Of course Pete Buttigieg is “legally married,” Fr. Martin. That’s not the point.

ike it or not,” Fr. James Mar­tin writes at Out­reach, “Pete Buttigieg is legal­ly mar­ried.” Once more I am here to point out that no one has denied this: I have not denied this, Bill Dono­hue at the Catholic League has not denied this, not even Jesus Christ has denied this. In fact, Mr. Dono­hue, author of the arti­cle which first incit­ed Mar­tin to pique, admits as much. In the self­same arti­cle he writes: “Buttigieg is legal­ly mar­ried.” His mar­riage to Chas­ten Glez­man, Dono­hue says, “is rec­og­nized by the pos­i­tive law.” Admit it or not, Fr., that is what Dono­hue wrote.

Mr. Dono­hue’s argument—however much it does or does not mat­ter to Martin—is that a mar­riage between two men (or two women) is impos­si­ble in nat­ur­al law. Anoth­er way of putting that is to say that mar­riage has an onto­log­i­cal char­ac­ter such that two peo­ple of the same sex can not enter into it, any more than a square can enter into round­ness. The law can declare a square round and make it hence­forth “legal­ly round,” but the square remains angu­lar in fact. That’s Dono­hue’s point. If Fr. Mar­tin wants to dis­agree, let him do so, but he should dis­agree with what Dono­hue is actu­al­ly argu­ing. Instead he intones, and intones again: “Well, you know, Pete Buttigieg is legal­ly mar­ried.” At this point it just makes him look will­ful­ly obtuse.

DISINJIMUOUS.

“Last week­end,” Mar­tin writes in his arti­cle, “I tweet­ed out what I thought was an innocu­ous, and obvi­ous, tweet: a state­ment of fact.”

Here Fr. plays inno­cent. I’ve searched my heart and can find no oth­er, more char­i­ta­ble way to char­ac­ter­ize it. I can’t believe he actu­al­ly thought his words were “innocu­ous.” Mar­tin has been speak­ing and writ­ing about LGBT issues for far too long; he knows very well how con­tro­ver­sial this sub­ject is; he is far too intel­li­gent and edu­cat­ed, either to have mis­un­der­stood Dono­hue’s point or to real­ly believe he’s just being a harm­less lit­tle cherub who won’t trou­ble nobody and will get five likes and two com­ments. Dear read­er, I know when I’m stir­ring the pot.

Next, Fr. Mar­tin says it is “self-refut­ing” for Dono­hue to both say that Buttigieg is “legal­ly mar­ried” and that the mar­riage is a “legal fic­tion.”

Once more I find myself in a cri­sis of char­i­ty. I under­stand per­fect­ly well the dis­tinc­tion Dono­hue made between what the law rec­og­nizes and what is true objec­tive­ly. (Or “onto­log­i­cal­ly,” if you like meta­physics.) I under­stand it and I don’t have the years of edu­ca­tion in phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­o­gy that a man must under­go in order to become a Jesuit priest. I sim­ply don’t believe Fr. Mar­tin can’t under­stand Dono­hue’s argu­ment; I think he refus­es to address it. It’s more fun for him to stand on his toes, lean far over a cliff of heresy, and say with affect­ed inno­cence, “I can’t imag­ine what’s so shock­ing about this.” Deal­ing with Dono­hue’s argu­ment forth­right­ly might require him to jump over the cliff. He’d pre­fer to have peo­ple mar­vel at his bal­ance.

MARTIN CONTRA FRANCIS.

So rather than both­er to accu­rate­ly describe what Dono­hue’s argu­ment is—rather than go even that far—Fr. Mar­tin decid­ed the arti­cle was no more than “anoth­er gra­tu­itous attempt to den­i­grate LGBTQ peo­ple.” I did not see that in the arti­cle; I did not see where Dono­hue “den­i­grat­ed” any­one. “Basi­cal­ly,” Mar­tin says, “[Dono­hue] was say­ing that Pete Buttigieg’s mar­riage to his hus­band Chas­ten didn’t exist. In that way, it remind­ed me of Catholics who say that trans­gen­der peo­ple, in essence, don’t or shouldn’t exist.”

Well, the mar­riage exists legal­ly, just not onto­log­i­cal­ly. Basi­cal­ly, Mar­tin is say­ing that Dono­hue’s argu­ment does­n’t exist, and if so, maybe Mar­tin believes that Bill Dono­hue does­n’t, or should­n’t, exist. But I don’t recall Dono­hue say­ing any­where that Buttigieg’s per­son­hood or exis­tence is a legal fic­tion. I can’t imag­ine that he thinks Buttigieg is a cat or a horse claim­ing to be human under the law. Dono­hue seems to believe that Buttigieg walks the earth and breathes, and I can’t imag­ine he begrudges him his share of oxy­gen. To what­ev­er extent there are peo­ple who want to “erase” LGBT per­sons, no such desire con­tributes to the argu­ment Dono­hue is actu­al­ly mak­ing. It’s gra­tu­itous and dis­hon­est for Fr. Mar­tin to bring it up.

In fact, as I point­ed out in my pri­or arti­cle, Pope Fran­cis, says the very same thing that Mr. Dono­hue does. It’s in Amor­is Laeti­tia, a text that the­o­log­i­cal­ly lib­er­al Catholics gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brate.

• In AL 52, Pope Fran­cis says that same-sex unions “may not sim­ply be equat­ed with mar­riage.”
• In AL 252, Pope Fran­cis says that same-sex unions are “not in any way sim­i­lar or even remote­ly anal­o­gous” to mar­riage.

And yet I don’t hear Fr. Mar­tin com­plain­ing that Pope Fran­cis reminds him of peo­ple who think LGBT per­sons don’t exist. If Dono­hue is eras­ing gay peo­ple, then so is Pope Fran­cis, and Fr. Mar­tin should say so.

WINK-NUDGE.

Instead of being con­sis­tent, how­ev­er, he com­plains about all the hate­ful words on Twit­ter. “I was called a heretic, an apos­tate, a false priest, a ser­pent, a dog, a bitch, a wolf, Satan and so on. … Demands were issued for my imme­di­ate lai­ciza­tion, and so on, and I received a few death threats at my office, as well as count­less threat­en­ing direct mes­sages through my oth­er social media accounts.”

My prob­lem here is not with say­ing that such reac­tions are dis­grace­ful and unchris­t­ian, because they are. My prob­lem is that there were mul­ti­ple sub­stan­tive respons­es to Fr. Mar­t­in’s tweets, and he men­tions none of them. It’s easy to refute some­one who says “you’re a fag,” because there’s noth­ing there to refute. Actu­al argu­ments are hard­er to pick apart, but Mar­tin can’t be both­ered. It’s almost as though, from his point of view, they … don’t exist. He’d rather por­tray all his crit­ics as foul-mouthed haters.

If you think Mar­tin is try­ing to wink-nudge heresy into the Church, I don’t blame you. It works like this. Dono­hue says: “Buttigieg is legal­ly mar­ried.” Mar­tin objects. “Buttigieg is mar­ried,” he says—without the qual­i­fi­er. Catholics object and Mar­tin says, “All I’m say­ing is that he’s legal­ly married”—qualifier back—“that’s just a fact.” So first he makes a prob­lem­at­ic broad claim; then, he changes it to a nar­row claim that no one has actu­al­ly denied; last, he pre­tends the small claim was all he meant in the first place: Why is every­one hat­ing on me? Of course I don’t think that broad thing, no one’s say­ing that, but you can’t deny the nar­row thing.

You might say that it’s all very … jesuit­i­cal.

NOT ABOUT “CATHOLIC RULES.”

Many of the peo­ple com­ment­ing upon this seem to think that Dono­hue is in a snit about mere rules, as though he thinks that the Catholic def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage ought to apply to every­one else, and if you’re not mar­ried in the Catholic sense you’re not mar­ried at all, even if the rules you’ve accept­ed are dif­fer­ent.

The premise behind this is that dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions of mar­riage are objec­tive­ly equal. Your def­i­n­i­tion is no more true or false than my own, it’s just dif­fer­ent. But Dono­hue does­n’t share that premise, and if some­one is going to refute him, they’re going to have to refute his premise. There may be cer­tain rules about mar­riage that are vari­able; for exam­ple, Catholics must be bap­tized. Catholics must be mar­ried by a Catholic priest in a Catholic parish, even if it’s an inter­faith mar­riage. Two Mus­lims, or two Jews, or two athe­ists, or two Hin­dus, won’t fol­low those rules, and that does­n’t change the real­i­ty of their mar­riage.

But when Dono­hue claims that two men can’t be mar­ried, he’s not talk­ing about “Catholic rules” or “Catholic def­i­n­i­tions.” He’s talk­ing about the onto­log­i­cal nature of mar­riage. Only a man and a woman can enter into it in order for it to be mar­riage.

When Jesus talked about mar­riage, about what was “so” “from the begin­ning,” he said: “He which made them from the begin­ning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4). In oth­er words, the nature of marriage—that it is between a man and a woman—is part of God’s design from the begin­ning. That’s what I mean when I say it’s onto­log­i­cal.

This has noth­ing to do with “I demand that every­one else fol­low our rules.” It has to do with round­ed­ness being onto­log­i­cal to cir­cles.

If you would cri­tique Dono­hue, you would have to do so on that basis. Play­ing disin­gen­u­ous games of “all I’m say­ing is [insert what no one denied]” does­n’t even approach the real argu­ment.