Whose fault is that?

7. I may not have had resolve to fight before, but (because, I guess, we are now in the place that I wanted to jump ahead to) I have a measure of resolve to fight today. The culture war is sure to continue. I expect a long string of First Amendment lawsuits, some of which will have legal merit and some of which will not, some of which will win and some of which will not, and time will tell whether First Amendment protections of dissenting opinions will remain robust. We will each of us, as always, have a duty to defend our own family, and to defend the truth.

8. And yet I can't stand with the (understandable) impulse to self-defense. We are stuck with many inconvenient words of Jesus that appear, oddly enough, to predict that neighbors will say nasty things about his disciples, that family members will reject them, that they will be thrown in jail, etc. Oddly enough again, these words appear to endorse accepting this situation. As if it were a blessing or something. This is obviously folly. Someone's folly, anyway.

9. I saw a lot of celebration yesterday, and that is something I understand. People who feel victorious celebrate; it is a natural, basically good impulse. I also saw a lot of spitefully gleeful rhetoric. This is not a basically good impulse. It saddens me. There is a lot of work to be done in engaging hearts and minds.

10. There is conversion to be called for, too, among people who hold to the sacramental understanding of marriage, because -- face it -- from time to time the dominant rhetoric betrays an outright false understanding of the dignity of all human persons. End derogatory slurs now. End ridicule now. End code words now. Shut it down. Clean up our own house. There is a lot of work to be done engaging hearts and minds.

11. We are supposed to act in ways that so that we are confident no one can misinterpret our actions as approving of sin. Obviously we cannot totally control how another person will perceive our acts, but we are supposed to refrain from acts that give the impression of endorsing falsehoods. We should also be trying to refrain from acts that give the impression of rejecting persons. We might be in a better position today if we had worried as much about giving the impression that we do not love people if they are the wrong sort of people. For there more ways than one in which we can give an impression of endorsing falsehoods about the nature of the human person.

12. So, #LoveWins was the hashtag of the day yesterday. This is two-thousand-year-old news. May I suggest #LoveHasAlreadyWon? Be not afraid, folks.

 

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Comments

[Amber]

I agree wholeheartedly - I particularly like point #4.

[Fran Rossi Szpylczyn]

Excellent post. I am Catholic, work for the church in a parish, and in other ways from freelance to lay ministry. I understand the teaching and accept it, but I would be lying if I did not say I struggle. If someone wants to call the canon law police on me (not you, anyone who might read this), then please follow your conscience.

That said, I do like what you said in #4, and I think hit on the loss of moral authority, the profound loss of moral authority (and not just in MN) in #6.