Homosexual acts are categorically wrong
Charles Rice
Right or Wrong?
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently announced its support for legislation to allow children born to or adopted by one member of a same-sex couple to be adopted by the other member of that couple. In light of this and other events, including the presentation of "The Vagina Monologues" at Notre Dame and the emergence of the altar boy as a hazardous occupation in Boston and elsewhere, it may be useful here to recall some basics.
Homosexual acts are intrinsically wrong. As the Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, issued with the approval of John Paul II in 1986, stated: "It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally. To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design."
The "inclination" to commit homosexual acts is not a sin, but it is a "tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."
The Catechism incorporates this teaching and the entitlement of each person to respect and fairness: "The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."
The 1986 Letter condemned the subjection of "homosexual persons" to "violent malice in speech or in action ... The dignity of each person must be respected. But the proper reaction to crimes against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society should be surprised when other distorted notions gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase."
In 1992, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent to the United States bishops a "background resource" on Legislative Proposals on Discrimination against Homosexuals. "`Sexual orientation' [is] not comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination," it said. "Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder. It is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches and in military recruitment."
In response to the European Parliament's 1994 approval of same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples, John Paul II described it as an "attempt to tell the inhabitants of this continent that moral evil, deviation, a kind of slavery, is the way to liberation, thus distorting the true meaning of the family. The relationship of two men or two women cannot constitute a true family; still less can one grant such a union the right to adopt children. These children suffer grave harm, because in these `substitute families' they do not have a father and mother, but two fathers or two mothers. This is dangerous."
As Father John Harvey, the founder of Courage, a support group for men and women who try to live in accord with Catholic teaching on homosexuality, put it, "The Roman Catholic Church is now the counterculture." The homosexual culture has a privileged status in the media and other politically correct institutions, including universities.
"I have often wondered," said Chicago's Francis Cardinal George, "why a supposedly heterosexual man, perhaps married and with children, is admired and celebrated when he declares himself homosexual, but a journey in the opposite direction is excoriated as repressive."
The Church insists on the dignity of the person while affirming that homosexual acts are an "intrinsic moral evil" and that the homosexual inclination is a disorder as is the inclination to any other moral wrong. In the words of the 1986 Letter, "Departure from the Church's teaching or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care, is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral." That truth is politically incorrect. But Notre Dame students are entitled to that truth from the administration without omission or equivocation.
Professor Emeritus Rice is on the Law School faculty. His column appears every other Tuesday. He can be reached at lois.a.plawecki.1@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, February 26, 2002
