Mass Chat with Bishop Barron ... If the only thing gay person hears from the Catholic Church is you’re “intrinsically disordered” we have a very serious problem on our hands.

Intrinsically disordered?

“He’s quoting you. It’s your words. 

He’s using your words, 

when you use the words and he uses them back, 

it’s circular using of the word 

and that’s from you.”*

Where to begin?

If the only thing gay person hears from the Catholic Church is you’re “intrinsically disordered” we have a very serious problem on our hands.

There are so many things wrong with that statement, right?

Wrong.

Some people online are upset that Bishop Barron used terms like 'gay' and addressed the fact that gay people interpret Catholic teaching as saying persons are intrinsically disordered rather than what is really taught, that the behavior, specifically homosexual acts are disordered.  (Hence, homosexual marriage is disordered - the sexual relationship is disordered.)

Truth be told, it's pretty much the attitude of conservative Catholics that gay persons themselves are indeed disordered and treat them as such - simply because it is impossible for them to separate the individual from the behavior, or in some cases, their friendship/relationship.  Taking it a step further, what other reason do they have for insisting that a man with same sex attraction, even though he is chaste and celibate and seeks God, not be ordained?  (Some will say he can if he is chaste for x-amount of time and doesn't approve of the gay agenda, and so on - but there are many who reject candidates even then.)

It's the vernacular in use today that explains why Barron uses these terms and believes the interpretation is confusing since it has been misused to some degree - even by the well intentioned.  This also may explain why Bishop Barron doesn't feel the need to carry on a major PR campaign against same sex marriage at this point, intimating to Rubin that although the Church cannot approve gay marriage, "I don’t think I want to press it much further, I think where we are right now in the States, I’ll apply the Aquinas principle, I think it would probably cause much more problem and dissension and difficulty if we kept pressing it."  The following seems to me a faithful and clear response to Rubin on the question of marriage:

Ruben: Is this one of the things where, I sense that your heart and your spiritual sense-self, maybe aren’t quite matched up, because I don’t sense judgment from you sitting here, I really don’t and I don’t sense that you want – that you would try to legislate to reverse the decision but I also sense that you can’t fully say to me well it’s okay. 

Bishop Barron: Yeah that’s probably right the way you just put it there is probably right. I wouldn’t want to fully just say that’s great off you go, at the same time I wouldn’t want to get on a crusader’s tank and try to reverse that…”

It works for me.

*So here's the deal.  I'm having fun using Melissa McCarthy's line from her parody of Sean Spicer on SNL last night - but seriously, Bishop Barron is using the terms secular culture uses, as well as 'gay' people and others, in the way they interpret catechetical language the Church uses.  This issue isn't a big one for me, I just wanted to comment on it however, since I very much like Bishop Barron and his approach to the evangelization of culture.