…Then you have the quandary of gay Catholics like
Andrew Sullivan. If he were a Protestant in the U.S., the future conservative
drift of Christianity literally wouldn’t be a problem. We Protestants — and
that may be the one and only time I use that particular phrase — are
schismatics to our very bones. Sullivan would have no difficulty finding a niche
or a cubby hole in the myriad of mutations that continue to spew forth from the
revolution that Luther and Calvin started and would no doubt be aghast at. You
want to handle snakes? No problem. Bark for Jesus? Hey, make a joyful noise unto
the Lord. You swing both ways? Well, there is this really happening church
downtown…
However, Sullivan doesn’t want to be a Protestant. The
fact that Catholicism is the religion of his birth plays a part in this but he
is not, I think, merely a genetic Catholic. Sullivan believes — and, if I have
read him correctly, believes with some intensity — that his church is the
church — the one that Jesus started, complete with sacraments, smells and
bells, holy orders, and with a Scripture and Tradition that, in the Catechism’s
words, form “a single deposit of faith.”
But he’s also gay and therein lies a huge problem. His
church has said that this constitutes a “disorder” and is supported in this by
Scripture and by thousands of years of unbending Tradition. Rome regards gay sex
as a sin and a life ordered around such activity as something approaching a sin
against the Holy Ghost — that is, while the church might not take the trouble
to actually excommunicate gays, there is an understanding that they are living
in something approaching mortal sin. In the dust-up over the priest sex abuse
cover- ups, it is instructive to note that the response of many conservative
Catholics, including several in the Vatican, has been to say that homosexuals
shouldn’t be allowed to take holy orders. Full
article
