“Catholic Sectarianism”

Intelligent and good people can end up taking wrongheaded positions, which is a point underscored by Paul Griffiths in taking a wrongheaded position on same-sex marriage. Griffiths, a frequent contributor to these pages who holds the Catholic Studies chair at the University of Illinois, Chicago, argues in Commonweal that Catholics should not oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage and, indeed, may well support it. Don’t get him wrong; Griffiths is not a conventional “progressive” given to ignoring church authority. He has read very carefully the July 2003 instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) stating that same-sex unions are contrary to Catholic teaching and should be strongly opposed. Griffiths writes, “Catholics are bound to show at least obsequium religiosum , religiously submissive respect or deference, to magisterial teaching like that found in the CDF’s document.” He understands himself to be simply raising questions aimed at “contributing to the further clarification of the Church’s mind over time while still maintaining submissive deference to what is taught. This is the ordinary process by which the Church’s teaching develops.”

Griffiths underscores that he is an “orthodox Catholic,” and offers an elegantly phrased argument, the gist of which is that “the public culture of the United States is now profoundly pagan, opposed in almost every significant particular to what the Church advocates as a justly ordered society,” and, since the Church’s understanding of marriage is so distinctive, complex, and humanly beautiful, it should not be debased or compromised by “entanglement” with a pagan society’s marriage laws. So let the pagan society go its way on marriage, including same-sex unions, and let the Church be true to herself. The happy result, he says, “would clarify Catholic teaching about marriage, help Catholics to live in accord with it, make it more attractive to non-Catholics, and so, in the end, conform the body politic more closely to Christ by making the Church more seductively beautiful.”

In the same issue, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels offers a stiff rejoinder to Griffiths, pointing out that the understanding of marriage as a life-long covenanted union between a man and woman is not uniquely Catholic. It is shared by other Christians, Jews, and, indeed, people of almost every culture and religion. “Withdrawal from public debate on the definition of marriage or any other publicly contested issue,” writes Steinfels, “is the gesture of sectarians”a perennial temptation of certain Protestant groups, and now of some Catholics, both right and left, as well as the newly self-styled ‘orthodox Catholics.’” The sneer quotes around “orthodox Catholics” are unseemly, and on most questions of Catholic moment I am closer to Paul Griffiths than Margaret Steinfels, but she is right about the dangers of “Catholic sectarianism.”

Moreover, throughout his argument Griffiths assumes that this “profoundly pagan” society is moving toward same-sex marriage, when, in fact, there is massive popular opposition to such a change and the only chance of its happening, as its proponents are keenly aware, is through the dictate of courts. The proposed Federal Marriage Amendment intends to maintain marriage as what most Americans believe marriage is and should be, even if many betray that belief in practice. To speak of America as a deeply pagan or post-Christian culture is a convenient way to abdicate responsibility for what is, in troubling fact, an incorrigibly, conflictedly, and confusedly Christian society.

Griffiths also overlooks the fact that in the Catholic understanding––an understanding shared by many others––marriage is part of the natural order, created and blessed by God. As the Code of Canon Law puts it, “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.” To which is added, “This covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.” By concentrating exclusively on sacramental marriage, Griffiths ignores the responsibility of the Church to teach and protect the meaning of marriage in the natural order. This is an error hardly limited to Paul Griffiths, and it has worked considerable mischief, not least in the sometimes promiscuous granting of annulments in the U.S.

Then there is the question of what is meant by obsequium religiosum when one publicly contends that the Magisterium is wrong about a Catholic’s public moral duty. It is important to state Griffith’s argument fairly. He writes, “I conclude that Catholics may support the legalization of same-sex marriages, together with the progressive disentanglement of sacramental marriage from state-sponsored contractual marriage.” He might say that he is not actually contradicting or rejecting the CDF instruction since it does not explicitly address the second part of his conclusion, namely, the disentanglement from civil marriage law. In truth, however, the instruction, backed by centuries of Catholic teaching and practice, assumes a desired compatibility between church and civil law on marriage. And behind that assumption are centuries of Catholic teaching and practice related to the proper relationship between Church and culture.

In this and every society, there is much that is opposed to, much that is compatible with, and much that is supportive of what, in Griffiths’ words, “the Church advocates as a justly ordered society.” In recent history, the complexity of our circumstance and our duties is admirably addressed in documents such as the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus and the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae. In these and numerous other magisterial statements, the point is that we are enjoined to advocate, as effectively as we can, a justly ordered society. The alternative is to abandon society to its “profoundly pagan” fate, in the hope that a few brands will be rescued from the fire by the attraction of the Church’s countercultural witness. In his Commonweal article, Professor Griffiths is taking on much more than a disagreement over same-sex marriage. But I expect he knows that.