Samuel Johnson supposedly said something like that. One of my readers will straighten me out, I’m sure. Anyhow, that quote came to mind when I read this mindless post at the Huffington Post:
A few years ago, I applied for a teaching position at a Catholic University’s law school. Although the faculty eventually voted to give me an offer, the school’s seemingly devout Catholic Dean vetoed that decision. Knowledgeable sources later told me that the Dean did so because I was openly gay and because of my writings in support of LGBT rights. Several years later, that same Dean resigned abruptly after the police raided a house of prostitution which he was visiting during his lunch hour.
The theme of this Huffington post is that the Catholic Church has no business taking a public stand on matters sexual, because of its current problems of being sued for decades-old crimes, and because, presumably, of the sins of this former Dean of CUA Law school. The people making this tired claim of hypocrisy don’t seem to realize that this Dean had the decency to “resign abruptly” precisely because he knew he had violated a valid moral law. The Gay Lobby evidently wants to redefine morality, so that their preferred activities no longer count as violations of anything. This is the most natural thing that we sinful humans want to do.
I find it amazing that an organization that claims to be the Mystical Body of Christ, and whose head claims to be the representative of Christ Himself on earth, has NOT attempted to redefine morality to accomodate its publically sinful members. If the Catholic Church were nothing but a human institution, with a human power structure, that is exactly what the head guy would have done, a long time ago. They could have redefined adultery back in the Renaissance, to acomodate the antics of some of their sitting Pontiffs. That’s what Henry VIII did, after all. “Divorce, no big deal. I’m the King. I get to do what I want.” It would have been the most natural thing in the world for some of those popes to say, “Ah, that stuff about sex being reserved for marriage: that was ok for fishermen and hayseeds. But we are much too sophisticated for that. After all, this is the Renaissance!” But no such thing. They lived in sin, but they didn’t try to define sin out of existence, just to placate their consciences, even though they had all the worldly power to do so.
The Holy Spirit does reveal Himself in strange ways.