toward a more inclusive ministry

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 16, 2003

Mark Shea draws our attention to a deeply disingenuous article in which an Australian Jesuit laments that the door to ministry is often closed to gays -- a door he attempts to unlock from inside.

Those familiar with gay propagandist John Boswell's technique will recognize the moves. You start with the preposterous claim that Christian opposition to sodomy reflected an inherited Purity Code -- i.e., Israeli xenophobia bolstered by a yuck factor. To this historical falsehood you add an exegetical distortion, viz., that Jesus was a dewy-eyed poet of the sentimental Left, concerned for social justice and benignly indulgent toward all sins except those of patriarchal authority. Finally you paint homosexuality as a sublimely arbitrary and innocent matter of taste (like a taste for black currants) and gay Catholics as dutiful defenders of the Faith, puzzled and hurt that some are suspicious of their good will. From here on the article writes itself:

The exclusion of homosexuals from ministry, however, is not on the basis of behaviour, but on the basis of public relationships that suggest homosexual practice. Indeed, some candidates universally praised for their zeal, spiritual depth and theological solidity have been excluded from ministry because they were open about gay relationships.

Universally praised for zeal, spiritual depth and theological solidity? And those the gays who didn't make the cut? Then we're forced to the conclusion that the 400+ priests who have died from AIDS (in the U.S. alone) must have been IV drug users who couldn't afford the Clorox.

It would be a pity if the churches came to focus too narrowly on the areas covered by the purity code. Ultimately Christ’s way of life must commend itself by its attractiveness. In the Gospels, the most powerful threats to it are not rooted in sex but in greed, power and violence.

"If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out." An unpromising approach to commendation-by-attractiveness. Perhaps He who instituted Christ's way of life lacked the benefits of a Jesuit education.