A couple of days ago, following the publication of Fiducia Supplicans (FS) and the debate and commentary it sparked, our friend Tony Esolen mused on the nature of couplehood.
He concludes by noting the natural connection between couplehood and sexual intimacy, and thus the impossibility of supporting the former (by, say, a priestly blessing) while excluding the latter. The end result of trying this, he writes, is to signal that “almost nothing of what the Church teaches about sex is to be taken seriously.”
I can’t argue with that logic. But an earlier section of Esolen’s piece is more notable to me. He points out that one characteristic of couplehood is exclusivity, and contrasts this with friendship:
Friendship, by its nature, is or ought to be nonexclusive: you may feel that your best friend is like your brother, but neither you nor he wishes to have no more such friends; that would be like wishing you had no more brothers. Friendship, particularly among boys and men, is directed outward, to the world.
Thus, Esolen continues, “two boys or two girls should not be a couple at all because that exclusivity is not what friendship is for; it is, in fact, an obstacle to the full flourishing of friendship.”
If exclusivity is not part of friendship, then what is it for? Ultimately, marriage. Exclusivity (also called fidelity) is one of the goods of marriage, along with indissolubility and procreation. And to the extent that it is a feature of couplehood prior to marriage, it’s because couplehood is ordered to marriage and is perfected in marriage. A man and woman in a committed dating relationship informally choose to forsake coupling with others as a leadup to doing so formally, by vow, in the near future.
I think this is an extremely important point for us to remember in these ongoing conversations over blessing same-sex couples. Namely, that it’s not so easy or so simple to extract homosexual activity from same-sex couplehood in order to “bless”—approve of, ask God to make flourish—the presumed good that remains. Because the entirety of couplehood, not just genital acts, belongs to the realm of marriage.
Often, the rhetoric in favor of blessing same-sex couples hinges on the presumption that to the extent that the persons exhibit fidelity to an exclusive partner, a unique and intimate kind of self-giving love, harmonious common living, and so on, those things should be affirmed. But if these “couple things” are properly qualities of marriage, not friendship—and if in fact they are obstacles to friendship—then they ought not to be affirmed any more than genital activity. (Indeed, it stands to reason that affirming some pseudo-marital goods in a same-sex couple will make it easier, not harder, for them to justify the sexual part of couplehood.)
Instead of blessings that affirm the non-sexual parts of couplehood in same-sex couples, we might consider a pastoral approach that redirects those things toward friendship: toward helping them become two people looking out at the world, not a “couple” looking at each other. Only in this way can they find inner healing, the right ordering of their affections, and full reconciliation with God and the Church.