Last month was a good one for human solidarity but a bad one for intellectual clarity. It rained muddles from the liberal left as much as the conservative right. And it all began with Pope Francis reiterating something he had said years ago, before he became pope.
In a documentary, in case you missed it, the pope endorsed same-sex-civil unions. He said they need the legal protection. He also said LGBTQ people have a right to a family.
A later clarification showed he didn’t mean more than what he actually said. Your sexual orientation or gender identification shouldn’t lead to being ostracised by your family of birth. He said nothing about forming new families.
As for same-sex unions, Pope Francis was reiterating a position he had taken when opposing same-sex marriage in Argentina: don’t legitimise the sexuality but recognise things like property rights, next-of-kin status, etc.
Still, the news networks gushed that Francis was the first pope in 2,000 years to express this openness to same-sex unions. Which is true but hardly impressive. For the great stretch of those 2,000 years, homosexuality was not understood as an ‘orientation’ – something you deeply are, rather than something you did.
For that matter, for a long time, marriage wasn’t exalted as a union of soulmates, either. Romance was for stealthy lovers, not spouses. Our idea of romantic marriage would have been novel to most previous popes.
As for Pope Francis, the truth is that he didn’t go as far as even St Paul’s nod to (heterosexual) marriage, which boils down to: if you really must, it’s okay.
How could the news networks get it so wrong? Well, they get many things wrong to begin with. But there’s also the fact that, on anything to do with values, they are card-carrying Victorians: they live under the assumption that they occupy the pinnacle of social enlightenment and everyone else is simply catching up with them.
It’s a serious error. It leads to misreporting what religious leaders have actually said – a disservice to their networks’ audience. It also confuses the roles of Church and state. It thinks of the Church as, fundamentally, social work with poetry. Wrong.
Any religion’s idea of nature is defined by its idea of what lies beyond nature, the supernatural, which is indefinable. Pope Francis heads an organisation that urges everyone to make the undefinable the focus of their lives.
Politics, on the other hand – even politics administered by Catholic politicians – should not concern itself with what cannot be defined. Governments cannot manage what they cannot define.
The Church can ‘command’ everyone to love but politics can’t. You can’t define love and you can’t track it – not with the instruments of government, anyway. What politicians can and should do is make basic respect a legal obligation, beginning with equal treatment. You don’t need to read minds or souls to do that. You just pass laws setting out rights and duties.
The moment we begin to restrict free speech to protect feelings, all free speech is in trouble- Ranier Fsadni
Behind the confusion of Church and state lies another confusion, that between belief and policy preference. Belief is concerned with absolute truth; policy preferences are concerned with good sense – the best you can do in the circumstances. Thomas Aquinas was drawing this distinction when he said adultery was wrong but it would be worse to make it against the law. You can’t enforce that law without a police state.
Often enough, it’s social conservatives who need reminding of this distinction but, these days, many social liberals seem to have forgotten it. They want heretics to recant and confess the right creed.
Just consider the reaction to Fr Patrick Pullicino’s recent opinion piece about the Church and homosexuality, where he said that homosexual activity harms society, as do families formed by same-sex couples.
Now it’s one thing to call him out when he misquotes the scientific literature, as he did. But Fr Pullicino also drew outrage because of what he said about harm to society, with some even claiming those views shouldn’t be published.
Really? Fr Pullicino is arguing about society as God would like it to be. He’s making a theological claim about what human nature is like when human beings repent of their ways. No one can prove or disprove claims like that. They have little to do with what social scientists can discover.
In a free society, he should be permitted to express that belief. We wouldn’t have seen half the fuss had he written that extramarital sex, or consumerism, harm society. No one would have said such opinions should be banned.
Why do we let one belief pass but not another? It’s not a good answer to say that the feelings of the LGBTQ community need protection from free speech.
Feelings should be protected by good manners and ethics. The moment we begin to restrict free speech to protect feelings, all free speech is in trouble. The country is full of people who feel hurt by something or other and who can’t wait to stop it.
The guidelines should be simple and clear. You may express your beliefs, as long as it’s done in a respectful manner. If you have people in your charge, then you may not harangue or bully them.
Politics can enjoin respect but it can’t do more without becoming repressive. No one is protected when heretics are forced underground or made to recant. We all become vulnerable to the ruling conventional wisdom, which has the annoying habit of changing.
Let our authorities focus on policy and let religions proclaim their beliefs. Anything else is double-speak: wanting to agree to disagree, while chasing out dissent.