Why Many Pro Catholic Gay Marriage Advocates Depress Me

Peters at Catholic Vote has a very good column at Two Contradictory Examples of How Gay Marriage Is Being “Debated” Today

This got me thinking about how a depressing majority of Catholics that want the Church to OK both civil and indeed Catholic gay marriage argue their case. That is not very well.

In fact what's depressing about it is how it shows the very huge religious illiteracy among the Faithful. Something that is of course not just a Catholic problem.

On twitter, on blogs, on facebook, etc, I rarely see the issues of people with varying degrees of same sex attraction discussed in the context of Christian sources. That is Scripture, Tradition, Church Teaching, Natural law, etc. Further in the Catholic context I rarely see the Church Fathers discussed or in fact the teachings of the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome or the second Lung of the Church the Eastern Orthodox.

It is rather bizarre to me that many Catholics ( and again this not just a Catholic problem) give the Church power it does not claim. That is to change essential doctrine. Basically many Catholics believe ( or maybe WANT TO BELIEVE) that the Pope can just say Same Sex Marriage is OK like he could change the discipline about celibacy and the priesthood.

I am fully aware that many people try to make the case for Same Sex marriage from scripture, tradition, theology , etc. However for most of the chattering peanut gallery that I see on the Internet they don't even go to this effort. The argument is basically "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE" and quit being a bigot. Most don't want to deal with the argument it seems. Possibly because they don't have the tools to do so.

The problem gets worse when you try to engage many Catholics on the issue with regards to Sacramental theology. Maybe they truly don't think marriage is a sacrament. Heck maybe they have no idea what a Sacrament is.

This my friends is the most educated laity in history we are told. The sad fact is I can argue the case for Christian homosexuality better than 99 percent of it's proponents.

Now again I understand that there are many Christians that make the case the case for Christian same sex relationships that have a sexual component. I read there stuff all the time. However again it appears that many people that support such a view can't be bothered to even parrot those lines.

Underlying this is a worrying fact .Modern Christian might look back belittle Christians that had lower educations and literacy hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But is it possible in this modern Internet age with info so available we are dealing with the biggest Christian education problem ever,