An Open Letter to the Archbishop

Editor's Note: The following is a letter mailed to the Archbishop of Boston, and copied to The Heights.

Dear Archbishop O'Malley:

I am writing out of concern regarding the most recent actions of the Catholic Bishops on the issue of gay marriage. Although I understand the tradition of Catholic doctrine from which your position stems, I ask you to study some of the troubling patterns of the Catholic Church in relation to human rights and to carefully consider the harmful effects of the message that the Church is sending today.

Rev. Martin Rhonheimer, of Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross recently completed an analysis of the role of the Catholic Church in events leading up to the Holocaust. He concluded that the Church's official teaching led to a confusing double message that contributed to anti-Semitic feelings in Nazi Germany. The Church preached that racial persecution of Jews was wrong but civil measures to limit the 'dangerous' Jewish influence in society were legitimate. Rhonheimer states, "Equality in the natural law was not equivalent in the Church's eyes to equality in the civil law." This mixed message made it difficult for Catholics to develop a clear understanding of the need to oppose the Jewish policy and thus paved the way for later Nazi atrocities. "It was the Church's own attitude toward the Jews that had made it difficult, if not impossible, to mobilize Christian consciences."

This chilling message is eerily similar to the one that is being delivered by the Catholic Church today in claiming that gay marriage will be damaging to humanity. It is not gay marriage that threatens humanity but messages of hatred and exclusion, especially those cloaked under the veil of 'morality'. It is ironic that Jewish leaders have actually taken a more 'Christian' position on the gay marriage issue than the Catholic Church. The Jewish Community Relations Council voted in favor of same-sex marriage, rightly noting that, "discrimination against one group leads to discrimination against all." The Jewish people have first-hand knowledge of where the path of discrimination can lead. We must remember that homosexuals were sent to Auschwitz along with the Jews.

Similarly, during the civil rights struggle in the United States, Rev. Martin Luther King described his sorrow at the absence of support from the white church, including the Catholic Church. He wrote, "I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. I have looked at her beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. Over and over again, I have found myself asking: 'What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?...Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?'"

Indeed.

As we contemplate the current debate over the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling on gay marriage, parallels between the past and present are troubling. When moral clarity is needed over fundamental decisions about human rights, history tells us that organized religion, including the Catholic Church, has not been a reliable beacon of justice. This makes it all the more disturbing that Catholics are being pressured to choose between allegiance to their religion and the dictates of their own consciences.

As a single heterosexual Catholic, if I married tomorrow, the full civil benefits of matrimony would be bestowed upon my husband without any scrutiny of his moral worthiness. Yet the same benefits are not offered to my gay friends, many of who have been in loving and faithful relationships for years. These good people have been wounded and scarred by the Church, whose hateful comments have been directed at them even during Mass, in the house of God. Much is said of marriage as a sacrament, but it is first and foremost a covenant of commitment. Allowing gay couples and families to formalize their commitment under civil marriage will serve to strengthen the bonds of society. Society is not strengthened by injustice. The evolution of a just civil society should be guided by the universal moral law to uphold the human dignity of every person.

Regarding the issue of children, gay parents are fully able to love and nurture young lives. Many children of gay parents are adopted. Underprivileged children, who might otherwise spend years in foster care, are now in loving family environments thanks to caring gay adults. The full-page ad in the Boston Globe last week using "research" studies on children of divorced households to denounce gay parenthood was appalling. As a research fellow and PhD student at Boston College I was horrified to see such a misuse of research. Any trained researcher knows that you cannot generalize study findings indiscriminately to populations other than those used in the studies. There are many children who are thriving in the loving care of gay households. Have the 'Focus on Family' and 'Coalition for Marriage' thought about the damage that these malicious advertisements might cause to such children? And I can only imagine the pain this hateful ad must have caused single Moms.

Catholic Church leaders do have a right to lobby legislators over issues of moral import. But the Church needs to recognize that each legislator has the duty to follow the dictates of his or her own conscience and should not be judged as "gravely immoral" by the Church when their decision does not comply with Catholic teaching. All Catholics, lay and clergy alike, should look at the gay marriage issue with open hearts and minds, remembering that the message of Christ was inclusion, not exclusion.

Perhaps God's purpose in creating homosexual persons is to guide the collective human consciousness to transcend our narrow boundaries of love. Heterosexual families do not have a monopoly on love. The Church's actions are undermining the possibility of human transcendence. People build the kingdom of God in different ways. We need the Church to be an active partner in building the kingdom of God. We need a church that welcomes all the builders.