A few afterthoughts occasioned by my column "On not doing wrong." To the unbeliever, the particular opprobrium with which Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki regards gay marriage is puzzling. Our Bruce Rushton has quoted critics who note that Paprocki has not refused funerals for men and women who have lived together before marriage, anyone who has used birth control, anyone who has had a child out of wedlock, anyone who doesn’t care for the poor, or for that matter who have committed other official sins such as greed, militarism, racism and support for the death penalty.
The church honors what it calls "the sacred value of the married state." Allowing all people to enter into the sacred value of the married state was the reason same-sex marriages were made legal. Would it be rude to ask who believes more in the sanctity of marriage, the bishop or the homosexual couples who rushed to wed when the law changed? Is the proscription of homosexuality the churchly equivalent of Dean Wormly’s double-secret probation?
