Homosexuality and Moral Theology: Methodological and Substantive Considerations

HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY: METHODOLOGICAL AND SUBSTANTIVE CONSIDERATIONS. T HE DISCIPLINE OF MORAL theology or Christian ethics is in a state of transition today. The changing self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church has affected moral theology. Moral theology also reflects the contemporary emphases in religious and philosophical ethics as well as the changing mores and life styles of our contemporary world. An area of ethical concern receiving wide attention in the last few years is homosexuality. The militant homophile movement strives to bring the question to the fore and argues for equality for homosexuals in all spheres of life.1 No longer can society at large or the Christian Church ignore the existence of homosexuality or the homophile community. How will the Church, specifically the Roman Catholic Church, respond to these demands? What should be the attitude of the law to homosexuality? The scope of this essay is more narrow: a discussion of the morality of homosexuality and the methodological approaches employed in this consideration. This study should, however, furnish a basis for forming a proper pastoral approach to the homosexual and the homophile community and also indicate an approach to the question of the law and homosexuality. A proper pastoral approach should develop in the light of moral theology, although a Dutch symposium on homosexuality almost ten years ago tried to develop a pastoral approach prescinding from moral theology 1 Richard R. Parlour, et al., The Homophile Movement: Its Impact and Implications ," Journal of Rdigion and Health, VI (1967), n 7-234; Foster Gunnison, Jr., " The Homophile Movement in America," in The Same Sex, ed. Ralph Weltge (Philadelphia/Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1969), pp. 113-128. 447 448 CHARLES E. CURRAN because they obviously feared the rigidity of moral theology.2 A discussion of homosexuality from the viewpoint of moral theology necessarily raises methodological questions for moral theology itself. Christian ethicists have employed different methodological approaches even though they may have arrived at the same conclusion. In considering the morality of homosexual acts this article will also evaluate the different methodologies employed and also raise specific methodological questions which concern the particular topic of homosexuality as well as the entire gamut of topics considered by moral theology. Two important methodological questions for the discipline of moral theology come to the fore in the discussion of homosexuality -the use and place of the Scriptures in moral theology and the role of the empirical sciences in the moral judgment. Methodology and Biblical Data Christian ethics reflects on human reality within the context of Christian revelation, but there have been differences about the exact role and function of Scripture in the discipline of moral theology. In general, Roman Catholic moral theology has approached concrete ethical questions in the light of a natural law methodology which tended to downplay the role of Scripture. The theological manual written by NoldinSchmitt , for example, discusses homosexuality very briefly according to the principles of the natural law and merely refers to three Scriptural texts in a footnote.3 Very often the general approach to Roman Catholic theology included a few proof texts from the Scriptures which were employed to prove the point which had been founded on natural law reasoning.4 • A. Overing, et al., Homosexualiteit (Hilversum: Brand, 1961). French translation : Homosexualite, tr. Y. Huon (Paris: Marne, 1967). 3 H. Noldin, S. J., A. Schmitt, S. J., and G. Heinzel, S. J., Summa Theologiae Moralis: De Castitate (36th ed.; Innsbruck: Rauch, 1958), p. 39. • Marcellinus Zalba, S. I., Theologiae Moralis Summa, Vol. II: Theologia Moralis Specialis (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1953), pp. ~77 and 378. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 449 Protestant theology methodologically gives more importance to the place of the Scriptures in ethical methodology, but a fundamentalistic Protestant approach errs by again using the Scriptures in a proof text fashion without any further consideration . The mainstream of Protestant theology benefiting from the impressive biblical studies begun in the nineteenth century realizes the cultural and historical limitations inherent in the Scriptures themselves.5 The renewal in Roman Catholic moral theology emphasized the need for a more biblically oriented approach. During and after Vatican II Catholic theology has, at times, gone to the opposite extreme and become...