Same-sex unions will need pastoral solutions

The Catholic hierarchy of Southern Africa has now made its submission to parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs on the question of same-sex unions, stating the Church’s opposition to its legalisation on several grounds, as we report this week.

In doing so, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference will have been aware that it was stating its objections largely for the record and as a matter of principle. The bishops’ submission will not halt such legislation, which the Constitutional Court has mandated parliament to effect, nor will the content of the new law be influenced significantly by their message.

The bishops will have aimed at informing the conscience of those who heard or read it—politicians involved in the process of drafting the legislation and voting on it, the Constitutional Court judges, and the public in general. To that end, the bishops are hoping that the African National Congress will afford its caucus a “free vote” when parliament will decide whether to adopt or reject the proposed Civil Unions Bill by December 1.

Curiously, the Bill itself is under multiple attack, from those who oppose same-sex unions and from those who believe it continues to discriminate against homosexuals. It is even possible that the Constitutional Court itself will reject the Bill for not going far enough.

Whatever the fate of the Civil Unions Bill, same-sex unions (or marriages, depending on the preferred terminology) will become a reality in some shape or form in South Africa.

While the sacrament of marriage—as opposed to its probable statutory definition when the new law comes into effect—cannot be administered to homosexual couples within the Catholic Church, there doubtlessly will be many Catholic parishioners entering into same-sex unions throughout South Africa.

This will create new challenges for the Church and its pastors. These require not a rigid doctrinal framework, but the application of sound pastoral solutions to every individual case.

There surely are many related questions that already exercise many a pastor’s mind.

For example, parish priests will need to determine whether to administer Communion to such couples.

In doing so, a priest will have to consider whether the act of having entered a civil union in itself disqualifies such Catholics from receiving Communion, or whether it does so only if he knows that the couple’s relationship is not celibate. Would a priest trespass by asking the couple about the sexual conduct within their relationship? Would the priest be prejudiced if he failed to treat, say, cohabitating heterosexuals in the same manner as he might a same-sex couple? Or might a priest make a decision on the basis of what he only presumes to be happening behind closed doors?

And if he admits such couples to the Lord’s Table, will this create scandal among some members of the parish, and would their objections be reasonable? Would such objections be an example of the kind of discrimination the Church clearly condemns?

Homosexuals are already legally entitled to adopt children. The new law is likely to formalise this. Might such children be barred from baptism or catechism classes?

And what would a pastor do if a same-sex couple asked for their relationship to be blessed? Would doing so bring him into conflict with his bishop, or would he be able to apply a formula that is consistent—and widely accepted to be so—with the Church’s teachings and positions on homosexuality?

The rights or wrongs of same-sex unions aside, these are some of the pastoral questions many priests will face. They will require compassionate and equitable solutions, and much reflecion and discussion before they even arise.