Baby Don't Hurt Me
What is this! Stop doing this!
*And that's before I even mention that, inexplicably, the footnotes in several sections of that website are at the top of the page. What the hell is this? How could this possibly be helpful to anyone?
**Which it is obviously not!
***Ed is an In Rainbows guy, while the potato feels like Amnesiac never really got a fair shake.
I don't have a fancy setup here let's dive right in: my friend Steph - herself a talented musician and author of a very good Substack - sent me a link to “Love Means More”, a new-ish website run by the USCCB which starts with this on the “about” page:
“When was the last time you had a disagreement with somebody about cohabitation, same-sex relationships, or gender theory? How did it go? Have you ever winced when you discovered someone else shared your own view, at least in theory, but had very different reasons for arriving at that position?”
And we're off to the races:
“Have you ever winced when you discovered someone else shared your own view, at least in theory, but had very different reasons for arriving at that position? Love Means More can coach you for these conversations. The website is organized to help anyone, Catholics or non-Catholics, think more clearly about the complex web of issues surrounding what it means to love.”
So this is a communications tool from the USCCB, the stated purpose of which is to equip people, for conversations on sensitive topics like gay marriage and gender identity, with the tools of Catholic moral theology. The content of “Love Means More” is not anything surprising; it's upsetting in the sense that hearing the bishops talk about sex and relationships is always upsetting, but it's all stuff you've heard them say before. And it's frustrating in its own way, because it reflects this apologetics-anchored view that is you say the right words and pull out the right citations, you'll be able to sway someone away from an intensely personal view driven by years of life experience. If you sit down with a gay couple that's been together for ten years, married for five, and is ready to adopt a child, you're not going to dissuade them by saying “ah but what does Saint Augustine of Hippo say about concupiscence”, nor do you have any good reason to try and dissuade them in the first place. Last year, when I was making fun of Word On Fire's Brandon Vogt and his tortured formulae for winning abortion arguments, I kind of talked about the same thing. Vogt then, and Love Means More now, are all about pulling out the right turn of phrase, completely divorced from any sort of material reality, or any understanding that a material reality might be an important thing to understand in conversations about tough topics. It's the kind of thing you do if you read G.K. Chesterton for fun; he loved dismantling his perceived opponents with a perfectly-chosen bon mot, although he never was able to crack tougher rhetorical challenges like “not hating Jewish people” or “weighing less than 500 pounds”. There is nothing here - and nothing from the Catholic church anywhere - that can answer “what about women dying because they can't get health care” or “what happens when IVF becomes a crime” or “what about all the laws and violence targeting gay and trans people”; the church and its representatives have nothing because the church and its representatives don't care about any of this, they care about winning an argument that plays out only in their heads.
If everyone is being honest, I don't think anyone has a realistic expectation of winning an actual interpersonal argument with anything taken from Love Means More. I think bishops write this and conservative Catholics read this to convince themselves - and each other, when they're talking with like-minded people - that they have a reason for embracing wildly unpopular and increasingly violent policy choices. I think writing stuff like that is an exercise in self-soothing and is, ultimately, masturbatory. “But Tony you write a blog and that's masturbatory too” yeah buddy that's right, so it's a good thing I'm not a direct successor of the Apostles overseeing a school system and social service networks and carrying hiring and firing power over hundreds of employees. I'm not saying I should have the bishops' job, I'm saying all of the bishops should have my job, and also nobody should have theirs.
So Love Means More is, as we'll see, not really effective for its stated purpose. And Love Means More is maybe not even really meant to be effective for that purpose, which means that in addition to being ineffective, Love Means More is insincere. But my focus today is on a third problem: Love Means More is insane.
The actual substance of Love Means More's material, like I said, is annoying in the way that the USCCB is always annoying when they talk about sexuality. The presentation of this material, though…this is where we go beyond “upsetting” and into uncharted waters. See, Love Means More is structured as a sort-of text-based choose-your-own-adventure game, where you read a few completely unhinged paragraphs and then click a button to decide which set of completely unhinged paragraphs you're going to read next. I don't know exactly how new the site is, but given that some parts of it are incomplete and patched up with “coming soon!” in place of some key decision buttons, it's clearly still a work in progress, delivering some incredible moments like this:
So, from that “about” page, I clicked on “What Is Love?” (baby don't hurt me) as my jumping off point. Up at the top of this page, you get “Love is to will the good of the other,” great ok, “Okay but what does that mean?” Ah cool the website is a little ahead of me here.
““I love you.” Imagine sincerely saying this to someone for the first time, and getting the response, “what do you mean?” In that moment, the stakes would be too high to pause for a calm, honest exploration of this question.”
That's certainly true, and I would add that if you tell someone “I love you” for the first time and their first response is “what do you mean?”, you have probably made a severe miscalculation somewhere.
“Maybe the answer is obvious, though. Think of the far-reaching impact of sayings like “love is love”, “love is all you need”, and “love conquers all”. They’re practically cliches at this point. Even the phrase “what is love” itself is notable for being the title of a 90’s dance anthem, which everyone reading this has probably heard more times than they can count.”
I'm a little upset that the site anticipated my joke and the title of this essay, but other than that, this page is unremarkable. Just a lot of “hmmm a lot of different phrases about love”. So, when I got to the bottom of this page, I clicked on “Willing the Good?” to dig a little deeper into this definition that the USCCB wanted to highlight for me, an ordinary lay Catholic. Here's the analogy they used, the thing that they thought would be accessible to a broad range of Catholics trying to better understand what the church teaches:
“Christmas was coming up and Ed wanted to do something big for his daughter, Charlotte. The problem was that he had always been a terrible gift-giver…It’s easy to lump together the primary and secondary tendencies of love, no matter what kind of relationship it is. The primary tendency, love of friendship, is love of the beloved simply and for itself, so that the beloved might have some good. The secondary tendency, love of concupiscence, is love of something for a further purpose, so that it might be good for the beloved. Take Ed’s desire to give his daughter a gift. This is the primary tendency, love of friendship, but it wouldn’t be a loving act yet, because he has to decide which good to give her. Separately, he also apprehends that bikes are good for kids her age. He might also enjoy riding bikes himself. This is the secondary tendency, love of concupiscence. It’s not for the sake of the bike that he apprehends it as good, but for Charlotte’s well-being (or his own). But again, that alone is not a loving act. The loving act is to give his daughter a bike as a Christmas present. That act involves both tendencies: the secondary love of x (bikes are good for Charlotte) and the primary love of friendship (Charlotte deserves a bike and much more).”
So, this is…not accessible and also extremely weird*. Backing up one page to “you just told your girlfriend you love her and she just asked you what you meant and now you have to scramble to save your ass”, your best move is absolutely not “I apprehend that I will the good in you, and let me distinguish that from the love of concupiscence”. Jumping into dense terms from moral theology seems like the exact thing that this website was designed to avoid. But whatever, it's stupid and I can just ignore it, unless in the immediate next paragraph, the “getting my daughter a bike for Christmas” analogy unexpectedly takes a horrifying turn:
“This may seem obvious, but it gets tricky if Ed’s personal motives are more complicated. Let’s say Ed was a cyclist in college, had hoped to pass the sport on to Charlotte, but she had an existing medical condition that made it riskier to ride a bike. In that case, if Ed still wanted to give her the same gift, he might not be considering what belongs to her well-being, but instead what he wants for himself, namely to relive his cycling career vicariously through his daughter. Then, the love of friendship wouldn’t be for Charlotte, it would be for Ed (who seemingly would not be improving on his gift-giving ways). She wouldn’t be rejecting his love if she didn’t take up cycling, because Ed wouldn’t really be directing the act of love to her, but rather to himself at her expense.”
What?
What? The stated purpose of Love Means More is to equip lay Catholics to talk about the church's moral teachings on things like marriage, gender, and sexuality. And it has decided that the best way to do this is by introducing a new illustrative character, “dad who never made the Tour de France so he's going to abuse his daughter until her heart literally explodes”.
Do you know any couples that want to start a family, but have to conceive a child through IVF, which the Catholic church denounces? If they bring up that this is how they're trying to conceive a child, and if you think it's your business to weigh in on that**, do you think your best rhetorical move is to start by shaking your head and saying “wow, you might as well be committing Munchausen By Bicycle”? Because the USCCB seems to be offering that as key to understanding the church's teachings on love.
Now, the goal of the Munchausen By Bicycle page was to express that if you love someone, you should care about what's good for them and what they want, not just what's good for you and what you want. Which you probably already knew! But this isn't a website for children explaining how to care about other people, it's a communication resource from the USCCB that is supposed to help you, an adult, “think more clearly about the complex web of issues surrounding what it means to love.” Has the Daughtercide Bike Race cleared up any complexity for you on the church's teachings, or has it restated something blindingly obvious in the most convoluted and disturbing way possible?
Whatever, I'm going to give them one bonkers analogy for free and press ahead. I got to the bottom of the page and was offered a choice between “Unity” and “Goodness”; I chose Unity. Here we go:
“Is there any kind of love that does not inherently aim toward the goal of unity? Let’s start with a simple example: Ed “loves” potatoes.”
I feel like by inserting the ominous quotation marks around the word “loves”, the USCCB has automatically made this a not-simple example, but let's move on:
“Yet it’s difficult to imagine Ed “loving” potatoes without ever actually eating potatoes. That’s because his love for potatoes is a desire for them to be present to him in a certain way or mode—specifically, in a culinary mode (i.e. eating). This is a very limited kind of unity, because Ed only shares the aspect of his being that relates to eating. The potato obviously never gets acquainted with Ed’s intellectual side or his musical preferences. But if Ed had a way of loving potatoes that doesn’t involve eating, would that count as a kind of love that doesn’t will unity? Maybe he has an admittedly odd hobby of collecting potato-themed artwork. Has he found a way to love the food without it being present to him?”
What the fuck is happening? I'm really trying to do more than just show you the text of the website and yell “what the fuck is happening,” but on the other hand, what the fuck is happening! What is this! Why would you write this! What possible utility do you think this would have for anyone! The potato never gets acquainted with his musical tastes? Is there some world where you explain how the ideal relationship is one where Ed can eat a potato prepared any way he likes, as long as they share their Radiohead album rankings with each other first?***
That potato discussion comes in the middle of a comparison to a long-distance couple deciding whether to get engaged, so best I can tell, the argument that the USCCB is trying to make with Ed the Abusive Father and Potato Aesthete (same guy!) is this: you don't really “love” potatoes if you don't eat them, because that is not the fullness of the experience that God created us to have with potatoes, just like you don't really “love” a human being if you're not open to the creation of new life with them, not equally open to the unitive and procreative dimensions of sexual intercourse. And if you are gay or otherwise queer - if you are not living in accord with God's plan for your love, as the bishops have laid it out - the church wants to “accompany” you with love and mercy, as long as you understand that you are signing up for a lifetime of celibacy since any sexual activity on your part would be gravely sinful; as is the case whenever the church communicates this to gay people, the “Congratulations!” is implied.
What about infertile couples? Since they're, uh, incapable of eating potatoes because, uh, their mouths don't work, does that mean the church doesn't approve of their love? Well, Love Means More says “NO.” in big bold letters, but I don't have any more details because, again, they haven't finished the website yet:
Okay, so the USCCB is very bad at explaining the teachings of the Catholic church. This is not breaking news, although “explaining the teachings of the Catholic church” is perhaps the exact on-paper job of a bishop and you'd kind of hope they would be better at it. But whatever. It's a stupid fragment of a website where the bishops wrote down how bad they are at explaining things, and people aren't going to read it. But we know where it all leads, because it turns out that the bishops have written that down, too.
In late 2022, the USCCB's chair of the Religious Freedom committee - my best friend Tim Dolan - and their chair of the chairman on the Laity/Marriage/Family Life/Youth committee - my other best friend Bob Barron - wrote to Congress urging them to vote down the “Respect for Marriage Act”. The reasoning, as stated in the letter, was that the Catholic church, through all of its diocesan organs, runs a ton of social service agencies that receive federal funding in order to run foster agencies and adoption agencies and housing assistance agencies and shelters for migrants and similar things that kind of patch the gaping holes in our social safety net. But imagine the horrors that these agencies could endure if the RFM Act passed, as articulated by Dolan and Barron:
“Faith-based foster and adoption care agencies could be forced to place children with same-sex couples
Faith-based housing providers could be forced to treat same-sex couples as married for the purposes of housing placement
Faith-based social service agencies serving immigrants could be forced to treat same-sex couples as married for the purposes of housing and other services
Religious organizations could be forced to hire and retain staff who publicly repudiate the organizations’ beliefs about marriage
Wedding vendors (bakers, florists, website designers, etc.) could be forced to participate in same-sex weddings
Faith-based groups could be shut out of working with HHS to provide foster care to unaccompanied alien children and unaccompanied refugee minors.
Religious organizations could be forced to treat employees’ same-sex civil marriages as valid for the purposes of providing spousal benefits.”
I said that explaining the teachings of the Catholic church was the basic on-paper job of a bishop, but the above is a large part of what the bishops actually do: they direct how agencies like these receive and give out money and resources. Housing agencies decide who gets the help they need to finally get into a stable living situation, and if they're Catholic agencies, the bishops lay out the guardrails for who they are and aren’t allowed to help and how the money gets dealt out. The bishops lay out the guardrails for whether a child can get placed for adoption or foster care, and with whom they are allowed to be placed. There are not as many resources in the church as there used to be, but there are still a lot, and the money and time and buildings that go to help those in need, or to compensate those doing the help, are controlled, for lack of a better term, autocratically. The bishop can have people advise him on these decisions, but ultimately those decisions are his, and if his diocese doesn’t like it, there’s not much that they can do about it, because nobody can fire or even reprimand a bishop except for the Pope (who very rarely reprimands bishops, although when he does it’s usually very funny).
And managing these resources involves, very clearly, decisions that can have life-or-death implications. And it's not great to see two very prominent bishops write to Congress to make it clear that if a gay couple wants help from a Catholic housing agency, the bishops would rather not help them and instead just say “hey sorry guys, you're having the wrong kind of sex, hope your don't die of exposure.” It makes you wonder why we have bishops in charge of this at all, why we're going to have them be in charge of the church's charity when they will publicly and repeatedly say “it's really important to us that we help people, hey just to be clear there are people we definitely don't want to help”. The bishops also run networks of Catholic schools in every diocese, and they will publicly and repeatedly say “it's really important to us that we educate children, hey just to be clear there are children we definitely don't want to educate,” a belief that directly affects who gets an education and who gets shoved into conversion therapy.
From the outside, this looks like cruelty or bigotry, but from the inside, you know that the bishops are arguing this based on the millennia-old teachings of the church. There is a sound theological tradition justifying the bishops’ choices when they make these serious, sometimes life-or-death decisions on who the church can house or place with a family or educate or help. I think that when we Catholics rush to criticize the bishops for making what appear to be cruel decisions that will hurt people, like literally hurt them, what we should aspire to do is sit down and ask them “can you explain to me why you're doing this? Can you teach me the Catholic view on this issue, explain it to me in layman's terms, so I can better understand this decision that really feels counter to everything I know about treating people with compassion and respecting their dignity and giving a preferential option to the poor?” The problem is that if we actually did that, they would respond with this: “Let’s start with a simple example: Ed “loves” potatoes.”
It took me a long time to outgrow the thing that every Catholic has to outgrow: the idea that when the bishops say and do something that seems horrible or cruel, you have to grant them some level of deference and think “well, maybe they know something that I don't, maybe I'm just a bad Catholic”. Sure, begging Congress for the freedom to discriminate against gay people, in late 2022, seems extremely bad, but the bishops have certainly studied this issue longer than I have, they're all very learned men and I'm just some jackass with a stupid blog. And then those learned men put up a website like Love Means More: Robert Barron signed the letter to Congress in his capacity as the chair of the USCCB committee on Laity/Marriage/Family Life/Youth, which is also the committee responsible for the Love Means More site. The same people who took the action (advocated to Congress and set priorities for Catholic social services) showed us, directly, their justification (wrote at length about what it means to really “love” potatoes). So when we see each individual step of the thought process of these learned men, we realize: oh, okay, maybe I'm just a bad Catholic, but I'm certainly better than this, and I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to think they're wrong about this if this is the only explanation they've got, and clearly they're all idiots, and if they expect me to use these talking points with another human being, they must think I'm an idiot too.
Now, as I said earlier, I honestly don't think the bishops expect any Catholic to actually say these things to another human being. I think the bishops, and those who agree with their teachings on sexuality and how those teachings translate into meaningful decisions on who gets to live in a shelter and who gets to live with foster parents, need to tell themselves things like this to sleep at night. You can't work in a job where people beg you for housing assistance, tell some of those desperate people to fuck off because you don't approve of the kind of sex they're having, and not lose your mind without some sort of justification. But Love Means More tells us everything they have in the way of justification, laid out in what they think will be the most rhetorically effective approach, and it's all ineffective and insincere and insane and just absolutely hollow. When you peek behind the curtain, there's not some deep insidious hatred or bigotry, certainly nothing beyond what everyone could already see before peeking behind the curtain. But there's just nothing behind the curtain at all, and the bishops fight tooth and nail to hoard their resources from those whom they see as undeserving, all in the name of that nothingness.
“Well, the bonkers stuff on Love Means More isn't really how the bishops would explain these things to people in real life” yes it is! This is an official website of the USCCB! You link to it from the main USCCB website, from the committee page with Robert Barron’s headshot on it! This is what they're okay with the public seeing! People had multiple Zoom meetings to work on this! They put this website in the budget and paid someone money to make this! They think that this message, presented in exactly this way, is so important to communicate to people that they have an obviously unfinished website up and running with it! Whether they're trying to justify their miserable policy preferences to themselves or to the public, this is all the ammunition they have to make those arguments! This is the best they've got!
I’d just ask that you remember this, when you hear the bishops try to talk policy, or politics, or anything that affects who gets resources or education or housing or sacramental ministry or anything else from the church: these are the same guys who tried to answer “What is Love?” and ended up looking less like Augustine and Aquinas and more like Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan in that SNL sketch, vapidly grinning and bobbing their heads while some voice in the background begs them “don't hurt me”.