Homosexuality debated despite Hickey protest - discussion on Catholicism and homosexuality at Georgetown University

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 19, 1997 by Chuck Colbert

WASHINGTON -- What started out as a scheduled debate on homosexuality and Catholicism turned briefly into a standoff over freedom of speech at a Catholic university.

In the end, the debate was held Dec. 6 at Jesuit-run Georgetown University over the strong objection of Cardinal James A. Hickey, archbishop of Washington.

In a Nov. 13 column in the Catholic Standard, the diocesan newspaper, Hickey wrote, It is naive for anyone to think that the church's teaching will receive a fair hearing in a debate organized by a group opposed to certain aspects of that teaching."

That group, New Ways Ministry, is "distinctly and deliberately ambiguous with regard to the church's' teaching on the wrongness of homosexual activity," he said.

Hickey has led the charge in recent years against the work of New Ways ministry in his diocese and its two founders, Sr. Jeanine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, who continue individual ministry to gay Catholics. Other dioceses, however, have welcomed the two and endorsed their workshops.

Jesuit Fr. Leo J. O'Donovan, president of Georgetown, held firm in the recent dispute, permitting the event to occur under the principle of academic freedom and the school`s policy on speech and expression. That policy states: "A university is many things, but central. to its being is discourse, discussion, debate: the untrammeled expression of ideas and information."

New Ways, a national Catholic ministry group that promotes education, dialogue, and acceptance of lesbian and gay people within the wider church community, was joined as sponsor by several university student organizations, including two gay groups and the student government.

"Universities have long been seen as an appropriate setting for debate on intellectual, legal, social and moral issues, and we are proud that our university recognizes the merits of the time-honored traditions of free and open academic debate," said Thomas R. Houck, a Georgetown law student and cochair of the law center's Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Association, a pre-debate news conference.

The four-hour debate/discussion, characterized by serious content and a civil tone, was held before 325 people.

Sr. Camille D'Arienzo, president of the Brooklyn Regional Community of the Sisters of Mercy and vice-president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, moderated the presidential-style format of the debate.

A panel of religion journalists questioned three Catholic theologians, each with distinctly different positions about gay people and homosexuality, on a wide range of issues. Areas discussed included the origin and nature of homosexual orientation, the role of conscience in sexual morality, civil rights legislation, same-gender marriage, pastoral approaches and the possibility of change in official church teaching.

The three theologians-were James P. Hanigan, a professor and chair of the theology department at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; Jesuit Fr. Richard A. McCormick, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind.; and former Jesuit John J. McNeill, a theologian, psychotherapist and author of three books, including his ground-breaking work, The Church and the Homosexual, first published in 1976.

During opening remarks, Hanigan, also a former Jesuit and now married, argued in favor of the "magisterial" position -- or official church teaching -- that holds homosexual activity to be sinful and a homosexual orientation to be objectively disordered.

Accordingly, the church is "obligated to defend morality as the guardian of human dignity," he said.

Believing the church's "distinction between homosexual orientation and behavior to be both appropriate and legitimate," Hanigan advocated, "the centrality of heterosexual marriage as the normative context for human sexual behavior" and stressed "the twofold meaning of sexual expression in marriage as procreative and unitive."

Hanigan, therefore, holds "such teaching to be a faithful expression of the scriptural witness and an authentic development of the inherited tradition," according to a written statement attributed to him in the debate's program booklet.

In addressing the audience, Hanigan described the "awkward position" in which he found himself, deciding whether or not to participate in the forum.

I have the utmost respect for the episcopal office and those who occupy it," Hanigan said. Cardinal Hickey's strong objection "gave me considerable pause and forced me to articulate the assumptions I bring to the debate," he said. All controversial issues do better if they are aired."

Throughout the debate McCormick articulated a "revisionist" position, which -- like the magisterial one -- affirms "the sexual expression of interpersonal love" between a man and woman as the optimal norm, "the best chance for growth" and advancement of humankind.

But accepting both the irreversibility of a genuine homosexual orientation and the reality of sexual activity among gay and lesbian people, McCormick argued for flexibility in pastoral approaches. Accordingly, those who minister to gays should encourage stable relationships that foster exclusiveness, intimacy and love, he said.