#dnaEdit: Terms of acceptance

The draft document released midway through the Vatican synod represents a fundamental, if incipient, shift in the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality, live-in relationships, civil marriages, and divorce. For long, the Catholic Church has stood firm as a fountainhead of social conservatism, advocating a public morality that historically marginalised and persecuted these sections. Even as governments and courts grapple with overturning discriminatory legislations enacted in times when the influence of Christian theology over public policy was unambiguous, the Catholic Church has shied away from similar corrective action. So when Pope Francis refused to condemn gay relationships, pre-marital sex or the use of contraceptives — all cardinal elements of the Catholic dogma — as sin, questions abounded whether the new leader was espousing a personal article of faith and whether he had the standing to overhaul long-held beliefs and practices. Pope Francis’ advocacy of understanding, openness and mercy rather than morality, is not going uncontested. Conservative bishops have distanced themselves and it will take all of the pontiff’s spiritual and moral authority over the Church to win this battle. 

The document, presented as a summary of the debates at the synod, signifies the importance of debate and discourse in altering prejudices. In 2005, Pope Benedict signed a decree saying that those with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” could not enter seminaries to train as priests while other church documents use language like “intrinsically disordered” to describe gay sex. In contrast, the latest document asks the question “Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation...?” The use of the word “orientation” is a measure of the distance, then, that this Church has traversed. However, there is clearly no case for celebration yet. Subsequently, the document does a balancing act saying that such acceptance and inclusion will have to come “without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony” and that the Church “affirms that unions between people of the same sex cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman”. The document also notes that the Church is not “denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions”. In effect, the theological advance sought to be achieved through “acceptance” offers homosexual persons a condescendingly gratuitous entry as unequal citizens.

Nevertheless, the ongoing debate at the Vatican holds many lessons for India on openness and dealing with social conservatism. The Indian Parliament has refrained from debating the controversial penal law criminalising homosexuality and has been content in letting this law take its course in courts and civil society. The present government has an avowed conservative agenda and had come to power riding on this constituency, but its silence on the complete disregard for the rule of law and mobocracy exhibited by its right-wing affiliates is dangerous. In Delhi University, the ABVP has opened a campaign against live-in relationships, while their counterparts in Chennai vented their ire against a beer festival. Meanwhile, inter-religion marriages continue to face the fury of fringe Hindutva groups in Madhya Pradesh. The use of force or the state machinery to further religious and cultural agendas should have no place in a modern democracy. Rather, they belong to a medieval past when institutions like the Catholic Church held sway and monarchs kowtowed before papal authority. An elected government is, arguably, entitled to follow and preach its conservative agenda, but it must draw the line on laws and actions which infringe on private lives.