Thread: Speaking the truth in love Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has done his bit for the gay marriage debate, by mailing 80,000 letters to parishioners.

I haven't seen the letters, but a newspaper report says the letter states that the church cannot ignore its responsibility "to speak the truth in love", and that "we all have a responsibility to follow that design" of sexuality given to humans by God.


Hmm.. excuse me? How is this loving? How is this even speaking the truth?

Because I can never understand, given that the church accepts that being homosexual is not a choice, that 'the truth' then becomes that the only sexuality given by God is heterosexuality. How can I have a responsibility to follow a design that I wasn't designed to follow?
 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I've now found a link to the text of the letter (pdf format).
 

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Posted by Latchkey Kid (# 12444) on :
 
Probably his way of trying to persuade people that he is still a nice guy.
 

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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
So what happens if homosexuals were given their design of sexuality by God also?
 

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Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
From the letter:

"Such a re-definition will undermine rather than support marriage"

"If we do that, we deny our humanity."

"Much is at stake for the common good in this debate"

"Our Australian society will flourish only if the true meaning of marriage is preserved"


None of that is true. If Australia allows gay Australians to marry, there is absolutely no reason to think that their society will therefore cease to flourish, that the common good will suffer, that straight Australians will cease to marry or divorce more readily, or that they will cease to think of themselves or others as human (for fuck's sake!).

The bishop is not speaking the truth. He is, at best, speaking propaganda in love. He can claim no scriptural mandate for that.


Is he speaking ‘in love'? Possibly, he can, without dishonesty, claim to be loving in the sense of willing the good of gay people. He probably does genuinely thing that violating Catholic sexual ethics is personally harmful to those who do it, and that it would be better for them if they did not. He probably also thinks that breaking a sworn commitment is a bad thing, best avoided. He therefore thinks that it would be best if gay people did not ‘marry', and put themselves in a position where both keeping or breaking the commitment would harm them.

But I doubt very much that love motivated that letter. A bishop whose consuming passion was the welfare of the gay people in his diocese would craft a very different letter to this one. A letter written from love (as opposed to one that is arguable consistent with love), would be full of compassion and sensitivity, acknowledging the very onerous burden that Catholic morality places on non-straights, offering support and affirmation, and gently and humbly advising against marriage. It would certainly not see gay marriage as something to be stopped at all costs, with threatened dire consequences for any society that enacts it.


The bishop is concerned about the threat to Catholic moral authority. That doesn't make him an utter villain - I'm sure that he does honestly think that Catholic moral authority is a good thing - but it's a very different motivation to that of love. Love would never make him accuse the egalitarians of threatening society, the common good, and the essence of humanity. It is wounded pride that leads to that sort of thing, not love.


"Speak the truth in love" is a hard saying for those who love, and fear to offend. It is obeyed by those who speak up for someone else's benefit, when they would rather stay silent. Is there any level of charity which could read that letter and be persuaded to believe that this bishop would really rather not have said anything, and that silence would have been the easiest course for him to take, but that the depths of his compassion would not let him take it? Certainly not a level of charity that I possess. I'll believe that he felt enough compassion to temper what he wanted to say in what he thought was moderate language, but that is not speaking the truth in love.
 

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
Canadian experience would indicate that he is wrong on fact, but that doesn't mean he can't express his (wrong) opinion. What that expression does to the reputation of his church is then out of his control.
 

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Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :
 
Shocking waste of trees. OliviaG
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
He's not speaking the truth and he's certainly not speaking in love.

I hope every recipient of this letter writes back to let him know just how deep his folly and lack of love is.



 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 

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Originally posted by Chorister:
So what happens if homosexuals were given their design of sexuality by God also?

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Obviously, this chap is expressing the religious truth as he sees it;

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It's propaganda.

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I think the secularisation has already happened.

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I suppose one might say that having accepted divorce, one might as well accept gay marriage. From a legal position, I would agree. But theologically, the RCC hasn't really accepted divorce, has it? As an institution, it's consistent with itself by disapproving of both of these changes, whereas some denominations have probably tried to tolerate one but remain unwilling as regards the other. This is inconsistent.

I don't think the RCC (clergy or laity) should demand that a secular society follow its theological dictates re gay marriage. That makes no sense. But I imagine that this letter, while making reference to decisions to be taken by the state, is really about focusing Catholic minds on the authority of their church. After all, the letter wasn't sent to everyone who might have a view on the matter, but only to Catholics. [/QB]

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Originally posted by Aelred of Rievaulx:
It's simple.
He's a cunt.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
I suspect that if called upon to justify this outrageous slur, he'd respond in measured terms about how we are only truly human when we live the life intended for us by our Creator, and that any sin which falls short of that perfection in a sense denies our full humanity. Which is, I suppose, just about enough to prevent the sentence being an out-and-out fib, but is ludicrously inadequate to make it appropriate to use such language against a historically persecuted minority in a political campaign directed against them. It is not any truer than gay sex denies humanity than it is that pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust do, so the use of this language of hostility against that specific sin is morally untrue, even if there is a pathetic justification for the words themselves. The words are not there to make a nuanced theological point - they are there as rhetoric to condemn.

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The language of something or other making us 'truly human' is one of my great hates with regard to the modern church. Our vicar, with all his liberal credentials, uses it a lot to back up various behaviours. I used to dislike it because it comes across as a bit sick-bucket sentimental, but now I see its implications as rather worse than that. 'Truly' is, in effect, being used as a synonym for 'fully' and if the Church is claiming that some behaviours make us truly/fully human it is by implication also making the statement that those people who are not displaying those favoured behaviours are not truly/fully human.

As far as I am concerned the only thing that makes us truly human is the fact that we are members of the species Homo sapiens. Within that there are no distinctions as to the degree that we are human. You would have hoped the history of the 20th century would have warned people off any idea of dividing the human race into those who are fully human and those who are not.

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What I think reason and charity require, in this case, is to assume in the bishop's favour, that he thinks that is cause is right, that he judges his means to be lawful, and that he is not conscious of having deliberately lied or sought to offend.

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Originally posted by Jahlove:

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Originally posted by Aelred of Rievaulx:
It's simple.
He's a cunt.

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Not so. He lacks depth and warmth.

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 

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Originally posted by orfeo:
[The Bishop is] not sending the letter to settle a theological argument within the RCC. He's sending it to mobilise the troops in the political, secular debate about amending the Marriage Act.

What you're 'imagining' the letter is doing has no basis in reality on the ground. What the letter is in fact doing is precisely what you've just said the church shouldn't do.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suppose the issue here is whether religious people in a secular society should express their views on legal matters that also have a bearing on their theological position. The problem is that, in people's mind, there is occasionally a connection between the two.

Some denominations completely withdraw from political participation, and their members don't even vote. They fully accept the division between their own beliefs and the aims and goals of secular power. With their history of political power and influence, it can't be easy for Catholics to take that line.

Still, according to that letter, the authorities are inviting all people, presumably including religious people, to make their views known on a website, so it's not as if Catholics are pushing their views onto a government that has absolutely no interest in them.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
if sexual liberation goes hand in hand with secularisation, then from the perspective of the RCC, it's probably better to stand against it, if possible. But if the church ever decides that this stance is hopeless then it'll probably become more accepting.

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Originally posted by Louise:
... Church says if you do X, then very bad things will happen.
People do X and bad things don't happen.
Church refuses to revisit claims on X despite evidence.
Sky continues not to fall when more people do X.
Therefore people conclude that church was wrong on X and frame laws accordingly.
'Behold!' says Church, 'How X leads to secularisation!'

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‘The contradiction’, Summerfield continues, ‘between this representation and the idea that the war had liberated women was resolved by the suggestion that, later in the post-war years, women would turn their backs on the domestic “cage” and demand the freedoms made available by the war.’ In this way, Summerfield has argued (with others) that there was a deferment to women’s liberation in the late 1940s and 1950s ― apparent in the fervency with which media circulated the traditional discourse on domestic ideology through all manners of outlets in the 1950s.
This deferment was critical to understanding the reaction of younger women, growing up in the 1950s and reaching their late teens and twenties in the 1960s. Whether directly or indirectly, there is a sense in which mothers thwarted one way or another in ambition in the 1940s and 1950s passed to their daughters a sense of the liberation they should now grab for themselves.

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The battlelines were drawn by the British Christian churches over the female body in the 1950s and 1960s, making sexual liberation of women the key issue... The Church of Scotland in 1970 identified the key to the sexual revolution and the alienation of the young from the churches: ‘It is the promiscuous girl who is the real problem here.’ The Church actually understood that the ‘moral turn’ was in female permissiveness, not in men’s, and that the churches were losing their central paradigm of Christian behaviour ― the respectable and sexually-abstinent single woman.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
if sexual liberation goes hand in hand with secularisation, then from the perspective of the RCC, it's probably better to stand against it, if possible.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Obviously, this chap is expressing the religious truth as he sees it; it's not an objective matter, since religion itself is hardly objective. Noone's is compelled to agree with him, and I suppose many Catholics don't. Some will already have left Catholicism behind due to issues like this.

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It was opposing sexual liberation which ended up undermining the churches authority and really caused the problem.

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Equally if you're going to hop from women's sexual liberation to gay liberation, then you can't just cite Callum Brown. If women taking the pill and getting out of the kitchen pulled the rug out from under a church still thinking in terms of a woman's duty to be the civilising 'angel in the house' of Victorian piety, then how does gay liberation have the same effect on a predominantly-heterosexual exodus?

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[T]he experience of a wider working world for women in WW1, led to advances in women's rights, but first comes the experience 'the Church is wrong on this' gained from working outside the home and seeing that the sky doesn't fall in.

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When you stake your authority as a teaching institution on something and it turns out to go wholly against the lived experience of the people you are trying to appeal to, it ends up convincing them that you are wrong. Hence you begin to lose your authority and start haemorrhaging membership.

In the case of female empowerment, expressed sexually and also in the workplace, the churches dragged their feet, which led to people finding experientially that they could do quite well without the churches, hence later reforms did not tempt large swathes of people back in.
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Sex just happens to be one of the areas where the churches have most consistently blundered and most consistently brazened it out, thus ending up accelerating the process by which differing experience can undermine belief, but the same process works in other areas, eg. the wider role of women, demonising other religious groups, and matters of science when churches back the wrong horse eg. on creationism or medicine.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
... I suspect that in any case, there's little that the mainstream historical churches can do to attract the large numbers of people who simply want to make their own moral decisions without the interference of institutions or religions. Becoming more tolerant will give the churches a more friendly image, but won't make them any more attractive as centres of moral guidance. And if they lose that role, what future is there for them? I suppose they can exist as a cultural remnant, guardians of a certain heritage. This is a role that requires very few actual believers, and it certainly doesn’t require bishops who write controversial letters, about gay marriage or anything else!

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Church isn't just a club with a particular set of rules, however; it's supposed to be a community. In addition, these days people are generally much less inclined to be "joiners". When they do, they are more likely to join a group that caters particularly to their interests, needs, age group, whatever. I also think the over-emphasis on conversions by some evangelical folk has overshadowed the on-going communal nature of Christianity. Come to the rally, say the Jesus prayer and you're set.

Church used to provide everything for a community from ice cream socials to counselling. Now people are more likely to go to a special event to meet people and to a support group for help. An analogy might be the period when US TV was dominated by the three networks, compared to today's 500-channels-plus-YouTube world.
 

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Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :
 
Oops. I'd actually decided NOT to post that, thinking it too tangential. Must have hit something by accident and missed the edit time. Sorry. OliviaG
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The interesting here is that you're depicting the church as intrinscally against progress. If that's how things are, then there's not much point in complaining about what the RCC might say or do about gay marriage or anything else: the RCC is inevitably behind the times, on a downward slope to extinction. Might as well let them get on with it, and the sooner the better.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
... New is bad, because if it's really a change then God Himself would surely have mentioned something about it.

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Svitlana

I suspect that in any case, there's little that the mainstream historical churches can do to attract the large numbers of people who simply want to make their own moral decisions without the interference of institutions or religions. Becoming more tolerant will give the churches a more friendly image, but won't make them any more attractive as centres of moral guidance.

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Originally posted by PD:
The fur usually begins to fly on the fuzzy edge between a legal arrangement conveying spousal benefits between individuals, and what characterizes marriage as the church has traditionally understood it. As a church historian I have to say that the history of Church marriage is more complicated than one might suppose, and that historically speaking an awful lot of people lived in non-canonical relationships. It was only with the various Marriage Acts of the eighteenth century, the bringing together of marriage and romantic love, and various moral crusades that the modern definition of "traditional marriage" was arrived at.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Actually, it would be interesting to know if there was also a homosexual exodus. In an earlier age of greater church authority, one would assume that a higher percentage of gay people would have been in the church. The number may have declined, not because gay people wanted to reject a Victorian stereotype that only applied to straight women, of course, but because church authority was now coming under attack more generally. Maybe there were gay people who were inspired by women's liberation, not only socially but in terms of the rejection of church control and values. You'd know more about this than I do, but different groups of oppressed people do benefit from seeing other oppressed people rise up and challenge the status quo. It doesn't matter if their grievances are different. I'm aware that this kind of cross-over has happened in other contexts.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

I wonder if all churches universally taught that women were to be confined to the home. I imagine that this must be a particularly middle class phenomenon, not applicable to churches that catered to the working classes, where women were obliged to go out to work. So perhaps it’s a problem born out of the gentrification of the churches, rather than being intrinsic to all church culture.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The interesting here is that you're depicting the church as intrinsically against progress. If that's how things are, then there's not much point in complaining about what the RCC might say or do about gay marriage or anything else: the RCC is inevitably behind the times, on a downward slope to extinction. Might as well let them get on with it, and the sooner the better.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

One problem with this argument is that, in terms of church development in the West, it frequently seems as though the most liberal, tolerant and culturally acclimatised churches are the ones with the least ability to attract and retain members. People leave restrictive churches, but don't necessarily try to find less restrictive churches to attend (although some do, of course). The RCC has notably lost fewer members, and lost them later, than more inclusive denominations. (I see that it has also become the largest denomination in Australia.) While fewer people go to church overall, the percentage of those who attend more conservative churches increases, because they don't lose members so quickly. This undermines the argument that if only the churches are more accepting of sexual licence (be it gay or straight) then they'll begin to flourish again.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suspect that in any case, there's little that the mainstream historical churches can do to attract the large numbers of people who simply want to make their own moral decisions without the interference of institutions or religions. Becoming more tolerant will give the churches a more friendly image, but won't make them any more attractive as centres of moral guidance. And if they lose that role, what future is there for them? I suppose they can exist as a cultural remnant, guardians of a certain heritage. This is a role that requires very few actual believers, and it certainly doesn’t require bishops who write controversial letters, about gay marriage or anything else!

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Originally posted by Louise:

The problem with what are called liberal churches is that they are liberal only by comparison with conservative churches. They would be better described as conservative-lite because they still use the traditional forms of authority that are being rejected: scriptural interpretation and church tradition guaranteed by apostolic succession. This means that in some key issues they lag behind the wider society which has rejected those authorities.
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An attraction to certain sorts of worship and worship experience can overcome this but I don't think that niche is as easy to pitch to people as offering them certainty - accept the authority and buy the package and everything will be guaranteed to turn out well in the end.

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I think there will always be a demand of some sort for this kind of authority, although ironically the goal posts will continue almost imperceptibly to move as they have done over the centuries - much of what's considered hard-line conservative today would be thought impossibly liberal, if not heretical, if you went back a few hundred years.

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When misogynist religions are allowed to censor and to have control of schooling and sex-education/birth control, then under those conditions they can make scary demographic come-backs. Have lots of children, get them while they're young enough, isolate them from other sources of ideas, subsidise the ultra-religious and tax others to pay for them because they vote as a bloc and can hold the balance of power...

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I wonder if all churches universally taught that women were to be confined to the home. I imagine that this must be a particularly middle class phenomenon, not applicable to churches that catered to the working classes, where women were obliged to go out to work. So perhaps it’s a problem born out of the gentrification of the churches, rather than being intrinsic to all church culture.

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Originally posted by Spiffy:
Every time I hear someone say, "I'm just speaking the truth in Christian love" my brain translates the statement to "Douchebaggery for Jesus!"

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Am I allowed to get away with that, because I'm right out of deep and meaningful comments?
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

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Originally posted by Spiffy:
Every time I hear someone say, "I'm just speaking the truth in Christian love" my brain translates the statement to "Douchebaggery for Jesus!"

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Originally posted by Mary LA:
Very hard to heckle or protest because he had a wide-eyed look of perpetual innocence that I associate with passive-aggression of the vicarly type.

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Only one way to strike back at such passive aggression-- as soon as he hits his hay-men, offer up ex tempore prayer for the plight of the poor heterosexuals in our midst.

Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I think the best way to respect the clergy is to remind them the position of savior and judge of the world is already taken, so they can get down off their cross now, we need the wood.
 

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Posted by Mary LA (# 17040) on :
 
That's it Spiffy -- nothing beats an impromptu prayer reminding the vicar and others where the dire state of heteronormativity leads such unfortunates!
 

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Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :
 
Off topic I'm afraid, but this reminds me of a situation years ago when I was helpng on a Christian camp. One of lads coming was perceived as an unspiritual trouble maker, who pulled the atmosphere down. Need I say I was rather fond of him, and liked him more that the spiritual heavyweights who were supposed to be the stars of the show?

In the prayer time someone had a vision of this lad as a vulture - the clear implication being he was going to spread corruption. Before anyone else had a chance to get going, I weighed in with the "INTERPRETATION" - how neccesary vultures were to the eco system of the desert, and so God was telling us that things/people who looked unattractive were actually his chosen vessels. An awkward silence followed.....
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Robert Armin and re vulture.
 

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Posted by Mary LA (# 17040) on :
 
Love that vulture!
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Louise

I've been thinking about your last post, but have only just got round to responding.

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I find the way things change ironic, simply because I've often had it argued to me by defenders of church tradition as an authority, that things haven't changed and their church has always taught essentially the same thing and therefore it cannot change.

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Going back to why this doesn't benefit Unitarians, I think it might also have something to do with experience of worship. I find if something wakes up and alerts the critical parts of my brain it pops me right out of any satisfying experience of worship. I can't go along with the popular conservative worship styles because they switch on too many alarm bells for me - it's like somebody suddenly pulling a trap door open under me and dumping me outside. One moment I'm caught up in the service the next moment the celebrant is giving a crass version of substitutionary atonement or we're being expected to pray or sing something offensive or ridiculous and suddenly the whole thing just seems like a nonsensical charade to me. On the other hand, the kind of scholarly questioning stuff which I find fascinating is nothing to do with worship - I might as well be at a seminar or at home reading a challenging book or conversing with a friend. So why go to church for that?

I'm very much a minority in that some traditional worship styles do still work for me, though I can't explicitly explain why.

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But why would people go sit in a church to be intellectually challenged these days? So even if I feel sympathetic to them, Unitarianism wouldn't attract me to a Sunday service. This is anecdotal I know, but I haven't seen this side of things well worked out or studied anywhere. What does worship do for people who no longer feel a church is where they're going to find authoritative answers as to how to live, how things are, and how things should be?

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Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
In other news, several Christians walked out of a speech by Dan Savage because he described parts of the Bible as BS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao0k9qDsOvs&feature=player_embedded

Were they rightly offended or were they overly sensitive? I know many people have made the same argument that Savage made but would not use the same type of language. Savage is right in that most Christians do not follow most of the precepts of Leviticus or the passages in favor of slavery.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
In other news, several Christians walked out of a speech by Dan Savage because he described parts of the Bible as BS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao0k9qDsOvs&feature=player_embedded

Were they rightly offended or were they overly sensitive? I know many people have made the same argument that Savage made but would not use the same type of language. Savage is right in that most Christians do not follow most of the precepts of Leviticus or the passages in favor of slavery.

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In areas besides slavery as well. For example, here's a gent who got Leviticus 18:22 (one of the anti-gay bits) tattooed on his arm in violation of Leviticus 19:28. Given the way Christians have taken to mixed-fiber fabrics and (mostly) abandoned slaveholding, being scriptural sticklers on the issue of homosexuality seems like special pleading.

As for whether the students involved were overly sensitive; definitely. Leaving aside whether or not an accurate description of what's in the Bible, coupled with calling it "bullshit", is inherently offensive, these are supposed to be journalism students. If they have to run for cover every time the have to hear a speech they disagree with or are offended by, they should consider a different profession.

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Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Which begs the question, do Christians ever follow anything from the Bible blindly, meaning, without critical reflection?

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Originally posted by OliviaG:
Shocking waste of trees. OliviaG

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Which begs the question, do Christians ever follow anything from the Bible blindly, meaning, without critical reflection?

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From what I've observed, they tend to do so mostly in cases where (they believe) the Bible supports their existing prejudices and preferences.

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Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
And the number of people outside the church who have only felt contempt or outright shunning is huge, not counting those who have simply been ignored.

Why else would such a large proportion of the population of many countries be firmly in the not-Christian camp?

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