Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions, by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler makes a compelling case that the foundation for a development of Catholic doctrine on same-sex unions is well established. They ground these claims in the work of Pope Francis who, despite not making doctrinal changes to Catholic teaching (per the authors), offered some public support for same-sex civil unions—a move Salzman and Lawler perceive as a monumental change. The book provides a thorough genealogy of Catholic theology on marriage; expands Salzman and Lawler’s groundbreaking arguments for holistic complementarity; highlights Catholic doctrine on conscience; advances a virtue ethics aimed at the flourishing of the whole person; proposes a profound theology of sacramental marriage and love; and applies all of these to same-sex love, cohabitation, and parenting.
Chapter 2’s history of Catholic moral theology on marriage was illuminating. The authors expertly trace the philosophical underpinnings of the Greco-Roman world and their impact on historical and contemporary understanding of marriage in the Catholic tradition. Combined with post-Vatican-II theology, including Pope Francis’s work in Amoris Laetitia, the authors convincingly make the case that a development of doctrine is well underway. Interestingly, though, Salzman and Lawler make no mention of the 2003 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against the legal recognition of same-sex unions—an omission that, given its juxtaposition with Pope Francis’s statements, would have further cemented their own claim that a doctrinal development is already at hand.
I consider Salzman and Lawler’s anthropological argument (developed in chapter 3) to be a significant contribution to Pope Francis’s vision for a synodal church. By drawing connections between anthropology and Catholic sexual ethics, Salzman and Lawler are able to recast our understanding of complementarity of all couples, regardless of sexual orientation. By doing so, they aptly model for the church how to successfully implement and incorporate insights from the social sciences into theology. Considering the struggles our church faces in its ability to listen and learn from all the faithful in a synodal context, this task has been long overdue—especially regarding sexual ethics.
I found the chapter on sacramentality insightful and profound. Yet I am puzzled by their repeated differentiation between “capital S” sacramental same-sex marriage for heterosexuals and “lower case s” sacrament for same-sex unions. Although the book endorses same-sex civil unions through Catholic theology, the capital-versus-lowercase-s distinction leaves the book open to a critical reservation advanced by many queer activists and scholars: endorsing same-sex loving relationship solely through permitting civil unions creates a “separate but equal” institution for queer persons. Heterosexuals get a “Sacrament,” while gay and lesbian couples get a “sacrament.” Although I understand that the book is primarily based on Pope Francis’s own position on same sex civil unions (which explicitly espoused that distinction), I had hoped that the authors—as ethicists—would have been more critically aware of the adverse implications of excluding same-sex unions from “capital S” sacramental marriage.
My second critique cautions Salzman and Lawler against an essentialism that—even when deployed by liberal revisionists—might oppress queer persons through assimilationist theological ethics. Although, as stated, I value the authors’ incorporation of social sciences into the life of a synodal church, their claims that anthropology operates as an objective system of knowledge that “entails unbiased observation and experimentation” (78) ignores that any reading of human nature (including those by the social sciences) will reflect the bias of the thinker.
With that, I point out that the authors’ anthropological theory of holistic complementarity already rests on a heteronormative assumption favoring complementary unions that are, presumably, monogamous and permanent. This, in turn, might perpetually relegate queer persons, nonbinary persons, polyamorous persons, asexual persons, and persons in open relationships as living lives that are less ideal than heterosexual ones. Furthermore, it only justifies same-sex unions so long as they assimilate to the heterosexual complementary vision. This adverse casting of queer relationships is already implicit in Amoris Laetitia’s discussion on people in irregular situations and is also left unchallenged by Salzman and Lawler when they rely on Pope Francis’s characterization of families in such irregular situations as “wounded” (8) without criticizing that discursive characterization.
Overall, the book does a marvelous job at situating Pope Francis’s thought about same-sex civil unions as part of a process of development of doctrine and is a testament of the hope of many Catholic same-sex couples for a change in the church. At the same time, some of the arguments make me wonder if essentialist and assimilationist theological perspectives, such as those espoused by the late pontiff and described in his work, will ever yield genuine inclusion for all queer Catholics. The conversation continues.
