Ecclesiology Trouble

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In a week where Syria falls, Christians are being rounded up, and most of America is Holiday Stress Eating, a little news item seems to be sliding by without much comment:

The official calendar for the 2025 Holy Year includes an event for an Italian organization called “Jonathan’s Tent” which “to the welcoming, training and knowledge of LGBT Christians, their families and pastoral workers, in dialogue with the various Christian communities.” Reuters reports on ths here. The Vatican is supporting the event (press notes support from the head of the Italian Bishop’s conference, the head of the Jesuits, and the Pope, himself) and, at the same time, not supporting the event. Reuters reports a comment that says that including the event on the calendar does not indicate “support for the event” or the groups involved.

The Organization’s website includes an announcement of the event, calling for others to join:

Save the Date: On September 6th at 3:00 PM, we will gather in Rome to share our message of inclusion, love, and faith. We will invite all associations and groups dedicated to supporting LGBT+ individuals and their families to join us as we officially cross the Holy Door of the Jubilee at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The pilgrimage will have the title “Church: Home for All, LGBT+ Christians and Other Existential Frontiers”. It will be led chiefly by Tenda di Gionata, an Italian gay rights group with a focus on helping “society and the churches to open up to the understanding and reception of homosexual people”. While that sounds low keey enough to be harmless however the Catholic Herald adds, “At previous events, the group has depicted Jesus Christ with a rainbow halo and before a rainbow flag, and has depicted Christ as a transsexual.”

In one way, this is snafu in the current sate of the Catholic Church in the western world: confusion around human sexuality or a fear of offending people causes a lack of clarity in church statements. But, in cannot be denied, there are those who are advocating for a change in the church’s teaching on this topic. They use the same lack of clarity as a sign of permissiveness or even as an invitation to continue in their attempts to change the teaching.

There are certain moments where this same process can be seen in the Eastern Orthodox Church: there are parties involved in the ideological attempt to have the Church change her teachings. There are even clergy that get on board with it. There are unofficial groups. There was, for a time, even an organization that had a semi-official status along the lines of the Catholic Church’s New Ways Ministry and Tenda di Gionata. There was a brief moment when the official website of one Orthodox Church included an article on its website by a high ranking cleric advocating for inclusion. This was removed only after a complaint, signed by many Orthodox clergy and laypeople, was sent to the head of that Church.

It is certainly a moral issue, one involving not only our Christian understanding of human sexuality, but also our understanding of the human person, touching thus on the doctrine of the Incarnation and salvation.

So, why should one want to treat this as a problem of ecclesiology?

In the Orthodox Church, as indicated above, if a church official, even a bishop (or their website) gets a bit off the rails, everyone else can step up to offer correction. If a Bishop persists in an error (real or perceived) other Bishops can distance themselves or even break communion with him. This does no damage to the Church, as such.

However, as it currently exists, Roman Ecclesiology is solidly based on the teaching authority of the Pope and, in a real sense, on his person. The documents of Vatican II and other texts make it clear that submission to his authority invovles accepting not only “official pronouncements” like the Dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, for example, but also…

This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.
– Lumen Gentium ¶25

(The text of Lumen Gentium is, itself, dogma as proclaimed by the title “Dogmatic Constitution”. This has been promulgated by a Church Council and affirmed by the Pope. It is on the same level as any other Dogma of the Catholic Church.)

A friend said yesterday at lunch that the Roman Church was – first and foremost – a structure. As long as the structure is in place and functioning, everything is OK. When Catholics quote the “gates of hell will not prevail” promise from Scripture they mean exactly this structure, this institution.

That same person said the Orthodox Church is “a way” supported by a very weak structure. When Orthodox quote the “gates of hell” promise, they do not mean “the Church of Russia” or “Of Greece”. They do not mean any structure at all. This is why members of the Roman Church often point at the Orthodox Church and ask, “yes, but which church?” The structure is not the Church. The Church is an organism, not an organization. When two bishops are out of communion with each other, that does not mean the Way, itself, is broken: only that the structure is having a bit of an issue. In Orthodox Ecclesiology, the Bishop and his clergy, and the laity, constitutes the Church in a given place: a fractal of the whole Church. It is the whole Church in a real and present way. The local is the whole.

In the Roman Church, the Bishop and his clergy – in submission to the Pope – constitute what is called a “particular church”, but not in the same, fractal way. In a real sense, the Roman Church only has one Bishop: the Pope. All other clergy serve at his pleasure. All other Bishops have only his power refracted. And he can, at any point in time, intervene at any other point in the structure. This is called “universal, ordinary, and immediate jurisdiction”. He can act in any way he wishes ad any point in the structure. And, in theory, at least, any Catholic can appeal to the Pope on any matter. When the Pope at the top of the structure actively engages in actions that contravene or even repudiate Church teaching, what’s to be done with the rest of the structure? When one is inside the structure, how is one to maintain a practice which includes a constant affirmation of the structure, itself? This is the ecclesiological problem.

When confronted with things like Jonathan’s Tent, if one is trying to be a faithful Catholic, one must accept the Pope’s Choices. This is how to play Baseball according to the Catholic Church’s rules as they stand now. (For other thoughts in a similar vein, on the death penalty, see this from First Things.) To do otherwise is to not be a faithful Catholic – which means to adhere to the teachings of the Church about herself. Most folks tend to act like either Orthodox (I will adhere to a faithful Bishop that I can find) or else like Protestants (I will do what I want).

It seems likely that groups like New Ways Ministry and the Rainbow Sash Movement will utilize the weekend of September 6th as as way of getting global media to show a sort of Pride Parade walking through the streets of Rome and entering St Peter’s. It will not be a protest march, but seemingly prayerful. Persons who object will be called haters, and the members of the pilgrimage will say only that they are here for “inclusion” and, perhaps, dialogue. There will be religious and clergy there, perhaps even Bishops and Cardinals. They will have no intention of following the Church’s teachings on human sexuality – since it is those very teachings to which they object.

To be fair, this has been going on for a long while: when Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae was published, many American Catholics – clergy, laity, and “professional theologians” – gave a very strong pushback and just said, “No”. When there was no repercussions, the process continued. Even though Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were both inclined to deal a bit more sternly with wayward theologians or teachers, which is to say, those in the official structure, I’m not aware of any lay organizations that were silenced or disbanded. Even Fr Ernesto Cardenal – who refused to resign from secular government, as JP2 had ordered – was only suspended by that Pope. He was later reinstated by Pope Francis. The number of clergy dissenting around questions of human sexuality has only grown while the willingness to reprimand on all save liturgical issues seems to have vanished entirely.

Certainly this problem would continue even if Francis were replaced by a more conservative Bishop of Rome in the future: all that would do is flip the switch. Those on the “outs” now, would be on the “ins” then, and vice versa. The Ecclesiological Problem would still be in place: the structure would still be more important than – and continue to obscure – the way.