Vatican needs to end stereotypes - Back Burner

A pushover in a bullyboy's tortured imagination. Such is the Vatican's July 31st statement about homosexual persons.

Sadly, these people never appear, except as grotesque stereotypes created out of baseless slurs, pseudo-science and irrational caricatures, which is to say, created out of nothing. They become the victims of a setup which tells more about the Vatican's ill-repressed fears than of its hapless target.

Where indeed are the real, living flesh and blood and spirit gays and lesbians who have found the blessing of healing and wholeness in the communion of each other's embrace? Where are those who have struggled and failed to find a life in the context of a religion that has imperiously judged them as "intrinsically disordered" and cast them into a pit where there is no solace, no escape for the zest of their lives?

Where are the gay and lesbian parents who have laboured against prejudicial odds not faced by their heterosexual counterparts to raise their children, natural or adopted, in a family of nurturing love? Many of us know such persons and families and admire them. We are their friends and will not have them pilloried as non-persons swept under the mg of ecclesiastical good housekeeping.

We will reject the loathsome Vatican accusation that gay-lesbian parents would "actually be doing violence" to their own children.

Where should these children be sent? Perhaps to some orphanage run by the church where their physical and spiritual lives will be protected from violent abuse?

The Vatican pronounces its judgment as a reality that "experience has shown." Yet we are given no probative sources, no substantiation from studies of such families. Indeed, Patrick O'Neill, president of the Canadian Psychological Association states: "There is no basis in scientific literature for this perception."

Hence the Vatican's fiat is utterly without accountability and fits the Latin maxim "quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur," which roughly translates as "put up or shut up."

The unsupported assertion that "there are good reasons for holding that such (homosexual) unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase" just will not pass muster as credible and would shame a high school student paper.

Why has the Vatican failed to heed the guidance of the future Pope John Paul II who taught in his book, The Acting Person, that "conflicts ... come about where communication, has broken down; human beings God intended destiny is for dialogue?"

And again: "Human affairs must be dealt with humanely, not by violence. Tensions, rivals and conflicts must be settled by reasonable negotiations and not by force," resulting in "a climate of dialogue and free discussion."

The Vatican's latest declaration has violated these standards. In particular, Catholic politicians and lawgivers are treated, not like responsible members of the church but like lackeys under the lash of their know-it-all betters, unquestionable ventriloquists for God supreme all this despite the pope's 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Performing Work), where he laid down the basic principles, which apply as well to the issue of homosexual unions. He writes: "Men and women are persons, that is to say subjective beings capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about themselves and with a tendency to self-realization ... They are conscious and free subjects.'

There are many serious and ethical, legal and social aspects of same-sex unions/marriages to be discussed and debated. But unless gay/lesbian men and women are fully recognized and involved without prejudice as equal partners in the conversation. There will be no equitable solution forthcoming.

The Vatican has erred, injuring the process by excluding those primarily concerned. Is there any word of recognition, or empathy, of praise indeed for these people for whom the Vatican has previously professed that men and women of homosexual orientation "must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." Not a word.

We decry the obvious contradiction speaking out of both sides of the mouth. Is the Vatican listening?

James Roberts is a priest in the Vancouver diocese

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