Fortnight for Freedom, Day 5

Fortnight for Freedom, a campaign spearheaded by Archbishop William Lori, the head of the Baltimore Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, is in its fifth of fourteen days, a span that will end square on the Fourth of July. F4F is supposedly about the "freedom" of the Catholic Church not to be encumbered by a recent Department of Health and Human Services mandate that women employees of Church-run institutions and Catholic-owned businesses must have cost-free contraception included in their health plans.

I say that's a diversion of focus, a ruse. F4F is actually about the power of an all-male apostolate — the Church's bishops, including the pope — to speak for the American Catholic laity, among whose women fully 98 percent (setting aside those women who have never had sex or have never been put at unwanted risk of pregnancy) have used artificial means of contraception.

I'm posting a new installment of this series every day of the F4F campaign, in hopes of showing that even an almost-65-year-old male Catholic who has never been married and is not sexually active thinks the bishops are all washed up.

Margaret A. Farley

I am reading Margaret A. Farley's recent book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics as I do this series. Farley is a professor emeritus of Christian ethics the Yale Divinity School and also a nun in the (Catholic) Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. In a story that appeared in The Washington Post on Monday, June 4, I learned of her book's existence at the same time that I learned, from the story:

The Vatican criticized a popular American nun [Farley] on Monday, saying her book on sexual ethics, including topics such as masturbation and homosexuality, contradicts Catholic teaching and must not be used by Catholic educators.

The story went on to say:

The Vatican rejected Farley’s views on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions and remarriage after divorce.

Farley writes that masturbation, particularly by women, “usually does not raise any moral questions at all” and that it “actually serves relationships rather than hindering them.”

The Vatican said the church teaches that masturbation is “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.”

Farley writes that “same-sex oriented persons as well as their activities can and should be respected.” The Vatican said that while homosexual tendencies are not considered sinful, homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.”

The story said it was the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that issued the censure, which was duly "signed by department head Cardinal William Levada, an American, and approved by Pope Benedict XVI."

The next day, a follow-up story by Post reporter Michelle Boorstein appeared on The Post's blog site. Boorstein stated:

Twenty-four hours ago news broke that the Vatican had condemned the book “Just Love:A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” a publication by a prominent nun-theologian that disagrees with church teaching on same-sex marriage, masturbation and remarrying after divorce. Monday morning, the book’s reported ranking on Amazon: 142,982


Tuesday afternoon, after a day of furious news coverage of the Vatican censure: It’s at #16.

The book had gone viral. That was when I bought it.