Professor Gerard Loughlin seems to make a sharp and clever point (The Tablet, 13 June) about sacramentality and gay marriage, but he skirts over important issues. Firstly, "homophobia" has nothing to do with this at all. The Church is wonderfully not homophobic in the basic sense that hatred and prejudice against people because of their orientation is rejected and deemed as sinful. Remember that the Catholic Church was the first ecclesial body to state this so clearly and boldly, not only in the Catechism but also back in 1986 with On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. There is also a sense that we are dealing with new awareness of a condition that no one fully understands (is it genetic? Is it psychological? Is it different for different people?) and we still have to go on learning and advocating compassion in relating to the gay community. The trouble is that many today twist the term homophobia to mean disagreeing with some aspect of same sex behaviour.
However, gay marriage is another matter. This is not really about equality at all for there are essential differences. You can speak about gay relations and committed partnerships (sexually active or celibate). You can arrange legal protection of property and inheritance for such. Marriage is something else. It is more than, different. It is rooted deeply in human nature, biology and procreation. It has a given complementarity of male and female both psychologically and physically. It is the normative manner to create children and nurture them, something intrinsic to its nature. Marriage is therefore impossible for a same sex couple. Let there be difference, don't squeeze people into the same shoes.
As for sacramentality, there might well be an echo of such about all, natural, civic human commitments, but full sacramentality is before Christ and his Church, whether at Cana or in the parish. Such is Canon Law, even if the sacrament is administered by the actual couple, but within that context and with the blessing of the Church.
Fr Kevin O'Donnell, Rottingdean, East Sussex
The Tablet’s leader article (30 May) told us that the Irish referendum result may point to the Church’s needing to change its understanding of marriage. We read that “official Catholic teaching on the matter” had been rejected and the Church had better take notice of this. In the same issue in a fine article Claire Jardine discusses the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Much of the article celebrates official Catholic teaching as expressed in Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate. Some irony here? Are we wanting to have our cake and eat it too?
Official Church teaching can and does change but it is drawing a very long bow to suggest the sensus fidelium is being expressed in some kind of definitive way through a vote in a civil referendum in a nation where we are constantly told very many people no longer take the Church and its teachings seriously. The same logic could lead to Australia’s turning its back on asylum-seekers being seen as an expression of authentic goodness because a democratically elected government instituted that policy.
Gerard Hore, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
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