Admission Rules

[Matthew_Holford]

I’ve been asked a question and while always ready to suggest an answer this one has stumped me. So, all help on this one would be gratefully received. It’s also, I suppose, a question of two parts.

An acquaintance wants to know if he would be accepted in the Catholic Church. Currently, he is a member of the Church of England. The reason why I can’t answer is because he is a homosexual. He freely admits to being one. He also lives in the same dwelling with another openly homosexual male. They openly admit to being in a relationship. They have also under gone, as permitted by English Law, a civil partnership. Now, my guess at the answer is: in his current circumstances the Church would not receive him.

The second part of the question is, and I think this is mainly irrelevant given the above circumstances, he also asked me whether to join an established Latin Catholic parish or to join the Anglican Ordinariate. As for his circumstances I believe he would get the same answer from any part of the Church.

 

[Spencerian]

I’ve been asked a question and while always ready to suggest an answer this one has stumped me. So, all help on this one would be gratefully received. It’s also, I suppose, a question of two parts.

An acquaintance wants to know if he would be accepted in the Catholic Church. Currently, he is a member of the Church of England. The reason why I can’t answer is because he is a homosexual. He freely admits to being one. He also lives in the same dwelling with another openly homosexual male. They openly admit to being in a relationship. They have also under gone, as permitted by English Law, a civil partnership. Now, my guess at the answer is: in his current circumstances the Church would not receive him.

The second part of the question is, and I think this is mainly irrelevant given the above circumstances, he also asked me whether to join an established Latin Catholic parish or to join the Anglican Ordinariate. As for his circumstances I believe he would get the same answer from any part of the Church.

A challenging question. I’ll put in my initial thoughts on it.

The Church doesn’t necessarily establish a state of sin as grounds for denying membership. How could it? We’re all sinners.

Your friend’s relationship is, based on your description, yes, illicit in regards to Church teaching. But it may not be any different than Catholics who married in the Church, who have divorced and remarried outside of the Church. They, too, would have an illicit relationship. The question may be whether the Church would require normalization of his relationship (in this case, not acting on his same-sex attraction through chastity).

If he is in the Anglican Communion, the ordinarate should be the easiest process to join the Church; after all, that’s why it was created by the Holy See.

Hopefully others may have more knowledge of the Code of Canon Law citations to help here, since those govern how members should behave. The closest citation I just found would prohibit your friend the Holy Eucharist, for homosexual acts is grave matter and requires the Sacrament of Confession to resolve.

I fear that your friend’s path of least resistance will be chosen here.

 

[Vincent1984]

The second part of the question is, and I think this is mainly irrelevant given the above circumstances, he also asked me whether to join an established Latin Catholic parish or to join the Anglican Ordinariate. As for his circumstances I believe he would get the same answer from any part of the Church.

He’d probably get the answer you suggest from an Ordinariate parish, which in my opinion is the correct one. He would need to give up his pretension that a same-sex relationship is a valid lifestyle, before being received into the Church. Otherwise, his ‘conversion’ would be nothing but a sham.

Would he get this answer from a regular Catholic parish? It’s a ‘postcode lottery’. I know one parish where the RCIA leader is a man with a live-in male lover. Lord have mercy

Spencerian:

Your friend’s relationship is, based on your description, yes, illicit in regards to Church teaching. But it may not be any different than Catholics who married in the Church, who have divorced and remarried outside of the Church. They, too, would have an illicit relationship. The question may be whether the Church would require normalization of his relationship (in this case, not acting on his same-sex attraction through chastity).

Irregularly married people would (should) normally be required to resolve that situation before entry into the Church; otherwise they would (1) be living in a situation that contradicts the Faith they are claiming to share, and (2) would be in a more-or-less constant state of sin after entry to the Church, which would rather negate many of the benefits of membership i.e access to the sacraments.

I would suggest that, for a person in a same-sex relationship, they ought to renounce completely the acceptability of such relationships, not merely refrain from sexual activity. It’s not only a question of sin, but also doctrine; why should someone be accepted into the Church if they do not want to believe as the Church believes?

 

[fred_conty]

The Baptismal promises he would be required to make would make this impossible if
he was a practising gay person. However if he should be willing to give up this activity, then he could make those promises.

 

[Matthew_Holford]

Thanks for the responses. That does sound like it would be the answer to this situation. It is analogous to those in irregular marriages. As I understand it, couples in these circumstances have to regularise their marriage before they are allowed to enter the Church.

 

[Matthew_Holford]

The Baptismal promises he would be required to make would make this impossible if
he was a practising gay person. However if he should be willing to give up this activity, then he could make those promises.

He is validly baptised. As a CofE member he would be received into the Church by confirmation.

 

[NewsTheMan]

One cannot try converting while simultaneously denying a doctrine of the Church in thought, word and deed. It makes no sense and the Church takes these things seriously. Yes, we are all sinners, but we all try to acknowledge and root out our sin as best we can. The situation would be different if he were a struggling homosexual who sometimes fell into being unchaste. Unfortunately, he is living with another man in a sexual relationship with no intention to stop and is thus actively living a sinful lifestyle contrary to Gods law. If he converted, he would be lying and thus sinning - and the Church does not condone such a thing, because the Church cannot permit the evil of letting someone lie in that way (that on top of the evil of the homosexual relationship).