Time for a New Copernican Revolution

Meeting of the Pontifical
Academy of Science 

Easter Sunday morning, I read an extremely disturbing article in the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/us/ashley-diamond-transgender-inmate-cites-attacks-and-abuse-in-mens-prison.html?_r=0

It is the story of Ashley Dimond of Rome Georgia who was born male thirty-six years ago but who in adolescence began living as a woman and who, for 17 years now, has been undergoing hormone therapy designed to support her transition to female.  Ms. Dimond had achieved some small degree of professional success as a song-writer and singer before falling into the trap of drugs and petty crime.  She eventually ended up in the Georgia Penitentiary system where she was placed in a men’s prison—she has male genitalia (a word, by the way, I never thought I would be using in my blog) where she has not only been subjected to humiliation by prison officials but raped more than a half-dozen times by fellow inmates.  She was denied continued access to the hormone therapy she has been on the past 17 years and that has had serious physiological as well as psychological impact on her.  Now I know that this posting is going to get some hostile and even vulgar remarks from various krazies—if they are offended by what I write about the Traditional Liturgy they sure aren’t going to like what I write about a transgendered person—but actually Ms. Dimond is not my primary subject.  This article stopped me in my tracks.  I don’t believe I have ever met, much less have known, a transgendered person.  Consequently, I have never given the issues regarding transgendered people much thought.  When I read a newspaper story or heard something on the news, I think I just shoved it into a pre-fit category in my mind and moved on to something more within my experience.   We had a neighbor, when I was growing up, that liked to wear his wife’s underthings around the house.  We kids weren’t supposed to know what our parents and the other neighbors were laughing about, but kids aren’t stupid and eventually find out the story.  I have certainly met my share of effeminate men and even a few who, while not exactly dressing in women’s clothes didn’t exactly dress like men either.  (I mean people other than certain prelates who like to get all frilled up Cinderella style.) But I must admit that I am totally unfamiliar with this transgender phenomenon and so I think I just lumped a wide spectrum of people into a single category and not a very flattering one.  This article has made me stop and realize that I need to learn more before I rush to judgments or even stereotypes.  I realized reading this article that I had always misidentified transsexual persons as transvestites when in fact it is something very different and that I know very little, and understand even less, about either phenomenon

In the course of writing this blog I have several times suggested that the Church too must rethink certain issues “from the ground up.”  A variety of the sciences –the medical, the sociological, the anthropological, the psychiatric—have made discoveries that fundamentally change the way that we are able to understand a variety of moral quandaries from in vitro fertilization to same-sex attraction to embryonic stem-cell research to gender identity.  I am not saying that this demands that we come to different conclusions, but we do need to take the new knowledge into account as we theologize for a Christian response to people whose lives are locked into these and other complex realities.  In the past it has too often taken us, as Church, far too longer to make the interface between our faith and the contemporary world, especially the sciences.  I am not going to get into the whole Copernicus/Galileo thing, but with the knowledge explosion in contemporary society we cannot afford not to engage in that dialogue now.  The Church’s—and indeed religion’s—credibility has already been all but lost to the under 30 generation.  It will take work for the theologians to absorb the immense motherload of new scientific data and it will take trust for the Magisterium to delegate the research to competent scholars, but our faith should assure us that while the way ahead seems dark and filled with pitfalls, the Holy Spirit ever guides the Church towards the truth.  There is nothing to fear about knowledge; nor is there any reason to block inquiry.  There is but one Truth and we cannot be afraid to search for it.  

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 8

 

Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube

baby" with her parents and her child.

Pope Francis has instructed the preparatory commission for the 2014 synod on  “The Pastoral Challenges on the Family” to circulate a questionnaire to the world’s bishops—which they are in turn to circulate to the parishes—ascertaining the current practices (not theory) of Catholics on artificial contraception, reception of the Sacraments by the divorced and remarried, couples living together before marriage, and the place of same-sex couples and their families in the life of the Church. 

This questionnaire (which my pastor says he as not yet received as our Archbishop seems tied up with other things right now) has generated a fascinating and contradictory set of responses.  The Neo-trads are waving their hands and saying—“nothing new, nothing new; been done before.  Keep moving, nothing to look at.  Nothing happening here.  Keep moving along….”  The Vatican II types are all enthused saying that “finally we are back on track with the Council—yeah, Francis.”

The neo-trads have a point.  This is not the first time that the Holy See sent out questionnaires to ascertain the sensus fidelium.  Previous synods were often preceded by questionnaires sent to the bishops to help prepare the lineamenta (agenda or working document).  Pope Pius XII wrote the world’s bishops before defining the dogma of the Assumption in 1950.  What is different this time, however, is that the bishops are to pass the questionnaires on to the parishes.  In other words the fidelium are going to get to have some consensus in the consensus fidelium.  Don’t get me wrong—nobody should expect that we are going to have magisterium by democratic vote.  Don’t expect any radical change in Church teaching.  When the dust settles, I don’t expect much to be different, but that isn’t important.  What is important is the process.  Change process will produce—in time—changed product. 

Blessed John Henry Newman pointed out that in the ancient Church there were three requirements for a doctrine to be established. Doctrine took the reflection and study of the theologians; pronouncement of the bishops, and the consensus fidelium.   Consensus fidelium might best be translated as the “harmony of God’s Faithful People.”  It doesn’t mean everyone agrees or that the majority agree—it only means that the People of God, the priests, deacons, and laity (as differentiated from the magisterium: the bishops and from the theologians) have come to hold this doctrine in their collective heart.  

Right now we as a Church are faced with the tremendous moral complexities of living in the twenty-first century.  Scientific, Sociological, Medical, Anthropological, Psychological developments—note, I hesitate to say “advances” because—as a historian I believe the jury is still out on how “good” some of these developments are—have changed the ground rules of possibilities.   At the same, the virtual disappearance of philosophy and theology from our educational systems has left most in our society unable to critically reflect on the moral implications of the choices facing us today.

Case in point.  It is only in the last generation that it has been possible for a child to be conceived in vitro.   Louise Brown, the first child so conceived was born in 1978. The various givers of the Law in Deuteronomy or Leviticus could not have imagined such a thing; nor could Saint Paul—or even Jesus.  Neither Augustine nor Aquinas—or Bellarmine for that matter—could have imagined it.  The understanding of embryology—or even a scientific appreciation of conception—was not in the realm of their intellectual universe.  The “Tradition” doesn’t supply easy answers to this dilemma as it is beyond the minds of those whose writings convey our historic faith.  This is not to say that there are not principles we can find in the scriptures or in the authors that can’t be applied to a solution, but it would be misleading to say that the Tradition supplies a moral resolution without a careful reexamination of precisely what the Tradition was meant to say and a dialogue of that Tradition with the insights of modern science.  So here is the case.  Martin and Susan, devout Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday in their parish—he being an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist and she teaching third-grade CCD—find themselves unable to have children.  They married fairly late, tried Natural Family Planning for two years to conceive, and finally went to a fertility clinic where they were told in vitro was their only hope.  Now despite their being good Catholics, the Church’s problems with in vitro is not on their radar screen.   Sure they heard it in Pre-Cana, but it didn’t register—they never expected to have this problem.  If they attended some adult education program they may have heard it, but even in the best parishes relatively few attend adult ed—especially when it is on reproductive morality.  No, Father doesn’t preach against in vitro from the pulpit any more than he mentions masturbation, oral sex, or contraception from the pulpit.  “Our commission for the pulpit is to preach the Gospel, not teach sex-ed” one priest said to me.  Martin and Susan could have checked the catechism of the Catholic Church—but they never even suspected that something was wrong here.  They wanted a child.  They would love to have several children.  There was nothing selfish in their decision—which is not to say that it was right, but their motives were generous.  “I only heard about it after the course was chosen” said a priest friend of their families.  “I suppose I would have said something if they had asked me beforehand, but frankly I knew their intentions were good and I wasn’t about to take away their happiness when they told me they were expecting.  I think we need to find ways to raise this question in people’s consciences, but I honestly find that most people can’t grasp the problem and just saying that such and such is a sin doesn’t hold water anymore.  You have to be able to explain to people just why it is morally wrong.” 

Pope Francis’ inventory is going to discover that there is a wide breach between theory and practice, but it will also show us that we cannot rely on old answers to new questions.  We need to restore philosophy to the academic curriculum—and not just some vague survey of thought but applied philosophy: ethics.  We need to teach people to think critically and to anchor their thought in intellectual discipline.  Science does not provide the ultimate answers to human existence.  At the same time, moral theology requires a strong dialogue with science—and dialogue implies an equality of parties in the discussion—so that the moral conclusions are consistent with the scientific knowledge to which they are meant to respond.  And in the meantime, we need to remember our task is not to judge but to absolve.