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Theologians blast US bishops on same-sex marriage

Three theologians who teach at Jesuit institutions--Paul Lakeland of Fairfield University, Daniel Maguire of Marquette University, and Frank Parella of Santa Clara University--blasted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for its opposition to same-sex marriage.

“[Cardinal Timothy] Dolan and the United States Catholic Conference are misrepresenting ‘Catholic teaching,’ and are trying to present their idiosyncratic minority view as the ‘Catholic position,’ and it is not,” said Maguire in an e-mail.

“The bishops will stand with Dolan and the US Catholic Conference, but on this issue, they are in moral schism since most in the Church have moved on [to] a more humane view on the rights of those whom God has made gay.”

“Most Catholic theologians approve of same-sex marriage and Catholics generally do not differ much from the overall population on this issue,” Maguire added. Maguire, an ex-priest, has also been a stalwart defender of legal abortion.

Parella said he sees “nothing in the Gospels” that should lead the Church to oppose same-sex marriage, while Lakeland said that the US bishops’ opposition to same-sex marriage is “not really an argument that has a theological justification.”