Some Reflections on Diversity

Today's video reflection comes from news coverage of a protest that took place last year in St. Paul, MN in the wake of anti-LGBT comments made by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt. Whether inspired out of true pastoral concern or not, the difficulty with the Archbishop's comments as well as the press release quoted near the end of the video is not so much the feeling behind them (whether good or bad) but the assumptions on which they're based.

As I've reflected on in several previous blog entries, the difficulty with current church teaching on homosexuality is that there is simply no acknowledgment of the diversity of the human community. For example, some women are gifted with aspects of themselves that are what we might traditionally understand as masculine and some men with aspects of themselves that are more traditionally feminine. There is nothing wrong with those of us who are this way. It's just who we are. It's simply how God made us. In fact, quite often it's the place within our souls where we experience most deeply God's love and freedom.

For that reason, although it's important to hold onto tradition and defend essential values, at the same time it's vitally important for the church not to become so rigid that it forgets that human life is much richer and more diverse than any of the categories we sometimes impose on it. Granted, categories and rules are necessary but without a complementary openness to diversity the rules start to lose their anchoring in reality and become an end in themselves.

May God grant all of us as a community of believers the grace to find ways to offer a vision of human sexuality that both challenges us to lead lives of virtue and offers us the chance to cultivate loving partnerships that will help us all to grow in our common call to holiness.

Peace and good wishes,
P. Chuck