A conversion of judgment

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, known by the acronym EKD, recently published new guidelines on marriage which move away from the traditional definition of marriage as a “divine institution”.

The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is only for one man and one woman, but some other churches are beginning to apply a looser definition of matrimony.

It now teaches that other committed lifestyles, such as homosexual partnerships and “patchwork” families, must be shown the same respect as traditional marriages.

Unsurprisingly, this has caused deep-seated divisions within the EKD. There are also speculations it could lead to the breakdown of ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church. If that is true or not remains to be seen.

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What is clear is that more and more pressure is being exerted on religious institutions to bend their moral ethics based on contemporary practices.

Many “conservative” Christians are starting to seek and find shelter in the Catholic Church since it is regarded, for better or worse, as the last beacon of strict Christian morality. It’s an outdated thing to some, but certainly reassuring and orthodox to others.

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The German and the British churches in particular have seen the major brunt of the secular pressure to conform to the spirit of the times when their governments legalised and thereby institutionalised matters like same-sex marriages.

The president and vice-president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Archbishops Vincent Nichols and Peter Smith, recently issued a co-signed statement which in a key section declared: “With this new legislation, marriage has now become an institution in which openness to children, with it the responsibility on fathers and mothers to remain together to care for children born into their family unit, are no longer central.”

Harsh words, and unfortunately true to reality since most surveys show that children born of married parents have about 22% more chance of growing with both parents around until they’re 18 years of age.

The Catholic Church, though not of this world, has always striven to influence this world towards the virtues of truth in Christ.

For instance, the recent papal encyclical, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), states that “love is an experience of truth”. Pope Francis encourages all those searching for truth to meditate on their experience of love, not simply as a fleeting emotion, but as a way of tasting the truth which always leads to faith.

He says that as we meditate on the love God has shown us in our lives, and seeing with the eyes of our lights, we, like the Israelites, create our own history of conversion and come to belief.

Lumen Fidei also says: “To the extent they [that is, you and me] are sincerely open to love and set out with whatever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to faith.”

Most of us probably don’t really like to hear about the love history of our spouses or partners. Yet this is the history of conversion that led them exactly to us. In the same way, the Church too does not like our sins, but blesses and sanctifies (redeems and makes holy) them for us to live the sacramental life.

Priests too are not born priests; they have their own specific histories of conversion, sometimes as radically as that of Saul who became Paul. Like all of us, they are blessed and sanctified through their conversion history.

Lumen Fidei speaks of a “road which faith opens up before us”. In Rio de Janeiro last month, Pope Francis begged us, as “religious wayfarers”, to not be afraid to keep looking, to ready ourselves to be led out of ourselves and “to find the God of perpetual surprises”.

Clearly the Church has a problem with a definition of marriage that excludes the clause of “openness to life”, the divine purpose of procreation. Hence it has a problem with homosexual acts. The Church also has a problem with pride, envy, gluttony, wrath, greed, sloth, lust, and so on. Still, the Church hates the sin, but loves the sinner.

Let one without sin cast the first stone at homosexuals then; or let us all accept the invitation to come into the Light of Faith, the purifying fire of Love.

Let us, with Pope Francis, all say: “If someone is gay and earnestly searches for the Lord, and has a good will, who am I to judge?”

Pope Francis is shepherding us back to a Church big enough to accommodate humanity without being worldly; a Church that speaks in God’s language of mercy even as it judges without condemnation.

May we, please God, not kick against the goad.