In this episode, Trent breaks down the recent controversy surrounding Pope Francis’s remarks about civil unions and gives us some tips for defending the Church’s teaching on marriage.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent:
Francesco, a newly released documentary on the life and ministry of Pope Francis, has made global headlines because the film contains a scene in which Pope Francis calls for the passage of civil union laws for same-sex couples. So begins an article in the Catholic News Agency on the recent controversy this week related to Pope Francis. We’re going to jump into that controversy today, talk about it and also talk about how do we communicate the church’s teaching on marriage, so-called same-sex marriage, civil unions, in a culture that is very, very, very hostile to those teachings. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. And when I first heard about this, I actually got a call from a friend. He called me and he said, “Trent, do you know what’s going on with Pope Francis?” And I was driving up to Oceanside to film for our Catholic Answers School of Apologetics. I’m actually filming a new course. I just finished filming a new course this week called How to Argue Against Abortion.
Trent:
And so he called me and said, “I saw on the news, Pope Francis is saying we need civil unions. Do you know anything about that?” And I was like, “Oh. Oh, goodness, what’s going on now?” So I pop on my phone at the traffic light, and I’m scrolling through the newsfeed trying to get a sense of all this. And I finally made it up to the studio and then got on my phone and looked at a few things related to it and then posted just a brief comment on Twitter to give my thoughts before I hopped into the studio to film this course.
Trent:
But now it’s been a few days and we have some more information that’s come in, so I want to go through all of it. And then I want to talk about how do we defend the church’s teachings on these important issues? Let me read through an article by JD Flynn and then I’ll offer some commentary and some other points that aren’t included in the article. So this is what Flynn writes over at Catholic News Agency. Some activists and media reports have suggested that Pope Francis has changed Catholic teaching by his remarks. Among many Catholics, the Pope’s comments have raised questions about what the Pope really said, what it means and what the church teaches about civil unions and marriage. Catholic News Agency looks at those questions.
Trent:
I want to be clear, this is not a new interview. This is something Pope Francis gave back in 2019. And portions of this interview were actually excised from the official transcript and were placed in the Vatican archives. So what happened is I think this documentary filmmaker, he was given unprecedented access to the Vatican archives, and people forgot that these clips from the official transcript of the older interview had been tucked away in the archives. He found them, took them, and they’re very isolated clips from a much longer answer that Pope Francis gave. I’m going to share that longer answer he gave later here in this episode, but that’s just a little bit of background of where these clips came from.
Trent:
So here’s what Flynn says about it. “What did Pope Francis say about civil unions? During a segment of Francesco, which discussed Pope Francis’ pastoral care of Catholics who identify as LGBT, the Pope made two distinct comments. He said, first, that ‘homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it.’ While the Pope did not elaborate on the meaning of those remarks in the video, Pope Francis has spoken before to encourage parents and relatives not to ostracize or shun children who have identified as LGBT. This seems to be the sense in which the Pope spoke about the rights of people to be a part of the family.”
Trent:
So I would agree. When I first heard this isolated phrase, Pope Francis saying, “Homosexuals have a right to a family,” that definitely struck me as odd because Pope Francis has said the opposite in the past about what a family is. He said that a family is a mother, father, and children. And I can see how a lot of people would take that one comment and really just run with it as, “Oh well, if homosexuals LGBT have a right to a family, does that mean they have the right to adopt children? They have the right to get married?” But Pope Francis has condemned adoptions by homosexual couples. So that just didn’t make sense to me. What more makes sense is when I saw some of the other comments, specifically, “They have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it.”
Trent:
I’m thinking, “What does that mean? Nobody should be thrown out?” Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it. And that makes sense. If you have a teenage son or daughter who is struggling with their sexuality, struggling with their sexual orientation, you shouldn’t just throw them out onto the streets to be homeless. And that does happen to some LGBT teenagers. So obviously no child should be kicked out of the home unless they are a grave threat to the safety of everyone else in the families. I mean, if you have a teenager who’s selling drugs or is in a gang, or is engaged in depraved moral behavior that puts other people at risk, and it could be depraved sexual behavior, but if it’s just a teenager who is struggling with their sexual orientation and you just throw them out onto the streets, that’s not what we have to do to help people to achieve holiness, just abandoning someone. That’s not the answer.
Trent:
And this makes sense with things Pope Francis has said before. In 2018, he said, “To ignore a son or daughter with a homosexual tendency is not good parenthood. You are my son. You are my daughter, just as you are. I am your father or your mother. Let’s talk about this.” And if you, as a father or mother, can’t deal with this on your own, ask for help, but always in dialogue, always in dialogue because that son and daughter has a right to family. And their family is this family just as it is. Do not throw them out of family. So I would say when it comes to a teenager, it should always be a last resort to remove them from your household. As I said, that should only be done when their behavior has risen to the level where they jeopardize the safety of other people in the house. Being a member of a gang, for example, would be one reason, but there could also be other depraved sexual reasons.
Trent:
If your teenager is bringing people over to the house and engaging in sexual acts with them against your rules and in the presence of younger siblings, and they’re not willing to follow your rules in that regard, then more serious consequences might be merited. But as I said before, if someone is just struggling with their sexuality, and you just find out, your teenager says, “Mom, I’m gay. Dad, I’m a lesbian,” “That’s it. You’re out of my house. You’re on the street,” that’s not the way to go about it. You can’t just throw a kid out on the street just because they’re struggling with a particular sin or particular identity. You have to work with them and seek out other help and compassionate care for this person.
Trent:
Removing a child from the home should be a grave last resort that’s taken, and they should never just be thrown out onto the street. If they can’t stay within your home, they should be placed in another setting, maybe another family member, maybe somewhere else where they can be taken care of and protected. They shouldn’t just be thrown out onto the streets. I think all of us should be able to agree just on that. If you can’t agree on that, that your child shouldn’t just be made homeless, I don’t know what else to say. I really don’t. So that’s what I’d say if you have a teenager or a child who is struggling with their sexual orientation. But it’s a little different. If you have an adult son or an adult daughter. If you have an adult son in a so-called same-sex marriage, an adult daughter in a so-called same-sex marriage, then you might have to put up particular boundaries for the benefit of other members of your household.
Trent:
You may not invite them over. You may find that it’s not appropriate to invite them over to your house with their legal spouse if you have small children, for example, and you’re trying to protect your children’s innocence, or you’re not trying to expose them to bad examples of morality. So how do we engage family members who live, Catholic family members or any family member, who lives a life that is in contradiction to the church’s teaching or in contradiction to the natural law? It’s difficult. Or people who are involved in other morally objectionable activities, you’re going to have to make that judgment for your own family. In some situations, especially if you don’t have small children at home, you might still be able to maintain that friendship and that good relationship and a pastoral relationship to hopefully nudge them and move them back to the truth, to help them to come back to confession, to come back to the faith. In other cases, you may not want to endanger the innocence of small children that are in your charge. That’s something you or I or anyone else will have to decide, given our own individual circumstances.
Trent:
But what the Pope is saying here about not throwing people out, especially children, I think that makes sense. We should do our best not to just throw up the wall and say, “Well, they’re going to hell in a hand basket, whatever.” We always want to draw people back to Christ as best we can, but without putting other people in spiritual danger. Some have suggested that when Pope Francis spoke about a right to a family, the Pope was offering a kind of tacit endorsement of adoption by same-sex couples. But the Pope has previously spoken against such adoptions, saying that through them, children are “deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God.” In saying that, every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.
Trent:
So what I want to read to you now is the full answer that Pope Francis gave. This is translated from the original Spanish, and you’ll see the parts where he talks about right to a family and not being thrown out. I think it’s important. I mean, I’ve been interviewed for videos before, and it’s been very easy for people to take one little thing that I’ve said and twist it to be the exact opposite of what I meant. So I think it’s important to read the full answer Pope Francis gave so you can hear the context of what he was talking about. And it’s interesting, in the full answer, he even mentions how he got angry when talking about this before that the media misreported what he said.
Trent:
So here’s the full answer that he gave. “Once I was asked a question on a flight, it made me angry afterwards. It made me angry because of how the media reported it, about the family integration of people with homosexual orientation. And I said, ‘Homosexual people have a right to be a part of a family. People with homosexual orientation have a right to be in a family, and the parents have the right to recognize this son is homosexual, this daughter is homosexual. Nobody should be thrown out or be miserable because of it.’
Trent:
Another thing I said, ‘When we see some sign in children that are growing, and then you send them…” I should have said to a professional, but I said psychiatrist. I wanted to say a professional because sometimes there are signs in adolescence or pre-adolescence where they don’t know if it is a homosexual tendency or if the thymus gland atrophied with time. I don’t know, a thousand things. No. So a professional. The headline of the newspaper, ‘The Pope sends homosexuals to the psychiatrist,’ it is not true. They asked me a question, and I repeated again, ‘They are sons of God. They have a right to a family’ and so forth. Another thing, and I explained, I was wrong in using that word, but wanted to say this, ‘When you notice something, it’s strange. Well, no, it’s not strange. It’s something out of the ordinary.’ In other words, they took a small word to nullify the context. There what I said was they have a right to a family, and that does not mean approving homosexual acts, not in the least.”
Trent:
So I feel the Pope’s frustration when he’s saying I wanted to… And I’ve been in that situation before where I have said things. And then I’ve said, “Well, I wouldn’t have said it that particular way.” I’ve done live radio all the time. And you say things like, “Well, I would have used this word instead of that word.” And he’s clearly frustrated by it. But the main point he’s getting out about the right to a family is simply, especially teenagers who are struggling with their sexual orientation, don’t throw them out on the street. He’s saying, “Look, if you can’t help them, send them to a professional, send them to somebody who will maybe see that they’re struggling with their sexual orientation. It may just be a phase, something to help them to grow out of it.” So, as I said, that particular comment I don’t think is as controversial. The one about civil unions, however, that is the far more controversial one. So let’s jump into that.
Trent:
Flynn’s article, he says, “On civil unions, the Pope said that what we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. ‘I stood up for that,’ Pope Francis added, apparently in reference to his proposal to brother bishops during a 2010 debate in Argentina over gay marriage, that accepting civil unions might be a way to prevent the passage of same-sex marriage laws in the country. What did Pope Francis say about gay marriage?” That’s the header in Flint’s article. “Nothing. The topic of gay marriage was not discussed in the documentary. In his ministry, Pope Francis has frequently affirmed the doctrinal teaching of the Catholic church, that marriage is a lifelong partnership between one man and one woman. While Pope Francis has frequently encouraged a welcoming disposition to Catholics who identify as LGBT, the Pope has also said that marriage is between a man and a woman and said that the family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage and that efforts to redefine marriage, ‘threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation.'”
Trent:
So then Flynn goes on to explain why Pope Francis’ comments about supporting civil unions are a big deal. Flynn writes, “While Pope Francis has previously discussed civil unions, he has not explicitly endorsed the idea in public. While the context of his quotes in the documentary is not fully revealed, and it is possible the Pope added qualifications not seen on camera, an endorsement of civil unions for same-sex couples is a very different approach for a Pope, one that represents a departure from the position of his two immediate predecessors on the issue. In 2003, in a document approved by Pope John Paul II and written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith taught that, ‘respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval for homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. Even if civil unions might be chosen by people other than same-sex couples like siblings or committed friends, the CDF said that homosexual relationships would be foreseen and approved by the law and that civil unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.
Trent:
Legal recognition of homosexual unions, or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior with the consequence of making it a model in present day society, but would also obscure basic values, which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,’ the document concluded. The 2003 CDF document contains doctrinal truth, and the positions of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on how best to apply the church’s doctrinal teaching to policy questions regarding the civil oversight and regulation of marriage. While those positions are consistent with the longstanding discipline of the church on the issue, they are not themselves regarded as articles of faith.”
Trent:
So originally what I posted on social media when the story broke was that if the Pope is endorsing civil unions for same-sex couples as an alternative to marriage, then I disagree with that proposal. In fact, I firmly disagree with that proposal. It just doesn’t work. I mean, civil union laws… In fact, LGBT people, they don’t want civil union laws. When you talk about civil unions, it’s funny. I feel like we’re going back to the year 2000. I feel like I’m sitting around and listening to Three Doors Down, and I’m playing Snake on my Cricket cell phone. Civil unions, at least in this country, they’re long since dead. It’s just marriage and then, now, forcing other people to violate their consciences to recognize so-called same-sex marriages. Like requiring Catholic adoption agencies to place children in so-called same-sex marriages, for example.
Trent:
But if the Pope’s goal was to say, “Well, people in these relationships or these households should have basic legal rights, like the ability to visit a loved one who was in the hospital or a legal beneficiary for life insurance or health insurance or whatever it may be,” then I don’t see a problem with that. And in fact, that 2003 CDF document, it mentions this. It doesn’t allow for civil unions, but it does address the objection of, “Well, what about all the legal benefits for households and things like that?” Here’s what the CDF says.
Trent:
Here’s what the CDF said in that 2003 document, “Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint, since they do not exercise this function for the common good, nor is the argument valid according to which legal recognition of homosexual unions is necessary to avoid situations in which co-habiting homosexual persons, simply because they live together, might be deprived of real recognition of their rights as persons and citizens.”
Trent:
So the CDF is addressing the objection, “Well, if you don’t allow for marriage or even civil unions, what about people who live together that need basic rights to function as a household in society?” So what the CDF said was, “In reality, they, those same-sex couples, can always make use of the provisions of law, like all citizens, from the standpoint of their private autonomy, to protect their rights in matters of common interest. It would be gravely unjust to sacrifice the common good and just laws on the family in order to protect personal goods that can and must be guaranteed in ways that do not harm the body of society.” So in other words, you can give legal rights and benefits for people to live their lives without redefining marriage or having a confusing competitor in the form of civil unions. And so what I proposed online was instead of civil unions, what about legal households? It could be any number of people, any kind of relationship, family members, siblings, friends, roommates, who cares? It’s not permanent. Permanence and monogamy would be reserved for the institution of marriage, and legal households are just something else entirely.
Trent:
It’s in no way a competitor to marriage because a civil union, two people, a union together for life. I mean, that’s marriage, that’s a faux marriage. But a legal household would be something different. Now, here’s the thing. I did get a lot of pushback online from people who said, “Trent, your proposal of legal households, it’s basically a civil union in name only. It would end up with so-called same-sex marriage.” And my reply would be this, “Pardon the pun, I’m not married to the term legal household.” Because other people said to me, “Trent, that already exists. You can do proxies, power of attorney, will and beneficiary.” Then that’s fine. I’m just saying it might be easier, have less paperwork, but if you don’t want the term legal household, if that would become confusing, I don’t care. Just give people the ability that, “Look, if you are unmarried, if you’re not married, and you want to designate someone, a roommate, a sibling, I don’t care, to say, ‘This is my emergency contact. This is the person who visits me in the hospital. This is the person who makes medical decisions for me if I’m incapacitated.'”
Trent:
Everyone should have the right to have someone like that in their life to represent their interests if they’re on a hospital deathbed or something like that. Because the reason I just bring this up is because when I argue against so-called same-sex marriage in the public sphere, that’s one of the objections that’s frequently thrown at me, which is, “Well, do you want people to die alone in hospitals without legal benefits to other people?” No, I don’t, which is why I’m against all these COVID policies. The same people who would say to me, “Trent, you’re cruel if you want to restrict marriage to a man and a woman. You’ll let LGBT people die alone in hospitals without hospital visitation rights.” These are the same people who would say they would endorse COVID hospital policies that caused people to die alone in hospitals. I do think that’s a lot of the people who would make that objection to me, wouldn’t be opposed to pandemic policies that result in the same thing.
Trent:
So just to summarize of his position, the documentary was, “I’m proposing civil unions instead of marriage to these people.” I’m firmly against that. And the CDF is also firmly against that. I just think it just doesn’t work, but if it’s a broader legal foundation just to help people, I don’t see a problem with that. If the term legal household is confusing, get rid of it. Just make sure people can find someone to legally take care of them. And we should have the legal apparatus set up so that it’s not an endorsement of same-sex couples living together, but it’s for anybody. Let’s say you’re just an unmarried person in your 50s or 60s, and you want to designate someone who’s your best friend, sibling roommate, to be the person that takes care of you when these difficult circumstances arise.
Trent:
In fact, in San Francisco, they’ve been dealing with this for a very long time. Archbishop Cordileone, in his reply, he posted on this whole affair. This is what his official response was to what Pope Francis said about civil unions. So Archbishop Cordileone, he said, “In our bishops’ regents audience with Pope Francis last January, during our ad limina visit, the visit dioceses and bishops make every five years to the Vatican, the topic of civil unions came up in conversation. The Holy Father clearly differentiated between a civil arrangement, which accords mutual benefits to two people, and marriage. “The former,” he said, “can in no way be equated to marriage, which remains unique.” Cordileone went on to say, “I would add that a civil union of this type, one which is not equated to marriage, should be as inclusive as possible and not be restricted to two people of the same sex in a presumed sexual relationship.
Trent:
There is no reason, for example, why a brother and his sister, both of whom are unmarried and support each other should not have access to these kinds of benefits. As I said before, if calling them a legal household is confusing, take the name out, just give them a forms, make sure they’re taken care of.”
Trent:
And, look, I’m even using the same language what Pope Francis is saying, “We have to make sure legally they’re taken care of.” If that’s the goal, I support it. But if using the word civil union, that’s confusing to people, you can’t do that. Now, some people have said that the Pope was mistranslated because he used the Spanish word [Spanish 00:21:13] instead of [Spanish 00:21:16]. So he used the phrase [Spanish 00:21:18], which could mean civil union or civil coexistence. And some people said, “Well, the Pope was just arguing for a civil coexistence law, but I saw another cleric from South America published on social media, I think, yesterday, saying, “No, the Pope would have meant in that interview, civil unions. But he would broaden civil union for any two people in a longstanding stable relationship.”
Trent:
But I think the term civil union, it’s just not very helpful. And as I said before, San Francisco has been dealing with this for a really long time. You go back to 1997, for example. So all the way back in 1997, San Francisco passed a law requiring businesses to provide healthcare benefits, not just to married couples, but to domestic partners in same-sex relationships. And so the diocese threatened to sue the city, saying that we’re not going to provide benefits and treat same-sex couples as if they’re identical to marriage. So the city and the archdiocese of San Francisco kind of went to war with each other and eventually reached a truce.
Trent:
This is from an article from February 7th, in 1997, talking about what happened there. It says, “The city and the archdiocese of San Francisco have reached a tentative accord on the city’s domestic partners benefits ordinance that would allow the Roman Catholic church to comply with the law and its own teachings. The deal would allow employees of Catholic groups or any other organization doing business with the city to designate someone in their household as eligible to receive spousal equivalent benefits. That could include a spouse, sibling, other relative, or unmarried partner. The breakthrough came during a private meeting at the archdiocese attended by San Francisco Archbishop William Levada,” who went on to, I think, be a prefect for the congregation, for the doctrine of the faith, “Mayor Brown and other city supervisors.”
Trent:
So I’ll just to level with you here. When Pope Francis uses words that are confusing or can be easily taken in the wrong way, I find it highly frustrating, and I just wish so much he would stop doing these interviews for the love of goodness. It’s like, I wish that they would just take the interview cameras away from Pope Francis and the Twitter away from Donald Trump. It’s like, “Take it away, get back to doing your job. Don’t be doing this other stuff. That’s just totally distracting.” So it frustrates me to no end. So that’s the one thing I have to confess to you all. I am just super duper frustrated when this stuff happens. But on the other hand, when I pray about this, I know I don’t want to fall into the sin of rash judgment, especially rash judgment about the successor of St. Peter.
Trent:
Now I’m not going to always agree with everything. If he’s endorsing civil unions, I totally disagree with that. And as Flynn will go on here in the article, that represents the Pope’s opinion on the matter, if that’s what he’s doing. It’s not church teaching. And so I just firmly disagree with that. I don’t agree with everything the Pope says. And sometimes he does things that really, really frustrate me, but I am… And this is a temptation for a lot of us. You don’t want to get into a situation of being cynical of dwelling in the heart, anger, cynicism, or even hatred sometimes. And I don’t want to have rash judgment or spread calumny or detraction about anyone, much less a successor of St. Peter.
Trent:
Flynn goes on to say, let’s finish out the article, “The Pope’s apparent call for civil union legislation, which seems to be different from the position expressed by the CDF in 2003, has been taken to represent a departure from a longstanding moral judgment that church leaders have taught supports and upholds the truth.” Now I will add what the Pope meant by civil unions in the 2019 interview may be clarified somewhat by the 2020 ad limina visit Archbishop Cordileone is talking about, because what he said… Let me bring that up here. Here, he said that, “The Holy Father differentiated between a civil arrangement, which accords mutual benefits to two people, and marriage. The former,” he said, “can in no way be equated to marriage, which remains unique.”
Trent:
I mean, while the Pope may say that it shouldn’t be acquainted to marriage, if you make it two people and call it a civil union, it ends up going that way. So it’s just not a very helpful response. The CDF documents said that civil union laws give tacit consent to homosexual behavior. “While the Pope expressed support for civil unions, he has also spoken in his pontificate about the immorality of homosexual acts. It is also important to note the…” This is very important. “It’s also important to note the documentary interview is not a forum for official papal teaching. The Pope’s remarks were not presented in their fullness, and no transcript has been presented. So unless the Vatican offers additional clarity, they need to be taken in light of the limited information available about them.”
Trent:
That’s the other thing that’s hard for me is that sometimes Pope Francis will say things that are confusing, and then he won’t provide immediate clarity. That is even just more frustrating. So I just want to be honest with you about all of this. It’s like we don’t want to fall into one of two camps, one camp, which is, I hate the idea that it’s like, “Oh, are you pro or anti Francis?” What do you mean am I pro or anti Francis? He’s the Pope. And what that means as the Pope is I recognize his legitimate authority as a successor of St. Peter, the charism of infallibility he has when he speaks ex cathedra, the normal authority he has as the Pope, when he issues teachings and things like encyclicals, and the fallibility he has as a person when he speaks in an airplane interview off the cuff, or when he does an interview for a media magazine.
Trent:
So I’m not pro or anti Francis. I’m a Catholic. I recognize that he’s the Pope. And I recognize the limits come with that office and the limits he has as a human being. So I applaud the Pope when he does things really well, and I shake my head when he does things that are not a great idea. And I disagree with him when he takes particular issues that I think violates sound norms of prudential judgements, all while recognizing and respecting the office he has as the successor of St. Peter. And also when we hear reports about Pope Francis or really about anybody, we should avoid the temptation to make a knee jerk response.
Trent:
So for example, on social media, I tried to be qualified in what I said. So I said, I agree with some of the principles behind what Pope Francis is saying here, such as not taking your child who is struggling with their sexual orientation and throwing them out on the street, or making sure that adults who have no one else to care for them have legal rights and people to care for them in society. But I disagree with his personal proposal, if it is endorsement of civil unions, as opposed to something like a broader “legal household,” which as I said before, I’m not married to the term legal household. I would agree with the 2003 CDF documents, section nine, which says that if people want these legal rights and benefits, they can access them in the same way that any other person in society can. You just shouldn’t redefine marriage or create a competitor to marriage in the form of civil unions to be able to do that.
Trent:
So I think it’s important when we hear these things, if we do make a response, we should wait on a response, but if we do, we should be qualified and wait for all of the facts to come in. And I do think the Vatican, Pope Francis, other people, if they do say things that are confusing, they have an obligation to provide that clarity as soon as possible. And we have an obligation to wait for that clarity. So it’s a bit of give and take. We should wait, but they should also give us that clarity as soon as possible. And it’s important to wait for that clarity. I mean, think about what happened to the Covington Catholic kids. Remember that? Covington Catholic, they go to the March for Life, and there’s one little video clip of Nick Sandmann. And the one native American guy is beating the drum in his face.
Trent:
And even many Catholics took from that, “Look at these high school students bullying this Native American,” when that’s totally not what happened. And there was actually another group of Black Hebrew Israelites who were yelling racial slurs. And then this Native American activist, Nathan Phillips, just kind of walks right up to his face and starts beating the drum. And Sandmann was just standing there, trying to project calm. It was the total opposite. But from that one little clip, people ran with the story, didn’t wait for any clarification, and it completely blew out of control. So that and many other episodes are illustrative examples that when we hear a controversial thing about particular figures in media or in the church, it’s important to cool our jets. I mean, sometimes you have to make an initial response, but it should include qualifications. It should say, “We’re waiting for clarity.” I would hope that clarity comes as soon as possible, but we’ve got to be careful about the knee jerk reactions.
Trent:
And finally, let me bring this back to a point I said earlier in the episode, we need to focus on how do we share the church’s teaching on marriage, on what marriage is, to a culture that wants to reject it. When I go and talk to people about same-sex marriage, like when I’m invited to speak at a public university campus or even a Catholic university, do you know what my goal is, my bare minimum goal I try to do when I explain the church’s teaching on marriage and why so-called same-sex marriage is not marriage? My minimum goal is just to communicate to the audience that I’m not a lunatic or a bigot, because that’s what they hear in their minds. You’re a bigot or you’re out of your mind, if you’re not in favor of… And notice I say, so-called same-sex marriage, because if marriage just is the union of a man and a woman, then you can’t apply the prefix same-sex before it.
Trent:
So when you talk about same-sex marriage, the main goal is this, or civil unions, ask what is marriage. Get the other person to define what marriage is for, and then ask them, if marriage is just celebrating the union of two adults, just celebrating a relationship between two adults, why should the government be involved? Why do we expect it to be lifelong? Why should it be monogamous? When you widen marriage enough, you lose the rational basis for the things that make marriage marriage. In fact, when I presented my talk, How to Talk About Marriage and Same-Sex Unions… In fact, when I presented my talk, How to Talk About Marriage and Same-Sex Unions at a, it was like a North Dakota university, many years ago, I think it was 2014. This was before Obergefell, before same-sex marriage really… So-called same-sex marriage became the law of the land.
Trent:
And I gave a presentation to a public secular audience, and there was only one minor protest. Two women stood up and began to make out in the front row, and they were escorted out. And then before my talk, a university administrator came in and said, “Remember, if anyone is triggered by Mr. Horn’s presentation, we have a safe room for you to go to.” And I asked her, and I said, “Ma’am, do you say this for every public speaker that comes to your university? Do you have a safe room for every speaker? Because I feel like it’s unique just for me.” And so I presented my case for what marriage really is from natural law. And what was interesting is there was a whole group of atheists in the front row, and during Q&A, I thought I was going to get grilled. Not a single question, not a single question.
Trent:
There was one question from one guy, he said, “Mr. Horn, can you define this scientific method?” And I was like, “Yeah…” I remember back to the fourth grade growing pea plants or doing little experiments, hypothesis, experiment, testing, variable data, conclusion. It was strange. And I asked him later, “Why didn’t you guys have questions?” They said, “We thought you were just going to quote the Bible. We had never heard a case like this before.” So here’s what I’m going to do for you to help equip you to talk about this. I’m going to take my talk, How to Talk about Marriage and Same-Sex Unions. It’s a little dated. I got to do a new one. I recorded it before the Supreme Court made so-called same-sex marriage the law of the land, but I’m going to take that talk. I’m going to put it on trenthornpodcast.com, and I’m going to make it open to anyone.
Trent:
So normally the posts at trenthornpodcast.com, you can only see them if you’re a subscriber, if you’re a monthly or annual subscriber at trenthornpodcast.com. But I’m going to place it there so that if you want to learn how to explain this issue to other people, it’s also available on FORMED, if you want to watch it there. But if you go to trenthornpodcast.com, I will post the talk there because I’m out of time here. I’ve already gone long, and Nick is helping Camila with her therapy. He doesn’t have much time to edit this episode because I want to get it out there as soon as possible. So I promised at the beginning of the episode, I’d teach you how to talk about this issue, and I will. So go to trenthornpodcast.com. It’ll be there. It’ll be free, unlocked for anyone, How to Talk About Marriage and Same-Sex Unions.
Trent:
I have other bonus content there, if you want to be a subscriber, you can check out. So that will help you to talk about this issue. But I hope I gave you at least enough insight, how to reflect on this particular controversy of this week. But the big things going forward are, let’s avoid rash judgment, let’s be charitable, let’s pray for one another, let’s pray for Pope Francis, and let’s communicate the truth about marriage in a gracious way, using powerful persuasive arguments. Go to trenthornpodcast.com if you want to get those, for free, and communicate that to a world that desperately needs to hear it. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
Speaker 1:
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