I'm okay, you're okay. . .

Last month, an ABC news anchor, a minor celebrity among the media, did something surprising.  He returned to the Roman Catholic Church of his baptism and was confirmed.  Ordinarily this would not have been either surprising or a news story.  That it was both of these is due to this.  The confirmand—Gio Benitez—is openly gay, civilly married to a man, was confirmed with his “husband” as his sponsor, at St. Patrick's in NYC, by the LGBTQ+ friendly priest, Fr. James Martin.  There you have it.  But this is not simply about the sexual orientation of the man being confirmed.  It is about the state of the Roman Catholic Church, the moral compass of that communion, and the nature of confirmation itself.

I suppose it would be easy simply to dump on Rome for this strange situation.  I would rather, however, look at the larger question.  What is the state of Rome?  We all knew its state when Francis was pope.  Confusion and obfuscation were the norm in his tenure.  He seemed to love to warm up to those on the fringe and to tick off those in the middle.  Fr. Martin was his sort of guy.  Now we have Leo but it does not seem that Leo is all that much different except that he seems to have made his peace with the accoutrements of the papacy (vestments to papal apartments).  For many it seemed the Leo was a return to normalcy in Rome, to the middle from the edge.  It would seem that this has read too much into his choice of garment or address.  Unless and until there is a shift, Leo is simply giving a traditional look to the more radical direction of his direct predecessor.  Am I wrong?

In addition, the moral compass of Rome seems to be turning toward the prevailing view of things in culture.  Here an openly gay man, married to another man, is confirmed in the faith and, it would presume, makes his pledge to live in accordance with that faith, all the while his husband is acting as his sponsor.  For all the talk about a return to the prevailing notions of moral integrity, Leo has shown his hand more than once in accepting the Francis effect as the new norm for his own papacy.  Furthermore, he has not shown any willingness to discipline anyone who goes further than the norm in accommodating the faith to the prevailing social norms of culture and society.  Will either Cardinal Dolan or Pope Leo offer any words about what Fr. Martin did?  Don't hold your breath.  

Finally, the question of what it means to be confirmed is now a more open question than it was.  After all, the effect of this sacramental act is to grant not simply approval but blessing to the lifestyle of the man confirmed.  He is submitting to the faith, so to speak, but he is also forcing Rome to submit to his shape of life.  Is that what confirmation means in Rome?  You say the right words about what you believe but you get to keep on living as you live even if that conflicts with doctrinal positions and the explicit statements of the Catholic Catechism.  There should be no shortage of folks who want to be confirmed under that kind of deal.

Lutherans first rejected confirmation and then, because of the social importance of this as a rite of passage, brought back the idea.  It would seem that we could not withstand the pressure put by those who wanted confirmation but without some of its baggage.  What once marked the initiation and confirmation of a person's faith and life within the discipline of the Church has become merely a symbol of their status and a sign of their lives having reached some level of approval or acceptance within the community of the faith.  What is the future of sacraments conferred upon those who chose not to accept the discipline of belief or life that accords with the faith in which they are confirmed?  Baptism has become the formal acceptance of those who believe they have a gender different from the one given them in birth or reflected by their reproductive organs.  We baptize them as they are (or as they deem themselves to be) and so it goes.  Why shouldn't they be then confirmed as well?  It would seem that confirmation has become the I'm okay,m you're okay liturgical theology Rome.  It already was that way in the ELCA.  Will it ever take hold of Missouri?