Last week I was saddened to receive a letter from a parishioner who stated that their family was formally leaving the parish because “…I cannot in good conscious remain a member of a community that makes a big deal about religious freedom as a thinly-veiled protest of same-sex marriage.”
I was sad not only because of the theological misunderstanding on which the writer’s letter was based, but also because of a confused understanding on the Fortnight for Freedom. First, the writer presupposes that to disagree with someone’s opinion makes one a “bigot.” This is a misguided form of thinking that permeates much of our cultural debates in our nation today. If you don’t agree with me, you hate me?! Whatever happened to agreeing to disagree? Are we so full of anger that we now see disagreement as intolerance or worse? If true, that saddens me.
However, the primary issue I take with this writer’s thinking comes from misinformation about our recently held Fortnight for Freedom (June 27) prayer service. This service was intended as part of an ongoing and annual event in which we have been participating for four years with other (arch) Dioceses around our country. The intent of the prayer service was to honor, and offer our gratitude, for the religious freedoms that our Founding Fathers enshrined in our Constitution’s first amendment, and to give thanks to the men and women of our Armed Services who have for centuries defended those precious religious freedoms.
Fact: this was our fourth annual Fortnight for Freedom in our parish and was not initiated due to the recent Supreme Court decision on marriage but was planned well in advance of any ruling.
Fact: the Catholic Church does not hate gay people (for evidence please see Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Parents of Gay Children and the USCCB’s pastoral letter entitled “Always Our
Children” (1997 et al, as well as the Catholic Church’s well known and preached teachings of Jesus Christ). The Church may—and does—disagree with the idea that marriage is constituted solely by “the presence of love” and therefore any relationship comprised of “any love” is a “marriage.” Marriage is a religious institution created by God which has at its heart the complimentary nature of the male and female human person (complimentary in physicality, in spirituality, and emotionally) and with the intended understanding of the procreation of the race—for the survival of God’s creation, which illustrates the fullness of the image and likeness of God—when husband and wife come together in the marital relationship (we see in the united and different and varying qualities of a husband and wife—all that God is—the fullness and perfection of His creation, both male and female [Genesis]).
To hold to the ill-formed idea that marriage is simply a lifestyle choice and is created solely by “human love” leads some to see that marriage could exist not just “between one man and one woman for the procreation of the race” but also for two men, two women, or three men and one woman or four women and one man, as well as between, God forbid, any other combination of humans where “love” is claimed to exist, even extending marriage to relationships still viewed as taboo, such as a forty-year old man and a sixteen-year old girl. I will assume that most rational human beings will “disagree” with the latter example, and then what? Are we just “bigots”?