The other day, at lunch, some comments were made regarding Jon Stewart’s interview with Senator Rick Santorum. As they were discussing homosexuality it came to the following point (to review the video go to http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=16630&poppedFrom=_shows_the_daily_show_videos_most_recent_index.jhtml&):

“Jon Stewart: Ultimately you get to this point where it’s this crazy stopping point where literally we can’t get any further. I don’t think you’re a bad dude. I don’t think I’m a bad dude. But I don’t think I can convince you of the idea that I think it’s doing society a disservice to dismiss the potential of all these really…

Rick Santorum: I don’t think it’s dismissing the potential. I think we should honor every person in America - that every person has worth and dignity. There’s a difference though, when it comes to changing the laws of the country, that could harm children.

Jon Stewart is right: the two sides of the issue cannot communicate because they lack a common: language to communicate and understand each other. Here, I would like to try to give a certain overview of the Catholic perception about homosexuality and same sex marriage. We all know what the Catholic Church teaches but we don’t necessarily know why it teaches it. I will first try to frame the discussion as a philosophical vision for mankind, only then I will review the Biblical perspective.

Vision and Philosophy

As Jon Stewart speaks of the point when: we can’t get any further he suggests that the non-resolution between the opposing views is due to a diametrically divergent worldview. What is the Catholic perspective or worldview of mankind? I immediately thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s: The Phenomenon of Man.

Now, personally, let me say that when de Chardin speaks of: harmonized collectivity of consciousness equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness, I have a hard time reconciling his: collectivity of consciousness with Christian theology. This seems to me more Chi than Triune, more agnostic ascendancy than atoning blood of Christ, and his: super-consciousness sounds more like a pantheist god or force than the transcendent God of Christianity. But in his world of noosphere and evolution that is more Marxist than Darwinian, he does touch on a concept that is Christian. In his book he says:

p. 263 : Egoism, whether personal or racial, … feels right. Its only mistake, but a fatal one, is to confuse individuality with personality. In trying to separate itself as much as possible from others, the element individualises itself ; but in doing so it becomes retrograde and seeks to drag the world backwards toward plurality and into matter. In fact it diminishes itself and loses itself. To be fully ourselves it is in the opposite direction, in the direction of convergence with all the rest, that we must advance - towards the ’other’.

The peak of ourselves, the acme of our originality, is not our individuality but our person; and according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can only find our person by uniting together. There is no mind without synthesis. [...] The true ego grows in inverse proportion to ’ egoism ’. Like the Omega which attracts it, the element only becomes person when it universalises itself. (http://www.archangelcompany.com/more%20teilhard.htm Extracts cited by Janice B. Paulsen from the fourth chapter of The PHENOMENON OF MAN, Harper & Row, revised English translation by Benjamin Wall (1975), pp. 235-290).

What is de Chardin saying and how does this apply to homosexual political activism?

If we look at the dictionary and everyday usage both words, individual and person can be used interchangeably. But there is a difference between the two. We can describe a stone as having individual characteristics but not as having personal characteristics. In Teilhard’s mind even a group can be considered as an individual. The raison d’être of an individual is to distinguish themselves from others. This can be a child from parents, an individual from a group, a group from society. He also explains in his book how political systems or even nations can be considered as individuals (for example, the insularity of Britain, the proletariat of Marxist thought, or the superiority of the Arian race in Nazism). On the other hand, the raison d’être of a person is to be in relationship with others. When pushed to extreme reactions the individual will demand or even fight for their rights at any cost, because that right is seen as the higher good.

One of the most striking example I can find is in the book: Our Bodies, Ourselves. In the section about the: Sex Industry where it argues that women exploitation by the sex industry is bad but if it is by choice prostitution is no worse than selling one self into an office job. At http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/viol_sexind.html the web site quotes: As one prostitute said, It’s my body; why shouldn’t I be the one to decide how I should use it?

To me the claim is illustrative of the individual vs. person concept as seen by Teilhard de Chardin. On one hand we have a prostitute saying this is my body, claiming it as her right as an individual. On the other hand we have Jesus saying this is my body, offering it up as gift of personal relationship. The one is closed into itself; the other is open to others. Similarly with the homosexual mindset it’s their right for their own good against the good of society. Even: well intentioned proponents or sympathizers of same sex marriage often ask why can’t homosexuals adopt children (like Jon Stewart asked). Again, even this seemingly reasonable question misses the mark because it is centered on the right of the homosexual couple rather than the welfare of children. The question should not be why can’t a homosexual adopt children but rather what is best for children. One question is egoist the other is altruist.

The difficulty in opening a dialog between the homosexual rights proponents and the preservation of the tradition family proponents is the differing worldviews. In this case I am using Teilhard de Chardin’s worldview. In paraphrasing his words: even though it feels right, egoism, in what ever form, as in this case homosexuality, separates itself from others; in doing so it becomes retrograde and seeks to drag the world backwards.

Before closing this part of the discussion Jon Stewart raised the question: is society worst now than at the time of segregation? The answer is society is better off now but not because of the fight for African American’s individual rights. Martin Luther King saw the fight for civil rights not as an Africans versus Whites issue. His view was one of reconciliation therefore personal and unitive in the de Chardin sense. On the other hand the Africans versus Whites rights would have gone nowhere if it had remained at the individual level led by the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers.

I don’t see in the homosexual agenda any drive to reconciliation and openness to others but an egoist claim that will not succeed and if it does it will drag the world backwards not because homosexuals are bad people but because of the essence of homosexuality and its intrinsic egoism.