I keep wondering whether the Catholic Church is on the Red Ball Express toward self-destruction, or whether, by holding the hard line on things like masturbation and homosexuality, it can still maintain adherents. I think that, unless they reform radically, they’ll ultimately become insignificant, but that will take a long time, and what do I know?

The growing breach between the Vatican and even its own official minions is clear in a new piece in the Guardian, “Vatican denounces nun’s book on sexual ethics.” The details (I’ve added a link to the book):

The Vatican has condemned a leading American nun for writing a book in which she praises female masturbation and approves divorce and gay sex and marriage, warning that the book must not be used by catholic educators. The Vatican’s criticism of Sister Margaret Farley, a professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Yale University, comes amid escalating tension with America’s nuns, after the Holy See accused them of preaching “radical feminist” ideas. In a statement approved by pope Benedict and issued on Monday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office claims Farley’s book, Just Love, a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, “ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others”. The statement singles out Farley’s claim that many women “have found great good in self-pleasuring – perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure – something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.” Masturbation, she concludes, “actually serves relationships rather than hindering them”. That view, the Vatican stated, contradicted the Catholic belief that masturbation is a “gravely disordered action”. Farley’s approval of gay sex ignored “Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity”, while her backing for gay unions was tantamount to “approval of deviant behaviour,” the Vatican said. Her openness to divorce and remarriage was deemed as “contravening God’s law”. When Just Love was first published in 2006, it was adopted by catholic educators in the US and won a prestigious religious book prize.

This is how the Vatican keeps its hold on people, starting with the young. Show me a teenager who hasn’t masturbated, and therefore isn’t guilty of a “gravely disordered action.” That of course, could send you to hell unless you go into the booth and say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have touched myself three times this week.” How the priests must lick their lips at that! Any reader who hasn’t engaged in self-pleasuring, weigh in below—if I don’t hear anything, I’ll assume that everyone has.

And, of course, the Church still views homosexual acts as another possible cause of mortal sin, something that can send one to hell (reconceived, of course, as “separation from God”). I wonder why any gays—people like Andrew Sullivan—can remain members of a church that condemns them so seriously. The excuse that “I’m changing it from the inside” won’t wash.

Well, the church still holds the hard line. Should this continue, we’ll wind up with a Catholic faith in which virtually every member (including nuns and priests) regularly commits grave or mortal sins. The Guardian comments further on the Vatican’s report:

That approach runs contrary to pope Benedict’s firm belief that the Catholic church will only survive if it clings to its core beliefs without compromise. The report warned: “Sister Farley manifests a defective understanding of the objective nature of the natural moral law. This approach is not consistent with authentic Catholic theology.”

Well, if the moral law is objective, it can’t be changed—ever. Unlike other churches, this is the ultimate reason why Catholicism is doomed to irrelevancy. If you want a good laugh, read about “natural law” here.