October Grab Bag

Same-Sex Blessings, Pastoral Accompaniment for LGBTQ Persons, and Artificial Intelligence

As many readers know, back in August the Window Light newsletter transitioned to paid subscriptions, with free subscribers usually receiving one article per week, usually early in the week, and paid subscribers receiving an additional, exclusive article later in the week. Over the next two months, however, my focus was on completing the Synod on Synodality World Tour series, and so there wasn’t really a rhyme or reason why some articles were free and others for paid subscribers other than when I had time to research and publish the articles in that series.

Now that the series is finished, however, I decided it was time to put some thought into which articles are free and which premium. So, at least for the rest of October, free articles published earlier in the week will be the usual fare for the newsletter: commentaries on current events in the Church and world, reflections on the field of theology, etc. Later in the week, I will offer commentaries on what’s going on at the Synod on Synodality and related issues as a premium for paid subscribers.

That being said, this week I’m already breaking my new rule. This week, I’m taking part in a symposium for the Political Theology Network blog on Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum. A short essay with my reflections on the document will be published there, and then simultaneously or shortly after, a longer version will be published here at Window Light. I want that article to be accessible to everyone, but since the timing of its publication is up to the editors at the Political Theology Network, I thought I would send out a round-up of commentary for all subscribers before it got too late in the week. Then this weekend, I’ll write up some thoughts on recent events at the Synod for paid subscribers. But in today’s post, I have some further thoughts on Pope Francis’s statement on same-sex blessings, as well as on diocesan pastoral guidance for accompanying LGBTQ persons, and at the end, some reflections on artificial intelligence, highlighting a recent article by Charlie Camosy.

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More on Same-Sex Blessings

Last week, the Vatican issued a statement from Pope Francis—a response to a dubia letter issued by five cardinals—opening the door for the blessing of persons in same-sex relationships. In an earlier post, I offered some initial reflections on the pope’s statement. The article is behind the paywall, but here are the key paragraphs:

. . . [A]lthough Pope Francis had approved the CDF’s statement [prohibiting the blessing of same-sex unions], some reporting suggested he was unhappy with it. In his recent note, Pope Francis’s doesn’t directly contradict the CDF’s statement, but rather goes around it. I think Cathleen Kaveny (as noted by Michael Sean Winters) is right, that Pope Francis comes to his answer by re-framing the question, an example of what [Colleen] Dulle means by “yes, and” thinking. Rather than framing the question in terms of the objective status of the relationship, Francis notes that, “[When] one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a request for God’s help, a petition for the strength to live better, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better.” It would be unjust to refuse this request simply because a person has been defined as a “sinner.”

Rather than arguing that a same-sex union has positive elements alongside the negative, however, Francis justifies offering blessings as an expression of “pastoral charity.” He focuses less on the objective moral status of the relationship, and more on the subjectivity of the persons seeking the blessing. He therefore sidesteps the issue that the CDF had made the hinge of its argument. That being said, reading his words carefully, he seems to suggest that same-sex relationships or unions themselves should not be blessed, but rather the “one or several people” who request the blessing. Therefore, his response is ultimately consistent with the CDF’s statement, which after all was an answer to the question, “Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” Interestingly, Francis’s remarks seem to echo some concerns that [Austrian Cardinal Christophe] Schönborn had raised about the CDF statement, although not going quite as far as it appears Schönborn would have liked.

When I wrote that, I didn’t realize that “pastoral charity” was an established term in the Church’s teaching on the vocation of ordained priests. As Dawn Eden Goldstein points out in her own commentary on Francis’s remarks at Where Peter Is, the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests, Presybterorum Ordinis, made “pastoral charity” a key to its description of the priestly vocation, and the term was also central to Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the ordained priesthood. She then goes on to show how Francis’s statement builds on early directives from the Vatican recognizing that priests can exercise discernment in prioritizing a person’s subjective desire to grow closer to God over their objective moral situation in circumstances where emphasizing the latter would drive them further from the Church, including through the use of sacramentals like blessings and even participation in the sacraments. The whole article is worth a read.

(Photo: Josh Applegate, Unsplash)

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When the five cardinals published their dubia letter the very week the Synod was set to start, especially since it was originally written in August (and in fact was a second letter sent after the cardinals found the pope’s responses to the first, sent in July, unsatisfactory), it was tempting to call the letter an attempt to distract from the work of the Synod. I think that reflects a kernel of truth, since as a I wrote in last week’s post, it does appear the letter was an attempt to hijack the agenda of the Synod. But I’ve refrained from calling it a distraction because, I thought, if I were an LGBTQ Catholic, I probably wouldn’t see it that way; the question addressed by Pope Francis might be important to me than whatever the Synod is discussing at the moment.

Writing for America, Michael J. O’Loughlin explores how blessings are understood in Catholic theology and why LGBTQ Catholics might want to receive one. I will be honest, I have never thought much about what a blessing is, so I found O’Loughlin’s article helpful. O’Loughlin cites the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who write, blessings “prepare us to receive the grace of the sacraments and help us to grow to be more like Christ.” He also refers to the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, who writes that “To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer. It is more than a word of praise or appreciation; it is more than pointing out someone's talents or good deeds; it is more than putting someone in the light. . . . To give a blessing is to affirm, to say 'yes' to a person's Belovedness.”

O’Loughlin’s main conclusion is worth quoting in full:

Catholics in same-sex relationships seeking a blessing often do so for the same reasons as other couples. They seek affirmation of God’s love for them. And they seek affirmation that there is something holy at work in their lives, however mysterious and ultimately unknowable that might feel.

As I noted in my earlier article, Pope Francis’s remarks are an attempt to thread the needle of recognizing this desire for affirmation while holding firm to what the Catholic Church has taught about marriage and human sexuality.

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Diocesan Guidelines

On October 4, the same day the Synod opened and Pope Francis released Laudate Deum, Bishop Thomas Zinkula of the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa issued new “Guidelines for Pastoral Accompaniment of Sexual and Gender Minorities,” or pastoral guidelines for working with LGBTQ persons in Catholic parishes, schools, and other institutions. Rather than laying out a set of specific policies, the guidelines propose a “case-by-case” approach.

The document puts forward five principles to guide Catholic leaders as they respond pastorally to LGBTQ persons:

1. “[A] fundamental respect for the dignity of every human person, body and soul, created in the image and likeness of God,” although the document notes that human dignity is closely tied to “the Church’s beliefs about the nature of the human person, sexual difference, and gender”;

2. “a basic acknowledgement of people who experience differences in sexual orientation or gender discordance”;

3. “a commitment to loving people first and listening for deeper understanding”;

4. “a commitment to involving others in the discernment process, especially the individuals and families involved as well as other professionals and collaborators”; and

5. “a case-by-case approach with a basic willingness to make reasonable and appropriate accommodations when possible.”

The guidelines are written in the same spirit as Pope Francis’s statement on same-sex blessings. For example, they recognize that “Most sexual minorities and their families who are seeking a relationship with the Church . . . are simply looking for a safe, welcoming place to worship, learn, grow in their spiritual journey, and encounter Christ.” I was also moved by this line: “When it comes to pastoral practice, we are not dealing simply with ideologies or issues but with people who are created in the image and likeness of the Creator.”

The committee responsible for drafting the guidelines met with several LGBTQ persons and experts, and the guidelines call on Catholic institutions in the diocese to do the same as they craft their own policies. I thought that one important reflection of that consultation was the document’s insistence that “persons who experience differences in sexual orientation or gender discordance do not choose this.” This reminded me of how many Catholic ministries have promoted “conversion therapy,” based on the presupposition that a person’s sexual attractions, even if deep-seated, are ultimately a matter of choice. Similarly, with regards to transgender persons, even Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia states, “This [gender] ideology leads to educational programs and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time” (56, emphasis added). This view has been echoed in the pastoral guidance for LGBTQ persons issued by several dioceses, including my former home diocese, the Diocese of Arlington’s Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology. Yet most transgender persons don’t experience their discordant gender identity as a choice, but as something given to them, at times something they experience with great distress. Most Catholic pastoral guidance is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what most LGBTQ persons experience, and so the Davenport Diocese’s guidance is refreshing in that regard.

The timing of the guidance’s release is unusual, although purely coincidental. The guidance comes a mere two weeks before Bishop Zinkula will be installed as the Archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa, my current diocese. The committee that drafted the guidelines, however, began its work in January, 2021, long before Zinkula had been announced to succeed the now-retired Archbishop Michael Jackels of Dubuque. It will be important to see how the guidance is implemented after Zinkula leaves Davenport, however.

News accounts of the Davenport guidelines have frequently contrasted it with those adopted in the neighboring Diocese of Des Moines, led by Bishop William Joensen. Rather than setting up a “culture war” conflict between the bishops, however, these distinct approaches to pastoral outreach to LGBTQ persons could provide an opportunity for an open and frank “conversation in the Spirit.” After all, Zinkula and Joensen were long-time colleagues as priests in Archdiocese of Dubuque (which is how I know both of them, although I know Joensen far better since he was a professor at Loras College, where I taught for several years). Jonathan Liedl, writing at the National Catholic Register, relates how German bishops who had strongly opposing views of the German Synodal Way have engaged in respectful and friendly dialogue with one another at the Synod in Rome, a dialogue grounded in their shared faith. There’s no reason why Iowa’s bishops couldn’t adopt the same spirit as the German bishops, who are divided by even more contentious issues.

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More on Artificial Intelligence

I have written quite a bit on artificial intelligence in this newsletter, including on what it would mean for artificial intelligence to be capable of engaging in an authentic, personal encounter, a sine qua non for providing pastoral or spiritual care. At America, my friend Charlie Camosy has an excellent article on an opposite challenge: How is the increasing use of artificial intelligence impacting how we think of ourselves as persons? As Camosy writes:

While some may be inclined to move closer to the view that AI is like us, the broader culture is actually primed to move closer to the view that we are like AI. Indeed, many students in my classes in recent years have said something like, “Well, aren’t we just essentially organic machines?” What is substantially different about the way we analyze a photo, engage a database, and spit back an answer to a question?

He goes on to say that this tendency is linked to the modern, secular “disenchantment of the world,” the loss of the sense of the sacred, including “being made in the image and likeness of God, of the soul, grace, a will that is transcendent and free, or (in some extreme cases) even consciousness.”

Long before the advent of AI, Pope Paul VI, in his Octogesima Adveniens (1971), warned of a “new positivism” (29), the tendency of the sciences to isolate particular aspects of human experience but then transform this knowledge into an all-embracing ideology, a tendency that ends up “mutilating” the human person, failing to understand it in its totality (38).

The author Shoshanna Zuboff, in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, argues that Big Tech corporations like Google and Facebook are guided by a radical version of this type of positivism, reducing the human person to a set of data that can be collected and algorithmically processed and analyzed. This data can then be used to manipulate human behavior through targeted advertising, social media feeds, and a host of other methods. Camosy is right, then, that we live in a society that is coming to understand human personhood “algorithmically”, something we ought to resist.

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Coming Soon…

• As I noted at the top of this post, later this week, I will publish my response to Pope Francis’s Laudate Deum, and this weekend I’ll post some new reflections on the Synod for paid subscribers.

• For next week, my goal is to write something on the horrible terrorist attack carried out by Hamas and Israel’s military response, drawing on both the just-war tradition and the Christian vocation to peacemaking.

Thanks for reading!