At the 20th Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner this weekend, “Overheated” Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, a Catholic, acknowledged to LGBT activists that the church he attends does not accept the progressive view of same-sex marriage — but he predicted that would change soon enough.
“I was proud to join my Senate colleagues in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court supporting full marriage equality,” he told the room of nearly 4,000 LGBT supporters. “And how happy I was, how happy I was on the day that the court declared yet again that equal is equal just as love is love. How happy I was because sometimes in life you don’t get a chance to finish the unfinished business, but I have been given an opportunity to do it. And, you know, like many people of faith, including maybe many in this room, my support for marriage equality now — my full complete, unconditional support for marriage equality — is at odds with the current doctrine of the church that I still attend. But I think that’s going to change, too. I think that is going to change, too.”
The Democratic vice presidential nominee explained that he believed that the “current doctrine,” which has been held since the founding of the church, would eventually give way to modern progressive doctrine because all things in Creation are “good.”
“My church also teaches me about a Creator in the first chapter of Genesis who surveys the entire world including mankind and said, ‘It is very good. It is very good,'” he said. “Who am I to challenge God for the beautiful diversity of the human family? I think we’re supposed to celebrate, not challenge it.”
Kaine, of course, managed to work in a dig on Donald Trump, whom he slammed as being “no friend to this community, and he’s no friend to the value of equality.” Kaine did not specify exactly how Trump, whose largely pro-LGBT stances have often put him at odds with his own party, was not a “friend.”
HotAir’s Ed Morissey, a Catholic himself, notes that Kaine appears to misunderstand the concept of doctrine in the Catholic Church. While a practice of the church may change, church doctrine is viewed as unchangeable. Morissey explains that at the 2014 Synods on the Family, from which he reported, the church leadership “only discussed same-sex marriage in the context of welcoming the children of such secular unions to the Gospel to ensure universal evangelism, while reminding gays and lesbians that they are welcome to join the church on the church’s terms, like any other voluntary association. The bishops rejected an attempt to allow for divorce and remarriage without a finding of sacramental nullity among heterosexual couples, let alone propose and discuss changing doctrine on the fundamental nature of marriage as a union of man and woman and a reflection of the creative power of Trinitarian life.”
Despite the liberal leanings of Pope Francis on the issue of immigration and capitalism and his overtures to the LGBT community, he has consistently maintained the doctrine of sanctity of marriage and its definition as being between one man and one woman. He has also commented several times on homosexuality and transgenderism, both of which he described in terms consistent with Catholic teaching. In response to Kaine’s prediction, CNS News provided a summary of Catholic doctrine and its scriptural basis:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to the natural law and that: “Under no circumstances can they be approved.” The Catholic Church also teaches that marriage is the permanent union of one man and one woman as taught by Jesus Christ.
Matthew 19: 3-6 says the following:
“Some Pharisees approached Him, and tested Him, saying, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?’ He said in reply, ‘Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator “made them male and female” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’”
The Catholic Catechism says of marriage:
“’God himself is the author of marriage.’ The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. …
“In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning permission given by Moses to divorce one’s wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts. The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it ‘what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’”
The Catholic Catechism says of homosexual acts:
“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”