Pope Benedict XVI: my hero

I am away from home at the moment, and so do not have the ease of access to news media (and to print materials) that I normally have. And one thing I usually try to avoid doing is posting on the basis of news reports of a speech without reading properly the original text... but I am going to do that here.


Several years ago, I resigned from the Executive Committee of my trade union when it adopted a policy statement that was headlined as opposing discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) persons. In the small print, it included definitions that meant that those supporting it considered LGBT lifestyles/behaviour as morally licit, and effectively, would be willing to present that view in all educational settings, including pre-school settings. That was what presented a difficulty to me, so I resigned from the Executive Committee to have greater freedom to oppose this policy.


About a year or so after this, Rocco Buttiglione was proposed by the Italian government as a Commissioner for the European Union. He was prevented from taking up the post when a media controversy followed his response to a question during the appointment process about his beliefs with regard to homosexuality. Rocco carefully and cautiously stated the Catholic position on this matter and, as he observed later, he was not sure whether he would be able to offer his head like St Thomas More, but a seat on the European Commision, yes that he could give up.


And now Pope Benedict XVI has presented a carefully articulaed account on the same matter. His concept of a "language of creation" that contains a male-female distinction that must be respected in the field of human sexuality is quite brilliant. An argument can be made that this language is present throughout creation in the ascent from asexual reproduction in lower living forms to sexual reproduction in the higher plants and animals. At the human level it gains a spiritual and, in the realm of grace, a theological meaning too.


I feel totally supported in the stand that I took in opposing my own trade unions policy. Pope Benedict XVI is my hero!



PS. Pope Benedict's Regensburg Address, which drew serious criticism at the time, led to a number encounters of Catholic-Muslim dialogue that did not exist before, and probably would not have happened with Pope Benedict XVI's address. The final statement of one such scholarly meeting between Catholics and Muslims has just been published. I wonder if this statement about sexuality will issue in a similar dialogue between the Catholic Church and LGBT advocates? If such a dialogue is going to happen, LGBT advocates are going to have to be willing to argue the case itself, and not just to argue, ad hominem, that anyone who opposes them is guilty of homophobia.