Symbols matter

The Catholic Register, 27 May 2021

A flag is not a sacrament, but the Catholic sacramental imagination wants to know what symbols mean.

Several Ontario Catholic school boards have decided to fly the Pride flag during the month of June. Many officials don’t want to talk very much about it; witness the briefest of stories which appeared in this newspaper.

I would like to talk more about it. Or at least ask a question that might be answered more or less completely, more or less clearly. What does flying the Pride flag mean?

That needs to be clarified. For example, nobody, despite its name, thinks that it is an endorsement of pride, traditionally first in the taxonomy of deadly sins. A Catholic school would no more fly that sort of pride flag than it would a sloth flag or a gluttony flag. 

The Pride flag is about a different sort of pride, pride in one’s identity, like being from Peterborough or Belleville. But it’s not really about hometown pride, either, is it? Otherwise the same flag would not fly in many different cities and countries. So what is it a symbol of?

Symbols can mean more than one thing, but the meaning does have to be specified. For example, the altar at Holy Mass is both a place of sacrifice and a mensa, a table at which we gather for a meal. It has multiple but specific significations. 

It is not, for example, a grand ceremonial shelf upon which to display the various medals of the deceased, as was done at the funeral of the late Duke of Edinburgh. They looked splendid, but it was (unintentionally) a literal desecration, taking a sacred place and using it for worldly honours. (That’s why, by the way, I refuse to permit government wedding licences to be placed upon the altar of God.)

Symbols are at the very heart of our faith, symbols which accomplish what they signify. A flag is not a sacrament, but the Catholic sacramental imagination wants to know what symbols mean. So flags are important.

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