“I’ve sat with friends who were living unchastely or who experienced gender discordance, and they had certain expectations about what someone coming from a Catholic perspective would say,” he continued. “Those expectations didn’t align with the approaches that Jesus, Aquinas, or recent popes would actually take, largely because of unproductive encounters with fundamentalists or misguided Catholics.”
“I’ve also had conversations with people from that side, where I thought there was more agreement, until I heard how they arrived at their position,” he continued. “The strange thing is that the encounters between these two sides are simultaneously too confrontational and not direct enough.”
Buonopane said that these kinds of discussions “only address the point of disagreement indirectly” and often cause “each side” to “become more convinced that the other hated them.”
Building off the past
The approach builds on Christ’s approach as described in the 1965 Vatican document Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope”), Buonopane noted.
Buonopane pointed out a key quote from Gaudium et Spes: “By the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, [Christ] fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”
Christ is “truly universal and truly distinctive at the same time,” and so “he’s the only one that can make it possible for us to receive and give the Father’s agape love,” he explained.
“That love is so universal that it can enter into any other kind of love in any human relationship and bring out its full character,” he said.
Buonopane pointed out that Christ is direct when questioned by the Pharisees.
“Because he’s truly universal, when he disagrees with his hearers, he’s not coming out of left field,” he said. “He’s able to use reasoning that they understand on their own terms (even if they don’t always end up agreeing).”
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.