VIEW FROM PAPAL BALCONY, SHORTSIGHTED ON "CREATED ORDER"
He says his view of of things (nature) is not anchored in the past, but few today believe that homosexuality is a choice of the kind he posits, one that impels individuals against their nature or on to ruin.
If anything, his comments make sense for people who are heterosexual, who "experiment" with homosexuality or otherwise, who make sexual choices or errands against the Church's apprehended order of nature and right living.
And, in fact, that interpretation isn't too far from a plain reading of some of the key passages of scripture, often taken to be about homosexuals, but which may, in fact, be written for heterosexuals. Homosexuals qua homosexuals aren't really acting against their nature, are they, at least not in the way that heterosexuals would be if they started 'having boys/girls on the side' or for recreation, one way or the other. (I'm just suggesting that's one sound interpretation of how the text is written, not anything more broad.)
The chief irony may be, however, the Church's own encyclical on homosexuality doesn't quite explain things exactly in the Christmas-message's understandably short terms. For the small category of people who they recognize truly feel their orientation to be homosexual, the Church's analysis is very close to saying that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, so that the few must ... remain out of sight (celibate), rather than expect 'the Order'/Magisterium to acknowledge publicly their true nature.
Why the Church elders feel so ardently that they cannot use natural law to teach that homosexuality is right for homosexuals and heterosexuality is right for heterosexuals, without an abridgment of the "message of creation", is beyond me. It hardly seems that the rest of what they would like to follow from their binary worldview would be unsupportable, because some assumption was violated. If anything, they would have a deeper and richer philosophy, overall.
I suspect that centuries of easy prejudice have created an inability to form anything more than the bluntest of theological distinctions for pedagogical reasons, perhaps, which is hardly a service to rescuing the "Scripture of Tradition" from defacement or forestalling a sin, possibly, against the Holy Spirit.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Pope Turns Tinny Ear to Hymn of Creation
