Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

‍You Are Not Alone

The importance of a significant other in our lives is brought home by the description of the creation of Eve from the side of Adam from our first reading. We can be in danger of seeing this description through the prism of our own contemporary prejudices and preoccupations if we read into it some kind of statement about male superiority and female subservience.  This is almost certainly not a perspective that would be in the mind of the ancient author of the text.  The point is much more to do with emphasising the intimacy and closeness of that relationship with our significant other: they are one being, one flesh with us, we are ‘joined at the hip’, as it were, so deep is our unity one with the other so that ‘the two become one flesh’.  God has made us to be completed and fulfilled by another person, a significant other.

But does that significant other have to be a person of the opposite gender as the Genesis reading implies? This touches into a ‘hot button’ contemporary debate: what about love between two people of the same gender? How does the Church regard that? Genuine love between two people can never be bad because all love finds its root and meaning in God, who is love.  “To love another person is to see the face of God”, wrote Victor Hugo. All love is a participation in the living and active presence of God’s Spirit in the lives of human beings.  

In 1995 Cardinal Hume spoke eloquently on this very subject. He said:

Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected…When two persons love, they experience in a limited manner in this world what will be their unending delight when one with God in the next…To love another, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to have entered the area of the richest human experience^[1].

Of course, this must be understood in the context of the Church’s teaching. The Church does not accept the moral equivalence of heterosexual marriage and homosexual relationships. The intimate relations between people, whether of the same or different sex, has to be governed by God's laws. The “experience of love is spoiled”, said the Cardinal, whether it is in marriage or in friendship, when we do not think and act as God wills us to act. Nevertheless, nothing in the Church's teaching can be said to support or sanction, even implicitly, the victimisation of homosexual men and women. Furthermore, 'homophobia' should have no place among Catholics.

In a further clarification, the Cardinal issued a document two years later in which he expanded his teaching. He wrote:

The sexual expression of love is intended by God’s plan of creation to find its place exclusively within marriage between a man and a woman, and that this expression of love must be open to the possible transmission of new life. This, of course, is a great challenge. It means that many types of sexual activity, including same-sex sexual activity, are not consistent with the teaching of the Church. No individual, bishop, priest or lay person is in a position to change this teaching of the Church which we hold to be God-given.

Yet…sexual orientation does not dictate the whole personality and character of an individual. Furthermore, a person’s sexual orientation can be unclear, even complex. Also, it may vary over the years. Most importantly, an orientation is not a moral failing^[2].

So, in summary, while sexual activity between people of the same sex may not conform to the traditional teaching of the Church, genuine love between them cannot be wrong, for “God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him” (1 John 4:16). One’s sexual orientation is not a moral failing but intrinsic to one’s whole personality and character and is capable of inspiring virtuous acts of the highest moral quality. It is never right to ostracise, victimise or harbour animosity or hatred towards anyone on account of their sexual orientation.

I am aware that the Gospel also contains some difficult teaching about divorce, but I think that’s enough controversy for today!

^[1]Cardinal Basil Hume, “Note on the Teaching of the Catholic Church Concerning Homosexual People”, 1995.

^[2]Cardinal Basil Hume, “A note on the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning homosexuality”, April 1997.

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Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

CCC 1602-1617, 1643-1651, 2331-2336: conjugal fidelity
CCC 2331-2336: divorce
CCC 1832: fidelity, a fruit of Spirit
CCC 2044, 2147, 2156, 2223, 2787: the fidelity of the baptized

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