The church's Gordian knot.

Resolved: However provoked, no Christian will use the word "homophobia" or "patriarchy" in heated debate over sex. The current test case is the Vatican's "notification" to Jeannine Gramick, S.S.N.D., and Robert Nugent, S.D.S., that they are permanently barred from further pastoral work with homosexual persons. Their joint ministry of writing, teaching, and building bridges to gay Catholics has been judged to be insufficiently condemnatory of the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts.

Gramick and Nugent are found guilty of ambiguity for overemphasizing the church's positive teachings on homosexuality, that is, that the homosexual condition is not in itself sinful, that homosexuals must be accorded full civil rights, and that homosexuals possess human dignity as children of God and must be pastorally cared for. But, Rome declares, it is erroneous to mislead gays by neglecting the teaching that homosexuality is an objective disorder that predisposes a person to intrinsically evil acts. Homosexuals have a right and a need "to receive the gospel message in its purity and entirety."

This latest condemnation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) sets off a firecracker-like string of questions. Was the CDF's appraisal of the work of Gramick and Nugent fair? The investigation and negotiations dragged on for two decades and concluded when the CDF requested written statements of internal assent to the church's teaching on homosexuality. Gramick refused and Nugent's nuanced statement of assent was rejected as unacceptable. Was this request for internal assent, which goes beyond the requirement of obedient conformity to church teaching, a chilling effort to coerce conscience? Almost certainly, since as Thomas More (1478-1535) explained to his inquisitors, silence implies consent. No person should legally or morally be punished for his or her private thoughts, only for an action that breaks the law.

Of course, as More's friends and enemies knew, in his heart of hearts More did not approve of King Henry VIII's divorce and elevation to the headship of the English church. And I would bet my bottom dollar that in their heart of hearts Nugent and Gramick do not give internal assent to the whole of the church's current teachings on homosexuality. (I can't.) Despite their careful obedience, they are being punished for a private dissent of conscience. Who knows, they may even have had a procedurally adequate hearing, but the larger questions remain: First, do Catholics have the right in good conscience to dissent from teaching that is authoritatively taught but not infallibly defined? And second, is the CDF's current teaching on homosexuality God's pure and entire gospel truth?

Clearly the answer to the first question is yes and hardly needs to be reargued with references to the hierarchy of truths and the sacredness of conscience. The cutting edge in the present fight is the challenge presented by question number two to the validity of the Vatican's teaching. I am not alone in finding the CDF's current teaching on sexuality and homosexuality to be rationally unconvincing, morally unsound, and theologically inadequate-but not, note well, because of its homophobia or display of patriarchy.

No, the church's teaching on homosexuality, sexuality, and gender is a tightly wrapped package that many intelligent, charitable, and holy men and women believe to be true. Why? First, because they think sexuality is ordered to biological procreation, and this ordering cannot be dispensed with to serve any other human good, such as unity or love. Second, taking biological procreation as the critical standard, men and women are believed to be differentiated in gender and to possess different and complementary vocations in the family and in the church. From the first two premises comes the third. Homosexuality is a fundamental defect because it is not ordered to biological procreation, and same-sex unions cannot be complementary in gender. Homosexual acts are intrinsically evil because they are not procreative and do not take place within marriage. Obviously, these teachings about sex and human nature can be seen as interdependent.

If you say that gender differences are not essentially complementary or determinative of vocations, you end up ordaining women and weakening the arguments against same-sex unions. A concession that not every sexual act need be open to procreation as long as it is expressing love in a committed heterosexual marriage leads to the approval of contraception and opens the way to nonprocreative homosexual unions. To accept homosexuality as soley a sexual variation and not a fundamental defect will weaken the assertion that in nature all sexuality must be ordered to procreation. If loving, committed same-sex unions can be moral, what happens to the gender complementarity that sustains the ban on ordaining women? And so it goes, circling round like the blind ox driving the gristmill.

Two final ironies: Homosexuals are told that they must abide by the same sexual morality as heterosexuals. Well and good. A universal principle of equal moral responsibility for all validates the human being's freedom to direct sexual behavior in accord with moral standards. But heterosexual individuals can freely enter into marriage with a beloved partner and express their love sexually, whether or not procreation is possible. Homosexuals are told that since the only sexual intimacy morally permitted is in marriage, and marriage is impossible for them, they have to be permanently chaste. The homosexual orientation is viewed by the church as involuntary and not sinful, nor is it seen as a defining characteristic of the whole person; but if it is defined as a defect, it forces persons to endure lifelong deprivations that heterosexuals do not face.

In explanations of the church's position, it's often admitted that suffering is being imposed upon homosexuals, a suffering that is justified as morally necessary to follow God's will and to preserve the goods of traditional marriage. But some defenders of the faith go on to claim that since gay persons can pursue friendships, extended family bonds, and charity, what's the problem? This argument denies the reality that experiencing erotic love and sexual joy in committed unions of mutual self-giving is uniquely human and a gift from God.

These current ambiguities, conflicts, and lack of reception of the church's teaching on sexuality signal a crisis in the development of doctrine. More moral, theological, and scientific argument is needed to correct the rigid overvaluation of procreation and gender differences, and the undervaluation of erotic joy. While it may be small comfort to Christians like Jeannine Gramick and Robert Nugent who are being punished for doing good, a new uniquely personal understanding of sexuality is emerging. Of course, pecking this particular ugly duckling out of its hard shell isn't going to be easy; but when the chicken yard is left behind, the swan is going to fly.