Are gay Catholics condemned to loneliness?

[Peter_J]

Thanks for the link.

Did you read the comments? One commenter mentioned a pastor by the name of Tim Bayly, who condemned celibacy as a rebellion against God. I wonder how many Evangelicals consider singleness to be a sin?

I don’t think very many would put it in such strong terms, but I do think there are many who are a but skimpy (from a Catholic pov anyhow) in their respect for the single state – and by extension for gay (homosexual) persons.

This is, no doubt, one reason that so many Evangelicals want to “fix” gay people through so-called ex-gay conversion therapy.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I don’t see this loneliness as a Catholic problem as much as society in general problem. I think there is a real tendency to see being paired up, preferably with children as the preferred state. On a practical level many people who pair up (whether gay or straight, Christian or non-Christian, married or cohabiting) will cut themselves off and only make time for their partner. In addition parents are a lot more cautious about who they have around their children. Sometimes it seems that people conflate the paired up state with maturity despite the character of the person.

All this can unintentionally leave singles out in the cold so it doesn’t surprise me that people are horrified at the idea of enforced celibacy. It shouldn’t inevitably mean lonely but it too often does.

 

[Dorothy]

I’m somewhat inclined to agree with you that there is a distinction between voluntary embracing a life of celibacy and have one thrust upon you. I think a better, a very real comparison, would be single heterosexual Catholics who haven’t met anyone and won’t meet anyone. This is an not insignificant (and growing!) part of the Church.

I would like to add that the Lord provides a way out of the loneliness with His Grace! He has given us Himself in the Eucharist, and taught us how to pray.

We all have challenges in our life that can make or break us.

 

[AdamP88]

This is just hypothetical because the Church is of course right and the world is in error, but being “in error” doesn’t necessarily make a person a homophobic bigot or any other negative title. That judgementalism is also worldly thinking, and the secular liberal world is very eager to judge & enjoys doing it. But we shouldn’t be.

A Muslim that believes with conviction that a woman should wear the hijab isn’t (necessarily) a misogynist.

A person that believes with conviction that manmade climate change is false isn’t (necessarily) selfish.

There is a difference between being a jerk in some capacity, and being in error, and Christians should always assume the later rather than the former when we dialogue with people. We don’t know what has lead to different people believing different things, but we are all human beings and we are universally susceptible to ignorance. Most of the time, it is because they were inundated with a certain worldview around family and friends. Resorting to insults or belittlement isn’t going to help them.

You’re right. But my point was more to illustrate that the church is right, and if we really love homosexual people, we would be more inclined to tell them the truth rather than the thing lots of Catholics do which is to half-accept that civil partnership is ok, or that a gay couple adopting is ok, or that it’s ok to do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home etc.

I do not want to see anyone in hell, which is why I’d rather say, no, this activity is not good for your eternal soul.

 

[Peter_J]

I don’t see this loneliness as a Catholic problem as much as society in general problem. I think there is a real tendency to see being paired up, preferably with children as the preferred state.

Well said.

And I would add, the pairing up only makes sense to our society if it is sexual.

 

[Yeoman]

You mean like divorced Catholics who are unable to get annulments?

That may actually be a more applicable analogy than the one about Priests.

As a side comment, I guess, while bringing it up in the current political and cultural atmosphere usually results in instant condemnation, there’s no good evidence I’m aware of that pretending a same sex union psychologically equates with a traditional marriage. Indeed, to go a step further, I think a person would have to look at the state of mind of people in really traditional marriages, like the Catholic ideal, and compare them to the psychological state of those in same sex unions. I suspect a person would find that they don’t equate.

Loneliness is a funny thing anyhow. I appreciate that those with same sex attraction can in fact ache over what they’re missing. But married people aren’t ipso factor exempt from loneliness and plenty of married people bear the cross of having had a spouse become distant. Additionally, there are people who never marry for other reasons. Three good friends of mine fit this category and they are definitely not attracted to members of their own gender. Things either haven’t worked out for them or as time went by they simply acclimated themselves to being single. I don’t think they could be regarded as lonely however and at least one of them, on a fairly modest income, lives a life that most married men would be at least somewhat jealous of (and I don’t mean the “lots of girls thing that some might suspect”). My point is, that just because a person finds that they cannot commit to a marriage does not mean that they’ll necessarily be lonely, nor does the fact that a person is married mean that they’ll never be lonely.

 

[Yeoman]

I don’t see this loneliness as a Catholic problem as much as society in general problem. I think there is a real tendency to see being paired up, preferably with children as the preferred state. On a practical level many people who pair up (whether gay or straight, Christian or non-Christian, married or cohabiting) will cut themselves off and only make time for their partner. In addition parents are a lot more cautious about who they have around their children. Sometimes it seems that people conflate the paired up state with maturity despite the character of the person.

All this can unintentionally leave singles out in the cold so it doesn’t surprise me that people are horrified at the idea of enforced celibacy. It shouldn’t inevitably mean lonely but it too often does.

I agree with your observation.

To add to it, if you compare the society we have now with that which we had mid 20th Century (and I know that not everything was rosy back then), we have developed one that sort of enhances or pre loads loneliness.

Walk around your town and I bet you’ll find lots of buildings built by fraternal lodges that are now used for something else.

Just consider the KoC, for example. In my town, in the 40s and 50s, if you were a Catholic man you were in the Knights. You just were. The Knights had a bar in their building. Lots of men hit the bar on the way home from work or maybe in the evening. Around closing time, the Priest (a Monsignor) stopped in, every night, to check on everyone there and to make sure they closed.

Was this a good Catholic thing? Yes it was, but it was an example of what happened on a larger scale. Beyond that, even in my own experience (I was born in the early 1960s) I well remember that if you worked in manual labor or if you were in the military service, and your group of co-workers reached quitting time (or got leave) you always ended up taking the whole group, usually, for a beer or something.

Included in that group was the really odd not so smart person who hardly talked. That same person today is the kid in his parents basement who plays violent video games all day and has nowhere to go to. But he was part of the group and and that meant something.

Also included, and we all knew it even if we didn’t say it, was the guy who was a homosexual. I’m sure things were hard on him, and it wasn’t talked about, unless he was teased about getting a girlfriend (which I’m sure wasn’t welcome), but the point is that he was part of the larger group.

Now, all this is sort of gone. That sort of labor has left, and people work alone all day and then go home by themselves and turn on “Friends” or the “Big Bang Theory” and watch fictional friends have the lives they don’t. Even married people often depart to their single computers, or their individual televisions, and fail to discourse all night.

 

[Peter_J]

I agree with your observation.

To add to it, if you compare the society we have now with that which we had mid 20th Century (and I know that not everything was rosy back then), we have developed one that sort of enhances or pre loads loneliness.

Walk around your town and I bet you’ll find lots of buildings built by fraternal lodges that are now used for something else.

Just consider the KoC, for example. In my town, in the 40s and 50s, if you were a Catholic man you were in the Knights. You just were. The Knights had a bar in their building. Lots of men hit the bar on the way home from work or maybe in the evening. Around closing time, the Priest (a Monsignor) stopped in, every night, to check on everyone there and to make sure they closed.

Was this a good Catholic thing? Yes it was, but it was an example of what happened on a larger scale. Beyond that, even in my own experience (I was born in the early 1960s) I well remember that if you worked in manual labor or if you were in the military service, and your group of co-workers reached quitting time (or got leave) you always ended up taking the whole group, usually, for a beer or something.

… And, meanwhile, kids my age were looking at you guys and thinking “What are they gay or something!?”

(Well, maybe we didn’t always say it. But we were thinking it.)

 

[Herculees]

They (gays) like celibates are called to re-direct their feelings.
One doesn’t have to be lonely just because they live a celibate life.

 

[EasterJoy]

They (gays) like celibates are called to re-direct their feelings.
One doesn’t have to be lonely just because they live a celibate life.

Let’s hope not, since in the Beatific Vision, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels.”

 

[pianistclare]

Right. I think people get weirded out by the word “celibate”.
They’re single.
No single person is supposed to sleeping around anyway.
Plenty of single people who live very fulfilling lives. Most say it’s precisely because they weren’t called to marriage that they are able to pursue certain careers, travel, live in out of the way places, etc. Life without sex isn’t the end of the world. It’s our culture that makes it seem impossible because sex sells.

 

[Lea101]

If you’re gay and if you’re already in love with someone…technically you would be condemned to “loneliness”…if you mean that they will never experience that kind of love. That doesn’t mean they don’t experience other kinds of love, though.

Personally if I was a homosexual in that predicament…I would find it pretty hard to love God. Just being honest.

So I guess we should acknowledge that part. Gay people technically don’t have a choice, they can’t choose to be celibate (like a priest) and they can’t hope for marriage (like a single person who wants marriage). There is literally no hope for romantic love. That could crush someone, which is why they just shun the church and tell us that we are getting it wrong.

Of course there is the point that romantic love isn’t the highest level of love out there, and one does not need that love to be complete.

 

[Bataar]

They (gays) like celibates are called to re-direct their feelings.
One doesn’t have to be lonely just because they live a celibate life.

It’s not the celibate part that is the problem, but the social. As a single adult, I am very lonely. I have some friends, but they’re all married with kids and so I rarely get to interact with them since, rightfully so, their families come first. If you’re in a relationship, not only do you have the comfort and closeness of that person, but it would open whole other avenues of social options not available to single/lonely people.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

Lea, I get what you mean and am very grateful that I have never been put to this test.

Bataar, it shouldn’t be that way, friendships and platonic relationships can be so undervalued. Friendships shouldn’t just be something to pass the time until you get married, both married and single people benefit from good friends.

 

[Peter_J]

No difference.

I’m not a priest myself, but I’ll venture a guess that any priest I know would stare at me blankly if I told them that.

 

[Bataar]

Lea, I get what you mean and am very grateful that I have never been put to this test.

Bataar, it shouldn’t be that way, friendships and platonic relationships can be so undervalued. Friendships shouldn’t just be something to pass the time until you get married, both married and single people benefit from good friends.

I agree, but it’s very, very hard for single people to make good friends as other people will be married and have kids and they simply don’t have time for their single friends.

 

[faithsmind]

It’s not the celibate part that is the problem, but the social. As a single adult, I am very lonely. I have some friends, but they’re all married with kids and so I rarely get to interact with them since, rightfully so, their families come first. If you’re in a relationship, not only do you have the comfort and closeness of that person, but it would open whole other avenues of social options not available to single/lonely people.

I consider it a path to sanctity, a calling to a higher path of holiness rather than a “condemnation” to loneliness, I guess. I’m waiting for my annulment and it’s been almost 5 years. There’s a chance it could be denied, so I’m pretty much in the same boat as you, Bataar. It makes it even harder that I’ve already been in a long-term sexual relationship and am surrounded by a family culture because of my children and our active role in the church. Also, I work, clean and organize, and then care for my kids, so there isn’t much time for socializing. It would be nice to marry a rich, sexy man with a French accent, yeah. But if a person who is called to a severe form of chastity seriously wants to seek and do God’s will, then this is the path that must be taken, and there is sanctification and sacrifice involved, yes. We aren’t exactly here to achieve personal happiness on earth. We are here to reach heaven and be with Christ. Non-believers might have problems with this. Sometimes I have problems with it lol. But I purposely choose it everyday out of love. I’m no better than anyone else. I fall a lot. Have to get back up.

 

[ConfusedLucy]

I agree, but it’s very, very hard for single people to make good friends as other people will be married and have kids and they simply don’t have time for their single friends.

I’m probably being a jerk but I think many of these people simply won’t make time for their old friends. Marriage changes you but not to the point that your single friends become unrelatable. I haven’t let marriage stop me valuing my friends.

 

[faithsmind]

I’m probably being a jerk but I think many of these people simply won’t make time for their old friends. Marriage changes you but not to the point that your single friends become unrelatable. I haven’t let marriage stop me valuing my friends.

Yeah, and I do have deep friendships with married females that I treasure.
But there are those days and moments where you can’t help but feel left out, or I begin to overly romanticize the marriage relationship as an outsider looking in.

As far as Bataar, I don’t know how he relates on a platonic level with males. It seems there’s always that attraction in the background which could threaten and complicate a Godly relationship. But, perhaps he prefers the company of women more? A faith-sharing group might be an incredibly rewarding solution to his struggle with loneliness.

 

[Sarcelle]

It’s not the celibate part that is the problem, but the social. As a single adult, I am very lonely. I have some friends, but they’re all married with kids and so I rarely get to interact with them since, rightfully so, their families come first. If you’re in a relationship, not only do you have the comfort and closeness of that person, but it would open whole other avenues of social options not available to single/lonely people.

Aren’t you the one that despises small talk? This may be what is limiting your options.

Part of socialization is enduring the small talk, especially with people you have just met.

Also, if you do have a wife and she wants to talk about things that you do not consider important, for the sake of your marriage, you better brush up on your listening skills.

Either that, or be prepared to be lonely for the rest of your life.