The bunny has the same reaction I do. via blue meridian @ flickr
I must present, without further ado, the following passage from an article on Catholic Online:
Should we really give disordered appetites civil rights status under the law? Let’s consider an absurd example. I have struggled most of my life with fighting obesity. I am on the “winning end” lately, but just give me another Holiday! A very good argument can be made that obesity also has a genetic predisposition. However, I will fight it my whole life because it is unhealthy. It is a disordered appetite. Should we as a Nation decide that fat people have a civil right to be fat? Should those who insist that they resist that “genetic predisposition” to overeat be called Fata-phobic?
The “disordered appetite” referred to by Deacon Keith Fournier, who authored this spectacularly headdesk-inducing piece, is a simple matter known as homosexuality. As if that’s not enough, Fournier questions whether fat people have a right to be fat? This is an epic WTF? moment.
Yes, Mr. Fournier, those who somehow disbelieve that being fat is never due to genes should indeed be called something akin to your term “fat-a-phobic”. Oh, and those who believe that a perfectly normal sexual preference for those of the same gender is somehow “disordered” really are bigots and homophobes. The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
However, namecalling will not change our position on this matter nor will it make us go away.
Did someone offend you by calling you out on your bigoted position? Tough. That so-called name calling is nothing compared to telling people that the way they are (or, perhaps, the way God made them if you believe in a higher power) is deviant and unnatural. Now that is objectionable. Fournier goes on to quote the writings of Pope Benedict XVI from when he was still known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:
To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.
As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one’s own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.
Well, thank you for at least mentioning that gay people aren’t all murderous fiends. Look, I understand the Catholic doctrine that sex is for procreation. I didn’t major in religion for nothing. I’m not writing this post to bash anyone’s faith, but passages like this really infuriate me, as do articles like Fournier’s. As a bisexual woman, I staunchly reject the notion that I suffer from a “moral disorder” as well as from “disordered appetites”.
Another choice bit from Fournier:
Marriage between a man and a woman, intended for life, open to children, and the family founded upon it, is not up for grabs. Nor is it an antiquated institution. It is the first society, first government, first school, first economy and first church. Strong marriages and the families founded upon them pave the path to the future. Continuing efforts to use the Police Power of the State to give the same legal status as a marriage to homosexual paramours and force the entire society to recognize their relationships as equivalent to a marriage do not serve the common good.
Ah yes, the same Police Power of the State that features a Supreme Court unwilling to listen to a challenge to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? The same Police Power of the State that forbids same-sex marriage in 44 of the 50 states? The same Police Power of the State that only decriminalized homosexual acts in Texas six years ago?
I suppose Fournier’s equation of LGBT individuals with people who don’t weigh what he believes they should is a tip-off to the nonsensical nature of his piece. And really, I shouldn’t expect anything more from someone who all but calls his position one of homophobia (but he resents the notion that someone else might call him out on it). Still, it’s dispiriting to read an article like that right after waking up, and to realize that Fournier is not alone in these opinions.
Maybe I should go back to bed. But that won’t work to effect any change, now will it?
I think the biggest problem with his comparison is that he expects condemnation of fat people to be so universal that he won’t have to defend that point, and treats it as a foregone conclusion throughout the article.
That is the single most insane thing I have ever read since my university Catholic priest in Scotland began a sermon with the words ‘if I were to drink beer from the holy chalice in a hotel room there would be nothing wrong with the beer, the chalice or the room but in conjunction it would be profane and sinful, it is the same if you have sex outside marriage using protection.’ The sound following this was the sound of hundreds of university students leaving the church, yes really.
Parenthetically, I think the place of obesity in the health care debate would be a good Harpy article topic.
emilyanne: What always gets me is that the Catholic church in the USA is losing people left and right… so they become more conservative to lose more potential Catholics? Huh?
I enjoy the mental picture of everyone just walking out.
(And hotel rooms make things extra sinful?)
I should add that Fournier’s bit about obesity is laced through with clear self-loathing about what he considers to be his own “disordered appetite”. It’s amazing that he doesn’t see that policies like those of his Church force the same self-loathing on LGBT individuals.
I find it interesting that the dear father compares homosexuality to an appetite that must be suppressed … a hunger that must be ignored. I’m thinking he might fall under the “protests too much” label.
Also, I love how he says the The Church is “rejecting erroneous opinions.” Perhaps I’m getting overly tied up with semantics, but I always thought that opinions are just that … opinions … you know, individual view points that are neither right nor wrong. Anyone?
DangerMouse -the Catholic church in America actually terrifies me – it has so little to do with the church I was raised in. Someone raised an interesting point on one of the Jezebel threads on this topic and basically suggested that the church has all but given up on Europe as a decadent form of Catholicism and is instead concentrating on Africa, Latin and North America – although I actually think that in the US the issue is that the church is forming closer links/is influenced by the evangelical movement. Certainly the pronunciations of men such as Fournier seem to have more in common with the evangelical church than with any Catholicism i have known (that one slightly insane Scottish priest apart).
Emilyanne:
“suggested that the church has all but given up on Europe as a decadent form of Catholicism”
Has anyone told the Irish Catholics that? *grins*
@emilyanne: I wonder how much longer it will be before there is a non-European pope. I agree that the Church is starting to think that European Catholicism is a lost cause when it comes to strict adherence to dogma.
(emilyanne you made my day when you remembered that thread on jezebel about the RC Church’s policy in Africa and Asia vs. N. America)
@soalg I think in the last election there were many disappointments when the cardinal in Nigeria(?) did not get the papacy.
GreenGothBritChick – ha probably not but more seriously I do think the church in Ireland is increasingly less influential in people’s daily lives.
@rodriguez: Well, after 500 years of nothing but Italian popes, the Cardinals elected a Pole and then a German. Maybe they’re inching toward non-European popes verrrry slowly. For a nonwhite Pope to be the face of a faith of a billion people? It would really be interesting.
All the Catholics I have known personally are very cool, accepting laypeople (or intimidatingly intelligent Jesuit priests). That these people belong to the same institution as a hateful nutbag like Fournier — to say nothing of child-raping priests and their apologists — continues to boggle my mind. I have to remind myself that “catholic” = “universal,” and there are as many kinds of Catholics as there are (for example) atheists.
Emilyanne–I have acquaintances from Spain who decide to ignore the church’s stance on premarital sex but are still anti-gay. My facebook status about prop 8 totally lost me a friend when I explained it later in the day and it was one of my most proud friend-losing moments.
I mean, we’re talking something that’s reflected in STRUCTURAL BRAIN DIFFERENCES (LeVay, 1991, Science). (That’s not the only argument, but that’s the one I like to use the most.) For example, I’d be seriously impressed if gay men can make the shapes of their brain change to look more like women just so they can be “disordered” and “self-indulgent”. It’s like when people talk about “choosing” to be gay–yeah, because people totally would choose that given today’s society (and that of previous generations and in other locales).
(Funny thing that I learned while checking that reference: Homosexuals are more likely to be left-handed (McCormick & Witelson, 1994, Behavioral Neuroscience). I’m surprised we haven’t heard that they are DOUBLE evil because of this.)
DangerMouse, jesus – see that’s the sort of thing I just don’t get. Mind you as I’ve explained elsewhere I had an odd sort of Catholic upbringing in that my church going parents are both pro-choice doctors who have performed abortions and in my dad’s case are at the forefront of stem cell research. Neither of them have ever had a problem with this – seriously sometimes i wonder about how my dad can call himself a Catholic given his great heroes are Darwin and T E Huxley but he would say that it is a religion that should encompass everyone and not to do so is contrary to its central tenets of acceptence.
And what do you call rampant child molestation, Fournier? A hobby? How about mass beatings of school children? Well, those stressed out priests and nuns have to let off steam somehow, right?
As a (lapsed) Catholic, I still insist on calling him Ratzinger; it’s a much more fitting name.
The argument that sex must be open to children in order to be moral pure infuriates me because it is so illogical. What about sex with a woman who has gone through menopause? Or sex with a man or woman who are infertile? Is THAT a sin? If the Church followed their own argument to it’s conclusion, they would have to say yes, that is a sin.
Of course, they only use this argument when its application is convenient.