Marian Ronan

Only Sex Matters

Waiting for New York Theological Seminary’s graduation to get underway this morning, I came across an interesting tidbit in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Seems that Seton Hall, the Catholic University in South Orange, New Jersey, is considering canceling a political science course on gay marriage. They are doing so because the archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers, says such a course would conflict with Catholic teaching.

Now I would not be so foolish as to suggest that cancelling this course is a violation of academic freedom. I suspect that the archbishop includes academic freedom in the same category as secularism, individualism, and moral relativism.

I do note, however, that the course the archbishop objects to is NOT a course in Catholic moral theology. I understand why a bishop would object to such a theology course, assuming, of course, that it opposed the church’s position on gay marriage. But the course in question is a course in political science. As Seton Hall’s vice-provost says in an article in the Newark Star ledger, reviews of the course suggest it’s “not an advocacy course… but a ‘special topics’ course intended to examine objectively all sides of a significant current public policy issue,” including, presumably, the Catholic church’s side.

It may be, of course, that the archbishop believes all courses in a Catholic  university should present only the Catholic position on the subject at hand. Were such a state of affairs to come about, however, the college or university in question, would, it seems to me, be ethically obligated to renounce its secular accreditation and apply instead for accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada because it would have a become a theological school (of sorts). Such an action might, however, impact applications from students wanting to study other subjects. To wit, the whole thing is too silly to be taken seriously.

I have a deeper concern about the bishop’s statement, however:  once again, an American Catholic bishop has communicated–as in the bishops’ health care embarrassment a while back–that sex is the only thing that matters to him..

You probably know what I’m getting at here, but just in case you don’t, consider this: Seton Hall offers eleven different MBAs–Master’s degrees in Business Administration–including one in  Financial Markets and another in International Business.  Given the enormous harm done to millions of human beings by the ongoing global recession, it is quite inconceivable  that courses in the Seton Hall business program do not regularly teach concepts that, when applied, massively harm the “common good,” that beloved centerpiece of Catholic social teaching. But can you for a moment imagine the archbishop ordering the university to cancel those courses because they go against Catholic teaching?

And the priests serving under these bishops understand this ideological hierarchy very well. I have never–and I go to Mass regularly–heard a priest preach that we American Catholics, by virtue of the billions of particles of CO2 that our cars and refrigerators and computers spew into the air, are sinning against “life.” Ditto war. The pastor of a church I attended when the Iraq war broke out actually preached that although that war was a violation of Catholic just war theory, those who supported it were still valued members of the parish. This is the way it is, of course, because Catholic teaching on abortion, homosexuality, divorce, pre-marital sex, and the “complementarity” (i.e., subordination) of women to men are the only teachings that matter, practically speaking, to very many of the US bishops.

The thing is, I can’t imagine God bothering to take on our humanity just to get control over human sexuality. Can you?