A Church for all humanity

You never see me write about religion, because I believe it’s an intensely personal thing (albeit with a communal aspect), but I can’t help being surprised and saddened by what seems to me to be the latent homophobia – intentional or otherwise – brought to the surface by Pope Francis’ recent statement allowing Church blessings for same-sex couples. Despite the fact that that statement was heavily qualified – that it wasn’t to be seen as “sanctification,” etc. – it still triggered a violent backlash from conservative Catholics, clergy and lay persons alike, who protested that the edict violates established Church doctrine.

Some of these objectors are my good friends (and they will remain so, unless they say otherwise). Many among them will proclaim that they’re not homophobic at all, that gay people and couples are among their best friends and that they’re merely upholding a key tenet of their faith – which just happens to exclude homosexuals from the blessings of the Church, because they’re fundamentally living in sin.

But I can’t see how that attitude – which some might call a holier-than-thouness – advances Christian love and charity. Pope Francis’ halfway gesture is compromised enough as it is, but would still have been a welcome step toward redefining a church that’s tried to keep a stiffly male face – despite the many gay people in its ranks – for millennia.

I grew up a church-going Catholic boy (inevitably for a La Sallista) but stopped going to mass a long time ago, as a liberal feeling distanced from the Church’s positions on such hot-button issues as birth control, abortion, divorce and homosexuality, not to mention its too-cozy relationship with authoritarian regimes in many places around the world.

I do admire and support the efforts of many priests, nuns and other religious to confront and ameliorate our social problems and fight for justice and freedom. I continue to pray, many times a day and at bedtime, for the sick and the oppressed, and to thank God for my blessings. I never formally studied theology nor the history of religions, but from what I can gather (and here I invite the experts to instruct me) what distinguishes the Catholic Church from others is its emphasis on good deeds as the path to heaven, rather than faith alone. You have to earn your sainthood; it is neither promised nor can it be bought. If so, that appeals strongly to me, as I’m sure it does to others.

But whenever I think of the Vatican and its hierarchy of old men whose meals are answered for by the alms of billions of the faithful and investments in blue-chip companies and real estate, among others, I remember a side of the Church that depends on its moral authority to survive as both a keeper of beliefs and as a global industry.

No one is surprised by the sordid financial and sexual scandals that have rocked the Church, as they merely prove that some people who run it are as fallible as anyone else. This is not why I left the Church, which I still want to think of as something transcendent, an idea of community above the mortal men and women who make up its body. What disaffected me was the arrogance of its orthodoxy – in which, among religions, it is hardly alone.

I’ll grant that every religion needs a body of core beliefs, some of which will be non-negotiable; if you don’t like what you see, you’re free to go somewhere else. I understand the dismay of the faithful over “cafeteria-style” religion where you can pick and choose what to practice and what not. But I had thought, perhaps mistakenly, that religions have a stake in inclusivity, in upholding beliefs and values that embrace persecuted minorities (as the Christian church itself once was).

I’ll acknowledge that apostates like me probably have no business lecturing devout believers on matters of doctrine. But this isn’t even about the finer points of doctrine, but rather about the broad strokes of faith and, ultimately, what and who that faith serves. If issues like gay relationships and marriage and divorce are to be the line in the sand that separates the true Church from the false (rather than, say, love of neighbor), then sadly I must stay out (to which the conservative core can say “good riddance,” or otherwise pray for my wayward soul). Exclusionary policies are never just internal matters, because they affect the perception of the excluded; indeed, they affect the excluded, and those who identify with them.

Pope Francis has been the first pope in a long time to have revived my hope in a Church that finally embraces the idea of an inclusive love of humanity as central to its practice, if not its survival. The closing of minds and hearts in our growing Trumpian dystopia calls for a far more powerful spiritual force to overwhelm the spitefulness gripping much of the world today. I would rather look up to Pope Francis and such other figures as the Dalai Lama – rather than a consistory of ambitious cardinals and bishops – to show the way forward.

I hope I won’t be alone in suggesting that much more work remains to be done, even beyond Pope Francis, toward such liberative measures as the ordination of women, for the Roman Catholic Church to be not just a church for the 21st century, but for all time, and for all humanity.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.