“Authenticity” has been the big thing, on and off, for decades. Being “authentic” meant being non-conforming, “true to yourself” – which usually translated to indulging your base instincts absent reasoning about them.  Christian cultures and “society” were the arch-enemies of “authenticity.”  We were all Rousseaueans now, standing up as individuals, defining our “own concept of existence, of meaning, [and] the universe.” (Justice Kennedy, in Casey) Which mostly meant: sexually.

Such was a dominant view of authenticity but, arguably, it was inauthentic.  It was not my “self” as much as my Freudian id identified as my “self.”

The philosopher Germain Grisez spoke of a more authentic “authenticity” as one of the eight basic goods of the human person.  (Over time Grisez shifted his “basic goods” around a bit; the best version may be found in his book with Russell Shaw Beyond the New Morality).

“Authenticity” was one of the four goods involving human relationships.  They begin with “integrity,” integrating all the parts of the person – emotions, instincts, reason, will – into one unified direction consistent with our ultimate end.  Only when we’re not divided within ourselves could we be “authentic,” i.e., reveal to the world what is inside as a unified whole, not a contradictory welter of instincts, passions, feelings, and slogans.

Once “what you see is what you get” inside and outside, a person can enter into relationships with other human persons, i.e., “friendship.”  And only then can persons enter into relations with the fulness of Personhood, i.e., God, which is “religion.”

That kind of authenticity is hard.  It’s not the “authenticity” of “take-me-as-I-feel-like-it,” because that claim could be inauthentic to my true self.

Why talk about “authenticity” at all?  Because there are many efforts to use selective “authenticity,” to advance bad moral positions.

For example, Patrick Healy, recently writing in the New York Times about Fiducia supplicans, the Declaration allowing the blessing of gay “couples”: “I Know My Mother Loved Me.  The Church Could Have Helped Her Accept Me.”

Fiducia embodies the current ecclesiastical mania about “welcoming,” which ignores how Jesus “welcomed” people to the Kingdom: “Repent!”  Metanoiete literally means “to turn” – from sin to God – which equivocating “welcomes” avoid addressing.

Everyone is given a blessing at the end of Mass, irrespective of their moral state.  But it’s a blessing to go forth during the upcoming week and be better.  No dissonance between your integrity – why you are here – and your authenticity.

But two persons who present as a “couple” living in an “irregular” union – two homosexuals or “divorced and remarried” people – are inauthentic and in an ambiguous situation.  There is a dissonance between what the Church teaches and how they present themselves to be blessed – witness the tortured efforts to parse out “individuals” and “couples” in some new ecclesiastical math wherein 1 + 1 ≠2.  Those raise the question of “authenticity” on the part of the Church.

Healy’s article practices selective authenticity.  The gist of his argument is that, had the Church previously been more “accepting” of active homosexuals, others – like his mother – would have been more “accepting” too.  His mother didn’t express “joy” when he announced that he had proposed to another man.  “She never visited our home.”

He began to question whether she was the “brave” woman he imagined her to be in his childhood.  And he blames the Church until Fiducia for complicity, posing a hopeful question: “Would this new blessing help. . . bridge the tension [between]. . .greater acceptance in society but condemnation or disrespect in our own families?”

Where to start?

First, the Church’s mission is not to promote your lifestyle but to put every lifestyle under Gospel scrutiny, calling for conversion where it is needed.  The person who thinks the Church’s mission is to declare “I’m OK, you’re OK” is mistaken about both Church and mission.

He’s mistaken about Church, because the Church exists to foster life modeled on the full truth of the Gospel, not select visions of “acceptance” disconnected from Christian morality.

He’s mistaken about mission, too, because the Christian mission is that neither you nor I are “OK,” because we are all sinners. But, by accepting the demands and the way of life of the Gospel, in Jesus Christ, we are made OK.  That’s very different from expecting the Church to be your personal cheering section.

Second, while the author undoubtedly believes in authenticity, I am not so sure he understands its demands.  He frames his vision of himself as “authentic.”  But those who require others – individuals and institutions – to affirm their “authenticity” are denying to those others what they themselves demand.  I have no doubt Healy’s mother loved him.  That’s what parents do.  But that does not necessarily entail that Healy’s mother had to accept all his choices, behavior, or lifestyle.  That’s not parental love.

Parents love children whose decisions and lives may disappoint them.  Sometimes parents even think those decisions and lives are self-destructive.  The child may not agree, but the child has no ground to demand a parent surrender his or her “authenticity” to become another voice of affirmation in the chorus.  Parents have a right, sometimes even a duty, to sound a dissenting note; that’s part of their authenticity.

It’s especially a part of their authenticity when it arises from the depths and wellsprings of faith.

A parent is uniquely aware of a child’s identity, even before that child has any conscious thoughts about it himself.  A parent, in fact, helps to confer an identity, incorporating this child into a family and a history, giving a name to a person whose sex has already been established by his biology.  A parent, arguably, may know a child better than the child himself.  And home is sometimes the only place where someone is really told the truth.

So while you are entitled to your parent’s and the Church’s love, you are not entitled to compromise their authenticity in the name of your “acceptance.”  That would be to make the proud claim that you are more “authentic” than others.