Chris Stefanick explains how the disagreement on same-sex marriage between the Church and the secular world stems from differing perceptions on whether sexual attraction comprises one’s identity, and says that the best way to address this issue is to see every person according to their true identity as a Child of God.
Transcript:
Host: We go to Anthony in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Anthony, we will probably get your question in and then have to get Chris’ answer on the other side, what’s your question for Chris Stefanick?
Caller: Okay, that’s all right, I’ll ask the question now, I’ll hang up. I have two questions I had to ask. One is about family members who actually were raised in the Church and fell away from the Church because of the belief that some of the things in the Bible are against—other family members that may be gay, they don’t agree with things like that. So they believe in a higher power, but they don’t believe in the Catholic Church or Jesus or the Bible. And these are people who were brought up in the Church and were baptized and confirmed. And the other question was just to touch on why there are no women priests. And I’ll hang up and wait for my answer.
Chris: Anthony, can I just get something clarified from you real quick before you go? You’re saying, because of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, they’ll go to a more general faith, but they’ll leave the Catholic Church. Is that it?
Caller: There’s actually no other faith, it’s just basically…they believe in a higher power, but nothing else.
Chris: Okay. Great questions. I think it’s important, when we question and answer people, that we, as apologists, as evangelists, keep our goal in mind. The goal isn’t to be right, though we want to be right, right? The goal isn’t to win an argument, though it’s great to win an argument. The goal, at the end of the discussion, for a true catechist/apologist/evangelist, is to bring a person a step closer to a relationship with Jesus Christ. And as part of that, we gotta convey the truth.
Now, the question that’s usually behind that, you know, “Why does the Church teach X, Y, or Z about sexual ethics,” and the reason people leave the faith over it, is often because they hear the Church’s teaching and presume that that teaching is totally incompatible with the messages of God, of love. So it’s gotta be answered. It’s gotta be answered with clarity and charity, because this is a huge block to the Gospel. You know, you see where I’m going there? I’m always thinking in terms of, “I wanna bring this person to a relationship with God.” This is a serious block to the Gospel for people.
It’s crucial, when we answer the question about same-sex attraction, to make it clear to people, right, that the Church’s teaching is not incongruous with the idea of a God who loves us. Now here’s where the conversation usually breaks down and they presume that it’s incompatible with the God of love: It breaks down at the issue of identity, right? The whole world will tell us that sexual attraction is an identity. And if that’s who you are, you have to act on that in order to actualize who you are, in order to be yourself. And that if anyone would teach you some moral teaching contrary to that, that says, “Don’t act on that,” what they must be doing is hating who you are, and telling you that you shouldn’t actualize yourself. That sounds like a message of hate, right?
The Catholic teaching, the truth, is that a sexual attraction doesn’t define who a person is. And a great story to point this out—how the Church not only teaches that, but loves people who are same-sex attracted, if you’re listening right now–Mother Teresa of Calcutta, back in the 1980s, AIDS broke out in the United States, and it was a climate of terror. You know, for anyone over 40, you remember, that we thought, “Hey, if someone sneezes on me, I might get AIDS!” We thought this might be the end of the world. We didn’t know how the virus was spreading just yet.
In that climate of terror, Mother Teresa started the first AIDS hospice in New York City. So much for hating people that we’re disagreeing with on a moral issue, right? Before any community was ever formed, any gay activist group was there, the Catholic Church was there, loving and serving people. And Mother Teresa once said, when someone referred to the, quote, “homosexuals” she cared for, she said, “Do not call them homosexuals, call them Children of God.” Because all of us, regardless of any attraction you have—you’re not primarily defined in terms of that attraction. That would be a reduction of a person. That’s undignified, to look at a person and say, “I’m gonna sum that person up in terms of who they’re attracted to.” The primary thing that sums us up, at our core, who we are, is a relationship with the God who loves us and calls us to give our lives to Him in love. We’re Children of God, that’s who we are.
You know, so the Catholic response to the gay movement, really, is primarily one of saying, “No, no, no, I’m not gonna reduce the person to an attraction. I’m gonna uphold the dignity of the person.” And obviously, if that’s the worldview, where this attraction isn’t you, but is, you know, something you experience, well, that’s why the Church can say–whether someone’s single and heterosexual, or they’re same-sex attracted—the Church would say…you know, would never teach us, Jesus never taught us, the Church fathers, there’s no Saint who’s ever taught us, “You’re gonna reach fulfillment as a person by sexually acting out!” Right? We don’t teach that because we’re not primarily sexual beings! We’re primarily HUMAN beings! We’re children of a loving Father.
So if that’s the context for the conversation, I think people might open their ears to what we’re saying, and if they disagree with us, at least it won’t be a block to that—to what we’re gonna say next, which is, “God loves you and calls you to a relationship with Himself.” Now I know it’s not always easy to get that point across, it takes some studying to get that point across with any clarity, which is part of the reason we’re, you know, culturally losing with this issue, because whoever gets the greatest sound-bite argument is the person who wins nowadays, and if they just go to, “Well that’s not fair,” then that tends to close the discussion, right? But we have to keep engaging that particular question. When we don’t, we do people an injustice. I’ve seen people in youth ministry dodge around that question, and guys, I’m telling you, it’s the elephant in the room, every young person’s wondering this.
But there’s great resources. There’s…if you go to RealLifeCatholic.com, one of the videos that I made—we give out free videos in our video section—is about this issue, another one about the idea of tolerance, you know, so you can share those videos; there’s great resources on Catholic Answers; if you don’t know how quite to say it, find the resource and share the link. We try to make evangelization easy for you.
Alright, so–but first and foremost, I think the Mother Teresa story is a good one, and to say, you know, because we disagree doesn’t mean we hate a person. And that’s not who that person is, that’s an attraction they have. And we’re called to fulfillment by following the Law of God, not living out sexual attractions.
Host: And now, okay, so now Anthony asked a second question, and I—it seemed to me it was related, I don’t have Anthony on the phone any more to ask him, but he asked, “Why can’t women be priests,” and I think what he was suggesting with that was, there’s another thing that comes up as a block to hearing the Gospel, “Well, I’m just not gonna listen to those people because they don’t have women priests.”
Chris: Sure, sure. Now the gay rights issue, and that whole agenda, that question comes up constantly, especially in work with young people. You know, it’s kinda strange, and I don’t know why this shift has happened, but, you know, after many years working with young people, I almost never hear the question anymore about women priests. It just doesn’t come up, they just don’t seem overly concerned about it. Maybe we’ve done a good job of explaining it. I think the Catechism gives a very wonderful and simple answer, if you look up “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” you know, “women priests,” Google that, you’ll find a good answer.
But really, it’s summed up by, we follow the decision of Jesus. That’s it. When it comes to Sacraments, we don’t manufacture those, we receive those from God. Now we know that he did that, you know, that’s why with the Eucharist, we don’t make a birthday cake; He used bread and wine, we use bread and wine, right? Now, why he did that? That’s a whole other question. But that that was his decision—and he obviously loved women. You know, he wasn’t afraid of, you know, bugging the system, he wasn’t afraid of being politically incorrect back then, so we can’t attribute his reasons to wanting to fit in with the time. Right? He was killed because he didn’t really care what people thought about what he said.
So the reason, I think, I think it’s a Sacramental reason, okay, and this is of secondary importance. The first and most important thing is that that was his decision and we receive the Sacraments from God, we don’t make those up ourselves. I think it was a Sacramental reason, that for every Sacrament, you have some tangible symbol that reflects a spiritual reality. And the symbol effects what it symbolizes. So with the Eucharist you have bread and wine, that symbolize the Body and Blood of Christ, becomes the very thing it symbolizes. It’s this efficacious sign, instituted by Christ to receive grace, for those who study the Baltimore Catechism. Amen, right?
With the priesthood, you have this really important symbol of the bridegroom of the Church. That’s not to say that men are more important, but they’re standing in the person of Christ. And the tangible, the physical, it matters a lot to God. You know, so He chose men for that role of standing in the place of Himself, of the bridegroom of the Church, which is his bride, and we’re all a big family in God, you know?
But I think that, perhaps, that question comes up less and less with young people because, you know, more and more we see women in Church leadership. It’s often the women who are, you know, from your own house to at your parish, so many people receive the faith from women, that, you know, that idea that women are unimportant or have no power in the Church, it’s just a joke for anyone who’s actually experienced Catholicism.