I think that heterosexual couples who enter into or are engaged in irregular marriages should also be refused employment in Church positions, because their situation is very similar to that of those in SSA marriages.
The Church won’t marry a couple that is completely and irreversibly impotent. Yet some older widowers and widows in this situation would like to marry in order to ensure survivor benefits to the other when one dies. So they will contract a civil marriage, which does confer those legal rights. So it will be “publicly known” when the banns are posted in the courthouse (though I wonder how many actually read those). This will be a chaste, but definitely “publicly” irregular marriage. Should they be barred from Church ministry because they are “manifestly” creating scandal by living in an irregular marriage even though it is a Josephite union?
Fortunately, I don’t think anyone in the Church would think of doing this, though you never know what some legalistic types would do.
Now consider a elderly homosexual couple “long past” the sexual stage of their relationship. They have been discreetly living together for years, not being “in your face” about their homosexuality, and otherwise faithful Catholics except this one failing. The chastity that willpower failed to achieve has been imposed on them by age and infirmity. They see the looming end. They would like to ensure survivor benefits, especially if one of the pair is in a weaker economic position. The only way to achieve this in their state/province, is through civil same-sex “marriage”.
I really don’t see too much difference in either situation. Both couples may be in a state of grace (the homosexuals having confessed the sins they no longer can engage in; the heterosexuals whatever sins they may have been guilty of). Neither are trying to create scandal, just trying to ensure that their partners are not in economic difficulty in the event of death.
Now let’s assume that some nosey person likes to read the banns at the courthouse, and discovers the notices for both the heterosexual couple and the homosexual couple. What is the likelihood that this person targets the gay couple who, for sake of argument, one of which is an EMHC, instead of the heterosexual couple in the same ministry?
This is where pastoral care comes in, and where a “one-size fits all” solution leads to injustice, and why sin is a matter for the confessional because “manifest public sin” may in fact be a situation where the penitent is in fact in a state of grace. The Church can and should in fact make wide-ranging judgments on the morality or not of
acts, but can and should also give pastoral latitude for individual circumstances as she cannot foresee every possible combination and permutation of situations.
And why the person in the pew should keep his or her nose out of the affairs of others, and trust in the pastor to determine whether a gay person is fit for ministry or not.
