Render Unto God

Before the national election of 2008, Archbishop Chaput wrote an excellent book on the role of Catholics in American society called Render Unto Caesar. Since then he has shown precisely what it looks like to carry those principles out. His latest battle has to do with the decision of a Catholic school in Denver to refuse re-admittance to two children whose "parents" are a lesbian couple. The Archdiocese issued the following statement:

"To preserve the mission of our schools, and to respect the faith of the wider Catholic community, we expect all families who enroll students to live in accord with Catholic teaching. Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment."

As you can imagine, there is no shortage of people lining up to accuse the Church of prejudice and discrimination. So the question then is whether these criticisms of the archdiocese are valid?

There appear to be three criticisms that pop up in one form or another.

1) "I just feel the Catholic Church is a church that should be teaching acceptance and tolerance. I just don't think this is an example of that… We're all sinners. Why discriminate against this end of sinners?"

The Catholic Church should teach tolerance and acceptance and does, but I think it would behoove all of us to understand what those words actually mean. Let's be clear right up from that we accept and tolerate people. We do not however have to accept and tolerate actions and ideas that are not good. This is precisely why we teach that we are to hate the sin and love the sinner.

This brings me to the next point. "Why do we seem to discriminate against this end of sinners?" This goes to the heart of why many gays will not go to church because they do not feel accepted. But this sin and these sinners are different. The difference is not in the sin so much as the fact that they do not see it as a sin. What they really want is acceptance of their sins and not the label of sinner. This the Church cannot offer. Christ came to heal the sick, not the ones who deny their sickness. The Church is not for someone who doesn't need healing.

2) "I don't think they interview to see what parents are divorced or what parents are using birth control or other things that are against the teaching of the Catholic Church"

This is actually a common way that we have come to argue despite being wrongheaded. My kids do it all the time. When one of them gets in trouble for something they did they immediately ask why their brother didn't get in trouble yesterday when they did something else that was wrong? Unfortunately, we never seem to grow out of this way of arguing.

This is actually a logical fallacy called the argument from silence. Just because the school doesn't test parents' catholicity doesn't mean that on this issue with these two children their handling of it is wrong or that it condones the other behaviors. You have to stick to the issue at hand.

There are two other problems with this approach. First, if someone was openly campaigning telling everyone that the Church was wrong on these two issues, I absolutely think the status of their children at the school would and should be in jeopardy. In essence, the two women that were guardians of these children are openly saying the Church is wrong by their actions.

Along the same lines, nobody says that divorce is a good thing (yet). I don't see "divorce pride" parades popping up throughout the country. But again, if someone were openly saying that the Church is wrong then the approach would be different.

By the way, I wish I could shout this to the rooftops. The Catholic Church is not against birth control. We are not called to a life of being the little old woman who lived in a shoe. We are called to responsible parenthood which means that we must be prudent in our decision to have children or postpone births. The Church however is against certain means (such as artificial contraception) that are used to postpone births. I know this sounds like semantics, but we need to be precise in our language.

I was talking to a guy who said to me that I "don't believe in birth control because I am Catholic." I told him that we did believe in birth control and that we were not all called to have as many children as possible. He said that what he meant was that we didn't believe in contraception. I told him again, that we did believe in it. Clearly it exists and we would be in denial not to believe in it. But we as Catholics think it is a very bad idea and ultimately damaging to marriage. Now he was interested in why it was a bad idea.

The point of this digression is that we need to make sure we frame the Catholic understanding in a positive light. Ultimately, that is how we should present the beauty of the Church's teachings. I could have simply told him that contraception was wrong, but instead I told him it was bad for marriages. This opened a dialogue that would have been immediately shut down had I chosen the "because the Church says so" response.

3) "Punishing a child for the "sin" of the parents is immoral, unethical, and flat-out childish, especially when the Vatican was recently hit with its own gay sex scandal less than a week ago."

This response came from a Catholic contributor at the Huffington Post. I am not sure if by placing the word sin inside quotation marks he is denying the reality of sin or this sin in particular, but nonetheless it is interesting perspective. I assume he is referring to this particular sin because he mentions the Vatican scandal.

I actually believe him when he says that he had twelve years of Catholic education because he clearly doesn't understand how the Church works. Is he saying that since the men who populate the positions in the Vatican are sinners that the Church should stop preaching against sin? That there are fallen human beings in the Vatican should surprise no one. That is precisely why we call it a scandal, but nevertheless our faith is not in the men who work in the Church, but on the Man who founded it.

Ever the faithful shepherd who cares for each individual soul, Archbishop Chaput said that ultimately the reason for removing the children is in their best interest. He said that, "(T)o allow children in these circumstances to continue in our school would be a cause of confusion for the student, in that what they are being taught in school conflicts with what they experience in the home." You have to wonder why the two women didn't come to the same conclusion and not send their children there in the first place.