So Close,Yet So Far....

I rarely watch prime time television – in fact, I rarely watch network television at all, with the exception of a few shows I follow on Hulu Plus. But earlier this week, after a crazy day and having just gotten my kids to bed, I collapsed on the couch and flipped on the TV. As I scrolled through the guide, I ran across a new show called “The New Normal”. Now, if you aren’t familiar with it, the basic plot line is that a single, never married mother of a 9 or 10 year old daughter has decided to be a surrogate mom for a gay couple. Kind-of a “Modern Family” meets “Gilmore Girls”, with a baby thrown in.  

So for some reason I paused on the listing and noticed that the title of the episode was, “The Godparent Trap”, and hit the “Info” button on my remote. The description said that the couple, Brian and David, is on a search to find Godparents for their baby, which prompts Brian to try to reconnect to his Catholic roots by visiting a church where he gets some unexpected advice. OK, now I was intrigued. A prime time sitcom about a same-sex couple was going to send one of them into a Catholic Church for advice on Godparents?? The first thought that ran through my mind was, “Oh no, here we go, more Catholic bashing in the popular media”, but a part of me hoped it would be different, so I decided to watch. And I am glad I did.

Now, I don’t want to oversell the message delivered in this episode – it was far from perfect, but there were a couple of extraordinary moments that got me thinking.

The first was a scene where Brain walks into the church, genuflects before the crucifix and has a seat in a pew. You proceed to hear his inner monologue as he glances around the sanctuary, finishing with him saying to the crucified Christ, “You know who judges me? Your Father.” This is immediately followed by a young priest tapping him on the shoulder and asking if he is there for Confession.

Inside the confessional, Brian starts giving a snarky and flippant “Confession” – which the priest quickly calls him on and tells him that if he isn’t going to take it seriously, then he can go. This causes Brian to alter his approach significantly, leading him to reveal that he is gay and there because, “I don’t think I can find spiritual foundation in others if I can’t even find it in myself.” It is a beautiful moment of honesty that leads into a spirited conversation between the priest and Brian about his homosexuality and the Church.

Now, without recounting word for word the entire scene, I want to point out a couple of key things that happened that made this so close to being the best representation of the Church’s belief about same-sex attraction that I have ever seen on TV, and also where is falls incredibly short of this achievement.

The first is that when Brian reveals that he is gay, the priest responds by saying, “Well, contrary to popular opinion, being gay is not a sin. The Church is not anti-gay.” This stopped me in my tracks! I was amazed and so excited that someone had finally gotten it right! Here it was, on prime time, an actor depicting a Roman Catholic Priest actually stating the true teaching of the Church – being gay, or having same-sex attraction, is NOT a sin! Alleluia! Sadly, this elation was short lived.

Brian immediately challenges the priest’s statement by asking why the Pope treats gay marriage “like Amanda Bynes treats pedestrians”, and instead of using this as a moment to explain the Church’s teaching on marriage, the priest instead dismisses the Pope by comparing him to a “loveable old uncle who pops off intolerant comments at a family barbeque”. Ouch. And so far from true. This was the moment I almost lost all hope for this episode, because it had gone from so right to SO SO WRONG.

A  couple of points here…

1. The Pope is not an intolerant old man. Old maybe….but intolerant? Absolutely not. And I took GREAT offense to a writer portraying a priest as holding that opinion of the Holy Father.

2. There is a huge, and very important, difference between being gay and the issue of gay marriage in the eyes of the Church.  More on this in a bit, but the point here is that insinuate that the Pope, or the Church as a whole, is indifferent and dismissive of this sensitive issue is unfair.

OK, back to the show…the conversation then turns to Brian talking about his love for the Church – for the ritual, the tradition, even the Stations of the Cross, and ending with him saying, “But you guys don’t accept me, so what am I supposed to do, Father? I mean, you tell me, where do I go?” A question I am sure many gay Catholics are asking themselves, especially if they misunderstand the Church’s true teaching.

Brian rejects the priest’s subsequent recommendation that he find a church geared to the homosexual population, and asks, “Why can’t the Church be accepting of all people?” to which the priest responds, “We are. We embrace everyone just like Jesus.” AH! Another miracle! The Church’s teachings on unconditional love displayed on prime time!!! YAY!

Of course, this is met with some challenge from Brian, who says that Jesus would not judge someone based on his sexuality, because Jesus loved everyone, causing the priest to launch into a passionate monologue about how Jesus was not a “blissed out hippy” but rather a radical force for change. It is a great moment that, once again, posed the perfect opportunity for the writers to illuminate the true teachings of the Church, but sadly, they wimped out.

Instead of challenging Brian with the true teachings, the priest essentially tells him that if he, and enough others, fights hard enough the Church will change and accept same-sex marriage. Once again, a golden opportunity missed.

It seems to me that the writer’s just didn’t have the courage to take this all the way. They stopped just short of real truth and instead presented a “PC” version of Catholicism to the masses. Because here’s the truth – the Church is not going to change. Nor should it.

You see, when you get right down to it, the Church is not asking any more of people with same-sex attraction than it is of unmarried, heterosexual couples, or the consecrated men and women of the Church, including our priests. And that is chastity.  

Because as Catholics, we recognize that sex is not about the desires of the flesh, but rather the desires of God. It is a beautiful gift that He has given us in order to be participants in His life-giving power. That is why we do not believe in birth control, either. Because when you put up any barrier between the sexual act and the ability for that act to result in a new life being created, you are misusing this gift from God. And God established the Sacrament of marriage as the holy union in which life was to be created and raised.

That is the heart of the Church’s stance on gay marriage, contraception, premarital sex, adultery, and masturbation. It all comes down to one thing – sex is intended to be a life-giving event, and using it in any other way is unholy.

But here is the other big thing to hold onto – the sin of engaging in homosexual sexual activity is no greater or worse than the sin of engaging in premarital sex – or the sin of a married couple using birth control. In the eyes of God, it is all equal.

So to say that the Church “rejects” people because they have same sex attraction, or even because they fall to that sin, would also be to say that the Church rejects people who have sex before marriage, or use birth control, or fall to any other sin – in other words, it would be to say that the Church rejects ALL people. And I am pretty sure that I know the Bible well enough to be confident when I say that Jesus did not teach that.

Do we need to be better about showing unconditional love to people with same-sex attraction? Yes. Are we perfect and always handle discussions about this very personal and sensitive topic correctly? No, of course not.

But I think we can all stop and take a lesson from the closing scene of this episode of “The New Normal” – in it, Brian is back in the pews, and the priest comes up and speaks to him. Brian asks if it is alright if he comes to Mass once in a while, and the priest responds by saying, “I would love to see you at Mass….you and your family.” That is what the Church is. Unconditional love. Not unconditional acceptance of sin, but unconditional love of the sinners.  All of us.