IAN ESGUERRA, a broadcast journalist, gives the only substantive reports on the Eucharistic Conference in Cebu. First on, there is Timothy Radcliffe, one of the deepest theologians and finest Catholic writers today. (Fine writing is an almost Catholic monopoly.) “I must be a help,” Ian notes Radcliffe as saying. “I mustn’t be a hindrance.” Context? I don’t know. Ian is limited to reporting lines. But I would guess he means that you gotta be a hindrance to evil and a help to good and not the opposite.
Ian quotes him as also saying, “I think all we do is we help people, as they journey toward God, each person in their own way.” Some will walk with a manly stride; others may sashay—but that is a function of habit and not at all of moral worth, for the thing is to get to Him. Indeed, Radcliffe says, “Everybody’s on their journey, and as Pope Francis said, ‘Who am I to judge?’ In fact, my position on gay marriage is the Church’s.”
Marriage, I would argue, is a sacrament between a man and a woman drawn to each other by love but for the sacramental purpose of procreation. True, this may fail but that’s not their fault. They can take consolation from Scripture, two are better than one—with or without marriage. Baptism preceded Christ. In fact, John baptized him. But marriage celebrated with priests came only in the late Middle Ages. Before then, couples made vows in front of a church door, and then reported to the feudal lord because he got first crack at the bride. This explains why there are fewer good-looking people in the world. If you wanted your spouse only for yourself, you picked someone who would not excite Milord.
So does a supposedly giving Church withhold the marriage sacrament from couples of the same sex? No. The Church has nothing to do with it. The sacrament itself pertains only to couples of the opposite sexes for procreation purposes. Just like extreme unction pertains only to people at the point of death. Believe me, you want to delay that sacrament for as long as possible. The Church doesn’t stop couples, of opposite or the same sex, from getting married before a judge or for that matter a voodoo priest, like in the Steve Martin movie, The Idiot. Indeed, a priest cannot celebrate a same-sex marriage. It wouldn’t be the sacrament but a meaningless gesture. In the same way, a priest cannot perform a quantum physics experiment. He doesn’t know how. On the other hand, my late aunt, a nun at the Assumption Convent could have done it. She was a physics major but then she was not a priest. Next!
Radcliffe said, “Poverty is a death penalty.” Indeed, two things are likely to die if you are born poor: your body from neglect and your spirit by being crushed. But the fact that there are still more poor people who grow to maturity than rich who never grow up, shows that, in the struggle of the fittest to survive, and, therefore, in deciding who should propagate and be propagated—the rich and their children or the poor and their kids—Darwin would pick the poor as the fittest. Radcliffe said, “Let’s not succumb to what John Paul II called ‘the culture of death.’ Meaning, it is one thing to push for parsimony in procreation—if you can’t afford it, don’t do it—it is another thing to adopt a policy that openly espouses, indeed encourages, less people than more as the ideal, like less is more in interior décor. This is not true, as anyone looking into the eyes of his grandchildren will tell you—the more, the happier.
Sure, it is sad when there are more people than can feed themselves. No one else will feed them in a capitalist economy. But it is not sad that they are many. What it is is tragic that so few get too much and too many get next to nothing. So it is not a problem of overpopulation but of maldistribution.
Radcliffe said, “In this moment of so much darkness in humanity, the Eucharist is a great sign of hope.” He did not explain in what way it is hopeful. Let me take a guess. He is playing with the word “communion,” which is to say interaction. In the important problems, the answer that frequently eludes the individual alone might be found where two or three, or more, are gathered in His name; but not too many—for that way lies the House of Representatives. Thank you Ian, you’re the only one.