The Magisterium and life. shed Light on homosexual love
Interview by Gimpaolo Petrucci to Gianni Geraci published on Adist New Signs n.6 of February 17, 2024, pp.14-15
"In good and bad luck. Christian homosexuals and the bet to build a relationship forever"It is the latest effort by Gianni Geraci (founder of theAssociation "Il Guado" in Milan, partner ofassociation "La Tenda di Gionata", the historical animator of the galaxy of groups of believers LGBTQI+ Italiana), edited free of charge by "La Tenda di Gionata" - Association born in the Gionata project on faith and homosexuality - and enriched by a afterword by the theologian Andrea Grillo.
By drawing on the history and heritage of reflections produced in the ecclesial field on the theme and meaning of marital love, and drawing on one's life experience, the author tries to answer the question: "Can a marital value be recognized for the experience that many homosexual couples live?".
The volume can be downloaded for free in PDF version from the Gionata project website. Or, you can request a paper version - equally free - to the email address tendadigionata@gmail.com . On the occasion of the publication of the book, Adista gianni geraci contacted The Author, to exchange some impressions.
In 1999 John Paul II stated that "the claim to attribute a marital reality to the union between people of the same sex is incongruous". Strengthened by your experience, you write instead that "a relationship between two people of the same sex cannot only be a marital relationship, but it can last for life and go further too".
In saying that "the claim to attribute a marital reality to the union between people of the same sex is inconsistent" John Paul II started by two premises that proved to be wrong: the first is that the homosexual condition must "be considered as objectively disordered", as stated by the document of the magisterium to which reference is still made in the Catholic Church when it is homosexuality (cf. Homosexualitatis Problem, 3); The second is the idea that in homosexual behavior there is something unnatural.
These two premises were denied as homosexual people came out of anonymity and started not to hide their couple relationships in their "banal" normality. We have so noticed that there are many homosexual couples who last over time and that they do not be based on a narcissistic attraction, but that last because they serve to make the lives of those who are part better and the life of the people who attend them.
The wrong premises, at the time, were also justified, because we homosexuals, when we turned to a priest, generally told him a life made of transgression, solitude and suffering. With the passage of time, things have changed and, therefore, if the Church really wants to remain faithful to the principles that inspired the "no" of the past, it must understand that the time of "yes" has arrived.
And it was the same congregation for the doctrine of faith to say that: "The teaching on the" objective disorder "of homosexual orientation refers to the third level, not infallible, of the teaching and therefore can change" (see Nugent R., "Declaration of Father Robert Nugent in response to the Vatican notification", in Gramick J., Nugent R. Gay souls. Homosexuals and the Catholic Church, Rome, 2003, p. 233).
It is essentially a question of taking note of what, a few years earlier, had declared the World Health Organization when he had defined homosexuality "a natural variant of human behavior".
And if a Pope who lives in the solitude of the apostolic buildings is partially justified when they do not realize certain changes, the people who meet every day of homosexual couples are much less justified when they deny the evidence of many experiences in which, to put it with an expression used by John Paul II in the speech of which he speaks, love is "a commitment that is made with a precise act of will that qualify it and makes it amor conjugalis ».
The declaration of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Confidence supplicans she was welcomed by the different episcopates in a not always happy way. And, although it opens to the blessings of homosexual couples, it puts many stakes and many distinctions to reiterate that homosexual relationships always remain of "Serie B" ... a step forward or the usual story?
For sure Confidence supplicans it is a step forward compared to another responsum, written just under two years ago, in which Dicastery himself stated that "the Church does not have, nor can it have, the power to bless unions of people of the same sex". The CDF did not take into account the fact that a blessing is not denied to anyone (as evidenced by the practice with which, at the end of the liturgical celebrations, the celebrant blesses all those present, without saying before: "If there is any homosexual couple, it is preached to go out before the blessing!").
Conference confidence it then represents a step forward that tries, at the same time, to reassure the Catholics who are afraid of homosexuality and think with terror of the hypothesis of an analogy between the experience of homosexual couples and that of heterosexual couples who marry. The reactions of some episcopates, on the other hand, can be understood, because in many countries of the world the idea is considered absurd that in homosexuality there is something positive.
It is right to take into account the difficulties of these episcopates to bless homosexual relationships, but in the same way I believe it is equally necessary to take into account the opposite difficulties of other episcopates who, in freer and equal societies, want to meet the request for blessing that comes from many couples of the same sex. A truly "Catholic" Church, that is, universal, must accept the differences between the various countries and respect both sensitivity.
In the book you speak of the concept of "generativity", starting from Genesis. Generating does not only mean "having children" but also living relationships capable of generating "life" outside them: a sort of non -biological generativity that manifests itself in the care of others, of the common good, of the planet ...
The second story of the creation, that of Genesis 2, on this point is very clear. God gives man an help that is similar to him in cultivating and guarding the garden in which he had placed it. Here the expression "grow and multiply" is no longer there, while the task of treating creation are underlined and "one meat". The terms are also different from those used by Genesis 1, precisely because the author interests much more to underline what the man and the woman have in common (not surprisingly indicates them with the same term declined to male and female).
In the general hearing of 17 December, Pope Francis said that chastity is a "virtue that should not be confused with sexual abstinence" and must be rather understood as "will of never own the other. Love is to respect the other, to seek his happiness ». In the book you speak of "chastity" in a similar way, contrasting it with continence.
In the book I use a happy expression of Don Leandro Rossi who, in the late nineties, speaking on the theme "What chastity for homosexual people?", Had said that "chastity means putting sex at the service of love". Unfortunately, when it comes to sexuality, in the Church, we often refuse to fly up and the chastity of sexual abstinence is reduced. From this point of view I believe that the clarification of Pope Francis, even if he says nothing new, was particularly useful and particularly happy.
The refusal of the inclusion of homosexual relationships in the marital ones therefore seems to reverberate ancient incrustations and cultural prejudices in the Catholic tradition rather than the fruit of a serious and in -depth theological research.
Starting from the end of the eighties, in the Church we refused to take note of what emerged in western societies: that the life of many homosexual couples, that is, could not be associated with a vice or a disease. This led to the paradox: on the one hand, some moralists attentive to reality came to say that the experience of homosexual couples could not be condemned a priori (e.g. Enrico Chiavacci, Giannino Piana, Leandro Rossi); on the other, the Catholic magisterium closed more and more to the hypothesis of any recognition of what is good in these couples.
I know priests who, in those years, did not dare to publish anything on the subject, because they were afraid of getting into trouble. The advent of Pope Francis has certainly not changed the doctrine, but led to a new climate, in which those who make theology on certain topics have started to feel more free and have started looking for answers to the need to update the ecclesial practice taking into account what we now know and that forty years ago we did not yet know.
