'Theo-dem', top Vatican hawk on family have meeting of minds
Print Friendly VersionBy JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York
An intriguing meeting took place in the Vatican today between a leading exponent of a political current known as the “theo-dems,” meaning center-left politicians inspired by Catholic values, and the Vatican’s leading hawk on issues of sexuality and the family. The encounter symbolizes two different visions of the church’s engagement in the Western “culture wars” – one moderate and dialogic, the other clear and uncompromising.
Indirectly, the session raises a crucial question, with implications far beyond Italy: To what extent can the more moderate tendency find a “right of citizenship” in a church that in many ways stresses a harder line?
Italy’s Minister of the Family, a 56-year-old devout Catholic politician named Rosy Bindi, met Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, 70, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in Lopez Trujillo’s Vatican office.
Though no statement was issued after the session, the two almost certainly discussed Bindi’s willingness to entertain proposals for the civil registration of unmarried, “de facto” couples, including same-sex couples, a proposal Lopez and other church officials have strongly opposed.
On most other cultural issues, Bindi and Lopez are in near-perfect harmony. Bindi opposes gay marriage and adoption rights for homosexuals, and has made clear that the government of Romano Prodi has no intention of introducing legislation that would equate same-sex unions with marriage.
“The word ‘pacs’ does not appear in our agenda,” Bindi has said, referring to the French acronym which has become a shorthand reference for civil equivalents of marriage in European discourse. "We speak of civil unions, of guaranteeing rights."
“One can’t think of putting the family founded on marriage and other forms of living together on the same level,” Bindi said, “and not just because the pope says so.”
Yet the fracture between Bindi and Lopez Trujillo on civil unions reflects a wider divergence in Catholic opinion – between those who believe that the state has to make some concession to new social realities in order to protect individual rights, and those who insist that any concession to the dissolution of the traditional family unit invites a slippery slope.
More broadly, some Italian Catholics see figures such as Bindi as a God-send, a way of keeping Catholic values alive in political and cultural circles often hostile to the church. Others, however, see her attempt to reconcile Catholicism with the post-modern political left as an effort to merge matter and anti-matter which the church should reject.
It’s a quandry with which Catholic politicians elsewhere, including Democrats in the United States, can easily identify.
Few politicians anywhere in the world, of any ideological stripe, can stake a better personal claim to Catholic credentials than Bindi.
Born in 1951 in Sinalunga, Bindi attended the University of Siena and quickly became enrolled in Catholic Action, by far the largest and most influential lay organization in Italy. Catholic Action has long been seen as the moderate and “mainstream” lay group in Italian Catholicism, while Communion and Liberation, founded by Fr. Luigi Giussani, is the more conservative alternative.
Bindi says that her life changed on Feb. 19, 1980, when she witnessed the assassination of her mentor, Vittorio Bachelet, by a commander of the Red Brigade terrorist group. Bachelet was a former president of Catholic Action as well as a former vice-president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Afterwards, Bindi dedicated herself to Bachelet’s project of bringing Catholic values to political life.
As a member of the opposition party under former conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Bindi was a strong opponent of the war in Iraq. After elections last May brought the center-left under Prime Minister Romano Prodi to power, Bindi was selected as Italy’s first-ever “Minister of the Family,” a position which has put her on the front lines of the culture wars.
Bindi has said that she sees the center-left as a “grand common home” for secularists and Catholics alike.
“Look, I appear sometimes as a Catholic of the center-left, which can take positions that are a little critical with regard to the church,” she said. “Now, my being a believer will be put to the test: I’ll have to find a synthesis between my values, and my respect for pluralism and the evolution of society, for different ideas and inclinations.”
Today's meeting suggests the search for that synthesis continues.
I think we need to focus
I think we need to focus more on separating the sacrament--the permanent union of one man and one woman in mutual self-giving ordered toward the bearing and rearing of children-- from civil marriage, which is a legal arrangement bestowing certain rights and responsibilities. With civil marriage, the state regulates it to prohibit injustice (under-age marriage, polygamy etc.). But that is all. If the parties want out of the contract, they get a divorce, divide up the assets and walk away. In the most egregious case, Britney Spears's 24-hour drunken Las Vegas marriage came with all the rights and responsibilities of any secular marriage. If Catholics can live with that, why not gay marriage? I think a firmer separation between the civil contract and the sacrament would benefit the Church; for a start, it would put an end to the outcry over annulments, which is simply people applying a secular standard to a sacrament.
Note a belief in the immorality of homosexual acts is not necessarily a barrier to gay marriage. Again, using the law to enforce morality is more of a protestant than catholic tradition (remember John Courtney Murray on contraception, and Thomas Aquinas's belief that prostitution should not be criminalized).
So, why should Catholics be concerned by gay marriage? It would not change our understanding of marriage one bit, and it might even be beneficial to the extent that it clarifies the distinction between the civil marriage and the sacrament. Of course, protestants (for whom marriage is not a sacrament) need the authority of the state more than we do. We should not fall into that trap.
I've written more on my blog here: http://reasons-and-opinions.blogspot.com/2006/07/thorny-issue-of-gay-marriage-catholic.html
Taking a name from Gerard
Taking a name from Gerard Manly Hopkins almost makes me wish I had chosen a name. But I doubt I would have come up with one as wonderful as yours.
I know nothing about Italian
I know nothing about Italian law, but in the American context, I do not understand how anyone can be for 'registration' (civil unions) and against gay marriage. I am writing solely in a legal context. Churches have every right to include or exclude anyone they choose. And to call any relationship by any name they assign.
I do think that politicians have overstepped their bounds when they seek to preserve the 'sanctity' of anything. Sanctity is a matter of ecclesiastic judgment.
Stability is a governmental concern.
Marriage as opposed to civil unions is important because it confers hundred of rights important for the stability of the couple and the family. Civil unions do none of these things. In addition if civil unions are an option for gay couples then under the 9th amendment they must be available to straight couples, who might opt for them because they bypass the legal entanglement needed to dissolve a marriage. So gay marriage is good for America because it strengthens couples and families. Civil unions are bad for America because they threaten the stability of couples and famillies.
Why can't Civil Unions
Why can't Civil Unions confer rights that are important for the stability of the couple and the family? Why not let "marriage" be an ecclesiastical word that happens between a man and woman in church and civil union the civil word that describes what happens between any couple who appear at the courthouse and ask to have those rights conferred on them? I'm not picking a fight, I'm asking.
In many countries a man-woman couple must appear at the courthouse to be married before they are permitted to have the marriage solemnized in a religious ceremony.
It seems to me the only way to accomplish the "conferral of rights" is to use the two terms because it's not politically expedient at the present time to call it marriage when the couples aren't always man-woman.
Thanks for the question.
Thanks for the question. I'm not even tempted to fight, A large portion of the rights are enshrined in federal law under the term "marriage," So civil unions which are usually locally enforced do not apply those rights. In addition the Defense of Marriage Act explicitly excluded same sex couples from all federal rights in marriage and withdraws the applicability of the full faith and credit clause of the constitution, which would carry state rights with the couple from one state to another. I know the church feels a proprietary power over m arriage, but in fact marriage was a civil action and only a civil action until the eleventh century when the church declared marriage the seventh sacrament.
I understand those rights
I understand those rights are enshrined in federal law under the term marriage. What I'm trying to say is: put those same rights under federal law using the term Civil Union. Because changing the term to civil union defuses much of the stuff coming from the "religious" right. There is a possibility you could sell that. I doubt it will be possible to sell the idea of Marriage between same sex couples to the public or to lawmakers anytime soon but you might sell Civil Union. Just call tham all civil unions regardless of gender. Take it totally out of the domain of Church.
You're right. But that
You're right. But that won't happen. DOMA is an example of how powerful the anti-gay unions/marriage lobby is. What will change things is a supreme court ruling based on the ninth amendment. With the composition of the court, I'm sure you think this even more unlikely. But I disagree. Loving v. Virginia made it illegal for governments to discriminate against interracial couples. A similar decision will extend the same rights to gay couples. (I can't wait to read Scalia's dissent!!) Who would have thought Lawrence would come in the wake of Hardwick?
GcH If the catholic church
GcH
If the catholic church wants to remain in its own ghetto, then by all means hold to a my-way-or-the-highway party line. However, Vatican II, among other things, razed the bastions behind which the church had insulated itself. The only way now is to dialogue - even with post-modern thought (which is less hostile than the modernity with which Ratzinger still attempts to dialogue). Which is more appropriate for the church, to witness or to coerce?