It is “impossible” for God to “bless sin”. This is the latest utterance from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on same-sex marriage.
French philosopher Michel Foucault said: “People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does.”
I have seen first hand, working clinically with teenagers, what a statement like the one the CDF made last week does to the developing mind of a young member of the LGBTQ community. It’s where the terrible seeds of internalised homophobia take root.
Over the years, I have had many conversations with teenagers labouring with their identity and sexual orientation. What I often heard in those conversations was the devastating impact heteronormativity has on a young mind.
The sheer isolation, the sense of nowhere to turn, the sense of society not tolerating them or difference has destroyed far too many of our children and adults over the years.
Thankfully, moments such as the marriage equality referendum in 2015, with myriad rainbow flags triumphantly flying over Government buildings, the collective national celebration of Pride week, and the representation of members of the LGBTQ community on our TV screens and in our school books have signalled, in recent times, just how much this little island has grown up.
Since 2015, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the reasons why teenagers seek out therapy. Identity and sexuality are no longer the main reasons teenagers access my clinic. But we should ask, what has caused this shift?
I believe it’s in direct response to societies changing progressive attitude towards sexuality.
The CDF’s tone-deaf statement, supported by the pope, has the potential to undo all of that good.
I often think about Philip Larkin’s poem
when I think about my own relationship with God and the Church.I have visited many churches in my life. I am always searching for something, not quite sure what it is. Perhaps I have a ‘hunger’ in myself ‘to be more serious’. However, the silence and sense of reverence I feel when I step inside, head bowed, always surprises me. I like tradition, I guess, yet my recalcitrant teenage self is also very present in those moments of quiet reverence.
It is hard to grow up in Ireland and not have a complicated, paradoxical relationship with the Church. It is something I have struggled with in relation to my own children. Should I bring them to Mass or not? I have over the years, but always find myself saying the same thing as I leave, if the message was positive, I’d return.
And labelling same-sex union as ‘sin’, when the majority of our schools are run by Catholic orders, has the potential to perpetuate the old anachronistic dictum that sexuality is a choice and that those in same-sex marriages are choosing to live in ‘sin’.
Why is it so difficult for the Church to accept that sexuality isn’t a choice? Perhaps they would have to ask themselves, why would an omnipotent and omniscient being create someone they fundamentally didn’t approve of? Maybe God loves us all — gay, straight, bi, queer — irrespective of sexual orientation.
Maybe God doesn’t see sexuality. Maybe that’s just a human construct. And maybe, just maybe, the Church should finally stop labelling its followers on the grounds of who they love.
To love someone is a special thing and to make someone feel shame or guilt for that love is the real sin.
If a business fails to modernise, it is annihilated by the competition. The dwindling numbers of priests and parishioners speaks to the Church’s refusal to modernise. People have moved on, they refuse to be lectured by an institution that refuses to include them.
The generation that is coming will not be spoken to by the Church like previous generations. This generation no longer accepts not being accepted and, if the Church doesn’t see this, it is in more trouble than it realises.
If the Church could move out of its own way and modernise — and accept us all for who we are in all our complexity and beauty — and celebrate difference, perhaps it would see a resurgence in its importance.
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