Some Things in the Catholic Church Will Never Change

Christine Flowers on Mar 22, 2021

The point is that matrimony is a sacrament that applies to a “union” of two individuals, and has very little to do with the intrinsic worth of those individuals. Bad people get married. Bad Catholics get married. Believe me, I know them.

But the institution of Catholic matrimony transcends the flaws in its human participants. The church has aspirational values, and one of them is to promote the beauty of a union open to the creation of human life.

The pope has consistently made clear that the church still embraces its gay and lesbian members, going so far as to say “Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They're children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it.”

But that is very different from saying that a union which violates church teaching should be permitted simply out of a sense that we don’t want to hurt those who violate those teachings not in their identity (which cannot be changed) but by their actions.

This isn’t about updating names, eating meat instead of fish sticks or kicking out some saints. This is about what it means to be Catholic.

For some people, that will mean saying goodbye. Those who remain, like me, have reasons that transcend the things that can be expressed in words.

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