Sexual Abuse in Churches: A Turn to Healing

When Sarah Mullally was formally installed in a historic ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral on March 25, 2026, a former nurse became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her vocational background highlights the importance of healing, which was appropriate because her predecessor, Justin Welby, had stepped down because he had failed to address a serial sexual-abuse scandal. It had been important most of all to the victims—boys at a church camp who were sexually molested by a gay man volunteering at the camp—that Welby go. Close to the day of the ceremony, Mullally promised explicitly to attend to such victims, as is fitting and proper for a Christian cleric to do. It is what Jesus Christ would do, whereas he would not recognize the sexual predators or their enablers in the hierarchies of Christian denominations. The contrast itself bears witness to just how far some denominations had fallen from being justified in claiming to follow the principles preached by Jesus in the Gospels. That those sects had been able to do so even while representing themselves as distinctly Christian institutions shows just how power clerics have in beguiling laity.

Mullally emphasized her commitment to “do all I can to ensure that the Church becomes safer and also responds well to victims and survivors of abuse.”[1] Being safer refers to the Church proactively policing its own, whereas responding to victims is a reaction to past abuse. Regarding the latter, she said the Church was “seeking to become more trauma informed, listening to survivors and victims of abuse.”[2] As a former nurse, she could have gone further by saying that she would make her Church into a facilitator of victims getting connected to therapists so the healing process could really begin, for being listened to is just a first step in the help that victims of sexual abuse need in order to heal.

Psychology not being my field, I can only surmise that victims of sexual abuse avoid commitment and instead may engage in anti-commitment behavior, such as having sex with friends and anonymous men or women. Of course, this is not to say that every man or woman who is sexually promiscuous has been sexually abused. Using rampant sex to push commitment away is a defense mechanism that only needs a fear of emotional intimacy to be able to control a person’s life and serially thwart genuine (i.e., intimate) romantic relationships. For some victims, sex itself may just be too painful.

It is precisely because sexual abuse can scar its victims so deeply that Welby’s abject failure to properly handle the case of John Smyth, “who sexually and physically abused young men at Christian camps in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa over five decades,” is so damning, especially as Welby was a Christian priest (and Archbishop).[3] This is not to say that such enabling and lack of accountability on such a crime only occurs in religious institutions. Penn State University’s athletic director and football coach looked the other way as an older men molested student football-players in the showers for decades. Even so, it is more shocking when older men molest younger men under a Christian flag.

Sexual abuse by an older man can be tacit, or subtly legitimated because it is camouflaged by a relationship arrangement that gives the younger man the go-ahead to be sexually promiscuity that keeps emotional intimacy away. There is, in other words, a cost to the younger man in being what is known as a trophy. An older man having such a “trophy” younger man bears no cost, as the older man can even be living with another man romantically. That the trophy is being kept from having an emotionally intimate partner of his own is of no concern to the older man who gets to have his cake and eat it too. The trophy may even be deluded into thinking that the older man is his partner. In short, this is sadly very unfair to the younger man, and thus I contend that the arrangement is a subtle form of abuse.

A fear of emotional intimacy, such as motivates a person to push people away when they get too close (such as by using sexual promiscuity), fits well with being in a trophy role. It can be caused by sexual abuse or from having witnessed abusive relationships, or even simply a low self-esteem. Such fear is, I suspect, very difficult for therapists to heal because people who don’t think they are worthy of emotional intimacy will lash out to thwart it in its tracks. This is precisely why Christian institutions could play such an important role in connecting victims of sexual abuse with psychological clinics, rather than merely be good at listening. The damage done mentally is surely very deep. That a former nurse became the Archbishop of Canterbury is a good indication of where Christian Churches could go in emphasizing healing in such cases. After all, Jesus heals in the Gospels.  

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Sarah Mullally Makes History as First Woman Enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury,” Euronews.com, 25 March, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Oman Al Yahyai, “Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby Resigns amid Sexual Abuse Scandal,” Euronews.com, 12 November, 2024.

Conservatism in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

The Quorum is a high-level governing body in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Quorum “helps set church policy while overseeing the many business interests of what is known widely as the Mormon Church.”[1] On December 27, 2025, Jeffrey R. Holland, “a high-ranking official . . . who was next in line to become the faith’s president,” died.[2] He was 85. To be at that age and yet next in line to lead a major Christian denomination is a sign of just how tilted toward the elderly the leadership of that Church was at the time. Almost exactly three months earlier, Russell M. Nelson, the then-sitting president of the denomination, died at the age of 101. Dallin H. Oaks, at the age of 93, became the next president. These ages make 75, the mandatory retirement age for Roman Catholic bishops, look young, though Pope John Paul II died at 84 and Pope Francis died at 88—both men while in office. Especially in Christianity, whose Gospels depict Jesus and his disciples as much younger men, the question of whether an aged leadership unduly foists conservatism on what in the Gospels is characterized as a radical religious movement.

In 2020, a group of researchers put the old adage that people tend to become more conservative as they age to the test. Contrary to the folk adage, the study found that political attitudes tend to be stable over time; however, when attitudes do change, “liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even though it overstates the degree of change.”[3] Regarding religion, research indicates people tend to become more religious as they age, but this doesn’t answer the question of whether a person’s religious beliefs become more conventional or orthodox within a religious institution as the person ages. Simply put, are older people in a congregation more likely to “upset the apple cart.” To the extent that living through decades has a thickening effect on the idealism of the youth because the inertia of status quo, whether of an organization or a society, is difficult to move, even with a faith that can move mountains.

As a complication, the influx of social ideology (e.g., social issues) into the religious domain can make orthodox religious believers seem more or less conservative. I have argued elsewhere that the overreaching of social ideology onto the religious domain minimizes or ignores the sui generis nature of both domains. Based on the study on political ideology changing over time as a person ages, it seems reasonable to posit that a person’s social ideology is most likely to stay constant, but when it changes, it is more likely to get more conservative. It is important not to omit the possibility, however, that very old people can surprise us and actually shake things up a bit in leading a religious organization.

Russell Nelson “was revered as a prophet” even though he was “the oldest serving head of the church” when he died at 101.[4] If the label of prophet resembles the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, the implication is that Nelson spoke truth to power. It may be going too far to say that his time at the helm of the denomination “will forever be remembered as one of . . . profound change” because he emphasized global ministry and increased temple construction.[5] The need to temper the magnitude of the change reflects the empirical results of the study on changes in political attitudes discussed above. For instance, in 2019, when Nelson was in his mid-90s, “the church made a surprise move . . . by pledging to roll back a series of anti-LGBT policies introduced in 2015 that had reportedly led to 1,500 people leaving the [denomination] in protest.”[6] That the motivation to roll back the anti-gay policies may have had something to do with the loss of membership, and thus money, tempers the magnitude of the shift in the social ideology in the Church’s leadership. Attention to finances can itself be construed as conservative. Furthermore, reversing the ban on children of same-sex parents being baptized and the expulsion of gay members who are married are not as surprising as the announcement that the denomination would perform gay-marriage ceremonies would have been.

That rolling back two policies does not count as profound change is also supported by the fact that just two years later, Holland gave a speech “in which he called on church members to take up metaphorical muskets in defense of the faith’s teaching against same-sex marriage.”[7] That the speech “became required reading for BYU freshmen in 2024” is itself an indication that the social ideology in the Church’s governing body and leadership had not changed.

That both Nelson and Holland opposed homosexuality even as two policies were rolled back does not mean that those men had become more conservative, and that were younger men in charge, the Church’s stance on the social issue would have been more progressive in 2019. Therefore, this case study should not be used to argue that because Jesus and his disciples are characterized as middle-aged in the Gospels, Christian denominations should be led by young or middle-aged people or else the radicalism of the movement in the Gospels can be expected to be hampered by old men at the helm. In fact, that Nelson did so much—albeit not necessarily of profound change—in the last decade of his life in leading his denomination qualifies the typical assumption that people over 85 should be put out to pasture because they cannot possibly make a difference, whether to an organization or a society.

Nevertheless, the finding that when political attitudes do change as a person ages, most often this results in a more conservative ideology, means that young and middle-aged people can be included at the highest level of an organization so to counteract or balance out the admittedly mitigated tendency. In other words, the elderly can make contributions as organizational leaders and are not necessarily more conservative than they were, so the need to balance out excessive conservativism, due to age, with younger leaders, is less though it does exist to some extent. The tendency of the elderly to resist giving up some power to younger members is thus something to watch out for in church governance, but the elders need not be replaced altogether as a prerequisite for religious organizations to be able to adapt to a changed environment at least to some extent so to be able to survive. It is not as though a denomination must adopt a progressive social ideology, which I submit is extrinsic through related to religion anyway, in order to survive; rather, the mitigated, or muted, tendency of people to become more conservative with age should itself be countered institutionally in terms of there being ways of including young and middle-aged members at the highest organizational level of leadership and governance. Generally speaking, the tyranny of the status quo should be countered so both change and constancy can have a chance at swaying the day.

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1. CBS News, “Jeffrey R. Holland, Next in Line to Lead Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Dies at 85,” CBSnews.com, December 27, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Johnathan Peterson, Kevin Smith, and John R. Hibbing, “Do People Really Become More Conservative as They Age?” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 82, No. 2 (April, 2020), pp. 600-11.
4. Nadine Yousif, “Russell M. Nelson, Head of Church of Latter-day Saints, Dies Aged 101,” BBC.com, 29 September, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Pope Francis on Blessing Gay Couples

Pope Francis approved a document in 2023 that allows for “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex”[1] The inclusion of the word, possibility, is important because it gives priests (and their bishops) whose stances on morality are socially conservative an out. That irregular situations are included in the statement—although admittedly they are distinct from “couples of the same sex”—is a hint that the statement would likely be controversial and taken at least by some clergy negatively. So that the document gives the clergy discretion is no small matter. It also matters because of the emotional vulnerability that is entailed in requesting a blessing. At the time, the Church was still being impacted by having been recognized, and thus stigmatized, as the cause of the emotional damage that had been inflicted on children by pedophile clergy over decades. In fact, the resulting declining church attendance may have gone into the motivation for the statement. The document's overarching pastoral purpose in blessing gay couples over conducting a moral critique of homosexuality shows not only how much Pope Francis differed as of 2023 from his predecessor, but also how very much the atrocities against children had changed the orientation of the Vatican. To the extent that a significant number of the pedophile priests and bishops had molested (and were still molesting) boys, any moral critiques getting in the way of blessing loving gay relationships would suffer from a lack of credibility in the face of dripping irony and sordid hypocrisy. Even so, the document can be criticized for failing to distinguish moral from theological critiques of male homosexuality—an oversight mitigated by that fact that the pastoral purpose of the letter subordinates even a theological assessment, for, as Paul wrote, faith without love, especially love whose object is not convenient, is for naught.

It should be stated at the outset that no cleric should be forced, even by the Pope, to give a blessing against the dictates of  conscience, for surely intention matters both in the giving and the receiving of a blessing. Mitigating the likelihood of being forced, conservative clergy may actually not find the document, and thus giving such blessings, to be as objectionable as might be presumed from the immediate sensationalistic journalistic reports. For one thing, the blessings “must be non-liturgical in nature and should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union.”[2] Church was still maintaining that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman. Furthermore, homosexual conduct was still considered to be a sin.

The document is thus not revolutionary even within the Roman Catholic Church. The underlying motive is pastoral, based in the magisterium (teachings) of the Church, rather than doctrinal from scripture. In other words, the blessings on same-sex couples can be approached as a means of ministering to human beings in their hurt and yearning for God’s presence, rather than as giving religious legitimacy to homosexual conduct. A request for a blessing can be viewed as a response to the human condition that seeks to transcend itself, including all the concrete situations that we face. Sexual conduct is such a situation, and so it too can be transcended, including when requesting a blessing. Even the love that two people have for each other is deeper than the sexual relations, and yearning for God’s presence—God’s love—relativizes even interpersonal love.  

Nevertheless, a priest (or bishop) may view the document as giving permission to bless a sin. The document attempts to deal with this objection by stressing that no ideology should be an obstacle in the way of a person wanting to feel a connection with God via a blessing by a priest. That is to say, a priest’s ideology should not be an obstacle to a same-sex couple requesting blessing. There are, however, some problems.

Firstly, the document itself contains a contradiction that could give a moral critique from an ideological standpoint some legs. On the one hand, the document recognizes a role for “the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers.”[3] However, the document also states that “requests for such blessings for same-sex couples should not be denied.”[4] In the daylight between this language, same-sex couples requesting a blessing could be confronted with ideological prejudice. Priestly discernment, being expressly granted, can find an indirect way to justify denying a blessing. For example, a social-conservative priest could simply discern that a couple has not prayed enough to be ready to receive a blessing, even though prayer is not a precondition (but most lay Catholics wouldn’t know that).

Secondly, although the document does warn clergy against denials based on technicalities, including those based on ethical analysis, a theological, non-moral rationale exists that conservative clergy could use. “When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it.”[5] The pastoral intent behind the document relativizes the moral dimension, but what about the theological dimension itself?

Religion, and thus theology, do not reduce to morality, though in Christianity (and Judaism) the relationship is complex. Divine decrees are not subject to moral constraints; otherwise, as Kierkegaard points out in Fear and Trembling, Abraham would be guilty of attempted murder in raising the knife above Isaac. So divine decrees trump countervailing ethical principles. Theology transcends morality because the anchor being sought transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and sentiments.[6] Where divine decrees are consistent with, and indeed even have moral content, however, such as five do in the Ten Commandments, morality is given theological legitimacy rather than relegated as subordinate. None of ten commandments, and neither of the two given by Jesus in the Gospels, are on homosexual relations. In fact, Jesus doesn’t discuss homosexuality.

We have to go back to Deuteronomy to find a divine prohibition on male homosexuality, but even there, the point is theological rather than moral. Although this supports the document’s prohibition of moral critique, the document does not confront the theological point being made in Deuteronomy. Looking over the list that is given in that book of things that God dislikes (i.e., abominations), we find items that do not have moral (or immoral) content. Eating shell fish, for example, is included on the list as an abomination. Contrary to the popular view, an abomination is not necessary something that is very, very immoral. Rather, an abomination is simply something that God dislikes. That renders the list theological in nature. Male sodomy (but not lesbianism) is included on the list. On this basis, clergy have a theological rather than a moral basis to use their discretion to refuse to provide a blessing.

To be sure, a biblical hermeneutic (i.e., method for interpreting biblical passages) could be used to get behind the scripture. A cleric could conclude that male homosexuality was deemed culturally immoral when Deuteronomy was written, and that the social ethic was simply given divine credibility. Similarly, the military attack on Jerico could have been legitimated by writing that Yahweh ordered that even the women and children be killed. Without going “behind” scripture to speculate, a priest would be justified in concluding that a theological rather than an ethical reason exists for not blessing same-sex male couples. The document does not take on this point, but an effort is made to transcend it by emphasizing a pastoral goal in dealing with sinners.

The document emphasizes the fact that sinners generally have need of God. In the Gospels, Jesus says he came for the sinners. In fact, he puts them ahead of the self-righteous in getting into the Kingdom of God. Accordingly, the document states: “The grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else.”[7] Were active sin a block to blessings, then nobody would be able to receive blessings. Clerical picking and choosing among sins, isolating abortion and homosexuality for special treatment, suggests the presence of human ideology. Ideological discernment is a very different thing than theological discernment. All too often, the two are conflated by clerics who would perhaps fit better running for a political office than saying Mass. God’s grace works even in sinners, regardless of the particular sin being committed. Doing something that God does not like does not cut oneself off from God’s grace. By analogy, friendships are not typically ended just because one person does something that the other person doesn’t like. Put another way, love is stronger than likes (and dislikes).

Similar to how love is not inconsistent with dislikes, wanting to be blessed, even if in a particular situation on the surface of life, is essentially a yearning to transcend. According to the document, “Ultimately, a blessing offers people a means to increase their trust in God. . . . The request for a blessing, thus, expresses and nurtures openness to the transcendence mercy, and closeness to God in a thousand concrete circumstances of life.”[8] Concrete circumstances are superficial relative to the yearning for experiential grounding to something that is solid rather than conditional. Such yearning is the seed of the Holy Spirit, which, according to the document, “must be nurtured, not hindered.”[9] Moral critique hinders. Ideology hinders. Even dislikes hinder. The Church’s clergy should themselves be oriented to transcendence where the reference point (i.e., God) lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotions.

It is therefore not by accident that the document states that the Church must castigate rather than perpetuate its own “doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”[10] With energies dissipated thusly, nothing is left with which to love the sinner. To be sure, sin snuffs out God, but sin does not fit so conveniently into a particular social ethic—as if humans were divine law-givers. Even amid sin, a person can be redeemed from its grasp. Even while within it, even “when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God,” the document states.[11] In providing a blessing, a priest is merely pointing hands in a transcendental direction. This is hardly to sanction conduct on the surface.

Therefore, sin does not reduce to immorality as defined by any particular ideology. Even if conduct taken to be immoral is further taken as indicative of sin, as something that is disliked by God, the sinner can ask God for help. To stand in the way of such a request, in which a creature renders itself vulnerable in a fundamental, existential sense, is itself blameworthy both ethically (because harm is being caused) and as a sin because blocking someone’s yearning for God is ironically to push oneself away from God. Surely God dislikes that, but even such a priest is not cut off from God’s grace. In the end, we are all struggling creatures falling short and yet we all have the amazing ability to yearn for existential transcendence.

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1. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
2. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
3. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
4. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
5. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
6. Here I am borrowing from Pseudo-Dionysius on the transcendence of God.
7. Christopher Lamb, “Pope Francis Authorizes Blessings for Same-Sex Couples,” CNN.com, December 18, 2023.
8. Nicole Winfield and David Crary, “Pope Approves Blessings for Same-Sex Couples If the Rituals Don’t Resemble Marriage,” The Huffington Post, December 18, 2023.
9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

Turning a Church into an Ideological Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

A Unitarian-Universalist "Church" wherein a few causes of political activism take pride of place, replacing religious faith and choking off tolerance. 

Perhaps it is only natural to prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.

A Methodist church smothered in ideological political causes that punctuate even the liturgy and constrain church membership. The photos below are of the same church.

In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.

In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.

The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”

Presumably a faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved. In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.

Because an orientation to contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is wholistic, as is truth itself.

Sure enough, after a month of being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe, and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological flags.

At least for the Methodists the claim can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology, so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.” One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.

The Unitarian Universalist “religion” accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally, Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life, when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf. So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.

By 2023, much had been written about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith. The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation. 

Gay Pride and Evangelical Christianity

Taylor Swift, an American singer and cultural icon in 2023, spoke “out against anti-queer legislation” during a concert in early June. “We can’t talk about Pride Month without talking about pain. There have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put [gay people] at risk. It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one . . . ,” she said.[1] So much hurt. The level of intensity on both sides of the moral, political, and religious issue motivated me to go to a parade to see for myself. When I arrived at the one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the morning, I thought the issue was mostly political; by the time the parade began, religion had clearly trumped the political. A small but vocal group of evangelical Christians and a larger group of young women wearing and carrying gay flags (in part to hide the Christians) were shouting at each other in utter futility of noise. What if people would use religion to dissolve the religious and political anger and even tension instead of stoking them? I contend that both sides missed an opportunity for interpersonal peace that could have grown like a mustard seed to take hold among combatants in a variety of contentious issues in the world.

The tension in the "culture wars" had been building in the United States and by 2023 was palpable. The U.S. Supreme Court’s returning the matter of abortion to the States had given Republican legislators in conservative states the confidence to pass anti-gay laws. In early March, 2023, for example, the Tennessee legislature passed and the governor signed a law prohibiting “male or female impersonators” from performing on public property or where the performances can be seen by children.[2] They are too impressionable, so the assumption went, to see men wearing dresses. One concern voiced by opponents of the law was that the content of drag shows, in which gay men (typically) dress as women and sing and tell jokes as performers, was being labeled as sexual. This raises the question of whether men wearing dresses is sexual in nature. A prepubescent child would perhaps view the dresses as costumes rather than conveying anything sexual, for we adults are the ones so preoccupied with sex. Transsexuals were afraid that police might “enforce the law against transgender people walking around in public, falsely painting them as ‘male or female impersonators.’”[3] It was not this concern that caused a federal judge to temporarily put the Tennessee law on hold, however, or that drag shows are not necessarily sexual, but, rather, that the legal language, locations viewable by children, is too vague and broad, especially given the contrasting free-speech interest of the drag-show performers. Doubtless drag performers in Tennessee felt misunderstood, hurt, frightened, and even dirty.

Also hurt was a fifth-grade teacher in Florida who was fired after being accused of promoting homosexuality because the Disney film she showed her class has a gay character. That a gay character is in a film does not in itself mean that the film promotes homosexuality or constitutes the instruction of certain gay topics, which Florida law banned.[4] The teacher felt unfairly treated, not only because the film does not promote homosexuality, but also because she had received signed permission slips from a parent of each student in the class. Furthermore, Florida's government had not instituted a process by which films could be assessed. Nonetheless, the new teacher was fired. 

Meanwhile, some Roman Catholics, even priests, were castigating the gay charity group, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as anti-Catholic and even Satanic. That the gay men who were in the charity group had been wearing the robes, or habits, of nuns is understandably prime facie insulting to Catholics. Unfortunately, the human, all too human urge to lash out without getting more information blocked the reason why the gay sisters were wearing the nun’s habit. Wearing the habits was actually a compliment. After the parade, one of the local leaders of the gay Sisters told me that the use of the nun’s attire was not to humiliate the Church, but, rather, because, she told me, “We do a nun’s work. We take care of sick people and feed the hungry. We value that.” It is a stamp of approval of what nuns do! The gay Sisters not only valued what Catholic nuns do in charity, but also actually did what nuns do. "We do what they do, so we wear their habit," the leader told me. The gay sisters were not anti-Christian even though they believed that criticism of the Church was warranted. Hypocrisy is fair game to be called out, such as in priests raping children and bishops, including Joe Ratzinger before he was a pope, covering up the crimes to protect the universal Church, and in hating one’s enemy (e.g., gays) instead of showing kindness and compassion as Jesus in the New Testament would. He is compassionate to a prostitute even though he views her job as a sin. He keeps her from being stoned, so would he not protect the gays from shouting evangelical Christians at a gay parade. Just as he goes to the home of a tax collector, he might even go to a gay parade even as his disciples shake their heads in utter disbelief. Would not Jesus volunteer to help the gay Sisters in caring for others, again at the consternation of his disciples? 

For their part, from a Christian point of view, the gay sisters could have gone "the extra mile" in not only doing a nun's work, but also caring for Catholic nuns, such in nursing homes. Catholic nuns, brothers, and priests for their part could have shown up at the charity events of the gay sisters to help them and do charitable work. To be sure, volunteering to work at charities only goes so far from a Christian perspective if enemies are hated and attacked rather than loved. For unless you have love (i.e., the root of charity is caritas, or sublimated love raised high), your faith is for naught, so writes Paul, and love of enemy, such as by helping and otherwise serving one’s enemy (and detractors as well as people one doesn’t like) is the highest manifestation of love, and the most difficult. For anyone naturally finds it easy to love one’s friends and thus volunteer to help them.

Were Catholic monastics and clergy willing to help the gay sisters—to be sure, without necessarily accepting the sisters’ use of the nun’s uniform—and the gay sisters willing to care for elderly nuns and volunteer at Catholic charities, the conflict would be transcended and both ends of the dispute might be able to sense God’s presence. This is none other than the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus in the Gospels. It is the goal, and it is open to be had now rather than only after death. It is clear that both parties to a dispute are not in God's presence when both sides felt insulted and hurt, especially when they are shouting at each other at the onset of a gay Pride parade. 

I did not participate in such a parade in 2023 because I agree with everything in the "gay agenda" and culture, but, rather, because gays in the U.S. felt attacked by the words and legislative deeds of conservatives in some of the American governments. Transsexuals and drag queens in particular seemed to feel hunted, and thus no longer welcome in some of the American States. 

To be sure, I have some reservations about the transexual ideological agenda, such as the use of the plural pronoun they for a singular antecedent, and the banishment of the words man and woman from public discourse. Flashes of anger meant to punish "infractions" and impose an ideological agenda are inappropriate and reflect a certain arrogance, for no human being has a monopoly on truth and ideology of whatever stripe falls short. The extreme lack of tolerance for ideological disagreement, as reflected in the flashes of anger reflect the wholesale dismissal of an ideological position that is not in lock-step with the political correctness, which goes well beyond the transexual agenda. 

The hateful claims that transsexuals are freaks of nature or even Satanic are in my view not justified by the transsexual ideological agenda with respect to language. Moreover, the claims detract from legitimate concerns that have not been given deserved attention. For example, I contend that a conflict of interest exists in cases in which the brain, or mind, is tasked with deciding whether that itself or the person's body expresses the person's authentic gender (i.e., whether the person is a man or a woman). This qualm is not limited to cases in which the person is mentally ill. The human mind is not unbiased with respect to itself. The assumption that the mind cannot be wrong in general or more specifically about its own thinking is false. Not even logic is objective, as certain assumptions are built-in. The assumption of objectivity or infallibility is, moreover, impious because only God is all-knowing (omniscent) and infallible. The assumption of human ideological infallibility is particularly egregious. The human mind is hardly an impartial decider between itself and the body, especially in a culture in which a mind-body dualism is held to be possible and perhaps even laudable. I've raised the point of the mind's conflict of interest with some transsexuals, who either dismiss the point or were stumped. These reactions give me reason to suspect that the conflict of interest has been exploited in a significant number of cases. Even so, I defend the freedom of transsexuals to express themselves and as they say, be the persons they are. To be sure, even the assumption that one's gender captures who one is may be reductionistic, if indeed several of one's roles go into one's identity. By the way, the singular pronoun one is gender neutral, and, if used, can obviate the problem of reduced linguistic clarity that comes with using a plural pronoun for both plural and singular nouns. 

I suspect that part of the struggle for transexuals is that societal notions of masculinity and femininity at least in America are too narrow. A man may assume that he is really a woman in part because some of his attributes fall outside of what society tells us are masculine. A young man with long straight hair might assume that he is feminine and thus not really a man in part because long hair is traditionally associated with women, or a man with a high-pitch voice might think that he is really a woman. Once while visiting a university, I said to such a man that the societal norms of masculinity are too narrow. “If that is your natural voice, and you have male reproductive organs, then that voice is masculine.” He smiled and I could see relieve fall over his face and down his long hair. Male lions, after all, have manes. Short hair may in fact emasculate a man (and who wants to see a person's skull).

In spite of my reservations, which I do not inflict on binary and transsexual people as they are insecure enough in American society, I have befriended some transsexuals in order to expressly convey empathy. I have found that they crave or at least greatly appreciate emotional support, as they have come to feel so hated and afraid due to the verbal attacks and legislation of conservatives. 

So on the afternoon of Easter Sunday in 2023, I stopped in at a gay bar to say hello to a transexual bartender whom I had met at a grocery store. Upon seeing me, she was so happy she gave me a hug. This told me that emotional acceptance was very much needed. It was not an easy visit for me, as young gay guys there made a point of giving me more than a cold shoulder because I was old. As I was leaving, one of them even said to his friends, "Oh good, he's leaving" so I would hear it. 

Again, while waiting to take my place in the gay parade’s line-up a few months later, I seized upon the spontaneous opportunity to minister to a transsexual, whose evangelical Christian parents had forbid him to take estrogen (i.e., the female hormone) and required him to undergo years of conversion therapy wherein he had been instructed to repress his gay instinctual impulses. He told me he felt isolated generally, and even fearful that he might be physically attacked attacked while walking in the parade. My opinion on transsexuality was not relevant; compassion does not hinge on ideological agreement. The professor in me did point out, however, that "they" is not a singular pronoun, and he went after that like a dog to a bone. At least our academic discussion got his mind off his fear. As we were talking, however, a small group of evangelical Christians walked through, announcing that everyone there was a slut and would go to hell. The clear message was that gay people are worthless. It did not take long for some of the gay young adults to reach a boiling point and start shouting at the so-called “Christians,” who fecklessly departed to across a street to take up their position. It did not take long for gay women especially to take their position directly in front of the "Christians." The battleline was set, and the lone policeman became visibly nervous and called for backup.

Shouting insults at one’s enemies is not loving them as if for their own good; such a rationale is extremely arrogant, and even self-idolatrous. Without love, especially where it is least convenient, faith is for naught. The evangelical Christians surely presumed that they were saved even as they hurled insults into the crowd rather than being kind and compassionate—yet without agreeing with the gay ideology or approving of gay sex. Perhaps people who consider themselves to be Christians hesitate to be kind and compassionate to adversaries in part out of fear that agreement would be assumed. Of course it is difficult to set the anger aside.

Attending to human needs even and especially of detractors or enemies can help a society transcend seemingly intractable conflicts of contending values. Attending to another person’s physiological needs, as well as the emotional needs from being emotionally hurt or afraid, can do wonders in relegating, or transcending, even very heated conflicts. Attending to pain-caused represents such a different orientation from the typical castigating of an enemy that a transformation of heart capable of moving such a mountain would be meteoric in its importance and power. 

At the location where the gay parade was set up, the shouting match between the “Christians” and the gay people could not be missed. I tried to model the silence that perhaps the divine is in shouting matches between groups contending for truth. I stood on stretch of raised cement and held the gay flag high while I silently faced the aggressors (i.e., the “Christians). Had bottles of water been for sale nearby, I would have purchased some and used one hand to give them to the “Christians” while holding a gay flag with the other hand. Rather than waving the flag to provoke anger, I would have sought quite humbly to attend to the thirst needs of the “Christians,” who were undoubtedly thirsty after having yelled so much on a hot day. I would have been modeling this to the gay women as much as being compassionate to people with whom I disagree ideologically.

I hope I would have said to the young gay women that only by helping one’s enemy can one get past the sting of the harsh words and thus the pain and anger. “Don’t you get tired of holding onto all that anger?” Jesus says in the film, Mary Magdalene to a woman angered by the physical abuse that women endured from their respective husbands. In that movie, Mary Magdalene not only is the first witness to the resurrected Jesus, but also understands that the Kingdom of God is a matter of transformed hearts rather than a military victory, a more just political or economic system, or something that will not happen until the end of time. Gandhi, who was very much influenced by Jesus’ preaching and serving others in the New Testament, grasped the nature of the transformation.

In the film Gandhi, a Hindu man whose son had been killed by a Muslim man in the religious conflict just prior to the independence of India killed a Muslim boy. There is a way out of hell, Gandhi tells the distraught man: Pick a Muslim boy whose parents have been killed in the conflict and raise him—only raise him to be a Muslim. This does not mean that the man must embrace or agree with Islam; rather, Gandhi’s message is that only by helping people deemed the enemy can a person be free from the hell that one has constructed around oneself by hating one’s enemy.

Without changing their interpretations of the Bible, the “Christians” at the parade could have helped the gays and their allies to get properly situated as to where to stand in the line-up. The reactions of at least some of the gay people being helped would probably have been a muted or stunned bewilderment, yet not to preclude a subtle willingness to be helped by people having a very different opinion on homosexuality. If the gays would have been too intolerant or proud to accept the help, the fault would have been in themselves rather than the Christians. Similarly, some of the “Christians” would likely have shown muted signs of appreciation for receiving cool water from a man, whom they would presume to be gay, holding a gay flag.

In shouting that gay people are worthless rather than helping them on a human level, the “Christians” missed an opportunity to preach to the gays. Destructive and short-sighted values and behaviors, rather than being gay per se, are rarely seen outside of the gay "community," which itself may be more of a wish than a fact given the salience of individualistic values that exclude that of other-concern. I’ve heard enough from gay men on how they treat each other and the bases on which they value each other to know that they really need some sermons on love thy neighbor as oneself. Obviously this does not apply to every homosexual, but my claim is significant enough that it characterizes the American gay culture (and perhaps those cultures in other countries). Rather than using a blanket Old Testament abomination approach in which homosexuality itself is deemed sinful, the conservative “Christian” preachers could urge gays to be more Christlike in how they esteem and treat each other. For in this respect gay culture had become ripe for constructive criticism by 2023. 

In the “dating” (really looking-for-sex) online sites, for example, gay men can be quite brutal to guys who are deemed old or ugly. How dare such an inferior even message “hi” to one of the self-determined gods on earth. The criteria for being of greater value include being thin, muscular, and "hung," which means having a big penis. Even though physical attributes can be expected to be given a lot of weight when the purpose is limited to sex, the hypertrophic emphasis can be seen in how gay men with more attractive physical attributes regard and treat other, inferior gays. Bluntly telling guys that they are ugly without provocation or that "fat" or "guys over 40" will be blocked just for messaging "hello" points to anger and extreme disrespect based on physical attributes. How dare you contact me! You should be contacting guys on your level. From the standpoint of kindness, the first are actually last. Furthermore, the obsession on seeing nude photos, especially of dicks, and the attached ultimatums on gay sex sites can also be good fodder for preaching. So too are profile statements such as, "No black men; just a preference." To be sure, I've been told that some black men have statements excluding Caucasian men. I've also been told that it is not uncommon for gay men under 35 to demand payment for sex from men over 50. The passive-aggression in demanding payment from men presumed to be out of shape or simply older is insulting to the latter. Perhaps guys who are into older men should be charged too. When the men actually meet for sex, after having "met" online, how a guy rejects another based totally on appearance can be brutal. A man might see the man walking to the door and refuse even to open it, pretending not to be home and instantly blocking the guy online and by phone number. The choice is as feckless as it is needlessly cruel. Alternatively, the host could open the door and say that he is sorry for the other's inconvenience the other isn't his type after all. 

The willingness to be unnecessarily cruel is a salient feature of American gay culture. This squalid quality should be isolated for criticism rather than flown over, whether in blanket condemnations of homosexuality as itself being a sin or in wholesale ideological defenses of homosexuality by conservative and liberal clergy, respectively. 

The cruelty itself is startling. In “threesomes,” for example, in which three guys meet to have sex, if two of the guys are more attracted to each other than to the third, the two feel no compunction to make sure the third is not treated as the “third wheel” (i.e., the odd man out). In fact, the two men may be just fine with not even touching the other man, even if he is the boyfriend or even husband of one of the two! In the song, Luck Be a Lady Tonight, Frank Sinatra sings that a lady doesn't "wander all over the room, blowing on some other guy's dice." I had a girlfriend once who did that, and I refused to marry her because of it. "Let's keep the party polite," Sinatra sings. It is not polite when two gay guys in a threesome text to each other while the third guy is in the room in order to plan out how to trick the third guy into thinking that the session is over. Tell him you’re leaving, then leave, and he will leave. Then come back. I've heard of cases in which a man will even participate in such a secret scheme to get his boyfriend out. 

Incredibly, no guilt seems to accompany such betrayal because the physical attraction of the moment is all that matters in that value-set. Such indifference to hurting another human being is nothing short of pathological; at the very least, such cruelty reflects a malignant egism or self-centeredness and the lack of a conscience. This is good fodder for sermonizing. 

I’ve also been told that on the sex sites, and presumably at gay bars too, it is common for boyfriends and even husbands to cheat on their partners. The gay men who have told me of the sheer extent of this behavior admitted that it is probably more prevalent among gays than straight couples. I suspect, moreover, that the importance of what the other gay guy provides sexually is elevated in the selection of a boyfriend and husband. A gay man in San Francisco said once told me that a gay guy typically does not return to the same guy for sex because it is generally believed in that gay culture that there are so many gay men that there is probably someone who satisfies more items on one's list of sexual "likes" list. Another gay man, who was married, told me that that city is not good for gay couples, as there is more temptation to cheat for the same reason. This can be expected in cultures in which sexual attraction is allowed to be be so important even in relationships. To be sure, there are exceptions. A good friend of mine from college told me decades later that sex is about 10 percent of his relationship with his partner. So I am describing a dysfunctional (i.e., superficial and too cruel) culture. 

Relative to heterosexual relationships, I believe that there are proportionally more “open” relationships, meaning that both men in a relationship agree that they can have sex separately with other men. Still other couples want to "play together" by bringing in a third man. The gay culture approves of both arrangements. I contend that it does so because of the overwhelming importance of sex in gay relationships generally. Given the importance given to sexual gratification, such separate sex risks the boyfriend or husband going to the other man. Gay men in couples whom I have spoken with seem not to understand why emotional intimacy is weakened in cases in which either man has sex with other men separately. Even in sharing a man, feelings can easily get hurt if the third man is more interested in one of the boyfriends or husbands and the latter lets himself ignore his partner during the session. Preaching is indeed needed and would be of great value to gay men in open relationships, as the perils thereof seem not to be known or respected among gays.  

One gay man told me that a man’s sex drive is such that expectations of monogamy are not realistic. I suspect that this opinion is widely held by gay men. An open relationship and even cheating have to be accepted, realistically. I beg to differ; the loss of emotional intimacy and the potential for hurting the other person are too great. I've been told it is common for gay couples to “play together” with a third guy. Astoundingly, a couple (e.g., boyfriends) might go to a third guy’s home, and one of the boyfriends may even participate with the third guy in excluding the other boyfriend from the action and even collaborate in secret with the third guy to get rid of the other boyfriend! At least in America, the gay "community" can be fairly criticized for being too comfortable with the infliction of emotional harm and even betrayal without any taint of guilt. Clearly there is a lot of room for preaching from a Christian standpoint wherein God is love, which manifests between people. Such preaching is not going to be done by conservative clergy who ironically miss the arrogance and meanness in the gay "community" by merely making the blanket statement that homosexuality itself is a sin, or by liberal clergy who refuse to criticize internal gay culture because those clergy are primarily ideological defenders of diversity.

How might conservative clergy reach gay men? Perhaps by volunteering in a HIV clinic, for instance, or at a gay parade or event, insight could be gained on where preaching is really needed from the standpoint of loving rather than betraying one’s neighbor. Furthermore, perhaps in showing compassion toward gay men, conservative clergy might come to value compassion to one another and thus not be so mean and hurtful. Perhaps feeling the kindness of Christian clergy (and laity) might rub off on the gay men who are so callous towards each other and so single-minded on immediate sexual gratification. 

Perhaps clergy who view themselves as allies of the gay community might divert their attention from ideology to religious experience. Such a pivot could provide a basis on which to assess the gay community critically and challenge it. Such clergy would urge gay people who are very compassionate to lead the way in extending their kindness to people with whom they strongly disagree. Perhaps at a gay Pride parade, for example, such gay people might be oriented to satisfying the thirst of even a shouting "Christian" on a hot day. 

At the gay Pride parade that I attended in 2023, the young gay women and their allies could have shown the “Christians” that gays are not all bad, worthless, or dirty. Perhaps the "Christians" would have discovered that in being cared for by the lesbians that sexual conduct does not exhaust the soul, and thus how God judges it. Perhaps the young gays could have acted in charity, whose value is greatly increased when the intended beneficiaries are people whom the young gays don't like or agree with. Seeing by example how the the way of Jesus could be applied, the angry "Christians" could perhaps have been healed, and thus been in peace rather than anger and arrogance. In the Gospels, Jesus accepts Matthew even though he is one of the hated tax-collectors, and Jesus goes to the house of the Roman Centurion, whose faith, Jesus says, has cured the man’s slave. It is significant that Jesus does not rail against Matthew or the centurion as being evil or impure; instead, he serves them even though they are outsiders, for even they are capable of being loved. Sometimes this has to be experienced in baby-steps, such as in offering water. It is water, after all, that often symbolizes purity or renewal in religion. Like a mustard seed, small acts of human-to-human kindness can have large impacts, whereas two contending parties voicing conflicting values are typically static rather than dynamic.

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1. Shruti Rajkumar, “Taylor Swift Breaks Silence And Condemns Anti-LGBTQ Bills During Eras Tour,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2023.

2. Matt Lavietes, “Tennessee Governor Signs First-Of-Its-Kind Bill Restricting Drag Shows,” NBC News, March 2, 2023.

3. Ibid.

4. Isabel Rosales and Jaide Garcia, “Florida School System Has Closed Investigation Into Teacher Who Showed Disney Movie With Gay Character,” CNN.com, May 23, 2023.

A Republican Catholic Bishop Violated God In Blocking Freedom Of Conscience

A salient aspect of the U.S. Constitution is the separation of church and state. A government cannot establish or show preference for a religion or sect thereof. Although church clerics can state a politically partisan preference, they risk their religious organization’s tax-exempt status. In the presidential election of 1960, John F. Kennedy was under sufficient popular pressure to publicly assure the American electorate that he would, if elected to America’s highest governmental office, let himself be an agent for the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome. So, when Bishop David Kagan of Bismarck, North Dakota urged his flock to vote for the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012, Maureen Fiedler, a Sister of Loretto and a holder of a doctorate in government from Georgetown University, wrote, (I)t is flatly unacceptable for a bishop to be giving voting instructions to his flock.”[1] Interestingly, the instructions trump even the primacy of an informed individual conscience.

In 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota Attorney General, beat Republic Rick Berg by just 0.9 percent. During the campaign, the Republican Party ran an ad referring to Heitkamp as likeable. David Kagan picked up on that adjective in writing a letter with instructions that it be read at all Masses to urge the laity not to vote for the more likeable candidate. Maureen Fiedler claimed in an article that such a de facto endorsement of Berg put the Catholic Diocese’s tax-exempt status at risk.

Fiedler points out that the partisan, or partial, orientation of the bishop is evident in his letter in that he “zeroes in on social issues.”[2] Specifically, Bishop Kagan states that the following should never be allowed legally: “abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and not regarding the unique and special role of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”[3] Fiedler points out that the letter does not mention “poverty, economic justice, immigration, peace in the world or human rights.”[4] Therefore, Kagan’s ideology cannot claim to embrace wholeness, and his partial orientation naturally invites ideological opposition. As is common in churches explicitly “on the left” or “on the right” politically/ideologically, whether in demanding that people “use their pronouns” or “oppose abortion (in order to receive communion),” people who might otherwise benefit in terms of religious faith by going to church don’t go. To willow the gateway using nonreligious criteria is dogmatic (i.e., arbitrary) from a religious standpoint. It is not good for a church in taking up monetary collections either.

In regard to Bishop Kagan, his exclusion of issues such as poverty detracts from his political and even religious credibility. Making matters worse for himself, he erroneously claims in his letter that informed consciences must conform to the magisterium (i.e., teachings of the Church), and thus to his partisan letter. Kagan declares that a “properly formed Catholic conscience will never contradict the Church’s teachings in matters of faith and morals.”[5] His statement contradicts the Roman Catholic Church’s Cathechism and the Second Vatican Council. The 1992 volume of the Cathechism states, “Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions.”[6] That freedom is denied if a conscience must never contradict the Church’s magisterium. The Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae makes it clear that a person “must not be forced to act contrary to [one’s] conscience. Nor must [one] be prevented from acting according to [one’s] conscience, especially in religious matters.”[7] This does not mean that the magisterium (teachings) of the Church can be dismissed, for, the same document goes on to say, “the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teachings of the church.”[8] To pay attention to something is to include it in the process of discernment of one’s informed conscience, rather than having to abide by the external teachings as if they were edicts that must circumscribe a conscience.

Bishop Kagan’s view of the relationship between conscience and ecclesiastical moral teachings on contemporary issues was erroneous, according to Tim Mathern, a Catholic and a senator in North Dakota’s legislature when Kagan was telling people in his churches to vote for the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. Mathern issued a press release, which states in part, “A Catholic owes a duty to listen thoughtfully to the bishop, but if in ‘good conscience’ he or she cannot give assent, the Catholic must be free to follow his or her own conscience, which is the true moral responsibility.”[9] Even as God alone is the source that transcends even the magisterium in forming a person’s conscience, moral responsibility—that which a conscience discerns is a morally responsible position on particular contemporary political (i.e., partisan) issues is part of the created realm, rather than being sacred. That is to say, a person’s moral position on “social issues,” which may inform selecting whom to vote for, cannot be assumed to be God’s position, as if God takes sides. For a stance on a partisan issue as a matter of moral responsibility is a human construction, and God’s nature, and thus omnipotence (power), cannot be constrained by human artifacts, including moral principles. In fact, God transcends our conceptions of moral responsibility.  

The so-called “conservative” Roman Catholic clergy who have placed such emphasis on their moral stances on a few select social issues are guilty of conceptualizing God in their own images, and, as Pope Francis said, of a sort of misordered concupiscence: the placing of a lower good above a higher one. In this case, the error lies in placing a few social issues, and even particular positions on those issues, above focusing primarily on preaching the Gospel. The particular social issues being obsessed over are not even mentioned by Jesus in the Gospels! Not only have those “conservative” clergy members severely diverted their attention, but also, as stated above, some souls that could have been saved undoubtedly stopped going to church because those people had opposing political ideologies and positions on the vaunted social issues and perhaps even antithetical notions of moral responsibility. No one likes to feel like an outsider; in fact, in a Christian context, serving rather than attacking outsiders is at the very least valued. In the religious sphere, moreover, partisan political issues and even a person’s notion of moral responsibility are transcended rather than allowed to be become sticking points or road-blocks.

Interestingly, the “conservative” Pope who made Kagan a bishop was a follower of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Unfortunately for Kagan, Newman wrote, “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards. . . . Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”[10] So Kagan could not even appeal to the patron saint of “conservative” Catholic clergy in validating the attempt to prevent Catholics from exercising freedom of conscience. To be sure, Kagan could have appealed to his own conscience in going against the Church’s position on conscience, but then so he would have been a walking contradiction. As such Kagan’s stance was unethical according to the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory (the first formulation of his categorical imperative). Kant must have hated logical contradictions. Furthermore, it would be the height of arrogance were Kagan to have believed that only his conscience matters—that those of other people, especially the laity, are inferior and thus don’t deserve to be free.

Even more seriously, in attempting to violate the consciences of the laity in his bishopric by artificially and exogenously blocking the innate freedom, which is given by God, Kagan violated God. Another Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, states, “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. For a man has in his heart a law inscribed by God . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”[11] A person’s conscience is formed by a sacred source, and yet David Kagan felt the need, and indeed presumption, to tie a person’s most sacred core to a partisan position on social issues. I wonder if the bishop at least respects himself. To violate a person’s sanctuary, where a person is alone with God (and David Kagan), is a violation not unlike molesting a child due to a dysfunctional wholesale repression of an intrinsic and basic instinctual urge—a violation that more than one bishop has covered up.

In the spring of 2013, for instance, news broke that the Catholic Church of Illinois, where Kagan had been a pastor at a church and, before that, an administrative assistant to a bishop, had underreported instances of priests molesting children. As far as I know, Kagan was not accused of being involved in the cover-up; my only point is that he would have been at home in an organization in which violations of the fundamental, God-given dignity of people get covered up. While the archbishop of Munich, Joe Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI and elevate Kagan to a bishopric, had written a letter refusing to defrock a pedophile priest because the scandal would hurt the reputation of the “universal Church.” So, Ratzinger directed that the priest be transferred to another parish, where the priest was allowed to be the youth minister.

Shortly before Kagan was appointed as a bishop, he had told his congregation in a homily on the Assumption of Mary holy day of obligation (i.e., the Virgin Mary goes to heaven bodily as well as soul) that if any of the four mysteries of Mary are difficult to understand, you should “just obey.” Included in his congregation were business executives, lawyers, and physicians. Just obey must have gone down like a lead pipe even though the congregation had the reputation of being “very Republican.”  Kagan should have been quite popular there rather than an insult, and yet he was elevated to a bishopric in another state. As of 2023, more than a decade since Kagan had become a bishop, Pope Francis has not promoted Kagan; the bishop is still in North Dakota.

On ethical leadership: "Ethical Leadership" 

On spiritual leadership: "Spiritual Leadership in Business" 

On Christian leadership (in terms of stewardship, shephardship, and servanthood): "Christianized Ethical Leadership in Business"

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[1] Maureen Fiedler, “Catholic Senator in North Dakota Challenges Bishop’s Election Letter,” National Catholic Reporter, October 25, 2012

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Patsy McGarry, “Conscience Takes Priority Over Church Teaching, Says Catholic Catechism,” Irish Times, June 3, 2018.

[7] Ibid., italics added.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Maureen Fiedler, “Catholic Senator in North Dakota Challenges Bishop’s Election Letter.”

[10] Patsy McGarry, “Conscience Takes Priority Over Church Teaching, Says Catholic Catechism.”

[11] Ibid.