6th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2012

In Jesus' day, leprosy was much more than a physical ailment.  Like all physical abnormalities in Jesus' day, leprosy was seen as a result of someone's sin – personal sin or family sin.  The affected person was automatically condemned as sinner.  Lepers were ejected from the community – from the family circle, and consequently from the possibility of earning a living.  By healing this leper, Jesus reinserted him into community

In our own culture and time, some would see AIDS as the equivalent of leprosy.  In lots of ways, the irrational fear, the strong distaste, even disgust, or instinctive awkwardness that people of Jesus' time felt towards lepers are not all that different from what many people today feel towards AIDS sufferers, and, for that matter, to homosexually oriented people in general.

Some people go so far as to see AIDS as God's punishment for sinful behaviour.  Attitudes to homosexuality may be changing in our world - but there is still a lot of confusion right along the spectrum of responses, from libertarian to hardline conservative.  The issue is topical at the moment because of the push in federal parliament to legislate in favour of gay marriage.

What I would like to do right now is to take off my teaching hat and simply to float a few thoughts to stimulate your own reflection.  I do this because I am not confident enough about what I think and feel myself on the issue.  I would expect that, in any normal congregation, some of those present would have a close family member who is homosexual.  Given the current cultural climate, the family members affected often struggle to accept the fact, are saddened by it and generally are inclined to keep it quiet.

Some people with a homosexual orientation choose to remain celibate.  Some don't - and become sexually active.  Current Church teaching is that all homosexual acts are morally wrong.  Does that mean that all homosexual people who act out their sexuality are sinners?  Not necessarily.  To personally sin, people need not only to do something wrong.  They need to know the wrongness and freely and deliberately choose that wrongness.  It would not surprise me that some homosexual persons might know that homosexual activity is wrong because the Church says it is; yet, for the life of them, cannot appreciate that wrongness [sort of know it "in their bones"], at least in their own particular case.

It's a bit like heterosexual spouses who know that artificial conception is wrong because the Church says it is, but can't themselves see that wrongness, certainly in their own situation.  Often, their experience of growth in mutual love, in their active caring for others, and even in their love of God, seem to confirm their stance.  Who knows what goes on in another person's conscience?

The issue before parliament is whether a committed homosexual union be regarded as marriage.  That raises the question of how a given culture understands marriage.  Traditionally, the term marriage has become restricted to the life-long, pledged and exclusive relationship between a man and a woman, geared to the possibility of producing children.  In the popular mind, that understanding has been under a lot of pressure.  The life-time and exclusive commitment is no longer legally required, even though the intention is usually expressed at the wedding.  The openness to children is becoming less important.  What has taken centre stage is the emotional relationship and the felt love between the couple.  It is this pared-down sense of marriage as simply the affective relationship of the couple that has led to the present question whether the couple even need to be heterosexual.

Some are asking if two homosexual people love each other as deeply as heterosexual couples, why can't their relationship be classed as marriage? My personal attitude is to direct my energies to strengthening marriages that embody the lifelong and exclusive loving union of a man and a woman, open to the natural procreation of children - rather than the continuing watering down of that ideal.  At the same time, I would think that a committed and genuinely loving relationship with one another is far preferable than a lifestyle of promiscuousness for the small percentage of the population who are not heterosexual and for whom the ideal of marriage is not possible, and who find a celibate lifestyle, in our current highly sexualized world, either unduly restrictive or virtually impossible.  Could the union be given, perhaps, some other title, other than marriage?