Abstract
In her second full-length publication on the sacrament of marriage, Bridget Burke Ravizza offers an extension of the qualitative study of Catholic married couples she co-authored with Julia Donovan Massey, Project Holiness: Marriage as a Workshop for Everyday Saints (Liturgical Press, 2015). Appealing to the sensus fidei and a four source (Scripture, tradition, experience, reason) inductive methodology, B. R. argues that same-sex marriages function as mediators of grace and thus are de facto sacramental (50–51). The testimonies provided by fifty same-sex couples who are in life-long commitments and have meaningful connections to the Catholic tradition compels a reassessment of the traditionalist sexual ethic upon which the official magisterial teaching against LGBTQ unions is based. B. R. demonstrates that the examples of same-sex couples living out their commitment to one another, to family, and to community in fidelity and service particularly challenge narrow magisterial definitions of complementarity and procreativity. Natural law-based anthropologies fail to take contemporary scientific data seriously and, coupled with literalist interpretations of Scripture, have been historically co-opted for oppressive, dehumanizing agendas. B. R. advocates instead for a contextual and virtue-based sexual/marital ethic, pointing particularly to David Gushee and Karen Peterson-Iyer as models.
The strength of this study are the sincere and reflective first-person accounts that communicate the struggle to integrate sexual orientation, spiritual development, and religious affiliation in the context of life-long commitments. Particularly powerful are reflections on the split experience of feeling both welcome and unwelcome in Catholic communities and institutions, including navigating the canonical restrictions placed on LGBTQ participation and the inconsistency of pastoral leadership (122–23). Citing one of the participants alongside Cardinal Robert McElroy, B. R. argues that Church teaching which continues to define same-sex attraction as disordered and equates same-sex relations with sin and scandal is in direct contradiction with more central teachings that promote acceptance, love, and imago Dei (183). This dissonance leads to confusion and less acceptance both within and without the Church.
While the common theme throughout was that of the juxtaposition of Catholic identity or proximity and same-sex unions, there are a couple of key insights that arose in the interviews that remained underdeveloped. One of these is the relationship between the sacrament of marriage and the Eucharist. Describing his own wedding to William, Matteo recalls that “when we were planning the wedding what immediately stood out to me in terms of what I wanted the liturgy to mean for us, and for whoever was open to receiving it this way, was I wanted people to perceive the link between what we were doing in our vows to each other—marrying each other—and the eucharist . . . I felt the only way to be married for us would be to do so in a eucharistic way and in a eucharistic kind of environment” (12). In another interview, Liam and Marty relate the gut-wrenching experience of being invited to serve as eucharistic ministers only to have it rescinded under a new pastor (131–32). While B. R. makes a point of drawing on the metaphor of the Body of Christ to demonstrate the way in which eucharist is manifested in and through same-sex communion, there is no further analysis of the issue of canonical exclusion from eucharistic participation in the Roman Catholic Church. This is exacerbated by the fact that the couples who wished to be married in eucharistic liturgical contexts were forced to do so in other Christian denominations. While the testimonies of couples persisting despite inhospitable conditions is poignant, a much broader critique and conversation must be had on the doctrinal and canonical positions regarding eucharistic inclusion/exclusion and the intersection of the sacraments to support the claim that same-sex marriages are de facto sacramental.
A second area of underdevelopment is the claim that it is both unfair and unjust for the Church to require that persons with same-sex attraction practice celibacy (6). The testimonies spotlighted in chapter five (on “Catholic Institutions”) almost without exception point to the unjust consequences of the Church’s doctrinal position. Brief mention is made of the duplicitous stance of some same-sex oriented clergy, who by some accounts make up more than half of the episcopate, as well as the accusations of scandal directed almost exclusively at same-sex oriented persons relative to heterosexual persons living in “irregular” situations. B. R. does cite the critiques of Brian Massingale, M. Shawn Copeland, and Susannah Cornwall; however, there is not a sustained justice-oriented critique of the multiple systems of power at play in the debate over the sacramentality (and legality) of same-sex marriage. Incorporating an account of systemic sin as it serves to oppress and dehumanize LGBTQ persons would only strengthen B. R.’s sacramental argument. Overall, the sacramental argument B. R. constructs on the basis of the sensus fidei of married LGBTQ couples is a worthy contribution to the project of enfleshing the Church. This text will be beneficial at the parish level as well as in undergraduate and graduate ministry formation programs.