jueves, abril 07, 2005

El Papa que permitió comulgar a Pinochet, pero no a gays

Regresando a esta intensa semana de "Papa news", quiero tomar un filón que pocos han/hemos tocado, y que hoy Andrew Sullivan muestra en un brillante ensayo que publica en The New Republic.

"... A Pope who devoted enormous energy to explicating why the only moral expression of human sexuality is marital heterosexual intercourse presided over the rape of thousands of children by his own priests. What was his response? He protected the chief enabler of the abuse in the United States, Cardinal Bernard Law, and used the occasion of his own Church's failing to blame homosexuals in general. Attempting to grapple with the real question would have meant a debate about priestly celibacy, homosexuality, pedophilia, and the Church's disproportionately gay priesthood. But this Pope was far more interested in closing debates than in opening them.

I have a personal stake in this as well, of course. I'm a Catholic now withdrawn from Communion whose entire adult life has been in Wojtyla's shadow. And, as a homosexual, I watched as the Church refused to grapple with even basic questions and ran, terrified, from its own deep psychosexual dysfunction. "Be not afraid," this Pope counseled us. But he was deeply afraid of the complicated truth about human sexuality and the dark truth about his own Church's crimes. This was a Pope who, above all, knew how to look away. How else do you warmly embrace Yasir Arafat and Tariq Aziz without moral judgment? But people--faithful people--noticed where he couldn't look. And they grieved, even as, in the aftermath of this brittle, showboating papacy, they now hope."

Las feministas dicen desde los 60-70s que lo privado es público. La triple jornada (madres, trabajadoras, esposas) de las mujeres, su muerte por abortos insalubres, la violencia doméstica... todo eso y más le ha dado conciencia a las mujeres de que los males privados también tienen impacto público. Andrew Sullivan y otros, tratamos de explicar lo mismo sobre lo gay. La homofobia se vive en las casas, en las iglesias... y aunque puede ocurrir en lo privado, tiene fuestas consecuencias en lo público. The Conjecture, un buen blog sobre política postmoderna habla del asunto:

"Sam at Insulted.org is angry. He's angry that the Catholic church denied communion to "rainbow sash-wearing gay activists who showed up to protest a directive from Chicago's prelate that they violated church teachings by advertising their homosexuality."

This is a tricky issue.... there is a lot of debate over how the church should react to the issue of gay activists. No matter how some idealists choose to believe, the current accepted general theology of all denominations of Christianity is that homosexuality is a sin, a blight on the face of the church. As such, homosexuals are to be, at the very least, encouraged either to seek change, or not to practise their sexuality within the confines of both the church and their Christian faith.

The problem here is that the Catholic church has decided to deny Communion to anyone with whom it disagrees. A few months ago, it decided to deny Communion to pro-choice politicians as a way of expressing its displeasure with their stance on abortion. Denying Communion to in-your-face gay activists is not out of character, then, and the Church has every right to do so.

However, Sam's point rings true (and is reflected in some of our discussions of gay marriage). Pedophilic gay priests are not denied Communion, neither are adulterous heterosexuals. Seen in that light, the decision of the Church to single out particular kinds of sin, for either liberal politicians or for homosexuals, smacks of rank hypocrisy. Especially in the case of gays, those who have chosen not to live closeted, secretive, fear-filled lives have recieved official condemnation, while those who contiue to lie to themselves and others about where their true sexual interests lie, are allowed to exist without consequence. I'm not making the case for outing every gay you know, but it has to be pointed out that the honesty required to live openly as a homosexual (and, frankly, the courage), is deserving of at least some note. It is not easy to be gay in America. It is even less easy to be gay and Catholic in America (or anywhere else for that matter). The Catholic Church's decision to exclude and condemn homosexuals strikes me as wrong, a rejection of Christ's teachings on brotherly love.

And yet, the Church has every right to do so. As an organization, the Catholic Church can set its own policy, and because it's both private and religious, has dozens of SCOTUS case precedents to allow it to do so. It is perfectly within the rights of the Catholic Church, even individual dioceses (is that how you pluralize diocese?), to provide or deny Communion to whomever it pleases.

And it's perfectly within the rights of Sam to get angry. It's also perfectly within everyone else's rights to protest and boycott the Catholic Church, for refusing to punish child-raping priests but making a public example out of homosexuals who dare to live openly...."

Tema interesante que merece airarse y debatirse. Y no sólo ha ocurrido en Estados Unidos. En España el debate está calentándose, y más debido a la cercanía creciente del matrimonio entre homosexuales.

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