Openly gay and Catholic

[pearl]

If they reverse course, it is tantamount to an admission that they've simply been wrong about this issue.

Or a deeper understanding of the nature of homosexuality. I think this is apparent in the decision that homosexual orientation is not by choice.

 

[Left Coast]

Or a deeper understanding of the nature of homosexuality. I think this is apparent in the decision that homosexual orientation is not by choice.

If your deeper understanding leads you to reverse course on a basic moral question, it's time to just say: we were wrong.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm aware. But no amount of "development of doctrine" can plausibly undo the teaching that homosexuality is unnatural and any same sex sexual behavior is inherently sinful. If they reverse course, it is tantamount to an admission that they've simply been wrong about this issue.

They do care about doctrinal consistency, but they care about survival of the Church more.

If it ever gets to a point where refusing to accept homosexuality would mean the Church dwindling into irrelevance or losing a significant amount of its assets, it will come around... as it has on many other issues.

... and when it does this, it'll come up with some rationalization of how the sudden change isn't really a change in doctrine.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

If your deeper understanding leads you to reverse course on a basic moral question, it's time to just say: we were wrong.

This is something that frustrated me to no end about the Church. Having "deeper understandings" necessitates being wrong.

 

[Ella S.]

Really? Is that why he thinks the priests and nuns are forbidden to marry or have sex? To have a more spiritual relationship with God? Forgive my cynicism, but that's not credible.

I've heard Andrew Sullivan several times on television. He's otherwise a pretty sound thinker politically and when articulating his case for gay rights, but in this area, he loses his skepticism and with it his ability to think rationally and compassionately about homosexuality. He accepts his Church's judgment that he is a sinner if he's not celibate (or in a heterosexual marriage) and tries to find a reason why that's good and wholesome.

This is a faith that has done every other thing in its power to see that every fertile womb is generating another baby at all times. Do you doubt it? Think about what your rules would be to accomplish that. Let's see - every young maiden needs to get married at the age of fertility, she must not withhold sex, they must not use the rhythm method, masturbate, or have gay sex, nobody gets a divorce, and when technology made it feasible, they were never to have elective sterilization, use birth control, or get abortions. Yet the priests and nuns are told to not partake. Is it really so hard to see why? The church doesn't want to have to support their families or put them in homes, and there will be no inheritance for any kids.



He wants a more coherent position from the Church? "Why not a teaching about the nature of homosexuality and what its good is?" I think I answered that.

He wants them to see homosexuality as natural, but there's nothing good or natural about human homosexuality in Christianity, and they don't respect the beasts. It's a sin that offends a good god, and is called an abomination. But he thinks they have good will for him, and together they should strive to understand the place of homosexuality in nature and mankind. It's amazing to read that from him. He's rational and tolerant everywhere else I've heard him speak.

Incidentally, many of those rules to pressure every womb to be open for business every year are still in play even though the world is presently overpopulated. We still see young women who don't want to have children being pressured by their families and peers to get out there and begin cranking out some children. We still see them fighting against abortion, fighting LGBTQ, and threatening to rescind same-sex marriage and contraception if they can. Catholics still try to prevent divorce among Catholics and to prevent Catholics marrying non-Catholics without the non-Catholic becoming Catholic.

I think it's also worth pointing out that this isn't reproduction for the simple sake of reproduction. If that were the case, the way they go about it is deeply misguided and harmful, but the underlying sentiment would be somewhat understandable from an evolutionary perspective.

No, "be fruitful and multiply" is a religious commandment that's meant to be paired with the commands to evangelize non-Christians into conversion.

Mainstream Christianity, especially Catholicism (but also Orthodoxy and much of fundamentalism) is designed in a way to maximize its own membership and funnel the money and political support of that membership to clerical leaders.

Follow the historical doctrines of the Proto-Orthodox Church, which later split into Catholicism and Orthodoxy and then, from Catholicism, came Protestantism. You will see how there was an organized movement to squash out opposing Christian sects, like the so-called Gnostics and the Marcionites. That's the root of the greed.

It only became more corrupt over time as it gained more power, which we see demonstrated the clearest by the crusades and the inquisition.

The reason Christianity is the most popular religion in the world is because it's the oldest surviving religion of spiritual imperialism. That's ultimately what the Catholic Church represents underneath its feel-good imagery and all of the rhetoric about a greater good they constantly undermine with their actions.

It's all about greed. It's been about greed for centuries now.

 

[Trailblazer]

The reason Christianity is the most popular religion in the world is because it's the oldest surviving religion of spiritual imperialism.

One reason Christianity is the largest religion in he world is because of all the efforts that were made by Christians to carry the gospel message far and wide by doing missionary work all around the world. Christianity is also appealing to many people because most people like to believe God is loving and they like to believe they are saved and going to heaven. Thus Christianity has a certain emotional appeal that other religions don't have, and given most people act on emotions rather than reason, you can fill in the blanks.

 

[Ella S.]

One reason Christianity is the largest religion in he world is because of all the efforts that were made by Christians to carry the gospel message far and wide by doing missionary work all around the world.

Precisely my point. This is what lead to many of the crusades, where pagans were brutally murdered en masse for not converting. It's what lead to the mass graves of Native Americans in Canada. It's largely responsible for the destabilization of much of Africa.

To this day, missionaries go out and continue to damage communities in foreign lands, often denying locals resources they need unless they convert.

It's imperialism.

 

[Palehorse]

This is an article from an interview of one who is Catholic and gay. But I think it applies to all Christian religions and the faith and moral dilemma many are faced with. Please keep in mind these are not my words.

There is a basic contradiction. I completely concede that, at one level. At another level—and I confronted this, actually, with my first boyfriend, who was also Roman Catholic. When we had a fight one day, he said: “Do you really believe that what we are doing is wrong? Because if you do, I can’t go on with this. And yet you don’t want to challenge the church’s teaching on this, or leave the church.” And of course I was forced to say I don’t believe, at some level, I really do not believe that the love of one person for another and the commitment of one person to another, in the emotional construct which homosexuality dictates to us—I know in my heart of hearts that cannot be wrong. I know that there are many things within homosexual life that can be wrong—just as in heterosexual life they can be wrong. There are many things in my sexual and emotional life that I do not believe are spiritually pure, in any way. It is fraught with moral danger, but at its deepest level it struck me as completely inconceivable—from my own moral experience, from a real honest attempt to understand that experience—that it was wrong.

I experienced coming out in exactly the way you would think. I didn’t really express any homosexual emotions or commitments or relationships until I was in my early 20’s, partly because of the strict religious upbringing I had, and my commitment to my faith. It was not something I blew off casually. I struggled enormously with it. But as soon as I actually explored the possibility of human contact within my emotional and sexual makeup—in other words, as soon as I allowed myself to love someone—all the constructs the church had taught me about the inherent disorder seemed just so self-evidently wrong that I could no longer find it that problematic. Because my own moral sense was overwhelming, because I felt, through the experience of loving someone or being allowed to love someone, an enormous sense of the presence of God—for the first time in my life.

It is bizarre that something can occur naturally and have no natural end. I think it’s a unique doctrine, isn’t it? The church now concedes—although it attempts to avoid conceding it in the last couple of letters—but it has essentially conceded, and does concede in the new Universal Catechism….
That homosexuality is, so far as one can tell, an involuntary condition.

Yes, and that it is involuntary. The church has conceded this: Some people seem to be constitutively homosexual. And the church has also conceded compassion. Yet the expression of this condition, which is involuntary and therefore sinless—because if it is involuntary, obviously no sin attaches—is always and everywhere sinful! Well, I could rack my brains for an analogy in any other Catholic doctrine that would come up with such a notion. Philosophically, it is incoherent, fundamentally incoherent. People are born with all sorts of things. We are born with original sin, but that is in itself sinful—an involuntary condition, but it is sin.

You see it even in the documents. The documents will say, on the one hand compassion, on the other hand objective disorder. A document that can come up with this phrase, “not unjust discrimination,” is contorted because the church is going in two different directions at once with this doctrine. On the one hand, it is recognizing the humanity of the individual being; on the other, it is not letting that human being be fully human.

Technically, the church is asking gay people to live celibately.
Right. But let’s take that for a minute. Celibacy for the priesthood, which is an interesting argument and one with which I have a certain sympathy, is in order to unleash those deep emotional forces for love of God. Is the church asking this of gay people? I mean, if the church were saying to gay people, “You are special to us, and your celibacy is in order for you to have this role and that role and this final end,” or if the church had a doctrine of an alternative final end for gay people, then it might make more sense. It would be saying God made gay people for this, not for marriage or for children or for procreation or for emotional pairing, but He made gay people in order to—let’s say—build beautiful cathedrals or be witnesses to the world in some other way. But the church has no positive doctrine on this at all. You see, that would be a coherent position at some level—that, for some mysterious reason, God made certain people with full sexual and emotional capability and required them to sublimate that capability into other areas of life.

But, you see, I think the church, at the highest levels, does not believe this. I think that on this doctrine, more than many others actually, the church is suffering from a crisis of its own internal conviction. Because homosexuality is not a new subject for the Roman Catholic Church. It is not a distant subject. It is at the very heart of the hierarchy, so every attempt to deal with it is terrifying. But the fact of the matter is, if the church is to operate in the modern world, the conspiracy of silence is ending. So something has to be said. And the something that has to be said has to be coherent, or it will be exposed, as incoherence is always exposed.

What are the good and positive elements in the Catholic tradition that could lead us to a more coherent position?
Natural law! Here is something [homosexuality] that seems to occur spontaneously in nature, in all societies and civilizations. Why not a teaching about the nature of homosexuality and what its good is. How can we be good? Teach us. How does one inform the moral lives of homosexuals? The church has an obligation to all its faithful to teach us how to live and how to be good—which is not merely dismissal, silence, embarrassment or a “unique” doctrine on one’s inherent disorder. Explain it. How does God make this? Why does it occur? What should we do? How can the doctrine of Christian love be applied to homosexual people as well?
Interview: Andrew Sullivan on being openly gay and Catholic | America Magazine

To be a catholic is to study catholicism...isms are teachings....Catholicism teaches homosexuality is not the way to get closer to GOD....

 

[Trailblazer]

Catholicism teaches homosexuality is not the way to get closer to GOD....

I don't believe that sex in general is a way to get closer to God. I figured that out a number of years ago and since then I decided sex was an impediment between myself and God so I gave it up altogether.

My religion teaches that we were created to know and worship God. Since sex plays no part in this I consider it a waste of time during this final leg of my journey.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Catholicism teaches homosexuality is not the way to get closer to GOD....

And? It also (in a way) teaches that drinking and smoking isn't the way to get closer to god. Or that playing video games isn't the way to get closer to god. If it's not a part of the catechism, it's not a way closer to god. That doesn't make it bad.

 

[DNB]

Acknowledging homosexuality as involuntary is hardly cause for celebration. One can imagine a laundry list of involuntary condition, many being unquestionably bad.

The point is: homosexuality is atypical - not abnormal - and the homosexual is no more deserving of fire and brimstone than is the person with green eyes. Any "scripture" that suggests otherwise is simple wrong.

Homosexuality is not only abnormal, but also perverse and an abomination in God's eyes - for did He not have a distinct plan in mind when He created them man and woman?
A man has a penis and a woman has a vagina, which aspect of this confounds people enough that they claim that it's an insignificant distinction? When, rather, it's an inherent, and therefore fundamental , delineation of what the boundaries are in an amorous relationship.

Aren't there enough depraved acts of sex and mental disorders in this world, that anyone actually has to question the source of homosexual activity - unsound thinking and emotions.

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (Leviticus 18:22)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).

 

[Trailblazer]

Homosexuality is not only abnormal, but also perverse and an abomination in God's eyes - for did He not have a distinct plan in mind when He created them man and woman?

Yes, it's called procreation.

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (Leviticus 18:22)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).

Some Christians and Jews just ignore the parts of the Bible they don't like. The problem with that is that if these parts of the Bible are wrong then there is no logical reason to believe other parts of the Bible are right so this opens up a Pandora's Box.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Homosexuality is not only abnormal, but also perverse and an abomination in God's eyes

BAAAAAARF if it's such an abomination in his eyes then let's hear him say anything about it, not these endless prudish puritanical talking heads.

did He not have a distinct plan in mind when He created them man and woman?

Nope. Clearly evident in that it took two tries with the Base Downgrade from Lilith the Boss to Eve the Rib, as well as having the big Self Destruct fruit in paradise, and then the massive Hard Reset of the Whoopsie Flood. No plan, only genocide.

A man has a penis and a woman has a vagina,

And sometimes people have both! Where is your god then?

Aren't there enough depraved acts of sex and mental disorders in this world, that anyone actually has to question the source of homosexual activity - unsound thinking and emotions.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the beam in your own?"

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (Leviticus 18:22)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).

Yeah, those aren't what Leviticus said in originality. That you have to rely on twisted and shoddy translation says a lot about the strength of your "eew yucky" stance.

 

[rational experiences]

The working order men women were equal and celibate. No hierarchy as brothers sisters...wore robes that covered sexuality.

Holy human accepts all human brother or sister is mutual not based on sexuality. Body Covered.

In the order I administrate. The state legal law human life. Church established first.

As parents were virgins first. Brother sister hence are first.

All babies now born given by law sin of sex DNA inherited.

So we are in topic by law of gods earth the above below stated nature the balances changed.

As said the medical position church was built founded on gods rock below. As previously it was altered and it's holy body mass left. As did its garden.

Ice age kept nature rooted underground. Nuclear decimated all saviour ice laws. The teaching.

Hence all life nature garden supported had changed. As identified.

As the nature garden covered earths body nakedness.

Man's nuclear star technology eradicated the gardens body off the face of earth.

So now life biology Inherited changed human laws...genetics. From changes above below.

Thus the church would not allow any human changed by sin such as immoral humans any church entry. To work.

Instead they were asked to dedicate abstinence of sex as proof their morality mind conscious spirit was pure itself.

As brother sister not mother father were first in nature. Virgins celibate.

Therefore it asked of a higher human morality of baby humans than first parents.

Reasoned all babies are born by sex owning exhibiting sexual abherrations.

Those who worked for the church had to remain pure in mind to not abuse the changed family life as a judgement owned by the conscious body inheritance. Why they wouldn't employ homosexual men.

Is history the organisation of service.

As in church all bodies are covered and sex wasn't considered inside the church. Church as a holy healing place for mind and body. Hence if men attended you did so in your own cloth...as did women. By politeness....and acceptance of origin law.

Not as a changed gender. As in gods house your gender was given by nature...biology. The exact reason.

Abstinence of sex...a truth.

Was an actual organisational condition.

The judge pope father was introduced as holy father for church legal proceeding when next star fall emerged....changed humanity again so all teachings of first church gone.

Pope position then infers only when life is star attacked am I not present.

You hence ask the pope are you a non sexual father or a homosexual as the end of all life on earth symbol. No pope in judgements star hit end.

Father pope hence knew and was afraid to accept any homosexuals position. Should be celibate his own proof identity.

 

[Ashoka]

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (Leviticus 18:22)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).

Do you think I should be put to death, DNB?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Homosexuality is not only abnormal, but also perverse and an abomination in God's eyes - for did He not have a distinct plan in mind when He created them man and woman?

I often wonder why God's plan should include the creation of those who so easily embrace the ugliest bigotry while rejecting science.

 

[Vinayaka]

Do you think I should be put to death, DNB?

I was going to ask the same thing. Perhaps he lives in one of these countries. Iran, Yemen among countries where being gay is punishable by death

It's truly sad. It should be cause to declare refugee status anywhere in the civilised world.

 

[pearl]

To be a catholic is to study catholicism...isms are teachings....Catholicism teaches homosexuality is not the way to get closer to GOD....

To be a Catholic is to have faith in God through Christ, that Christ is the 'sacrament' of God and the Church a 'sacrament' of Christ.

 

[pearl]

The point is: homosexuality is atypical - not abnormal - and the homosexual is no more deserving of fire and brimstone than is the person with green eyes. Any "scripture" that suggests otherwise is simple wrong.

Or maybe the fault to be found with the predisposition of either the author or the interpreter.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The point is: homosexuality is atypical - not abnormal - and the homosexual is no more deserving of fire and brimstone than is the person with green eyes. Any "scripture" that suggests otherwise is simple wrong.

Or maybe the fault to be found with the predisposition of either the author or the interpreter.

In other words: "Any "scripture" that suggests otherwise is simple wrong."