‘A Catholic case for same-sex marriage’

[Charlemagne_II]

april
**
Sorry my mistake, I was thinking of natural law in the wider sense and forgot that this forum - would have answers from the narrower catholic perspective. **

The word “Catholic” means universal … which is hardly narrow!

Returning to the original point of this thread, Sister Jeannine Gramick strikes me as typical of a person who needs lots of attention, even (and perhaps especially) when it is negative. I’ve known such people all my life. They are like little children who will misbehave and get smacked by their parents (which some kids prefer to being totally ignored.)

It cannot have escaped her attention that she has set her own authority above that of the Church. I am reminded of some of the last words said to have been uttered by the great Thomas Aquinas near death:

“Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against Thee. If anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance. Neither do I wish to be obstinate in my opinions, but if I have written anything erroneous … I submit all to the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from this life.”

Would that Sister Jeannine Gramick could be so humble.

 

[Bookcat]

Where can I get a copy of the ‘natural moral law’

I others have already provided you with information about the NML

Will and in an addition of this summary from the Compendium issued by Pope Benedict XVI

1. In what does the natural moral law consist?

1954-1960
1978-1979

The natural law which is inscribed by the Creator on the heart of every person consists in a participation in the wisdom and the goodness of God. It expresses that original moral sense which enables one to discern by reason the good and the bad. It is universal and immutable and determines the basis of the duties and fundamental rights of the person as well as those of the human community and civil law.

1. Is such a law perceived by everyone?

1960

Because of sin the natural law is not always perceived nor is it recognized by everyone with equal clarity and immediacy.

vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html

 

[Elizabeth502]

Where can I get a copy of the ‘natural moral law’

Inside a cleansed and open heart, into which it is inscribed, just as the ancient Jews knew Torah was inscribed on their hearts, and for which they regularly asked God for a cleansing of their hearts, to see His Law with clear vision and follow it with vigor.

When are hearts are polluted with secular confusion and a voracious attachment to worldly appetites and to the dominance of our Selves in contrast to Truth, Holy Natural Truth (natural law) is obscured from our faulty vision.

 

[aprilfloyd]

The natural law which is inscribed by the Creator on the heart of every person consists in a participation in the wisdom and the goodness of God. It expresses that original moral sense which enables one to discern by reason the good and the bad. It is universal and immutable and determines the basis of the duties and fundamental rights of the person as well as those of the human community and civil law.
]

What is the authority for that or proof? We don’t need to have religion to have morality? or law

 

[Elizabeth502]

What is the authority for that or proof? We don’t need to have religion to have morality? or law

Whether we are conscious of it or not, God is the source of all morality. Before there was organized religion, man sensed God, perceived God, knew God, and knew when he had done immoral things. Much of the stories of the Old Testament recount exactly that: man’s natural, immediate recognition of goodness and his natural, immediate recognition of evil. Goodness must have a source (absolute, consistent, and universally recognizable as True), and that source is whom we call God.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

april
**
We don’t need to have religion to have morality?**

Then where else would you get your morality?

Voltaire said it best in his essay On Atheism.

“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic."

 

[aprilfloyd]

Whether we are conscious of it or not, God is the source of all morality. Before there was organized religion, man sensed God, perceived God, knew God, and knew when he had done immoral things. Much of the stories of the Old Testament recount exactly that: man’s natural, immediate recognition of goodness and his natural, immediate recognition of evil. Goodness must have a source (absolute, consistent, and universally recognizable as True), and that source is whom we call God.

Hi Elizabeth,

I hear what you are saying but that cannot be proven, you are referencing the ‘catholic god’ other religions will differ and believe their god, others too that morality comes from man and not god - we don’t need a god to be good.

 

[aprilfloyd]

april
**
We don’t need to have religion to have morality?**

Then where else would you get your morality?

Charlemagne - you are not genuinely saying that you would be immoral if you did not believe in your god.

We have the capacity to be good, it is innately human. It would be an awful world if people were good because ‘they were told to be’ rather than because they chose it.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

april

**we don’t need a god to be good. **

But it sure helps!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

april

**We have the capacity to be good, it is innately human. **

There, you have just admitted it … the natural law!

But the natural law can be frustrated by false teachers, by our own proclivity to do evil, and by the machinations of the devil.

 

[aprilfloyd]

april
**
We don’t need to have religion to have morality?**

Then where else would you get your morality?

Voltaire said it best in his essay On Atheism.

“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic."

Voltaire makes a sweeping generalisation and shows a lack understanding of the confusion created by multiple faiths and gods.

We are all atheists as was Voltaire

 

[aprilfloyd]

april

**We have the capacity to be good, it is innately human. **

There, you have just admitted it … the natural law!

But the natural law can be frustrated by false teachers, by our own proclivity to do evil, and by the machinations of the devil.

I know about natural law - I studied law at school. It’s the catholic version that is confusing
and the belief that a deity created it and not man.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Voltaire was not an atheist. You have not read his essay On Atheism in which he roundly repudiates it.

How do you get the notion we are all atheists? Please elaborate. Are you in the right forum?

The Deity created everything, including the natural law.

 

[DexUK]

There is no gay gene. The key is found in early childhood and trauma.

Dr. Nicolosi

I did not say there was. Please do not put words into my mouth (or keyboard).

I don’t know what causes homosexuality. I suspect it is a mere fact of life. For those who are homosexual, it simply ‘is’.

I do know that next to no homosexual ever describes it as a ‘choice’. Even those who struggle with it and seek, more or less entirely in vain, to change themselves - they typically would describe it as a curse. If it were so obviously a choice, would they not simply be able to ‘choose’ to become heterosexual?

It is incontrovertible to anyone with eyes to see that homosexuality is not a voluntary thing. It is clearly involuntary and something over which the person who experiences it has no control, in the same way that a heterosexual has no control over their orientation.

What people have control over is their acts. Sexuality is not chosen or imposed upon a person by identifiable outside influences. It simply is. And for those very rare people who do claim to have a choice? Well, they’re simply bisexual - inasmuch as they are capable of sexual attraction to either gender they have the opportunity to live within or without the Church’s teachings and find emotional and sexual fulfilment in either eventuality. Of course religious fulfilment is only available in one…

And, as I’ve said before, I simply don’t understand why there are so many people on this forum who are even more unbending and uncharitable about homosexual people than the Church is. The Church itself recognises that a person’s sexual orientation is something innate to that person and even if it is, to that person, a trial the Church does not teach that it’s anything other than something they will have to live with. Those who preach that homosexuality can be ‘cured’ or ‘changed’ or is a ‘choice’ go way beyond what they’re taught by the Church and even further beyond any experience of real life homosexuals, including those who don’t want to be.

 

[aprilfloyd]

Voltaire was not an atheist. You have not read his essay On Atheism in which he roundly repudiates it.

How do you get the notion we are all atheists? Please elaborate. Are you in the right forum?

The Deity created everything, including the natural law.

There are more than one Deity and they can’t all be right. We can have morality without recourse to any of the gods.

Everyone is an atheist.

We are all atheistic in respect of other religions as distinct from our own. Ironically, atheism is the one thing that is truly common to all religions.

In that respect Voltaire was an atheist

 

[Elizabeth502]

Everyone is an atheist.

No, The most you can say is that the vast majority of believers are agnostics. A small minority of believers have had confirming mystical experiences which erases any remaining doubt. Most believers have some at least small degree of agnosticism within them, some much less than others.

 

[fix]

Everyone is an atheist.

Only if you redefine the word.

 

[aprilfloyd]

No, The most you can say is that the vast majority of believers are agnostics. A small minority of believers have had confirming mystical experiences which erases any remaining doubt. Most believers have some at least small degree of agnosticism within them, some much less than others.

Good Point,

But as most people are atheistic to 1,000s of other gods, then they are at least 99% + atheists.

That’s good enough for me

 

[aprilfloyd]

april

**we don’t need a god to be good. **

But it sure helps!

 

[Elizabeth502]

But as most people are atheistic to 1,000s of other gods, then they are at least 99% + atheists.

Say what?

Are you saying that most believers are monotheists? If so, I suppose, but there sure are a lot of Hindus in the world.