Discussion: “In Defense of Dumbledore,” by Regina Doman

Nothing to add. You’ve said everything I wanted to say - because I felt it needed saying - very well.

Proving once again that I take as direction the warning that fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Travis,
Thanks so much for giving my article the honor of a reasonable and respectful disagreement! It’s easy to generate disagreement but rare to find someone willing to take the trouble to do it with courtesy. I am honored. Thank you.

And the same to the rest of you who have commented thus far here and on John’s blog.

I have to begin by saying that I probably will not be able to give this discussion the attention it deserves for a quite gender-specific reason: I’m expecting my seventh baby any day now, and am possibly in the early stages of labor. So I want to apologize in advance if I make a number of questionable points and then pass into obscurity before being able to reply to anyone’s responses. Having said this, I do welcome direct questions or challenges. I also do add my prayers that the discussion remains respectful and I will do my best to help it not degenerate into something unhelpful.

I wrote my article as a heavily-conservative-orthodox (insert label here) Catholic and I (as someone has noted) I was writing to an audience even more conservative to myself, including many Harry-Haters. So the angle I took was a very specific one, that I would probably not take if I were to be making the argument to Harry-lovers in an ecumemical audience (as is this one).

I mainly want to clarify some points that Travis raised, but I don’t really intend to try to convert anyone here to my point of view. The Catholic Church as a whole is a difficult animal to swallow: for instance even John Granger and I, who have so much in common, would find it easy to get into an argument over the historical disagreements between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

And of course, the same Catholicism that asks me to believe things so objectionable to other Christians and non-believers also asks me to love all others who don’t share these beliefs unconditionally. And I’m as bad at that as the next Catholic. So let me claim any uncharitableness on my part as my own failing, not my faith’s.

Travis wrote:

>Ok, let’s get this on the table first: I believe the Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin. I just want to get rid of all the silly things the church has believed about it - mostly stereotypes that won’t stand up under a moment’s scrutiny - and get at the real issues involved. Here are my basic issues with the article:

God calls men to image Himself, God the Father, whereas women are called to image His receptive creation.

This claim has no exegetical basis whatsoever. It runs quite contrary to Genesis 1, I’d argue. Both male and female are called to reflect the Imago Dei - indeed, together, they were created in His image.

I respond:
My reference for this is Catholic tradition, including the most recent teaching of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. It is taken from the New Testament, including Ephesians 5. I will quote the relevant passage here

“25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31″For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[b] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

Side note: this is also the source for my equating marriage to “public crucifixion for married men.” The husband is called to be like Christ, laying down his life for his bride. How did Christ do this? Hence the allusion. I think that heterosexual marriage, properly understood, is not the cakewalk it might appear to be, but a lot more like crucifixion than anything else in life. (Thank God it includes resurrection too. )

Back to main point: Catholic teaching reflects and builds upon Scripture. To say that a man is called to image God the Father can be explained by saying that of course Christ is an image of God the Father. Men are called by Christ in Ephesians to be the image of Christ to their wives: they are also called to image God the Father to their children. The Church is an image of God’s creation. Women as wives are called to image the Church - thus to also image receptive and redeemed creation. It’s a stretch, but not a large stretch. I think that numerous Scripture references would back up this image of men and women.

C.S. Lewis also backs this up in his book (my personal favorite) That Hideous Strength when Ransom says to Jane, “The male you can escape on a biological level, but you cannot escape the masculine on a theological level.” He is also citing the view that men as masculine symbolize the Creator, whereas women are called as feminine to symoblize creation. Note that women have the easier job, btw, being creation, whereas men are clearly not God the Creator.

And since Catholicism insists on an “both/and” interpretation when it comes to Scripture, the Church also would agree that both men and women ARE made in the Image of God, as Travis quotes. Both men and women image God, yet they also image the relationship between God and creation, Christ and Church, Creator and Mother Earth. There is no conflict here.

Travis wrote:
>The gay lifestyle invites a man to turn aside from the woman and substitute the pleasures of life instead: clothing, cars, excitement, travel, developing talents.

I’m sorry…what? If this is something that only gay men do and all gay men do, she has a point. Since this is not true, she has no point.

But we’re all “invited” (tempted) to find fulfillment in brief, anonymous sexual encounters, whether gay or not. What’s the point of this? How is it specific to homosexuality?

I respond:
Total agreement. A related point I could have made is that I personally think the serial divorcee and the playboy (and the swinging woman, and the adulteress, and the prostitute) have done and continue to do far more damage to society than all the gay-rights activists in the world. The homosexual lifestyle attracts more than its share of criticism because for most people, it’s “someone else’s sin,” not mine, not my sister’s, not my best friends’. I personally have a lot of sympathy for the average gay or lesbian person. The handful of people that I would like to smack upside the head or see disemboweled are all heterosexual: such as the man who left one of my friends for his secretary, leaving her to struggle alone with six devastated children and a handicapped newborn. And he is a strong vocal critic of the “gay lifestyle,” by the way.

The article needed to be short and focussed on the “gay issue”: so I see that it appeared to put excessive weight on homosexual sins as opposed to heterosexual ones.

BTW someone seemed to assume that I view homosexual orientation as a “choice,” not merely the gay lifestyle. I do not think I would call it a choice. We can’t choose our temptations. Two people from the same background can have two different sets of temptations. Given a set of bad circumtances (divorce, parental abandonment, abuse, exposure to pornography, a loveless childhood, lack of affection from father or mother) most children will find it difficult to bond with members of the opposite sex. A few of them will experience homosexual tendencies, but most of them, as Travis notes, will simply become heterosexual “players.”

There is, however, with every sexual temptation, a choice to give in. I will note that with each bad choice, further choices become more limited and less voluntary. Indulging in pornography once, for example, can lead to an addiction that a person has less “control” over. I recognize that many times, a young person’s decision to “experiement” with homosexuality can lead to them developing a full-fledged orientation over which they have little control. It is such a delicate, nuanced thing: who can say where there is really choice? Does a ten-year-old boy have a real choice when his his older friend invites him to “try something new?” (as happened to one of my family members.)

However I would state that I categorically believe that a homosexual orientation is psychological, not genetic.

For the record, the Catholic Church refuses to make a ruling on the origins of homosexuality. She merely assumes “it happens” and then directs what should be done from that point on.

She also sees the human person as more than the sum of their temptations, and will not identify “gays” as a subset of humanity, as a “third gender.” From her point of view, they are just men and women with a specific and rare set of temptations: not released from the obligations of all humanity merely because of their particular temptations.

> Later in the article she does reference the “serial divorcee” and the “promiscuous playboy,” so she certainly recognizes that this is not specific to homosexuality. But what of the gay man who is dedicated to his “family,” to his partner, to their adopted child? Look: I still believe it’s a sinful relationship, but it doesn’t fit the stereotype we’ve assumed of all gay people, and it’s time we lay down the stereotype and address this from a more biblical angle.

I respond:
Unfortunately, as much as I sympathize with the gay person’s desire to have a stable gay relationship and adopt children, I disagree with them. The human heart was made for monogamy: I can understand why the gay person would crave the stability of some sort of marriage. And fatherhood and motherhood are also deep-seated desires.

But children are not objects of self-fullfillment. They are individuals with rights, and every child deserves to have a father and mother, publicly and irrevokably bound to one another, as parents. Of course not every child is able to have this (due to any number of circumstances) but we do children no favors by promoting gay marriage and adoption as solutions.

From the Catholic Church’s point of view, marriage is about children, despite what anyone else might want to believe. And we cannot allow children to become subjects in yet another social engineering experiment. No-fault divorce has been devastating enough: studies show children never recover from it. Statistics also show that the rate of homosexual break-up is far greater than heterosexual break-ups. This is not the only reason I oppose gay marriage, but it should be a realistic one for any Christian considering promoting it.

So, while I can understand that some might believe Christians should support and promote the non-stereotypical “gay marriage” lifestyle as a solution or option, I have to say, as a Catholic, no.

I know it’s not a nice answer.

Since gay marriage and adoption don’t figure in the HP books even tangentially, I naturally didn’t address them in the article.

Travis wrote
>Essentially, the gay lifestyle is the easy way out.

No, no it’s not. Being a heterosexual “player” is the easy way out. That’s pretty much expected of guys these days, and it’s even rewarded. There’s nothing easy about the “gay lifestyle” in a culture dominated by Pharisees.

I respond:
I understand your point here, and would agree that to be a heterosexual player is in some ways easier (though it now can involve messy court battles over child support unless you’re careful to pick only sterilized female partners). I would agree that the gay lifestyle is a lonely and dangerous lifestyle, and still is, despite the fact that people are more tolerant of it than ever. The human heart was not made for either lifestyle.

Travis wrote:
>I know that my Catholic friends will not be happy about this, but: “contraception” can hardly be proven biblically to be a sin, let alone a “root” sin. On a more important note: The most destructive forces in our society, in my opinion, are (a) not preaching the gospel of forgiveness of sins through Christ, (b) replacing the gospel with the culture war, and (c) Pharisees.

I respond:
Of course I expected disagreement with other Christians here. It’s rare to find anyone who will agree with the Catholic Church on birth control, for one thing. But if you look at Catholic teaching as a whole, (as opposed to what individual Catholics or the Catholic press prints) you will find that these are the most fundamental “beefs” that the Catholic Church has with society: not the gay lifestyle, not abortion, not sex per se.

The Catholic Church doesn’t believe that sex is bad. Or even simply good. The Church believes that sex is holy: sacred, divine, an active participation in the life of God. And because it is so very, very holy, sex is surrounded by laws and taboos and special circumstances that are appropriate to it as the sacred thing that it is.

And as the Catholic Church, as opposed to the reformed Churches, sees Love, not Faith, as primary, sex is far more central and important to Her than the issues that Travis mentioned.

To put it baldly, from the Catholic point of view, if you truly understand sex, you understand love. If you truly understand love, you understand everything. If you don’t understand sex, you don’t understand love. If you don’t understand love, you understand nothing.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Walker Percy’s novels which to me, seems to capture the true view of the Catholic Church on sex. From Love in the Ruins, a conversation between a hippie and a lapsed Catholic doctor:

Hippie: You’re Catholic, right?
Doctor: Yes.
Hippie: Sex isn’t bad, doc.
Doctor: I know.
Hippie: It’s not even the most important thing.
Doctor: It’s not??

Sorry so long and hope some of this is helpful, or enlightening, or at least not too offensive. Thank you, Travis, for the opportunity to contribute. Please wish me luck with the baby coming.

Peace and good,
Regina