By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
There were many fears floating around the Internet about what would be contained in the final report of the Synod on the Family. It does not look as if they became a reality. The most serious criticism seems to be that the “progressives” at the synod were able to insert language that left crucial issues open to future changes. Peggy Moen in the November 5 issue of The Wanderer cited Raymond Cardinal Burke who spoke of a “lack of clarity” in the document, especially on the question of Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
This is, of course, a crucial matter. A lack of clarity provides an opening for liberal forces in the Church to push at the parish and diocesan level for the changes they favor. Think back to how liberals were able to use the “spirit of Vatican II” to make Communion in the hand and Mass in the vernacular standard practices, even though Vatican II called for no such thing.
I can envision a scenario where the progressives will maneuver in a similar way in the years after the Synod on the Family to open the door for a loosening of the prohibition against divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion. All it would take would be a broadening of the grounds for annulments, as they say, “on a case by case basis.” Indeed, that appears to have been happening even before the synod took place. The number of annulments granted has been increasing dramatically over the past decade.
But I have not been able to picture a similar scenario on homosexuality — until recently. I was convinced there was no comparable wriggle room regarding homosexual behavior, no camel’s nose under the tent similar to the idea that an individual may have been too immature to understand the obligations involved in his or her Catholic marriage vows — which is the yardstick diocesan authorities have been using to grant annulments. Now I am not so sure.
Many will argue that Church officials have been using the immaturity yardstick too freely in recent years. That may be the case. Or not. Only those involved in evaluating the evidence can make that judgment. But even if poor judgment is being used these days in determining when an annulment is appropriate, we are talking about poor judgment. Not a change in Church doctrine. Revising the Church’s teaching on homosexual activity would require a change in doctrine. Either the sexual act is intrinsically linked to love and the creation of new life, or it is not.
What could the progressives be looking for? The Church proclaiming publicly, “Oops, we were wrong on this one. Sorry.” Well, maybe that is their goal. And maybe they will not need any wriggle room to push forward.
Why do I say that? Because of a column entitled “Making Gay Okay at the Vatican Synod” by Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Dr. Anne Hendershott. I came across it on the October 26 edition of the Huffington Post. Google it. It would be worth your while.
Hendershott begins by observing that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is clear. She cites section 2357-2539 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which describes same-sex attraction as “disordered.” But Hendershott notes that similar phrasing was once used by the American Psychiatric Association. The APA in 1953 referred to homosexual behavior as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Yet by 1987 all references to homosexuality as “disordered” disappeared completely from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the APA.
How was the change effected? Hendershott calls our attention to a 2002 interview on Chicago Public Radio with Alix Spiegel, the grandson of Dr. John P. Spiegel, the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association in 1973. Alix Spiegel, Hendershott tells us, recalled that when he was growing up in the 1970s, his grandfather was viewed heroically as “the man who singlehandedly changed the DSM” regarding homosexuality “because he was a big-hearted visionary, unfettered by prejudice.”
What the world did not know, according to his grandson, was that John Spiegel “had gay lovers through his life, and even told his wife-to-be that he was homosexual two weeks before their wedding.”
John Spiegel was not a solitary figure in the homosexual cause. Writes Hendershott, “While the American Psychiatric Association was a very conservative organization in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, there were a number of other gay psychiatrists. So many, in fact that informally they began to publicly question traditional psychiatric ideas about homosexuality.”
They worked within the APA to discredit psychiatrists who treated homosexuality as a physical or psychological disorder. The homosexual psychiatrists promoted the view that “it was no longer the homosexual’s ‘fault’ that he was compelled to engage in same-sex behavior,” and lobbied for the appointment of psychiatrists who agreed with them to positions of influence in the APA, “formerly closeted psychiatrists” who then worked from inside the APA to create a new consensus. The result? By the “late 1960s the sociology surrounding homosexuality…swept up” the psychiatric profession.
Hendershott’s point must be stressed. This change in the APA’s position was effected not by any “scientific breakthrough on the pathology or lack of pathology surrounding homosexuality,” but by “raw pressure politics explainable sociologically. The gay liberation movement had won the day. Sociological explanations were offered as the reason for any impairment or distress that gay men or lesbian women were experiencing — that it was not the result of pathology, but rather the result of social forces such as stigma and social repression.”
Hendershott sees the same process now at work in the Church, arguing that it is “driving the debate on the goodness of homosexual acts.” She is convinced that the lesson of the success of homosexuals in the APA has convinced homosexual activists in positions of influence in the Church that they can achieve similar results if they are patient; that while the Church’s teachings “may not change this year,” time is on their side.
They know that they “have advocates for change” among the hierarchy and the theologians, and a “global coalition…of gay advocacy groups like Dignity USA, and New Ways Ministry — both of which have lobbied the Church to recognize same-sex marriage as a sacrament — as has the Westminster Pastoral Council, the Polish gay rights group Wiara ITecza, the Italian group Nuova Proposta, and the Chilean group Drachma.”
Beyond these groups there is the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics funded by George Soros, as well as the Arcus Foundation financed by homosexual billionaire Jon Stryker, which is working, in the organization’s words, to “change the conversation” on Catholic teaching on homosexuality, in order to create a “counter-narrative to traditional values.”
Is it possible that these forces in the Church will be able to undermine Catholic teaching on homosexuality in the same manner that homosexual activists in the American Psychiatric Association were able to change the psychiatric profession’s view on homosexual behavior?
Will they be able, in Hendershott’s words, “to draw upon sociology rather than theology to make their claims,” thereby making an end run around the theological basis of the Church’s current teaching on homosexuality? If this strategy is put into play, it won’t matter if the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is unambiguous and clearly stated. It will come under attack by peer pressure and the “spirit of the times.” It is what happened at the APA.
Will the strategy work? We have Jesus’ promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church that He founded. The opinion of the moment among sociologists and trendy leftists in Hollywood and the media will not prevail either. But Jesus did not guarantee that there will be no trying times along the way. It looks as if we are in for some.
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