The Catholic Church Was Not "Out-Marketed" on Gay Marriage

Cardinal Dolan, a/k/a Porky Pig

If one were to believe New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan - a/k/a Porky Pig on this blog - the Catholic Church has lost the battle against gay marriage simply because it did not use the proper PR and marketing tools.  It's a load of bullshit, and an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter calls out Dolan and the bishops and cardinals like him.  The Church's position on gays is simply wrong and more and more Catholics see the falsity of the Church's position - a position fueled largely by self-loathing closeted priest, bishops and cardinals - and will not blindly follow the dictates of the institution that brought them the worldwide sex abuse scandal.  The editorial maintains that the hierarchy needs to listen to rank and file Catholics and stop acting as if we are still living under the imperial structure of the Roman Empire on which the Church is modeled.  Here are editorial highlights:

The church's problem with the issue of homosexuality, claims New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, stems from lousy marketing, that most secular undertaking of the materialist culture. The problem, he asserted, is not in the church's teaching, but in how it has been sold. It's just not been made pretty enough to entice people to take it off the shelf. Hollywood and a host of other secular interests were first to place their shiny new products on the shelf. 

The cardinal, who lives on Madison Avenue, is within walking distance of some of the best marketers the world has ever known. If he looked to them for advice, they might suggest he begin with a focus group.

In a sense, the church has in its questionnaire preparing for the Synod of Bishops on the family (see story) a focus group study underway right now. If Catholics honestly answer these questions and bishops' staffers honestly report their answers, church officials might just learn -- among other things -- why most Catholics aren't "buying" the notion that their gay children, parents and friends are "intrinsically disordered" or suffer from a "condition."

If the church faces a marketing failure on issues of sexuality, the failure is in listening to its people. In recent years, the U.S. bishops have been deaf to the people of the church -- and the American voters -- on the issue of same-sex marriage. When it comes to contraception and divorce and remarriage, the church has tuned out what the faithful have been saying for 50 years. The church's teaching on sexuality is unpersuasive because the church advances teachings that actually reduce human sexuality and sexual activity to its most banal, utilitarian and mechanistic level, detaching it from the deepest possibilities of genuine human intimacy.

Official teaching on contraception has been so widely dismissed in practice, one wonders it even comes up in conversation. The same is true for divorce and remarriage.

The same is quickly coming true on the topic of homosexuality, because among Catholic parents who know their children as all manner of things -- curious, funny, loving, mischievous, talented, gracious, annoying, musical, athletic -- all the things that parents revel in and come to love, some are also coming to know their children as gay. Thank God that today most parents are not cowering before a catechism characterization of their children and sending them off in a panic to a Courage meeting to be remade into something more acceptable.

Dismissing the lack of acceptance of church teaching as a marketing failure is an insult to the very idea of teaching and certainly to gays and lesbians. It walks, in search of a sound bite, right past the mystery of the human being.

Dolan promised to keep up the battle against gay marriage, all the while, we presume, trying to convince the world of the popularized notion that the church can simultaneously hate the sin and love the sinner. As if the human mystery can be bifurcated and compartmentalized into portions lovable and despisable.

Should the cardinal want respite from the fight, he might take an evening or two and meet with some gay Catholics and their parents. Ask them to tell their stories, ask them why they stay in the church, ask them how they pray, what they hold as their hopes and dreams. Really listen, maybe even make allowance for certitude to melt a bit.