The unspoken tragedy of the Orlando massacre
In responding to the Orlando massacre at a same-sex nightclub, Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg found religion, including Catholicism, responsible for the slaughter. He wrote, “sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people.” And he is right that we were wrong; but he is right for the wrong reason. Our contempt was not in words spoken but in those left unsaid. To hold someone in contempt is to look down on him or her as somehow less worthy. It is to judge some as unable to meet basic human standards of behavior, or to doubt that others might be capable of genuine sacrificial love. Many Catholics are guilty of this contempt. This contempt, however, is not rooted in the magisterial teaching of the Church but in the Catholicism practiced and preached by most Catholics, lay and clerical, in the modern Western world. It is the contempt of low expectations, a contemp