The ongoing drama of the Catholic Church in a liberal society is tantalizing. Day by day, the bishops run into U.S. orthodoxies. Here are three postulates of U.S. liberal sociology.

1. People make mistakes, and society should recognize that such mistakes are, as often as not, the result of tensions and ambivalences and confusions and inequalities in the society that has nurtured them.

  • However. In the matter of the Catholic priests, we do not want to hear that kind of thing. We want to be reassured that every priest who is accused of improper relations with boys (or girls) will be reported directly to prosecutors who should be given exclusive dominion over the priest's life and career. And we expect that the priest complained of should immediately be withdrawn from clerical life and duty.

    2. Some people are homosexual, some people have red hair. It is a lingering prejudice of a society not yet secure against the call of cultural atavism that homosexuals are thought of as in any way different from heterosexuals, save obviously in the matter of whom they elect to have sex with. Prejudice against homosexuals, qua homosexuals, is on the order of prejudice against women, Jews and blacks.

  • However. A commitment to First Amendment rights requires the protection of religious freedom, and the Catholic Church, while not condemning the man or woman who has homosexual inclinations, does condemn the practice of homosexual sex. This inevitably gives rise to a level of prejudice that the Catholics have to come to terms with. If all Catholic homosexuals are expected to be celibate, then the Church is in effect imposing on the entire Catholic homosexual community standards of behavior reasonably demanded only of priests who take voluntary vows.

    3. It has never been established that the culture in which sexual appetites are indulged in newspapers, magazines, movies and books is, on that account, a society mandated to sexual promiscuity. The same First Amendment that preserves the right to exercise one's own religion preserves also the right of the sensualist and the pornographer to display his wares, and of the Hollywood actor to observe his marriage vows only for as long as it is convenient for him/her to do so.