Speaking from the Catholic tradition, I don’t have a problem with gay clergy, since they seem always to have always served the church.

If you follow the unauthorized legend, gay Christian clergy go back to St. John, the Beloved Disciple, who “rested his head on Jesus’ chest” (Jn. 13:23). The only requisite would be that -- like their heterosexual counterparts – the gay clergy remain celibate. Moreover, given the heightened attention to sex scandals within churches, it makes sense to tighten the standards for future clergy – both heterosexual and homosexual.

Same-sex marriage for Catholics must meet a sacramental test: the love between spouses must be “fruitful” like the union of Christ with this Church. For nearly two thousand years, this sacramental dimension has been taken literally: the couple must have the potential to fulfill the biblical mandate, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 9:7).

Same-sex unions don’t meet this material test to be a sign and sacrament, much as a rice cake, a corn tortilla or a potato chip are each unable to represent the wheat bread that is used for the sacrament of the Eucharist.

All of this will sound convoluted to an ordinary listener. After all, the driver of a car doesn’t want a lecture on the motor’s design with the question: “Will it get me to the church in time?” But just as the car can’t run unless someone engineered the motor properly, Catholic pastoral practice depends upon complex theological reasoning.

My faith commitment helps me understand the Catholic process, and I would not want to speak out of turn about other denominations, just as I would consider it unseemly for outsiders to pontificate about what Catholicism should or should not do.

Since the II Vatican Council, Catholic theology has drifted away from the hard material sense of the sacramental sign and moved towards psychological meanings.

The sign value of matrimony, as now taught, is not so much a material union in the sexual act, but the loving and affective relationship that brings two people together for life. But can’t people of the same sex have just such a “loving and affective relationship”?

Moreover, the sacrament does not depend upon actually having children, since elderly people without the ability to have children can also sacramentally contract marriage. There is theological wiggle room, therefore, to ask questions about the capacity for people of the same sex to enter into lasting relationships that have faith-filled meaning, despite a physical inability to propagate except by extraordinary means.

Knowing the slowness with which Catholicism deliberates changes in teaching, I would not expect the doctrines about the sacrament of marriage to change for same sex couples in my lifetime. What is changing is the pastoral attitude towards gay persons committed to the faith.

The on-the-ground approach in parish life is often close to “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Certainly, a more general social openness and acceptance of the rights of gay couples to live without discrimination or penalty has changed my own perceptions of homosexuality.

The “coming out” of family members and positive experiences with gay colleagues in the work place have blurred the dictates I inherited in my youth from a pre-Vatican church.

The most intriguing aspect of Catholic theology concerns the “normalcy” of homosexual orientation. I am not talking here about the “situational” homosexuality of sailors or prisoners, or about those who pursue hedonistic pleasure wherever genitalia can be found. My question centers on the likelihood that science may identify the “gene” that makes persons gay.

Since Catholic theology has always held that “grace perfects nature,” discovery that homosexual orientation is natural would require major rethinking of the issue. Moreover, the church has always accepted the kind of “natural” gifts in artistic talent that often seem to accompany the homosexual disposition. It doesn’t seem fair to celebrate the beauty created by the gay Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, but reject the accompanying genetic trait that facilitates their art.

I believe that even in its most caustic pronouncements about homosexual orientation, the church has recognized that the natural argument may revolutionize its theological premises.

Notice that the orientation has been called “a disorder” --- not “a sin.” “Disorder” is a category that would accept natural conditions that we might call “atypical”. For instance, being left-handed is a “disorder” since most people are right-handed: but it is not “abnormal.” Add to the list lactose intolerance, being seven feet tall, having a photographic memory, or being allergic to shell fish. While it is no sin to be born with any of these differences from the general population: it would be a sin to treat such persons as lesser in importance or humanity.

I think what might change the theology of the church is the extension of this category of “natural” to homosexual orientation. If so, one day the most important religious questions for Catholic clergy or couples will be about the practice of virtue, chaste relationships, altruism and piety.