Can one really dissent from a teaching without understanding that teaching?
That’s a question I’ve mulled over while reading Gerald Naus. Gerald formerly authored a blog called The Cafeteria is Closed until his open rejection of Catholic teaching on human sexuality prompted ire from readers, quips about his blog title, and his removal from not a few blogrolls around the Catholic blogosphere. Now he pens at Standing Athwart History, Yelling $#@*!.
The 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae provided Gerald another opportunity for open dissent, which he manifests with playful revelry. He seems to enjoy posting weird or disarming factoids about what Catholic theologians throughout the ages have said regarding sexual behavior. However, Gerald himself admits to much ignorance about Catholic thought on the matter. He knows little of Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, considering the late pope’s books unreadable. Catholic rules on human sexuality, based on twisted assumptions, are made by the “Chaste Caste,” he says.
Gerald approaches the rules and regulations of human sexual behavior as products of the celibate clergy’s decision making and evaluates them as such, uprooted from the development of Catholic thought on metaphysics and morality. To my mind, his dissent seems superficial, a response to rules regarding positions and placements, what lovers should and should not do, rather than with the underlying Catholic understanding of human nature from which such "rules" come. By saying Catholic rules are made by the “Chaste Caste,” he divorces such rules from the context in which they can be understood.
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