Last week, in between articles about contemporary U.S. politics, I read a review of a new book Women and the Church: From Devil’s Gateway to Discipleship by Natalia Imperatori-Lee, professor of religious studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. In her most recent book, she examines the history of Christian feminism as a response to the ways in which women have been portrayed in Scripture and male theologians’ interpretations of Scripture.

Thanks to Women and the Church: From Devil’s Gateway to Discipleship, this week’s reflection is about Christian feminist theology.

Feminist theology is a movement found actually in several religious traditions. Its goals are to promote the role of women in religious leadership, to reinterpret patriarchal imagery and language about God, and to analyze the images of women in Scripture and religious tradition.

In the 1960s, more women began studying to become theologians, when the women’s rights movement opened doors to higher education for women. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, female theologians developed Christian feminist theology with a focus on women’s perspectives and experiences.

Christian feminist theologians realized rather quickly, however, the danger of being short-sighted in their focus and understanding. They realized they had to move beyond the perspectives of just white, American, and European middle-class women. They began to speak increasingly about being in solidarity with Second World women of Eastern Europe and Third World women of the southern hemisphere in their struggles against patriarchal oppression.

During the 1990s, Christian feminism expanded greatly and women from almost every location around the globe began to pursue education in theology and feminist theory. They thereby drew attention to how manifestations of patriarchy had affected Christian theology and ethics. They saw more clearly that church leaders and theologians often used the Bible to downplay and even denigrate women. Biblical texts were interpreted as “proof” that these practices were sanctioned by God. Simplistic interpretations of biblical texts like Genesis 2–3, resulted in male theologians depicting women as “the daughters of Eve” and therefore the temptresses of men.

Tertullian (ca. 160–225), for example, who has been called “the founder of Western theology,” characterized women as “the devil’s gateway.” Augustine the Bishop of Hippo (354–430) — “Saint Augustine” — argued that only a man can fully image God and that a woman can only image God through her husband. St. Ambrose (339-397 AD), the Bishop of Milan, imputed second-class status to women because a woman “was only a rib taken out of Adam’s body.” Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), the great Dominican Aristotelian philosopher and theologian, nevertheless, like Aristotle, spoke of women as “defective” and “misbegotten.”

Very significant in Christian tradition, the persistent narrative that Mary the Magdalene, the first witness of the Resurrection, was a prostitute thanks to Pope Gregory (540 – 604) is, as historians understand today, absolute misogynist fiction. On Easter Sunday in the year 591 during his sermon, Pope Gregory created this falsehood when he wrongly interpreted the New Testament and conflated Mary the Magdalene with the “unnamed sinner woman” who anointed Christ’s feet in the Gospel of Luke. In degrading Mary the Magdalene, Pope Gregory denigrated all women and significantly contributed to institutional misogyny.

Misinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures has also led to misogyny. For example, ever since Adam blamed his wife Eve for what HE Adam did (Genesis 3:12), churchmen and artists began downgrading women by misinterpreting that account. During the Renaissance, for example, artists, including the Italians Michelangelo (1475 – 1564) and Masolino da Panicale (1383 – 1444) as well as the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes (1440 – 1482), painted the serpent in the Garden of Eden with a woman’s head.

Clearly, a Christian feminist theological perspective must examine androcentrism in biblical texts, church teachings, and their interpretations. Jews and Christians know that God has no gender. God does not have a bodily form. Nevertheless, the male writers of biblical texts used the male form of the Hebrew and Greek pronouns when referring to God. These continue to be literally translated into English. Thus, we have God consistently referred to as “he” and “him.” As theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936 – 2022) often stressed: ” Christian theology has always recognized, theoretically, that all language for God is analogical or metaphorical, not literal…. To take one image drawn from one gender and in one sociological context as normative for God is to legitimate this gender and social group as the normative possessors of the image of God and the representatives of God on earth. This is idolatry.”

During Christianity’s two-thousand-year history, the concrete embodiments of Christ’s mission have taken many forms in communities gathered in Jesus’ name.

In 2017, Fortress Press published an important book about early Christian women: Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity by Sr. Christine Schenk. She is the co-founder and founding executive director of FutureChurch, an international group of Catholics affiliated with parishes focusing on full lay participation in the life of the Church. Discovering reliable information about women in early Christianity is a challenging enterprise. This book is magnificent. Brian McDermott, SJ, reviewing the book for America magazine said it has ample material to “radically transform our understanding of Christian women as authority figures in the early centuries.”

In her book Introducing Feminist Theology (Orbis Books, 2000), theologian Anne M. Clifford, professor emerita from Iowa State University, stresses that a particular methodological concern for Christian feminist theology is language. “Through language,” she writes “humans create powerful symbols, and in turn, human attitudes and values are created and perpetuated by these symbols. Language conditions how we think and often what we think.”

We need to check our language today. When writing about God, for example, we need to drop the masculine pronouns. God does not send “his blessings” but “God’s blessings.” When it comes to the sign of the cross, in recent years I have heard a variety of inclusive versions. Here are three examples: “In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer,  and the Sanctifier;” “In the name of God, who is both Mother and Father to us, and of Jesus the Only-Begotten, and of the Holy Spirit;”and “In the name of God, our mother and father, and of Jesus, our brother and healer, and of the Holy Spirit, our wisdom and guide.” This last one is my favorite.

Some non-inclusive language can be easily corrected. The Nicene Creed (381 CE) is a good example. Where we read “who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven,” just drop the word “men.”

When proclaiming the Scriptures, we need to be inclusive. In I Corinthians 1:10, where Paul writes: “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” one can easily be — and and correctly be — inclusive. Paul was not just writing to a group of men. For years, when I would read that passage in liturgies, I would simply say: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters…” But today I have a bit more sensitivity and LBGBTQ awareness. I would say today: “My dear friends I appeal to all of you, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We move ahead.

Thinking about Christian feminism today, one of the most exciting and most hopeful developments, especially for Roman Catholics, is the women priests movement. It began dramatically with the ordination of seven women to the priesthood by a male Roman Catholic bishop on June 29, 2002. The ordinations took place at Passau in southeastern Germany, on the Danube River. The “Danube 7” as they were soon called, became the first priests of the movement. In 2003 two of the Danube 7 were ordained bishops, with a third woman from the group receiving episcopal ordination in 2005. Rome was not pleased, and excommunications followed. But the movement has grown tremendously.

Today, the women priests movement is operating worldwide with two groups formed in the United States and referred to as Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA (RCWP-USA) and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP). Both of these organizations have international members. These women priests are ministering in over 34 USA states and are also present in Canada, Europe, South and Central America, South Africa, the Philippines and Taiwan.

I am happy to say that I know a few women priests and bishops. They are courageously prophetic in their life and ministry. They are a positive and hopeful sign for today and tomorrow.

– Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Were women by nature more prone to vice and evil than were men? This was a serious question in an era in which women were blamed for a spectrum of evils, from sterility to deadly illnesses. Another common question was, Were the female descendants of Eve, the evil temptress of Adam, capable of thinking clearly and acting ethically?

 

The major reason for any feminist movement is to end oppression, discrimination, and violence directed to women and to acquire full equality and human dignity for every woman.

 

Feminism is a worldwide phenomenon that has taken many forms and that means different things to different people. Feminism is a social vision, rooted in women’s experience of sexually based discrimination and oppression, a movement seeking the liberation of women from all forms of *sexism, and an academic method of analysis being used in virtually every discipline. Feminism is all of these things and more because it is a perspective on life that colors all of a person’s hopes, commitments, and actions. Feminism has been given a variety of broad and narrow definitions since the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

By way of introduction, I should say that this week’s post is written by a fellow who is still a U.S. Catholic. Born and baptized in SW Michigan, I attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college, and Catholic universities. My career as teacher and professor has been in Catholic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. But I am proud to say that I have always strived to be a constructive, thoughtful, and inquisitive Catholic. Asking questions is healthy and necessary. As the Greek philosopher, Socrates, who died in 399 BCE, reportedly said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

          The U.S. Catholic Church, today, is in a major transition. Catholics continue to lose more members than they gain, though the retention rate for Hispanic Catholics is somewhat higher than for white Catholics. According to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C., 20% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Catholic. But in 2007, 24% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic. The Catholic population today is 57% White, 33% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 2% Black, while 3% are of another race.

          Politically, from the mid-19th century up to the 1960s, U.S. Catholics were close to 90% solidly Democratic. In the 1960s and early 1970s, however, with the decline of unions and big city machines, and with their upward mobility into the middle classes, U.S. Catholics drifted away from the Democratic Party and began to support the conservatism of the Republican Party. This shift was apparent in the presidential elections of Richard Nixon. He received 33% of the Catholic vote in the 1968 election but 52% in 1972. Today, 61% of white Catholic registered voters say they identify with or lean toward the the Republican Party, compared with 35% of Hispanic Catholics.

          In the 2020 presidential election, Catholic voters were split down the middle: 49% backed Donald Trump and 50% voted for Joe Biden. And so, what will happen in the 2024 U.S. presidential election? Big question. As of a few days ago, it appeared that the balance had shifted in favor of the Republicans, with 52 per cent of Catholics currently identifying with the Trump Republican party. Now of course it will be interesting to see what happens on November 5th with a far-right conservative Catholic Republican vice-presidential candidate, and the U.S. Catholic, Joe Biden, no longer a 2024 presidential candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumed Democratic Party candidate and comes from an atmosphere of interfaith openness. She is a dedicated Baptist Christian. Her mother is Hindu. Her father is a Baptist. Her husband is Jewish.

          There is no question that the U.S. Catholic bishops supported many former Trump administration policies, especially on abortion and gender issues. They wanted Catholic institutions to reject birth control provisions in their employees’ health insurance coverage. They wanted to fire staffers who did not support their teachings on gay marriage. They celebrated when Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

          New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan cozied up to Trump after his presidential election in 2016 and gave the invocation at his inauguration on January 20, 2017. In 2020, both Cardinal Dolan and the former bishop of Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland, used their positions of authority to essentially support the Trump administration. Jamie Manson, writing in the National Catholic Reporter on April 28, 2020, reported that New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “…seems to like to boast about his relationship with Trump almost as much as Trump likes to boast about himself.”

          Bishop Strickland served as Bishop of Tyler from 2012 until his removal by Pope Francis on November 11, 2023. In May 2023, Strickland had accused Pope Francis of having a “program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.” He also said President Joe Biden was an “evil president.” But that is not the reason Strickland was removed from the Diocese of Tyler. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, the Holy See ambassador to the United States since 2016, told Strickland that the most serious allegation against him was his “disrespect for Pope Francis.”

          I don’t know if U.S. Catholics in general are really thinking theologically today. Their beliefs are out of sync with the hierarchy. Perhaps they have just become more secularly American. Nevertheless, while the Catholic Church officially holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 adult U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a profile of U.S. Catholicism by the Pew Research Center. In addition, Pew reports that many U.S. Catholics would welcome more changes, with 83% saying they want the church to allow the use of contraception, 69% saying priests should be allowed to get married, and 64% that women should be allowed to become priests. According to Gallup, a majority of U.S. Catholics have consistently supported same-sex marriage since 2011.

          U.S. Catholic papal sentiments are interesting as well. Pope Francis’ approval rating of 75% is slightly higher than that for his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, but almost 20 points behind the U.S. Catholic approval rating for Pope John Paul II, at 93%. What is papal popularity based on? Papal PR packaging or objective reality?

 

          Well, I now move on to another set of U.S. Catholic observations. As a professor of theology, I taught master’s level U.S. Catholic seminarians for more than thirty years. Many former students became priests, and a few became bishops. What I find most significant about young U.S. Catholic priests today, however, is that they are theologically, ethically, and liturgically extremely conservative. A great many are returning to Mass in Latin, to people receiving communion on the tongue, and moving girl altar-servers aside. Implications for the future? When one turns clocks backwards too much, they just stop working.

          In an article in the New York Times on July 10, 2024, Ruth Grahm, describes today’s young Catholic priests as “Young, Confident and Conservative.” Ruth Grahm is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. Her article is about new priests ordained by Milwaukee’s Archbishop Jerome Listecki (now over 75 and close to retirement) at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee. Grahm stressed that there is increasing unity among today’s young priests, writing: “They are overwhelmingly conservative in their theology, their liturgical tastes, and their politics.”

          Dr. Brad Vermurlen, assistant professor of sociology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, has studied the rightward shift of U.S. Catholic priests for a number of years and reports in Sociological Spectrum (Volume 43, 2023) that priests ordained since 2010 are “the most conservative cohort of priests we’ve seen in a long time.”

          So, why are there so many conservative young U.S. Catholic priests today?

          As a participant and close observer of seminary formation programs, I would say, first of all, because conservative-leaning U.S. Catholic bishops were appointed over a 35-year period by Pope John Paul II (pope from 1978 to 2005) and his successor Pope Benedict XVI (pope from 2005 to 2013). They changed the theological focus of seminary education by removing progressive professors with an open-minded post-Vatican II theology and replacing them with conservative professors with a narrow-minded pre-Vatican II theology that romanticized “the good old days”

          Today’s young Catholic priests are the products of that Pope John Paul/Pope Benedict theological throwback and fear of change. As my friend Dr. Patrick Sullivan, head of P&D Consulting in Montana City, wrote recently: “I think they long for simpler answers…. There is so much change happening around them that they seek some form of stability. They honestly believe that having the security of straightforward rules and answers will simplify their lives.  We are going through a paradigmatic change.  Young people are particularly sensitive to this. When someone comes along and shows them that things were much better when Catholics behaved, they are open to it.”  Patrick, who also has a Master of Divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, is the former president of ARCC, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church.

          I suppose if people try to live in the romanticized “good old days” they don’t have to think about contemporary issues. It is much easier to be obedient to conservative authority, sing the old songs, repeat the old lingo, and be happy. That is the fundamentalist journey. Unfortunately, it often ends in a dead end. We live in the present. The past is past.

 

– Jack

 

Dr. J. A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the previous U.S. presidential administration (2017 – 2021), Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist born in 1976, served as the president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Later, after his OMB days, he launched the Center for Renewing America which is positioned firmly in the vanguard of the Christian nationalist movement, anchored in the belief that a far-right interpretation of the Bible ought to dictate U.S. politics and public life.

        The Center for Renewing America, with its militant right-wing culture-war agenda, is based on the false belief that the United States was founded as a strictly Christian nation and must remain so. In fact, the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) appealed to “the laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and asserted that all had basic rights “endowed by their Creator.” But the document that actually enumerated and enshrined those rights, The U.S. Constitution, which became effective on March 4, 1789, lacked even those vaguely drawn references to a deity.

        As Donald Trump, now 78 years old, increasingly infuses his current presidential campaign with Christian trappings, his support is as strong as ever, among conservative Christians. When he was president from 2017 to 2021, Trump formed a political alliance with far-right Christians by giving them a six to three conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He appointed conservatives Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

        Currently six members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholics: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They are all conservative except for Sotomayor. Along with these six Catholic justices, there are two Protestant justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch; and one Jewish, Elena Kagan. The most conservative members of the Supreme Court are now Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas.

        Trump’s supporters like to use religious lingo when promoting him. During a Trump campaign rally on March 18, 2024, in Dayton, Ohio, for example, many of the former president’s supporters wore T-shirts and hats — that were also sold at the rally — bearing religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, Guns & Trump.” 

        A key organization that is promoting the current Trump campaign is The Heritage Foundation, established in 1973. It is an activist U.S. conservative think tank based in Washington, DC. Kevin D. Roberts, born in 1974, has been the president of The Heritage Foundation, since 2021. Prior to assuming that role, he was the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which contends, among other far right issues, that climate change does not exist.

        Roberts has a PhD in U.S. history from the University of Texas. He taught history at the college level before founding a Catholic K-12 school, the John Paul the Great Academy, in his hometown in Lafayette, Louisiana, which he led until a move to Wyoming. In Wyoming, he was the president of Wyoming Catholic College in the rural city of Lander. Roberts is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and holds Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, born in 1963, in high regard because he put Hungary on a conservative Christian path.

        Starting in 2022, the Heritage Foundation began publicly embracing national conservatism as its guiding ideology. In March 2023, it came as no surprise, therefore, that the Heritage Foundation, under Kevin Roberts leadership, established a cooperative relationship with the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based state-funded think tank founded in 2013. The Danube Institute is a center for ultra reactionary thought that gathers anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ speakers who celebrate Victor Orbán’s “Christian Nationalist” project.

        Viktor Orbán, who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, is a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Interestingly, Orbán met with Donald Trump in mid March 2024 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and the two men hit it off immediately. Trump heaped praise on Prime Minister Orbán. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered at his Florida resort. Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader.” Trump’s former chief strategist now in prison, Steve Bannon, once called Orbán “Trump before Trump”.

        Viktor Orbán, traveled to Florida again on Thursday, July 11, 2024, and met again with former President Donald Trump following the NATO summit in Washington. Orbán met with Trump at the former president’s beachside compound Mar-a-Lago and shared a photo of the two on social media with the caption: “We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

        Orbán has been quite open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called a “Christian democracy,” which is simply a variation on the theme of Christian nationalism.

        Heather Cox Richardson (born 1962), who is a history professor at Boston College and publishes Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current U.S. events, has become a strong critic of the Heritage Foundation’s close collaboration with Orbán, exemplified in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a plan for a right-wing takeover of the U.S. government under Donald Trump if elected president once again. Project 2025 lays out what is essentially a Christian nationalist vision for the United States, with Donald Trump as the sent-by-God authoritarian dictator.

        After the assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, Trump suggested that divine intervention spared his life. Clearly the attempted assassination has only increased the quasi-religious devotion of his followers. Then, on Monday, July 15th, Trump chose senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice-presidential running mate. Vance is just what the Trump campaign wants: a strong conservative Catholic and an energetic supporter of Project 2025.

        Project 2025 would strip tens of thousands of professional government workers of their civil service protections, create an army of political loyalists in government, ban abortion nationwide, set up immigrant detention camps, deport millions of people, repeal all climate safety regulations, and exact criminal revenge against reporters, judges, and Democrats.

        Heather Cox Richardson also reported on July 12, 2024, that Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution,” Ivan Raiklin (b. 1976), has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists considered to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

        There is nothing Christian about Project 2025 and there’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is an aberration that is focused on power and domination not on the way of Christ.

        I am not a pessimist but a realist. Our contemporary challenge is very real.

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Leuven

Historical Theologian

Focus: Religion and Values in Contemporary Society

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

After my Values Clarification post on July 3rd, a number of people have asked me for a clarification about Catholic teaching about LGBTQ issues past and present. By way of response, here is my brief summary…

        The document On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons was a pastoral letter authored by the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and delivered in Rome on October 1,1986 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927 – 2022), who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, and Archbishop Alberto Bovone (1922 – 1988), then Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Here are the key affirmations in the CDF document: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus, the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

        Six years later, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was promulgated by Pope John Paul II (1920 – 2005) on October 11, 1992, the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council (1962 – 1965). The Catechism states that sexual activity between members of the same sex is a grave sin against chastity and that homosexual attraction is objectively disordered. However, the Catechism also states that homosexuals “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”

        On November 14, 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued their own document Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care. “Because of both Original Sin and personal sin, moral disorder is all too common in our world,” the document stressed and continued, “there are a variety of acts, such as adultery, fornication, masturbation, and contraception, that violate the proper ends of human sexuality. Homosexual acts also violate the true purpose of sexuality. They are sexual acts that cannot be open to life. Nor do they reflect the complementarity of man and woman that is an integral part of God’s design for human sexuality.”

        In March 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the Church cannot bless same-sex relationships because “God cannot bless sin”. On January 25, 2023, in an interview with the Associated Press, Pope Francis stressed that “being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime.” But he then clarified his statement by adding “but it is a sin” because sexual actions outside of a heterosexual marriage are sinful actions.

        Then on December 18, 2023, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Fiducia supplicans, a declaration allowing Catholic priests to bless people who are not considered to be married by the Church, including same-sex couples. In a later clarification, it was made very clear that same-sex marriage is not considered a marriage.

        Well, although not everyone in the Church may appreciate it, our understanding of human sexuality – with its biological, emotional, psychological, relational, and spiritual dimensions — has developed historically and it continues to develop. Official Church teachings, sooner or later, must also be adapted to new understandings. We observe. We judge. And then we must act.

        Fortunately, not everyone in Church leadership is theologically time-bound in an old anthropology. A number of Western European Catholic bishops have clearly begun to call for changes in Catholic doctrine about human sexuality. Some examples: Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J. (born 1958) of Luxembourg argues that “the sociological-scientific foundation of Catholic teaching on lesbian and gay people and acts is no longer correct.” It is, he believes, “time for a fundamental revision of the doctrine.” Bishop Helmut Dieser (born 1962) of Aachen, Germany said in an interview with the German paper Deutsche Welle on November 8, 2022: “Same-sex feelings and love are not an aberration, but a variant of human sexuality.” Similar statements have been made by Cardinal Reinhard Marx (born 1953), the Archbishop of Munich and Freising and head of the committee for social issues at the German Bishops’ Conference. “The catechism is not set in stone. One may also question what it says,” Cardinal Marx told the weekly magazine Stern in an interview published March 31, 2022. He stressed that “Homosexuality is not a sin…. LGBTQ+ people are part of creation and loved by God, and we are called upon to stand against discrimination.” 

        These bishops insist that Catholic leadership must acknowledge and accept historical and scientific understandings of human sexuality and formulate doctrines that reflect such an understanding.

        Large majorities of Catholics in Western Europe support legal same-sex marriage. In the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, more than than 60 percent of U.S. Catholics now support same-sex marriage. U.S. Catholics, in fact, have supported same-sex marriage since 2011. I know a few U.S. bishops who are not at all happy about that. But then, a May 2022 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans supported same-sex marriage, and the 2022 American Values Atlas by Public Religion Research Institute found that 69% of Americans supporting same-sex marriage. And in fact, a growing number of organized religious groups in the United States have issued statements officially welcoming LGBTQ people as members and extending marriage rites to them.

        Sharing these thoughts with a friend, he said “OK but what does the Bible say?” Well, I suggested that biblical texts need to be interpreted in an historical-critical fashion: interpreting biblical documents in the light of their contemporary environment when they were first composed. Historical-critical scholars stress today that the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament texts never really understood something that today is called the “homosexual orientation,” because it was was simply taken for granted that EVERYONE was heterosexual.

        I would suggest that searching for biblical texts about what today is called the “homosexual orientation” is an anachronism. It would be just like searching for biblical texts about the best kind of cellphone or computer one should buy.

        Biblical passages often used to condemn homosexuality were actually based on the old and false assumption that all human beings are naturally only heterosexual. That biblical assumption is now scientifically proven to be incorrect. Contemporary sexual anthropology recognizes sexual orientation as an intrinsic dimension of human nature.

        What is “natural” in sexual activity will vary depending, for example, on whether a person’s natural sexual orientation is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

        Homosexual acts are natural for people with a homosexual orientation just as heterosexual acts are natural for people with a heterosexual orientation.

        We do grow in our knowledge and understanding about human identity, and that growth has major theological, anthropological, and ethical implications.

        For further reading, I recommend two books by my Leuven-educated friend Todd A. Salzman and his colleague Michael G. Lawler from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.The first came out in 2015: Catholic Theological Ethics: Ancient Questions, Contemporary Responses. Todd and Michael’s most recent book has just come out: Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions, Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine. Excellent books for your local or parish library.

– Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Leuven

Historical Theologian

Focus: Religion and Values in Contemporary Society

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

 

 

 

In the mid-1960s, a classroom teaching approach called “Values Clarification” became very popular. Professor Louis Raths (1900 – 1978), at New York University, developed materials and teaching strategies to help his students think about what they prized in life and examine their understanding of ethical decision-making. In 1966, along educators Sidney Simon (1917 – 1997) and Merrill Harmin (1928 – 2022), Louis Raths published Values and Teaching: Working with Values in Classrooms.

The thrust of the “Values Clarification” approach was to help students identify their values and reflect on them in discussions, writing, and small group work where the values often came into conflict. In effect, to help students work through their positions on positive and negative values like loyalty, truth, trust, compassion but also dishonesty, denigration, lying, selfishness, etc.

In my first years of teaching as a high school religion teacher in Michigan, I regularly used values clarification techniques in my classes and, as head of the religious education department in my local Catholic high school, I encouraged and helped colleagues do the same. During a departmental values clarification discussion, in fact, we actually changed the name of our department from “religious education department” to “Christian development department” because our concerns were not only growth in religious understanding but promoting genuine Christian living.

In my now many years of university and ongoing adult education teaching, I have always stressed that it is not enough to just discuss values but to reflect and think about the meaning of lived-out values. Values are more than words. Values are displayed in concrete actions. Some people can be very good actors when speaking-about-values but very deceptive performers of lived-out values in real life. I can think, for instance, of some contemporary actor-type politicians and actor-type religious leaders. Their focus is nice sounding PR propaganda.

This past week, after reading more than enough reactions to the recent debate between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, I started thinking about Winston Smith, the main character and protagonist in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and written by Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950) an English novelist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell.  Winston Smith was an employee at the Ministry of Truth and his task was promoting “doublethink.” Actually “doublethink” was a well-defined process of deception. According to Smith, the purpose of “doublethink” was: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

Well, this is not 1984 but 2024. But the issues and challenges are similar. Today we greatly need values clarification to critique values-words and values-actions. Nice words can indeed be values deceptive. One cannot make a genuine values judgment about a person, an institution, or political behavior without seriously looking at values-actions.

I prefer to speak about healthy and unhealthy values-actions and offer four values clarification observations:

1. Healthy values-actions help people live in contemporary reality, accepting its ups and downs. Unhealthy values-actions are anchored in lies and deceptive falsehoods. Unhealthy values leaders sing pleasant tunes but hope no one is hearing their lyrics. They encourage anxious people to simply close their ears and eyes to what is happening around them and let someone in authority take control.

2. Healthy values-actions help people connect and build bridges with other people. Unhealthy values-actions create barriers that divide people by validating hatred, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

3. Healthy values-actions empower people to take responsibility for their lives and the lives of others. Unhealthy values-actions are narcissistically self-focussed and stress over-powering other people in demeaning ways through abuse, control, and repression.

4. Healthy values-actions promote love, compassion, and collaboration.

We, the people of today, have quite a challenge ahead of us. But there is no reason to give up. We can collaborate and strive to be well-informed thinking people. But ACTIVE thinking people! As the famous Russian medical doctor, playwright, and short-story writer, Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904), said: “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

I have always liked Anton Chekhov, and he remains a prophetic example for us today because of his strong opposition to brutal authoritarian governmental repression. Chekhov’s key values were health, intelligence, love, and as he wrote “the most absolute freedom imaginable: the freedom from violence and lies.”

But I will round off this week’s reflection with the memorable words of Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be