Over at
dotcommonweal, J. Peter Nixon has an
excellent, brief piece assessing the current legislative tussle over same-sex marriage in New York, specifically with respect to the role of the US hierarchy in the larger public debate. Citing polling data, Nixon insists that no matter how vociferously the Church opposes gay marriage, the outcome is inevitable, if not imminent, and that they will lose this fight, state-by-state, until the entire Union grants full legal recognition to same-sex couples.
The bishops are going to lose this one, he argues, but
the particular manner in which they choose to go down fighting holds immense repercussions for the Church's ability to evangelize young adults across the entire spectrum of moral matters over the course of the next several decades. He invokes a 2007 book entitled, "
un-Christian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity... and why it matters" in which a staggering 91% of young adults (aged 16-29) outside the faith describe Christians as "antihomosexual," whereas only 16% would describe Christians with the phrase, "consistently show love to other people."
That's some gut-punching stuff, and I think it's pretty accurate with regards to public opinion among
Millenials. I also think Nixon's absolutely correct in his hypothesis that the way the Church engages this particular socio-political issue is immeasurably determinative of its ability to speak effectively to young adults in all other areas of human life. Every single poll that's been published in the past decade shows, unambiguously, that Millenials overwhelmingly support the legalization of gay marriage, with the
latest statistics putting the percentage in favor at 68%. The Pew Forum, among the most comprehensive resources with respect to religion and social issues, has followed
the Generational Divide and discovered that the percent of young Americans who support gay marriage keeps going up.
Having lived on five different college campuses in the past decade, and having served as a campus minister at a large university, I can supplement the abstraction of these statistics with the substance of individual conversations and group interactions, all of which affirm the numbers. The fact that many young Americans disagree with the hierarchy on the matter of homosexuality is relatively easy to quantify. Less tangible, but every bit as real, is the perception among these same young adults that the Church's sexual teachings are irreconcilable with their daily experiences, and that, worse, the Church's official statements are uncharitable condemnations of their actual friends and relatives who are gay.
This perception of the Church as lacking in love (not to mention humility) strikes them not simply as unfortunate or unpalatable, but as patently unacceptable. It imperils the possibility of evangelization in general, as Nixon laments, for they see Catholicism as starting from
an anthropology of the human person that they quite simply reject. They're not going to be receptive to the invaluable wisdom and beauty of the Church's sexual teaching--much less actively undertake to explore it on their own--because they already know that, embedded within this framework is a metaphysical assessment of their gay friends as "
intrinsically disordered." If the Church can be
this wrong about so fundamental a matter, why should they listen to other teachings that are premised upon this same faulty anthropology?
Of course, it would undoubtedly be countered by opponents of same-sex marriage that the anthropology of the human person at work in the Church's position is not, in fact, flawed, but that the people who come to such an assessment have been insufficiently catechized or have been corrupted by the culture. (The argument from sin and ignorance.) That's a perfectly fair point, and I don't here have the time to delve into an exhaustive consideration of
theological anthropology (hence the title of the blog), but there are two distinct facets under consideration: the theoretical consideration of homosexuality and the practical morality of daily life.
Nixon's post does not attempt to analyze, much less resolve, the theoretical matter. His purpose is to highlight the practical effects of the public rhetoric and political strategy of the Bishops as they press their case in the legislative arena. For this, he should be applauded. A friend of mine once remarked to me (and I am sure it has been said by more luminous figures in history) that, "A person with an argument can never convince a person with an experience." It's among the most insightful adages I've ever encountered, and, to my experience, it's unqualifiedly accurate.
The bottom line is that the Bishops are forcefully pedaling an argument that runs head-first into the experience of the Millenials, and it's impugning their moral credibility in general. This isn't to say that the Church should run away from its principles--the vocation of the Church is to be prophet, even when that means it will encounter negative public reaction or political consequences for its position. What Nixon is suggesting, and what I am second-ing, is an honest acknowledgment that the campaign against same-sex marriage currently being waged by the US hierarchy is taking a practical toll on the Church's ability to spread the Gospel among young Americans, and that, if the Bishops are going to fight this battle, they should engage in some sort of conversation about how not to drive away their flock in the process.
An analogy: let us assume, for the moment, that the US Bishops are right about this matter, and that it really would be in the best interest of society to accept their proposal. Such would be akin to a group of coaches at a particular high school coming together and deciding that the young athletes entering their programs were lazy, undisciplined, entitled brats whose best interest would be served by a properly placed kick in the proverbial pants. As such, they decide that they are going to enforce discipline on the student-athletes right from the time they enter as freshmen. But their particular method for doing so is to employ a drill-sergeant-esque cavalcade of negative reinforcement. Athletes who complain are publicly berated with merciless tirades delineating their ostensible worthlessness, and any who fail to exert sufficient effort during drills are punished unforgivingly with push-ups, laps, and humiliation.
The underlying purpose may well be noble--to help forge them into the sort of disciplined, tenacious athletes that will achieve success in their respective sports and, ultimately, life--but the efficacy of their method could well be called into question. For every few individuals who respond well to this sort of training, there undoubtedly would be a dozen that walk away from sports altogether. Now, not only are they still lazy, entitled twits, but they've lost the myriad benefits of participating in a sport, e.g. physical health, inter-personal bonding, and stress release. Thus there is the question of whether the coaches are correct in their assessment of the teens as unmotivated, spoiled twirps who really, objectively, would benefit from a program of forced discipline (we assume for the sake of argumentation that they are), but there is also the matter of what the most effective way to make that happen really is, and whether or not the number of teens who are permanently turned off outweighs the good they're accomplishing with those who stick around.
Correspondingly, there is the question of whether or not the US Bishops are correct in their assessment of the threat that legalized gay marriage poses to society (which neither Nixon nor I are examining), but there is also the matter of the efficacy of their methodology. At a time when the best data available reveals that fully 1 in 3 of every American adults who was raised Catholic claims no longer to practice the faith (via the
Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey), this question of whether or not their approach is driving young Catholics away is imperative to consider.
