Article By Dr. Brown, Diocese Seminarian Intake Psychologist

Saturday, November 18, 2000

Catholic priest who supports gays is owed an apology from his critics

By David J. Brown

There they go again, Jim Foster and Gary Morella, sounding more like Dr. Laura, Pat Buchanan or Gary Bauer than the "Christian" Lord or church they profess to serve. I refer to their offensive attack in the CDT (Oct. 11) on the Rev. Joseph Hlubik. Hlubik, a good and decent man and an honorable priest, courageously and appropriately continues to affirm his and his church's support for the respect, dignity, caring and valuing to be rendered to gays and lesbians, both from an authentic "Christian" ethic as well as from civil decency. It's unconscionable how Foster and Morella first distort then meanly attack Hlubik, gays and lesbians, and the Penn State Catholic community. Trumpeting their "truth" and their self-styled mandate to sniff out sin and error, they call for condemnation of all who dissent from their monolithic mentality. Jesus had a word for these religiously self-righteous, those who spouted the Law and words of Scripture in judgment of others, and who thereby victimized the minds and hearts, souls and bodies of otherwise good and innocent people. He called them "Pharisees, whitened sepulchers filled with death." Beyond their attack, Foster and Morella seem to play fast and loose with the truth, carried away by their agenda and intense ideology. They exhibit the absence of a thoughtful or adequate grasp of moral theology, sound exegesis or biblical hermeneutics, or a contemporary conversance with solid behavioral science. Their so-called "natural law" explication for the condemnation of homosexuality is a prominent weak link. Do they forget so quickly that so many events - including slavery and the treatment of women as inferior - were justified by natural law? And of course, while calling homosexuality "unnatural," Morella and Foster are evidently ignorant of the fact that the greatest articulator of natural law theory, St. Thomas Aquinas, wrote long ago that homosexuality was natural for particular individuals (Summa IaII, Q. 31, article 7, and Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 3, Chapter 126). And while they quote the catechism, they omit that paragraph 2,358 of the original Latin version in fact states that "homosexuals do not choose their orientation," which, of course, asserts a nonvolitional ontological factor. The implications of this are profoundly problematic for natural law condemnation and judgment in moral theology. Foster oxymoronically declares that "authentic love demands true discrimination." That's like naming the new ballistic missiles "the Peacemakers." How many more Matthew Shepard incidents must we endure because people legitimize from their idiosyncratic reading of the Bible scapegoating and regarding as inferior a group as a subhuman threat to "normal and family values"? And how frightfully reminiscent of another era in this century when it became legitimate to discriminate against and marginalize another "deviant" group of people? Morella claims that "a homosexual orientation doesn't exist in the context of an innate and final condition per much contemporary research." There is indeed scientific evidence mounting that a homosexual orientation is not volitional and that its genesis is a determined condition and function of complex genetic, environmental and psychological factors. I gather that what he calls research comes out of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. The problem is that this small coterie of associates is not considered to be scientifically credible or current with their refried Freudian theories about arrested psychosexual development causing homosexuality. And their claims about so-called reparative therapy have been roundly dismissed by the respectable scientific community as without merit, and, in fact, misleading and dangerous. Foster's and Morella's claim about something they call "Christian anthropology" emerges as an absurd oxymoron, equally so with likening homosexuality to alcoholism. They would have us think that God is like Cinderella's stepmother, trying to force-fit everyone into a one-size shoe. Wiss portrayed it better when he exclaimed, "In my Father's house, there are many mansions." Foster and Morella can't seem to appreciate that the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality is quite complex, and determined by many considerations, including the church's own doctrine about the primacy of conscience and that of religious liberty propounded in Vatican II. Foster and Morella like to invoke Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, so let me quote him myself: "Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority." Nevertheless, the "Church" is not limited to or summed up in what one particular individual or agency of the Vatican says in a pastoral letter. Let's consider another recent one from Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who in joining the Jubilee 2000 spirit of atonement and amendment voiced by John Paul, wrote: "I ask pardon of our Catholic homosexual and lesbian members when and where the Church has been non-supportive of their struggles or falling into homophobia." A very different attitude than the compulsive condemnation of Foster and Morella. Perhaps they will eventually ask the pardon of the Rev. Joseph Hlubik. I, for one, appreciate his exemplary and sensitive service to the Catholic community. David J. Brown is a clinical psychologist based in State College