Those were the words of Christ, yes.
(name removed by moderator);8484548:
. But now that you have brought it up what I can tell you is that research we have done on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa shows that as primary cause of the transmission the lack of basic education. This lack/substandard education was something our European colonial masters intended so as to retain their hegemonic control over the developing world which the church in its “missionary zeal” supported in what it was as a mutually beneficial partnership. Second a significant portion of rape in South Africa is what is termed “corrective rape” when homophobic bigots believe that if a lesbian women is raped she will be cured of her homosexuality and become straight. If you believe as you say that sexuality may be “reformed” then it is with these rapists that you stand - on the basis that he who wills the end wills the means.
- I agree with (name removed by moderator); that is a “bait and switch” argument. So because about 1 TO 2% (at the most) of American and other countries’s clergymen engaged in that deplorable and eviil practice and were uncovered on it (and also there were many reasons clergyman abuse was sort of ignored----including the attitude of letting gay clergymen openly “act out”) therefore the teachings of the CC regarding SSA and homosexuality/lesbianism are wwrong and “evil?”
- May I remind you that a lot of the people who were involved and uncovered in the scandals are either no longer priests and are also (mostly) in jail. The excommunication business is up to the Pope and the higher levels of the Church; take it up with them. But DO NOT make it as if there has not been any consequences and reforms because of this because there HAVE been. The Church has insituted new procedures, regulations, and will basically no longer tolerate this.
Now, getting rid of the ideology of permissiveness and “opneess” regarding certain behavior that has permeated the Church for the past 50 years or so and which created the “atmosphere” which enabled stuff like this to prosper in the Church-----THAT is another matter.:shrug:
I know you probably will not repond to this, but I have to say:I wasn’t even going to respond to your lengthy post because you got mad at me for making accusations, and then proceeded to make accusations about my sex life, when you know absolutely nothing about me – other than that I’m gay and Catholic. I wouldn’t stoop so low as to suggest anything about your sex life, and I’d thank you to extend me the same courtesy.
That being said, maybe I should clarify what I meant in choosing the words that I did. I believe, regardless of church dogma, that it is evil to deprive a couple of legal protection simply because you don’t agree with their sexual orientation. What the Church decides in regards to Her own Sacraments is Her business; but She doesn’t have the right to make it legally acceptable to prevent a person from visiting their dying partner in the hospital, or have their house taken away when their partner dies because the deed was in the deceased person’s name, or rip families apart because one person happens to have been born in another country. That’s not love – that’s evil.
I go to Mass and receive Communion so that I can experience the transforming power of the liturgy, and encounter Christ in the Eucharist. The exterior trappings, and even the priest himself, are just accidents of the world… They don’t change the Sacraments I receive. Even the Church teaches that the personal sins of the priest don’t affect the validity of the Sacrament, and so it follows that their personal opinions about others don’t affect it either. True, if a priest were preaching hate in his homily, I probably wouldn’t be inclined to return to his parish… not because of the Sacrament, but because I simply wouldn’t want to listen to his words.
You said that I’m disagreeing with Christ’s teachings, yet Christ never said one word about homosexuality. He showed love to prostitutes, tax collectors, pagans, and even to the people who killed him (not that I’m comparing myself to a prostitute, haha). That’s what being a Christian is about – loving one another. And believe me, that’s not always easy to do when you feel completely unwelcome in church.
Thank you for your kind responses CMatt25 and Kouyate42. God bless you!
Do you mean agape rather than eros? there could be quite a bit of eros going on.
Eros is intimate love. Eros refers to “intimate love” or romantic love; storge to “affection” or fondness; philia to “brotherly love”, or the love between family members or close friends;
Sorry, but it’s the same. Homosexual love is the same as heterosexual love in the brain. physorg.com/news/2011-01-brain.html
Your argument is equally non-persuasive. If you lower the bar to “if you don’t want to marry x, don’t” and “how does that affect your life,” you can replace the x with multiple partners, animals, minors, etc. and make the exact same argument.
Except you could refer to harm in those other cases (except perhaps multiple partners), making a secular moral argument. Marrying animals doesn’t make any sense, and they cannot give informed consent. When it comes to marriage between a child and an adult, we similarly lack informed consent due to immaturity etc. Why do you think children are not allowed to drink, to drive, to vote or to have a credit card?
Nor does marrying your same sex, since the nature of human marriage is the joining of physically opposite genders.
I can give secular reasons for why it doesn’t make sense, and I gave one. The animal cannot consent to the arrangement and doesn’t even comprehend what is going on.
There are plenty of arguments against polygamy which are simple and pure common sense. Possibly the most obvious one being the gender imbalance which allowing a single man to marry several women would create. and there is no way that a man could treat multiple wives with the same equality.
