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Dear Archbishop Conti
I must thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your recent
assertion that gay marriage is 'pointless' has rejuvenated my
interest in the Catholic faith. I'm afraid I must ask that
you indulge me for a second to get you up to speed with where I am.
I like to refer to myself as a 'Catholic atheist'. As one of my
university lecturers pointed out, we are a product of our
background, so whilst as an atheist one may be resistant to all
forms of spirituality and religious institutions as a whole, most
likely on account of our cultural upbringing there will be a
particular brand of the aforementioned phenomena that we will have
renounced actively rather than implicitly and as it happens, it was
the Catholic god that I rejected.
My teenage years were spent at a Surrey convent school where
unsurprisingly the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church were very
much the dogma de jour. What always irked me is that questions of
utility, or to be frank coherence, were very much taboo. You see
Archbishop Conti, your recent comments regarding the
intelligibility of gay marriage in relation to the teachings of the
Catholic Church gives me some hope that maybe your prescriptive
system of beliefs is answerable to rational debate in terms of
lucidity and consistency. Essentially, if you can implement such a
strategy, surely you won't mind if I use a similar method to iron
out what I have perceived as irregularities within the institution
you seek to protect.
You see, you and I aren't so different. Neither of us have the
intention to procreate, at least not in the traditional sense. Even
if I do one day have a family of my own it will not be a product of
the biblically endorsed fruitful multiplying. Just as you claim to
have an innate vocation to dedicate your life to god, I have an
instinct towards homosexuality. So let me ask you this.
If we gays are not capable of manufacturing a suitable family
environment and you are compelled to a life of abstinence, what was
the point of endowing us, the gays and the clergy, with the
appropriate anatomical bits? Surely if we're concerned with
what is Not Pointless then an omnipotent being could have crafted
us differently? Rather than making us physically
indistinguishable from our heterosexual counterparts it would have
been prudent to implement a different biological structure, perhaps
akin to a smooth-down-there Ken doll? I suppose what I'm saying is,
if he didn't like it he shouldn't have put a thing on it.
Allow me, if you will, to preempt you. I suspect you will
suggest that we gays are capable of turning away from our deviant
impulses and reproducing within the confines of a heterosexual
marriage. What strikes me as oppressively obvious is that such a
union is a recipe for resentment, misery and regret. Would you
really ask that the LGBT community resign themselves to traumatic
physical interactions within a partnership that is mutually
unfulfilling resulting in the induction of a child to family that
is horribly dysfunctional? And you would do so in the name of an
all-loving God? Such a scenario could well be described as
pointless, but I would suggest it is not merely pointless, to all
involved it is overwhelmingly cruel.
Of course as an atheist, I agree that gay people (although I
would extend it to everyone) shouldn't seek the presence of God in
their commitment to each other, which if I have understood
correctly is precisely what the 'sacrament' of marriage pertains to
be. But if some of us do and you wish to preclude us from that, to
cite pointlessness seems to raise more questions than it
answers.
Anyway, I'm truly heartened that the Catholic Church at long
last seems receptive to such lines of enquiry and I excitedly
anticipate your response.
F. Davies. (Catholic Atheist)
