Galileo and gays

"A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable."

I am not sure how these two groups may be distinguished from each other. The latter group are to be treated with understanding and sustained in hope but they must remain chaste even though they find themselves incapable of enduring a single life. Homosexual acts are regarded as "intrinsically disordered".

They are so because they are condemned by Scripture and because "according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality." That is, they lack an end in the begetting of children.

The mainstay of this conclusion is the same as for the conclusion that contraception is disallowed in Humanae Vitae (1968) that such acts are contrary to the natural law written in the very being of humanity. The purpose of sexual acts is to produce children: any activity that prevents this is a subversion of the purpose of sex and hence a sin against the creator of the natural order.

A simple definition of natural law is proved by Curran in his The Development of Moral Theology: "by using God given reason and reflecting on what God has made, the rational creature can determine what is the plan of God." Nature demonstrates a purpose. If the purpose of sexual acts is procreation then anything that acts as a barrier to that is contrary to the plan of God and hence sin. Contraception, homosexual acts and masturbation fall within this category.

Natural law theory relies on a particular understanding of what it means for God to create. It assumes that God has actually made the universe according to His plan. However, the figure of Charles Darwin stands in the way of this as well as our discovery of deep time and space that reduces the earth and human history to insignificance.

As I have noted before, this does not do justice to the biblical understanding of creation. God does not create a universe, He creates a nation Israel, he creates a new creation in the baptized person, He creates a new people, the Church. This He does through his two hands, the Word and the Spirit.

Thus any idea that we can read the plan of God from nature is nonsense. Nature is morally neutral and chaotic; there is no plan to it. The only order in the world is the order of the Word of God. Christ is that order incarnate. Rather than read nature the Church should be reading/hearing the Word made flesh.

The application of natural law theory to sexual ethics has been a disaster.

Married Catholics all over the world have refused the teaching on contraception because they find a need to limit the size of families for reasons of economy and the health of the wife. In a crowded household and limited resources the fear of conception casts a pall over the intimate relationships between man and wife.

The traditional position would condemn gays to lives unenlightened by intimate emotional and sexual relationships, the very lives that the Church celebrates as the ultimate flowering of humanity. Out of a realization of the truth of the science about same sex attraction and our of a concern for those involved, it seems onlyjust that these relationships should be recognised by the Church as one path to the fulfilment of the promise of intimate relationships.

Pope Francis may be looking for a more pastoral way but his path is blocked by the iron logic of natural law ethics.