Ministerial exception is a necessary safeguard for our rights of conscience
Dealing with the ministerial exemption is hardly a cake walk. Of late, the Catholic hierarchy is taking a mile from that inch the ELCA provided them. This will not work out well for them, both in the Court and public opinion.
On October 8, the Court will hear 3 cases that may greatly alter these matters. While the Constitution allows leeway in ministers, it is not a license for bigotry. If homosexual and heterosexual civil marriages are treated differently, no one will buy it, especially because the priesthood puts the G and A in LGBTQIA. Sometimes the Q too.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act can be changed by the Court and Congress. The stupidity of the bishops may bring about the heat to change it if the laity sees the light. That goes doubly true for both institutional arrangements. Infallibility does not protect stubbornness on Medievalism, misogyny nor modern sexual ethics. 2020 approaches. The bigger they come...
SSM is settled. That has nothing to do with your prior response on the priesthood. The question before the Court is whether the spate of findings that have recognized gays and lesbians as a protected class allow the meaning of sex in the CRA to be expanded to sexuality without having to pass ENDA? It is an argument about how the Court rules, not the result. This is not a First Amendment question.
ReplyDeleteIf the merits of Catholic HR policy were before the Court (that would be a District Court matter to be separately litigated), the question would be of fact. Specifically, does the Church allow employees to enter into heterosexual civil marriage and not homosexual marriage. In other words, if Pepsi allows advocating for Coke, does it have the right to fire someone who advocates for Diet Coke?
No. Bigotry cannot be sanctified in that way, nor can sour grapes over its argument in Perry v. Brown against marriage equality being laughed out of court.
The profound issue is how many retirements will it take until the Church starts blessing gay unions? While the number of global South cardinals is an indication, I must note that they are already bishops.
Amoris Laetitia was pastoral. So is blessing legal civil marriage, especially with a Pope with a doctoral degree in the sciences. He actually can make sense of the argument of disordered or created. Disordered is a sophistry - a relativistic way to avoid scientific reality. Being gay is biology, not rebellion, and to not believe gay men when they assert otherwise is not only bad behavior, but it asks them to accept our lived experience of faith when we reject their lives experience of their sexuality.