A “shell game” is a sleight-of-hand where, ostensibly, something is put under one of three shells that are then rapidly rotated, the player having to guess under which shell that thing is now located. This game is akin to the real-world confidence game named by the idiom “bait-and-switch.” Which brings us to Fr. James Martin, S.J.’s urging Catholics to celebrate “Pride” month (see here).

The connection between the games and Martin came to me yesterday on the Washington Metro. DC is currently hosting “WorldPride 2025” and, despite changes in the White House, the local governance — including the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority that runs Metro — has not changed. On the platform was a rainbow poster with the slogan, “we all ride together!” Well, that’s true. Which raises the next question: What does that have to do with “sexual orientation”? If sex is a private and individual matter, what possible role does it play in taking a subway? Vending machines do not ask you where you are on the “LGBTTIQQ2SA+” spectrum. It’s not a question on travel pass applications. Metro Police, if they’re around, don’t make checks. As far as I know, they don’t poll rider satisfaction based on that spectrum. So, other than a non-sequitur, given that “we all ride together,” who cares about your “sexuality”? What does that have to do with the price of a one-way, non-discounted fare? What relevance does it have to a commuter railroad? Absolutely nothing.

Metro doesn’t feel compelled to put up an October poster for “Polish Heritage Month,” with Tadeusz Kościuszko and Kazimierz Pulaski in silhouette, announcing “we all ride together!” Pulaski, after all, was a foreigner (and we all know how the “xenophobic mega-MAGA” types detest foreigners) who died in the battle for American independence. Maybe that “community” doesn’t feel included? But nobody cares if a Polish-American is riding with them on the Silver Line to Largo. Then why is it vital for WMATA to tell us “diverse” sexual orientations are in the car?

It’s not vital, unless you want to advance an agenda. It has nothing to do with Metro’s mission to get everybody, regardless of whom they sleep with, from point A to point B safely. Rather, it’s a kind of shell game, intended to link something noncontroversial — “we all ride together” — to a controversial social policy program and to pretend there’s no controversy about it.

Same with Fr. Martin’s paean to Pride month.

Fr. Martin says Catholics should “celebrate Pride” because homosexual persons are “beloved children of God.” It’s especially important for Catholics to do that because “much of the rejection that LGBTQ people have faced has been motivated by Christianity—at least what many people think Christianity teaches.” No doubt Martin thinks it’s a sexual teaching of contempt, the remedy for which is “to mark Pride Month and remind our LGBTQ friends that they are welcome in what is, after all, their church, too.” This is like Metro’s “we all ride together.” The argument doesn’t cohere, but it’s a great shell game.

Yes, we are all “beloved children of God,” and the Church is our “church, too.” Yes, homosexual persons — like any other persons — have a right to respect and safety. Yes, the Church has taught that all persons have a right to respect and safety. But Martin wants to use “respect” to smuggle in not respect for persons but for actions and lifestyles that, regardless of what certain Jesuits think Christianity doesn’t teach, are sinful. Given the extended philosophical training Jesuits receive as part of their formation, James Martin cannot not know he is making logical leaps that are not necessarily entailed by the argument. He may want them to, but, as my Momma used to tell me, “wishin’ don’t make it so.”

Like Metro, the Church is open to everybody, regardless of sexual orientation. That is its mission. And, to the extent that some might think it doesn’t, it needs to correct that perception. But the Church’s mission is not to accompany actions, lifestyles, and/or wrong choices. That is true across the board, and not just in relationship to the Church’s sexual ethics. In that sense, Pope Francis was right: the Church is a “hospital.” Her message is: “I’m not OK, you’re not OK, but we can be OK in Christ.” And what it means to “be OK in Christ” is what the Church is charged to teach authoritatively, and has.

The Church on earth has no other members except recovering patients, because — apart from Jesus and Mary — every human being is morally ill. That means the Church has to dispense her remedies, first of which for everyone is conversion, metanoia, changing one’s ways, literally, “how one thinks” about things. But what James Martin wants is for the Church to change, to tailor her therapies to his preferences (which he wants to declare as Christ’s). It’s the equivalent of telling a person with predispositions for cancer, “you should discern whether or not to continue your two-pack-a-day habit but, after having discerned, ‘who am I to judge’ you?”

Conflating ideas to smuggle in an agenda is not just bad logic. It’s a shell game.