Catholic Priest Openly Supports Same-Sex Marriage

Photo by Doug Kasputin, Baltimore Sun

From Stoyan Zaimov's article in The Christian Post:

"A Roman Catholic priest in Maryland, one of the states that will be deciding whether to approve of same-sex marriage on Nov. 6 [2012]*, has told his congregation that he will continue to support such unions – right after reading out loud a letter from his Archbishop urging Catholics to vote against gay marriage. 

     'Could we not then say that their devotion to and support of each other . . . could be recognized by the church as a valid sacrament of God's unrelenting faithfulness to us just as much as the union of an elderly straight couple? Neither will procreate children, but both can be sacraments of God's faithfulness in the living out of their commitment to each other,' the Rev. Richard T. Lawrence told his congregation at Baltimore's St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church on Sunday."...

click here to read the rest of the article.

Fr. Lawrence's argument is similar to the one made by Andrew Sullivan in "What You Do," a 1996 New Republic essay. As Sullivan explains, the Catholic church's hierarchy asserts that the sexual act must have two core elements: a "procreative" element (the willingness to be open to the creation of new life) and a "unitive" element (the desire to affirm a loving, faithful union). However, the church also expresses compassion for the infertile and the elderly by allowing them to marry even though they cannot produce children. Sullivan maintains that the church should also extend its compassion to gays and lesbians by offering them the sacrament of marriage: 

Andrew Sullivan

"Sterile couples are allowed to marry in the church and to have sex; so are couples in which the wife is post-menopausal. It's understood that such people have no choice in the matter; they may indeed long to have unitive and procreative sex; and to have children. They are just tragically unable, as the Church sees it, to experience the joy of a procreative married life. 
     The question, of course, is: Why doesn't this apply to homosexuals? In official teaching, the Church has conceded that . . . homosexuals 'are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or pathological constitution judged to be incurable.' They may want, with all the will in the world, to have a unitive and procreative relationship; they can even intend to be straight. But they can't and they aren't. So why aren't they allowed to express their love as humanely as they possibly can, along with the infertile and the elderly?"

I personally disagree with the church's official definition of homosexuality as an "objective disorder." (Also, adoption and other avenues can enable a gay marriage to be procreative!) But I really love how Sullivan uses the hierarchy's own logic to undermine its stance on same-sex marriage. And I deeply admire Fr. Lawrence for sticking his neck out like that to defend same-sex unions -- and to express dissenting opinion within the church.

*Maryland voters approved the gay-marriage measure in the 2012 election.