THE REAL ISSUE

It seems to me that the real issue behind much, if not all, of the debate on human sexuality that is engulfing our church, our society, our world, is that of power masquerading as authority. It is only when we take off the masks that we are able to see the issue for what it almost always is: the desire to have power/control over another/others.

To be sure, authority is vital for the ordering of any community, be that community as small as two or as large has three hundred million. Someone has to have the final say‑so, the authority to decide if the new car is to be blue or red, to decide if we go to war or not. When that authority, which is willingly bestowed by those under authority, is employed lovingly, there are little or no problems. We may not always like the decision, but we trust that the one in authority knows what is best for us because that authority truly loves us. Our children do not always agree with our decisions about them, but they know, we hope that we love them and are doing what we do because we love them.

On the other hand, when the one in authority – be that authority parent, politician, president, priest or pope – abuses that privilege, when it becomes an issue of power, then problems arise at home, at church, in the world. When the subject over which authoritative decisions must be made is that of human sexuality, the issue of the abuse of power can be crucial. If someone, some authority, can control, has the power to control, another's sexual life, that authority controls the other.

The point, however, is that authority can be misused. When it is, it ultimately degenerates into, for a lack of a better term, power politics. Our country is beset with power politics over sexual issues. Abortion is a sexual issue. Homosexuality is a sexual issue. Divorce and remarriage is a sexual issue. That is not to say that they are not real issues or that they are unimportant. It is to say that the way we have approached these issues lately is with a club in our hand rather than love in our hearts.

When we say to others, "If you don't like it, get out, out of the country, out of the church, out of whatever", we miss the point of what being a citizen and being a Christians is about. It is not about having the power to control another’s life – physical, spiritual, social – and using and abusing it, asserting that we are right and you are wrong and we will make laws to punish you if you disobey. Sadly, tragically, in many quarters that is what it has become or seems to becoming.

No, it is not about what it has become: about control. It is about caring about the other. It is about trying to understanding what we cannot understand and maybe will never understand. It is about trying to walk in another’s shoes even though that is impossible. It is not about either-or, this or that, right or wrong.

We are all sexual beings. I no more understand my heterosexuality than someone else understands his homosexuality. None of us ever will. In the meantime, we must live as Christian sexual human beings. We must begin to see these sexual issues for what they are: issues of being, and not what they have become: issues of power and control.