c. 2006 Religion News Service

PARSIPPANY, N.J. _ As a seminarian, the Rev. Frank Agresti played devil’s advocate with the question of what the Catholic Church would say to a faithful same-sex couple who had won recognition from the government but craved the same from the church.

Now the priest at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church who once posed that problem to his teacher needs to be the one with the answers. And he doesn’t pretend to have them.

“It’s a tough one. It’s a really tough one,” he said after celebrating Sunday Mass here. “Their love for each other is a valid love. … How does that fit in with God’s plan? I don’t know.”

In the wake of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Oct. 25 ruling on gay rights, religious leaders like Agresti are juggling definitions along with dogma. With the court granting same-sex partners all the rights and benefits of heterosexual married couples but leaving the “marriage” title for legislators to decide, the term’s religious weight could gain significance as lawmakers delve into the language.

“We feel that marriage is a religious institution, and any time the state attempts to monkey with it, it’s catastrophic,” said Frank Sforza, pastor of Trinity Pentecostal Holiness Fellowship in Cranford. “What the state of New Jersey is trying to do is soften the impact by giving it a different name.”

The court’s ruling prompted a mix of angry and measured reactions from various religious officials. Newark’s Catholic archbishop, John J. Myers, predicted “intense political pressure and legal attack” on religious communities that stand by their own definitions of marriage.

But as the mood inside St. Peter’s showed, even subscribing to a faith with clear standards doesn’t make the semantics, or moral distinctions, clear-cut.

The Catholic Church is firm in its teachings on sexual orientation: Homosexuality is an “objectively disordered” condition, same-sex intercourse is a sin and gay marriages are emphatically banned. New guidelines that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plans to vote on this month include ways to promote gays’ acceptance within the church community, but reaffirm these principles.

“We feel that if two people of the same sex want a marriage, it’s not a marriage,” said the Rev. Rick Hardy, also of the Parsippany church. “The most important part of marriage is procreation of children.”

Yet parishioners like Thomas and Margaret Mitchell _ who renewed their vows recently after 50 years of marriage _ said they hesitate to judge same-sex couples with the same level of commitment.

“I’m a little biased about it because I’m a Catholic, but if they think it is (love), then it’s their right,” said Margaret Mitchell, 74.

“God never really said anything as far as one man, one woman,” said Chad Dalzell, 24, another lifelong Catholic. “They’re still people.”

Such diverse interpretations make Agresti’s job more complex, he said, but also more significant.

Agresti, who is awaiting the bishops’ vote for guidance, said he broached the court’s decision with a group of prospective Catholics this week to gauge their perceptions of the church’s position. But they answered him with more questions.

The quandary he’s faced since seminary persists. Still, he hopes lawmakers will look to religious leaders for guidance over the next few months.

“We definitely have an obligation to be a voice in society to transform it for the better,” Agresti said.

(Claire Heininger writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END HEININGER