Lesson Three Extra

After I got home and had a chance to think more about our discussion yesterday, I was reminded of a letter that I had read online quite a while ago and bookmarked to save.  It was a letter that was written by a college professor to his students in response to a discussion that they had had in class.  The aftermath of the distribution of this letter made national news.  (You can read the details of the whole brew-ha-ha here: Dr. Kenneth Howell Email Reaction.  The story might sound familiar to you once you start reading.)

In his letter, Dr. Howell gives an excellent explanation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality.  Of course, many others have done that as well.  To me, the strength of his letter is the way he applies logic and rational thought to what is usually an argument that breaks down to emotional and irrational terms.

Dr. Howell writes, "...we have to remind ourselves of the ever-present tendency in all of us to judge morality by emotion. The most frequent reason I hear people supporting same-sex marriage is that they know some gay couples or individuals. Empathy is a noble human quality but right or wrong does not depend on who is doing the action or on how I feel about those people, just as judging an action wrong should not depend on disliking someone. This might seem obvious to a right thinking person but I have encountered many well-educated people who do not (or cannot?) make the distinction between persons and acts when engaging moral reasoning...In short, to judge an action wrong is not to condemn a person. A person and his/her acts can be distinguished for the purposes of morality."

There are, in fact, guiding principles for determining the morality or immorality of any act, and these principles, which are based on the primacy of human dignity, take into consideration the act itself or the object chosen, the intent, and the circumstances.  (You can read all about the morality of human acts in the third part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "Life in Christ".)

In the end, regardless of the issue, whether its same-sex "marriage", health directives, life issues, ordination of women, or simply the common, everyday choices we make, it is not you or I who decide if something is moral or immoral, right or wrong, good or evil; it is up to us to do our best to try and discern what God deems moral or immoral, right or wrong, good or evil.  God is our moral compass, not our empathy, not our feelings, not our desires to rationalize, not even a desire to try and make everybody happy.  There is truth and as long as we earnestly seek it, we are on the path to find God.

If you would like to read Dr. Howell's letter in its entirety--and I would recommend that you do--you can find it at: Catholic Teaching On Homosexuality by Dr. Kenneth Howell.  I would love to hear your feedback when we meet again.  I hope these links give you some further insight into the topics we discussed at our meeting.