[PLUG-TALK] Homosexual behavior is as morally wrong as murder...

[Michael Robinson]

Victimization is high in the pantheon of the politically correct. Fr.
Rausch hits a new high-or low-in a passage on page 83 of Reconciling
Faith and Reason. It occurs in the chapter "Sexual Morality" (where he
spends, incidentally, more time trying to justify "stable" homosexual
relationships than on any other topic). He writes, "The questions raised
by those who have been marginalized by the Church's teaching-those in
second marriages without annulments, gays and lesbians trying to live in
faithful relationships, those unable to afford or support more
children-will continue to trouble the Church."

Add to the crime of victimization the additional tragedy of
marginalization. Following this line of thinking, every murderer,
rapist, adulterer, liar-insert your sin of choice-has been
"marginalized" by the Church's teaching. And the only way the Church can
bring an end to this crime is to stop teaching.

The next sentence after the quote above is this: "This is where the
current debate is joined, not about the existence of moral norms rooted
in our human nature [which Fr. Rausch is willing to concede], but over
the question of whether those norms are universally applicable."

This is an astonishing posing of the issue. There are moral norms rooted
in human nature but not universally applicable? Then those to whom they
are not applicable in Fr. Rausch's opinion are something other than
normal humans