Quote of the Day

Repeatedly over the last year and a half, I’ve written about teachers in Catholic schools and leaders in Catholic parishes who were dismissed from their posts because they were in same-sex relationships and — in many cases — had decided to marry.

. . . The blunt truth of the matter is that during a period when the legalization of gay marriage has spread rapidly in this country, from just six states in 2011 to more than three times that number today, Catholic officials here have elected to focus on this one issue and on a given group of people: gays and lesbians.

Their moralizing is selective, bigoted and very sad. It’s also self-defeating, because it’s souring many American Catholics, a majority of whom approve of same-sex marriage, and because the workers who’ve been exiled were often exemplars of charity, mercy and other virtues as central to Catholicism as any guidelines for sex. But their hearts didn’t matter. It was all about their loins. Will the church ever get away from that?

Pope Francis seems inclined to do so, and is nudging other Catholic leaders with his carefully chosen words and artfully orchestrated symbols. He’s probably not telegraphing any major shift in church teaching — which, by the way, changes plenty over time — but he’s signaling that Catholics who run afoul of it needn’t be vilified.

– Frank Bruni
Excerpted from "The Church's Gay Obsession"
The New York Times
October 4, 2014

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – May 31, 2014
• Quote of the Day – August 22, 2013
• Quote of the Day – June 15, 2013
• A Head and Heart Response to the Catholic Hierarchy's Opposition to Marriage Equality
• Responding to Bishop Tobin's Remarks on Gay Marriage
• Rediscovering What Has Been Written on Our Hearts from the Very Beginning
• Beyond the Hierarchy: The Blossoming of Liberating Catholic Insights on Sexuality
• God Weighs In on the Gay Marriage Debate

Image: Ben Wiseman (New York Times).