Refuting Rice's Column
Letters to the Editor
As a philosopher I operate with a simpler set of intellectual resources than Law Professor Charles Rice brings to bear upon the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
I hope I am not unqualified to enter the local conversation about the catechetical teaching that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." This is a curious teaching, relying as it does on an antique, essentialist metaphysical biology with no supporting empirical evidence in contemporary biology. Its psychological foundations are even shakier. Neither homosexuality nor the performance of homosexual acts is a mental illness. Official church teaching no longer assigns priority to the procreative functions of marital sexuality.
Homosexual lovers may aspire to and practice chastity with the same ever fragile success but continuing fidelity as their heterosexual counterparts.
Professor Rice assumes that all homosexuals are called to celibacy and sexual abstinence. He presents no relevant evidence in support of that assumption even though he surely is not unaware of the distinction of chastity and celibacy.
It is good trial advocacy to make claims in one's opening remarks that put one's adversary at a serious disadvantage, and Professor Rice is an expert advocate, but conversations among equals at a University require a different protocol. Arguments which seem to have little real purpose but the stigmatization of homosexual proclivities do no credit to a Catholic university.
Edward Manier
philosophy professor
November 28, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, November 30, 2000
