1/ Mr. Gehring is being truthful when he says that “the Catholic Church holds a view of human sexuality at odds with the shifting cultural winds.” But he goes wrong in suggesting that the Church can and perhaps will change its fundamental teaching on marriage and sexual morality
2/ to accommodate the zeitgeist. It won’t. Indeed, by its own reckoning it can’t. And it shouldn’t. Ideological fashions come and go, but the truth remains the truth in season and out. And the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexual morality, however unfashionable
3/ or unpalatable they may be to early 21st century progressives or others, are true. Moreover from the Church’s own perspective its core teachings on marriage and sexual morality are not only superior on rational (natural law) grounds to the view with which Mr. Gehring wishes to
4/ replace them, but its teachings fulfill the criteria by which the Church herself judges certain of her teachings to be permanent and not subject to substantive revision. So the teachings are here to stay, whether Mr. Gehring likes it or not. If the teachings are false and
5/ substantively changeable, that means the Church simply does not possess the teaching authority that she has historically claimed and that is among the things belief in which makes one a faithful Catholic. Fr. James Martin in tweeting out Mr. Gehring’s essay, describes it
6/ as “a superb (and concise) overview of where the Catholic church is today on outreach to LGBT people.” I do not know whether Fr. Martin intends these words to be an endorsement of everything Mr. Gehrig says. I hope not. For if it is so intended, then it clearly
7/ contradicts Father’s affirmation of his acceptance of the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexual morality. Mr. Gehring certainly appears to be calling for the Church to abandon the idea of marriage as a conjugal union in favor of a conception of marriage that would
8/ include same-sex sexual partnerships. And he is as explicit as he can be—so here I do not have to insert the word “appears”—in denying the clear and firmly settled teaching that homosexual acts, like other non-marital sexual acts, are intrinsically morally wrong. Mr. Gehring
9/ expressly observes that the teachings he denies are indeed teachings of the Church. So if Fr. Martin agrees with him in rejecting those teachings, he is contradicting his affirmations that he does not challenge or reject those teachings. Logically there's no third alternative.
