Tweet
Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago
The Illinois state Legislature is gearing up to consider passage of The Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act (HB5170), a marriage equality bill. Unsurprisingly Cardinal Francis George, Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, opposes the bill.
What is surprising is Cardinal George’s reliance on “natural law”, not Bible references, to make his case. From the letter “Same-sex Marriage:” What do Nature and Nature’s God say? signed by the Cardinal and his bishops:
Marriage comes to us from nature. The human species comes in two complimentary sexes, male and female. Their sexual union is called marital. It not only creates a place of love for two adults but also a home for loving and raising their children. It provides the biological basis for personal identity.
It is physically impossible for two men or two women to consummate a marriage, even when they share a deep friendship or love. Does this mean nature is cruel or that God is unfair? No, but it does mean that marriage is what nature tells us it is and that the State cannot change natural marriage. Civil laws that establish “same-sex marriage” create a legal fiction. The State has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible.
Neither did the Church create marriage. …Christ raised marital union to the dignity of a sacrament, giving it significance beyond that given it by nature; but, like the State, the Church cannot change the natural basis of marriage.
Is Cardinal George a Roman Catholic Archbishop, or a pagan priest? If the former, why is he ditching Bible-based reasoning in favor of “natural law” that equates having sex to marriage and implies that even God is powerless to alter?
And “Nature’s God”? How strange to see a Roman Catholic cardinal invoking a deist notion coined by Thomas Jefferson.
Nothing about Cardinal George’s “natural law” argument sticks together, but he embarrasses himself in particular by implying that heterosexual sex is all that “natural law” allows. He is apparently ignorant of the fact that homosexuality is everywhere in nature. There’s nothing unnatural about it.
Archbishop of Seattle J. Peter Sartain and his bishops also attempted to use a secular argument against civil marriage equality, saying, “Upholding the present definition of marriage does not depend on anyone’s religious beliefs”.
Why are members of the hierarchy stepping away from their purview — religious-based arguments — and instead relying on secular arguments and “natural law”? As I said in response to Archbishop Sartain’s statement, it “constitutes a capitulation to the fact that a supermajority of American Catholics support marriage equality and have already rejected religious-based arguments for discrimination against their gay and lesbian friends and family members.”
Likewise, by relying on this “natural law” argument, Cardinal George and his bishops would seem to be admitting that they can find no religious reason to oppose civil marriage equality that is acceptable to their laity.
18 Comments
Thankfully, President Obama’s Illinois endorsement has a lot more power than Cardinal George’s condemnation. I think Obama’s public favorables are quite a bit higher than George’s.
Cardinal George’s “natural law” argument is a re-hash of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. So there’s a long history of using this argument in catholic tradition.
And when I encounter this argument I also ask where in nature we see marriage. What we see in nature is a great deal of sexual activity, almost all of it not associated with monogamy, let alone commitment and none of it involved with joint checking accounts, pension inheritance and hospital visitation.
Marriage has absolutely nothing to do with nature. It’s a man-made custom. It isn’t part of the natural world, any more than tango is, or bon dancing.
Keep in mind also that the Catholic doctrine of “natural law” has nothing to do with nature as it is — it’s a description of the way the Catholic hierarchy thinks it should be.
The letter has about as much to do with reality as the Church’s other pronouncements: nothing.
Bzzzzt! Sorry Mr. George, you lose the argument based on the facts. Humanity comes in many forms. Although most Americans are either male or female, 1 out of ever 2,000 births results in an intersex human being, someone who is physically (or even genetically) between the two genders. And while Catholics are free to believe those people cannot get married (because typically they are infertile, and infertility can be a bar to marriage in the Church) our civil laws must allow for all people to enjoy the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Also, I’ll say it again, how does the Catholic Church have any moral foundation on marriage after they decided to recognize Newt and Calista’s marriage? Apparently divorce and adultery are only barriers to marriage in the Catholic Church if you are poor or unconnected. If you’re rich and powerful, however, as many annulments as you need will be granted to ensure you can marry the woman who spent 6 years undermining your last marriage.
as paul says above, the catholic church has been making arguments based on natural law for a very long time… back to augustine and aquinas. but george’s argument probably would be a weak one in aquinas’ classroom at the sorbonne 800 years ago. that’s because arguing from natural law presupposses using human reason to look at the natural world for answers to a whole slew of questions. but now zoologists have documented a lot of same-sex behavior in species other than people.
george is trying to appeal to “reason” in his argument, but we all know that he’s really appealing to the prejudice that resides in many people.
it’s up to all of us to recognize that prejudice for what it is and put it aside. then, george’s argument will fail.
The Holy Trinity:
Male
Female
Hermaphrodite
He sure does rock a pretty lace dress and scarlet over-shawl, though, doesn’t he? This virgin expert on the sexytime, Cardinal George.
Cardinal Boy George would be a better arbiter of moral virtue.
Cardinal, maybe your version of “consummate” is archaic.
There is a basic biological law which underlies evolution, which is that reproduction must be maximized. Ultimately all behavior is for the purpose of reproduction; those species which do not reproduce are not “fit” and cease to exist. So Cardinal George could argue that if people are constrained to act only instinctively, like most animals and plants, homosexuality should be avoided if it interferes with reproduction. Of course even in non-human nature it sometimes happens that populations overstrain the capacity of the local environment, and then there is a population crash. There are reasons to think that humans will overstrain the capacity of the entire earth before long, which would likely lead to a massive crash of many other populations besides humans. If Cardinal George could find a passage in the Bible which tells us how to deal with this, he might have something.
If a church or belief system wishes to limit the scope of marriage for it’s own reasons, within the boundaries of that religion or belief, then so be it. But then they must step out of the way of civil arrangements for the same action.
Simple.
Foolproof.
I know, I know. Complications afterwards. But we get to step forward a bit more into these uncharted (for the church) territories.
When I was with child (a long time ago) people would ask me if I wanted a girl or boy. I always said a little hermaphrodite. Even in San Francisco people didn’t know what to say.
But that is just simplistic thinking. There are variations on gender and sexuality in many species. Just cause some don’t understand why doesn’t mean it isn’t important and valid.
The Catholic Church these days is as wrong about everything as all those fundy protestants, but at least it is wrong with more intellectual rigor. Churh doctrine is indeed, has long been, that homosexuality is unnatural, not that there are specific Scriptural injunctions against it.
Partly, the Church takes this position because its general position is that, while we rely on truths revealed in Scripture, every revealed truth can be backed up, and has to be explicated, in rational terms. But in this particular case, there can be no reliance on Scripture to hate on Teh Gay, because all the scriptural passages that protestant Holy Roller types cite as condemning homosexulaity, do no such thing. It’s all laughably shoddy scholarship.
The Church is tied to theological positions on human sexuality taken centuries before we invented the concept of “homosexuality” about 120 years ago. The fundies don’t care about reason or the facts, not even the facts about Scripture, so they’re happy to embrace ludicrous readings of the text if they serve the purpose of the moment — hating on Teh Gay. And their target audience wouldn’t sit still for theological reasonings about the natural status of homosexuality. They want to hear that gays and secular humanists will burn in Hell for all Eternity, and they want it striaght out of Scripture, and if Scripture doesn’t have it foiir them, they’ll damn well invent the citations. The current Pope and his ilk may be just as sick, but at least they are bound, if only by tradidition and institutional inertia, to pursue their prejudices without dragging Scripture itself into the gutter with them.
On the topic of marriage — any kind of marriage — I give the appropriate level of credibility due to people who have rejected all forms of human sexuality for themselves and who believe that the only acceptable forms of human sexuality is that which treats women like dairy cattle and the statutory rape of youngsters as long as perpetrated by their fellow clergy.
This is apart from the fact that Cardinal George, like the other bigots, archbigots, and cardinals are agents of a foreign dictator who has mandated a global cover-up of sexual abuse.
But that’s just me.
Same argument could be used against celibacy, don’t you think?
Actually, it’s more on the order of “survival must be maximized.” Edward O. Wilson came up with an interesting idea to explain sociality in insects — kin selection: worker bees do not reproduce but support the queen, who is their sister, so at least one-quarter of their genetic heritage is passed on with a greater chance of survival in her offspring. Goes a long way toward explaining not only the persistence of same-sex orientation throughout human history, but also the roles that same-sex oriented individuals have filled in many societies.
Churh doctrine is indeed, has long been, that homosexuality is unnatural. . .
Well, since homosexual behavior and/or same-sex pair bonding has been observed in over 400 vertebrate species, that one got blown out of the water. Oh, I forget — “Nature” is what the bishops say it is, not what it actually is.