Within the Church it is a different matter entirely. Unity is constitutive of the Church, but unity in Truth. We cannot have one gospel for Germany, another for Poland; one liturgical-moral-doctrinal legacy in San Francisco, another in New York. Furthermore, the crucial theological and moral issues ARE binary: God is three persons or one person; Jesus is human-divine or human or divine; women can or cannot become priests; sterile, non-unitive sex is essentially wrong or it is not. One side is right; the other side is wrong. If women can become Catholic priests than they should! Absolutely! And not 50 years from now, but yesterday! And the refusing Church is indeed hateful, ignorant, misogynist, legalistic, retroactive and phobic. But if women cannot become priest, they cannot. Simple! No one can make them priests: not the Pope, not synodality, nothing!
Priests by a large majority keep a distance from the Culture War. Occasionally you will hear a sermon about abortion, but very very rarely will you hear on Sunday about homosexuality, cohabitation, contraception, pornography and masturbation, and the masculine priesthood. These are taboo topics...on both sides...and there are reasons for this. I have know a fair amount of Jesuits and Maryknollers over the years: about 90% avoid these issues. Their hearts burn for the poor and the suffering, they are very uncomfortable with the sexual and life issues. My spiritual director of many years, John Wrynn S.J. of happy memory was non-directive with me, neither endorsing nor challenging my fierce conservatism, but one day he quietly said: "I don't know why women can't be priests." He is typical: uncertain, he has no dog in the fight.
Why are so many neutral, abstaining from the fight? Great question. A number of vectors come into play.
1> Most people are not philosophers: they lack the ability and/or interest to pursue theoretical principles. So they don't really care about these issues that exploded in the 60s with the Sexual Revolution. Morally, most people are emotivists: they decide and act on the feelings of their heart, not the reasoning of their intellect. This is even more true of women and so of the de-masculinized Church we have become. In the context of World War II, all the loss of life and resources we sustained in the wake of Pearl Harbor, few Catholics thought twice about the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Every felt good the war was ended without further bloodshed and most liked Harry Truman. About abortion most Catholics might say: "I don't like it and would never do it but I FEEL uncomfortable with the government telling a woman she can't have one. So I am peronally averse but politically pro-choice."
A second motive is to keep the unity of the Church, to prevent schism or a mass exodus. Saint Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae but did not enforce it. He kept the Church together, even though there was a de facto schism. Priests and bishops avoided the topic. The result: over 90% of Catholic women of child-bearing age went on the pill at some point. The Church retreated, ceded the ground to the Liberation forces, and has been losing the War ever since. The recent letter of Cardinal Ladaria cautioning the American Bishops to proceed with caution and avoid a split Church reflects this pastoral concern. Both John Paul and Benedict were extraordinary: they relentlessly persisted in proclaiming the gospel truth, always gently and patiently.
Thirdly, and closely related to the previous motive, is a pastoral sensitivity in priests to keep close to those who cannot accept or understand Catholic teaching on these topics. The culture has pulled most far away from the Catholic way. So, for example, a typical priest finds that most couples seeking matrimony are already living together. What to do? Most soft-pedal and play good cop: pre-marital chastity is offered as a suggestion, an option, an ideal. Hardly any mention of "living in sin." Priests want to love and be loved; they want to give and receive acceptance; they have little taste for tough love.
Forthly, the crucial issues of gender, sex, and unborn life have always been, for Catholics, sacred, delicate realities that are surrounded by silence and discretion. These are not things we talk about: not because they are bad, but because they are holy. And so, when the Sexual Revolution exploded after 1965, the Great Generations of Catholic in power at the time were entirely unprepared: so they avoided the conflict. Result: the Revolution succeeded, entirely, even within the Church.
Lastly, these moral-religious issues have become unhappily politicized. Traditionally the Democratic Party championed Catholic concerns: the working man, the poor, marginalized minoritites, a more robust sense of the common good, solidarity and a limited but assertive state. Implicitly, for example, the party of my childhood was quietly, but firmly, pro-family, pro-life, pro-religious liberty. A Copernican Revolution occurred circa-1970: the Democrats betrayed Catholics for the liberated, secular elite; the Republicans gathered up conservative Evangelicals and Catholics into a political stew that included (traditionally Catholic) cold war militance and (questionably Catholic) low taxes, preference for the wealthy, and a failure to critique mega-capitalism in favor of a moderate subsidiarity. And so, Catholics were quite comfortable backing gun control, generous immigration policy, and an expanded health care system; as they were uncomfortable with a pro-life movement that they perceived as arrogant, indifferent to the poor, and too close to the wealthy.
Pope Francis is a good example of this neurality: he seems to be ambivalent. Last week the Vatican sternly forbade blessings for homosexual couples; this week he wrote a sappy, saccrine letter to Fr. James Martin commending him on how Christ-like he is in being close, compassionate and caring. No mention of truth, justice, sin or holiness. His position is untenable: conservatives feel entire abandoned by him, progressives resent that he has disappointed him.
The neutral position is entirely untenable. The forces for sexual liberation are so militant that to abstain is basically to surrender. Their aggression is increasing. The war is raging ever more viciously. We live in apocalypic times. It is time for us to revive the legacy of John Paul: as he quietly, confidently faced and eventually defeated the Nazis and the Communists, it is now for us to persist in the Truth...confidently, calmly, affectionately, fiercely, hopefully.
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