Liturgy, politics and….sex

About religious doctrines, traditions, cultural pressures, and the US bishops conference that just ended. It had a little of all the above.

There’s that formula that your GetReligionistas love so much — sex plus politics, minus doctrine, equals headlines.

Like the one in WaPo that highlights the tension between the bishops document and one just out by the D.C. Council, saying two opposite things about marriage.

The nation’s Catholic bishops approved a position paper that emphasizes the church’s traditional positions on marriage Tuesday, the same day that the D.C. Council agreed to schedule a vote on legalizing same-sex unions for Dec. 1.

They had to navigate some thin ice there.

The D.C. measure was not addressed directly in the pastoral letter, although it was a topic of discussion in the halls at the annual bishops’ meeting at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

In addition to the council action, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics ruled that a proposed ballot initiative defining marriage as between a man and a woman cannot go forward, reaffirming an earlier ruling that such a vote would be discriminatory.

So we’re not only at the point of having to reaffirm the traditional values that have upheld civilization throughout history, but having to defend those values against now being declared discriminatory.

The bishops keep at it, consistently addressing issues from the basis of both faith and reason. And rights…..because America has always stood for the fairness that one person’s rights do not trample on others. (Like, you don’t have the right to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.) But Church rights are being trampled by government bodies, and in this case, the D.C. city council.  

The Archdiocese of Washington said last week that Catholic Charities, its social service arm, would be unable to continue its partnerships with the city if the current bill isn’t changed.

Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl, in an op-ed piece that appeared on The Washington Post Web site Tuesday, said that church officials recognize that the council “is firmly committed to opening marriage to homosexual couples. We are asking that new language be developed that more fairly balances different interests — those of the city to redefine marriage and those of faith groups so that they can continue to provide services without compromising their deeply held religious teachings and beliefs.”

That’s about as fairly and gently worded as possible. But this wasn’t about the bishops and certainly not anything about their meeting over how not to compromise their deeply held religious teachings and beliefs, as GetReligion notes.

If you look at the statistics, the bishops have other subjects that they need to spend more time discussing. That is, there are topics that need major discussion if the goal is to defend centuries of Christian tradition on marriage and family.

But you see the problem, I hope. How do I know what the bishops are debating, other than what is covered in the mainstream press? I could read dozens of Catholic blogs, of course, if I want the discussions of doctrine, rather than simply the political headlines.

The [Baltimore] Sun, however, did provide glimpses of the actual heart of the document:

“Before the session, the bishops circulated statistics showing that American couples have grown less likely to marry and more likely to live together. Those who do marry tend to do so later in life, and the probability that they will divorce or separate is between 40 and 50 percent, according to a University of Virginia report.

“People are entering into marriage probably without an adequate appreciation of the beauty of marriage and the gift that it is,” O’Brien said. “The document is meant to strengthen Christian marriage, to prepare people who are going to be married before they enter that bond to appreciate what the commitment is, and also to open a discussion in our culture as to what the differences are today and to try to reach some common ground.”

Politically, of course.

And then we are off, once again, into the world of contemporary issues and their applications to current political debates.

I know this is hard for reporters. What we have here is a clash between centuries of Christian doctrine and new doctrines rooted in the Sexual Revolution, one of the greatest earthquakes of modern times. It’s hard to cover the past in media that are rooted in the present. But, when those doctrines and traditions frame the content of the news story, readers need to know that.