The Catholic Church issues another statement about gay marriage

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Substantively the dubium response is the same old "intrinsically disordered" rationale, just worded a little more diplomatically than in the past. What's more interesting is the attached explanatory note, in which same-sex relationships are lumped into a broader category of non-marital sexual relationships as opposed to being set apart as their own Super Duper Ultra Sexual Sin. The recognition that there can be strong human qualities in same-sex relationships is also something of a novelty, and is something that liberal bishops like some of the ones in Germany have been pointing out for years; prior Vatican pronouncements on the subject tended to assume a "fruit of the poisonous tree" principle where every aspect of a gay relationship was inevitably toxic and disgusting. But, no, the finding/ruling itself isn't anything new.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well there's the expected walk back. Though it took longer than expected.

Substantively the dubium response is the same old "intrinsically disordered" rationale, just worded a little more diplomatically than in the past. What's more interesting is the attached explanatory note, in which same-sex relationships are lumped into a broader category of non-marital sexual relationships as opposed to being set apart as their own Super Duper Ultra Sexual Sin. The recognition that there can be strong human qualities in same-sex relationships is also something of a novelty, and is something that liberal bishops like some of the ones in Germany have been pointing out for years; prior Vatican pronouncements on the subject tended to assume a "fruit of the poisonous tree" principle where every aspect of a gay relationship was inevitably toxic and disgusting. But, no, the finding/ruling itself isn't anything new.

That makes it worse than simply saying nothing at all. To acknowledge you've engaged with the reality of human experience for a moment but then dismiss it.

I know you'll disagree but for me it's another facet of the 'cruelty is the point' school of Vatican grandstanding.

The reason I disagree, in this case, is that it's substantially the same point that was advanced about divorced and remarried couples in Amoris Laetitia, which did (whatever one thinks of this) end up constituting a noticeable liberalization in the Church's policies around things like admission to communion. If this were coming without that context from earlier in Francis's pontificate then my attitude towards it would be closer to yours.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Embarrassing. Why make a strong statement that we all know will eventually be reversed? They're just setting up a future pope with the headache of admitting they got something else wrong in 2021.

This is about as informed and objective a take on where the Catholic Church is heading as are the radtrad fantasies about all younger Catholics being based and tradpilled Capitol-stormers who will turn it into an aesthetically-Baroque variant of Asatru by 2050.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Embarrassing. Why make a strong statement that we all know will eventually be reversed? They're just setting up a future pope with the headache of admitting they got something else wrong in 2021.

This is about as informed and objective a take on where the Catholic Church is heading as are the radtrad fantasies about all younger Catholics being based and tradpilled Capitol-stormers who will turn it into an aesthetically-Baroque variant of Asatru by 2050.

We both know where the world is heading on this issue, or in many cases already is. Maybe the Catholic Church will stand by this declaration in 2041 (though I predict they'll have partially walked it back by then), but it's delusional to think they'll still be digging in in 2121.

People are growing up in an LGBTQ-equal world and just aren't going to see a reason to keep such a hardline rule. This includes future priests growing up today.

This statement is itself an incremental relaxation of rhetoric and potentially of pastoral practice; see my exchange with Andrew above. There's no reason not to expect this issue to eventually take the Amoris Laetitia path, which is a form of liberalization and coming to terms with the times but not the sort of direct reversal of past teaching that the Magisterial Protestant churches have opted for.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeOLoughlin/status/1371459425576304642

Something about Wisconsin seems to produce a disproportionate number of extreme-right priests (and sometimes bishops). That priest who was briefly a rightist cause célebrè during the election for preaching that it was a mortal sin to be a Democrat was also a Wisconsinite, as--at first--was Cardinal Burke. It's one reason I would never consider working or studying in Milwaukee or Madison whatever their other merits as communities.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MikeOLoughlin/status/1371459425576304642

Something about Wisconsin seems to produce a disproportionate number of extreme-right priests (and sometimes bishops). That priest who was briefly a rightist cause célebrè during the election for preaching that it was a mortal sin to be a Democrat was also a Wisconsinite, as--at first--was Cardinal Burke. It's one reason I would never consider working or studying in Milwaukee or Madison whatever their other merits as communities.

Although Robert John Cornell, one of only two Catholic priests to have ever served in Congress, was a Wisconsin Democrat.

Also the bolded statement - BRTDesque much? 

I do have a similar attitude towards religious like-mindedness that BRTD has towards political like-mindedness, yes. Although it's not nearly as strong, hence why I'm currently happily living in one of the least religious areas of the United States.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I read the responsum again and the thing that strikes me about it this time is the extraordinarily hard and fast distinction it makes between individuals and relationships. I think that this is a conceptual and theological flaw for reasons that, in themselves, have nothing to do with sex, and I hope either a future CDF, a future Pope, or maybe even this CDF or this Pope, identify and redress it at some point.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No offense, Andrew, but if you and Celticempire are both speaking disparagingly of a style of Catholic belief/practice/identity/whatever, then that's a good sign to me that it's doing something right. (joking, mostly) (Apologies also if you're not speaking disparagingly and I'm just misreading your tone, which is a definite possibility.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No offense, Andrew, but if you and Celticempire are both speaking disparagingly of a style of Catholic belief/practice/identity/whatever, then that's a good sign to me that it's doing something right. (joking, mostly) (Apologies also if you're not speaking disparagingly and I'm just misreading your tone, which is a definite possibility.)

I don't really know what you're trying to say.

I'm making a joke that it seems like you don't get. It's not in very good taste so I'm happy to drop it. Sorry.

Speaking more seriously, it says a lot that "cultural Catholic" is used as a smear against people who chafe against Church teaching on stuff like this, but not against people like Bill Barr (or Antonin Scalia before him!) who openly, admittedly dissent on stuff like the death penalty. (Yes, kids, Scalia publicly admitted that he flat-out disagreed with the death penalty stuff in Evangelium Vitate.) There is a deeply ingrained "don't punch right" sensibility among (white, Anglo) committed Catholics that seems like it's getting more impossible to dislodge rather than less the longer Pope Francis stays in office.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No offense, Andrew, but if you and Celticempire are both speaking disparagingly of a style of Catholic belief/practice/identity/whatever, then that's a good sign to me that it's doing something right. (joking, mostly) (Apologies also if you're not speaking disparagingly and I'm just misreading your tone, which is a definite possibility.)

I don't really know what you're trying to say.

I'm making a joke that it seems like you don't get. It's not in very good taste so I'm happy to drop it. Sorry.

Speaking more seriously, it says a lot that "cultural Catholic" is used as a smear against people who chafe against Church teaching on stuff like this, but not against people like Bill Barr (or Antonin Scalia before him!) who openly, admittedly dissent on stuff like the death penalty. (Yes, kids, Scalia publicly admitted that he flat-out disagreed with the death penalty stuff in Evangelium Vitate.) There is a deeply ingrained "don't punch right" sensibility among (white, Anglo) committed Catholics that seems like it's getting more impossible to dislodge rather than less the longer Pope Francis stays in office.

Oh.

Obviously have a different experience of Catholic identity being as it was the walls, floor and ceiling of my life from 5 to 18 with almost no notional secularity as it was the entirity of the identity of half my home town, my family, all my friends and schooling. Fast forward a few decades and it's gone. Not just for me, but for most who have came after.

My point is, Catholicism is cultural and communal or it is nothing and the Church has completely forgotten this. It moved from not actually taking a hard and fast position or issuing Vatican diktats on a lot of social-moral issues to making it pretty much the only time lay Catholics hear from it.

So here's to the cultural Catholics by default. It's all they have saving them from obsolescence in huge swathes of the west.

Some of my best friends (including some of my best church friends!) are self-described, proud cultural Catholics. (The woman I'm considering moving in with--not like that, she's a lesbian--calls Biden "Fish Fry Joe" because of how strongly she identifies with his style of Northeastern Irish-American firehouse/union hall Catholicism. This is the same woman who describes herself as "Side C for Celibate-but-not-for-moral-reasons".) Hell, a good 70% of the reason I converted was that I wanted to move back towards the same cultural environment as my aunts, uncles, and grandparents once I got sick of American "church shopping" culture. Of course, that environment wasn't really what I found when I got there, for the reasons you're articulating here.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

A small but steadily increasing amount of the new queer religious bloc is being driven by heathens like me, at least in the more hippie faiths rather than the Varg Vikernes-type folk, even when said faiths arguably rest more on heteronormative essentialism and mystifying fertility and family than a lot of forms of Christianity. Whether or not this is a good thing for broader queer visibility and liberation is debatable, but it's helped me a lot personally.

I know someone, a lesbian who's been engaged to her girlfriend/fiancee for about seven years for whatever reason, who worships Jesus as one god among others in an Eclectic Wiccan context.