{"id":53,"date":"2010-08-10T17:32:49","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T17:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh.html"},"modified":"2010-08-10T17:32:49","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T17:32:49","slug":"moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh.html","title":{"rendered":"Moderate Catholics on Prop. 8 decision: Shhh"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been waiting around for some reaction to the Proposition 8 decision from my friends at bien-pensant Catholic blogs like America<\/i>‘s In All Things and Commonweal<\/i>‘s dotCommonweal and the National Catholic Reporter<\/i>‘s NCR Today, but so far to almost no avail. Michael Sean Winters did issue a critique<\/a>
\nof Judge Walker’s decision<\/a>, based on a misunderstanding of what the
\njudge meant when he wrote that “a private moral view that same-sex
\ncouples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not a proper basis for
\nlegislation.” The issue is not whether, as Winters asserts, “there is
\nnothing ‘private’ about Catholic moral views.” It’s that, as Walker
\nwrote, “[t]he state does not have an interest in enforcing private moral
\nor religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose.” And the
\ndefenders of Proposition 8 failed to demonstrate such a purpose.<\/p>\n

Be
\nthat as it may, what are we to make of the silence of all those others
\non a subject that has engaged no little Catholic rhetorical and
\npolitical action? What I’m inclined to make of it is that, like most
\nAmerican Catholics, they are actually in favor of same-sex marriage–at
\nleast as a right in civil society–and so can’t bring themselves to
\nstand with their bishops. But on the other hand, to do anything else
\nwould subject them to intolerable abuse from the Catholic right–abuse
\nthat (as David Gibson points out<\/a>
\nover at dotCommonweal today) even that paladin of right-wing
\nCatholicism Archbishop Charles Chaput characterizes as meaner and more
\nvitriolic than anything on the other side.  <\/p>\n


\n
\nI’m not suggesting
\nthat these moderates come right out and tell the bishops they don’t know
\nwhat they’re talking about. Rome has spoken pretty plainly on the
\nissue. But there are issues of prudence and even principle that might
\nusefully be raised. Such as that the church is going to have to prepare
\nitself for the day when, as with birth control and divorce, it accepts
\nsame-sex marriage as a normal feature of a civil society whose moral
\nlegislation is not its own. And that just because the Magisterium now
\nteaches that same-sex marriage is in violation of the natural law, it
\ncould be the case that, as has happened with other moral issues in the
\npast (slavery, for example, and usury), a fuller understanding of the
\nnature of things casts a different light on the matter.<\/p>\n

Update: <\/b>Reader Bryan Comes comments that I missed one of those moderate voices I was looking for–his own<\/a>, over at U.S.Catholic. And a good post it is. Thanks, Bryan!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been waiting around for some reaction to the Proposition 8 decision from my friends at bien-pensant Catholic blogs like America‘s In All Things and Commonweal‘s dotCommonweal and the National Catholic Reporter‘s NCR Today, but so far to almost no avail. Michael Sean Winters did issue a critique of Judge Walker’s decision, based on a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nModerate Catholics on Prop. 8 decision: Shhh - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moderate Catholics on Prop. 8 decision: Shhh - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve been waiting around for some reaction to the Proposition 8 decision from my friends at bien-pensant Catholic blogs like America‘s In All Things and Commonweal‘s dotCommonweal and the National Catholic Reporter‘s NCR Today, but so far to almost no avail. Michael Sean Winters did issue a critique of Judge Walker’s decision, based on a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-10T17:32:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Moderate Catholics on Prop. 8 decision: Shhh - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/moderate-catholics-on-prop-8-decision-shhh.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Moderate Catholics on Prop. 8 decision: Shhh - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"I’ve been waiting around for some reaction to the Proposition 8 decision from my friends at bien-pensant Catholic blogs like America‘s In All Things and Commonweal‘s dotCommonweal and the National Catholic Reporter‘s NCR Today, but so far to almost no avail. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}