Cardinal Marx: Church should see positive aspects of homosexual relationships [CWN]

[graciew]

real questions is does a sick or ignorant conscience override the concept of natural law. In this case I don’t believe it does.

I do not quite get you…Sounds like ignorance is a natural stage to be continuously prayed over to improve for our own good…
I ve been trying to find something about St Augustine and the quest for good and Good. But it may not be related,just that for some reason it keeps coming to mind.
There is also this beautiful song" Open the eyes of my heart,Lord".
Just trying to put pieces together. …guess I am tired too today,and I can 't…

 

[JosieN]

Why does She? Why does She oppose gay marriage? Is fornication also unnatural and intrinsically disordered? Is homosexuality intrinsically disordered? If so, why so, if not, why not? What does intrinsically disordered mean anyway? If it is not intrinsically disordered and instead objectively disordered then what does objectively disordered mean? To what degree is it objectively disordered?

Maybe the Church opposes gay marriage because the great saints of the Church believed it was a sin against nature. You can read what St. Augustine wrote about it.

Saint Augustine is categorical in the combat against sodomy and similar vices. The great Bishop of Hippo writes: “Sins against nature, therefore, like the sin of Sodom, are abominable and deserve punishment whenever and wherever they are committed. If all nations committed them, all alike would be held guilty of the same charge in God’s law, for our Maker did not prescribe that we should use each other in this way. In fact, the relationship that we ought to have with God is itself violated when our nature, of which He is Author, is desecrated by perverted lust.”
Further on he reiterates: “Your punishments are for sins which men commit against themselves, because, although they sin against You, they do wrong in their own souls and their malice is self-betrayed. They corrupt and pervert their own nature, which You made and for which You shaped the rules, either by making wrong use of the things which You allow, or by becoming inflamed with passion to make unnatural use of things which You do not allow” (Rom. 1:26). (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book III, chap. 8)

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Of course. That is not a new understanding. If someone were to ask me if adultery is a mortal sin I would say yes. If they were to point to a particular person and ask me the state of their soul, I would ay I don’t know, that is for God to judge. This is nothing new. Yet it remains true that some actions are seriously wrong in themselves, regardless of personal culpability.

Jim I believe this is not correct use of Moral Theology terms.
“Adultery” is not a “mortal sin” if you strictly adhere to the clear definition in the CCC.
In that definition full culpability must be present.

“Adultery” merely defines a grave external deed (sex outside of marriage by at least one married person).

Therefore adultery cannot be always and everywhere said to be a mortal sin.
It is certainly grave matter though.

Some people speak of grave matter as “objective mortal sin”.
This in my mind is unhelpful when it comes to more esoteric understandings of Aquinas’s analysis of morality but maybe its a good way to remove the ambiguities involved here.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Could you go ahead and explain it in the positive,Blue? Objective right and such. Thanks! You are very clear

Not quite sure what you mean.
All sin begins with transgression of a rule. This is the objective part and admits of an intellectual discernment of true or false. If true then an objective wrong has been done.

At this stage this is only “material sin”.

If full understanding and freedom from constraint is present then we have “formal sin”. And if the objective trangression is serious (ie grave matter) we have “mortal sin”.
It is mortal because the above conditions logically imply malice against God is present.

This alone defines true sin and is incompatible with grace.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Does the Catholic Church teach that using artificial contraception is a mortal sin?

PRmerger: yes. It is indeed a mortal sin to use artificial contraception.

Prove this with a Magisterial quote from the last 50 years please PR.
Unless I have missed something I believe no such explicit link between contracepting and “mortal sin” is to be found unless culpability is in some way stated.

The old manualists and perhaps Trent at times may have used “mortal sin” in the way you use it here but the vocabulary has been considerably tightened since then.
Time to get on board with the definition in the Magisterial CCC I believe.

The Baltimore Catechism is no longer Magisterial, not that it ever really was as the current CCC is.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

real questions is does a sick or ignorant conscience override the concept of natural law. In this case I don’t believe it does.

I don’t quite get you either.
Objective always remains objective. Wrong remains wrong.
But just as the Church teaches, for the inculpably ignorant or the coerced, such transgressions are not imputable, malice is absent and grace may abound and grow despite the objective wrong.

Wrong and Sin are two different categories.

Though not for the judgemental types who somehow love to go on about these things rather than Right and Grace.

 

[Brendan]

Why does She? Why does She oppose gay marriage? Is fornication also unnatural and intrinsically disordered? Is homosexuality intrinsically disordered? If so, why so, if not, why not? What does intrinsically disordered mean anyway? If it is not intrinsically disordered and instead objectively disordered then what does objectively disordered mean? To what degree is it objectively disordered?.

Yes, those are the things we can explain

That is why God gave us Aquinas

Even on this forum, not many understand what it means for an act or inclination to be ordered towards something.

So yes, having a discussion group where we explain WHY the Church teaches what it does would be an excellent idea

 

[PRmerger]

Prove this with a Magisterial quote from the last 50 years please PR.

I’m curious where you got the number 50 and why I have to limit myself to that.

Would 55 years be permissible?

Why can’t I use something from 250 years ago?

At any rate, I’ll prove it right after you show the Magisterial quote from the last 50 years that says that “[W]e never see a mortal sin, we only see someone engaging in grave matter.”

 

[Seamus_L]

Comments like that are the reason an Orthodox friend of mine said he could never become Catholic. He believed we change the rules every so many years.

 

[PRmerger]

Comments like that are the reason an Orthodox friend of mine said he could never become Catholic. He believed we change the rules every so many years.

Did you ask him about the new Orthodox view on divorce?

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Maybe the Church opposes gay marriage because the great saints of the Church believed it was a sin against nature. You can read what St. Augustine wrote about it.

Saint Augustine is categorical in the combat against sodomy and similar vices. The great Bishop of Hippo writes: “Sins against nature, therefore, like the sin of Sodom, are abominable and deserve punishment whenever and wherever they are committed. If all nations committed them, all alike would be held guilty of the same charge in God’s law, for our Maker did not prescribe that we should use each other in this way. In fact, the relationship that we ought to have with God is itself violated when our nature, of which He is Author, is desecrated by perverted lust.”

 Further on he reiterates: “Your punishments are for sins which men commit against themselves, because, although they sin against You, they do wrong in their own souls and their malice is self-betrayed. They corrupt and pervert their own nature, which You made and for which You shaped the rules, either by making wrong use of the things which You allow, or by becoming inflamed with passion to make unnatural use of things which You do not allow” (Rom. 1:26). (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book III, chap. 8)

When I ask for the Church I mean the Magisterium, so use things like encyclicals and Councils to do so.

Please explain each of those, many of them will have related answers and pretty much all are necessary to know in order to provide satisfactory answers to LGB people.

Yes, those are the things we can explain

That is why God gave us Aquinas

Even on this forum, not many understand what it means for an act or inclination to be ordered towards something.

So yes, having a discussion group where we explain WHY the Church teaches what it does would be an excellent idea

Since you have said they can be explained please explain them.

You should see some of the stuff Aquinas wrote on women.

 

[JimG]

Jim I believe this is not correct use of Moral Theology terms.
“Adultery” is not a “mortal sin” if you strictly adhere to the clear definition in the CCC.
In that definition full culpability must be present.

“Adultery” merely defines a grave external deed (sex outside of marriage by at least one married person).

Therefore adultery cannot be always and everywhere said to be a mortal sin.
It is certainly grave matter though.

Some people speak of grave matter as “objective mortal sin”.
This in my mind is unhelpful when it comes to more esoteric understandings of Aquinas’s analysis of morality but maybe its a good way to remove the ambiguities involved here.

Well, here’s the thing: Understanding degrees of culpability is useless if one does not first know right from wrong. Murder, fornication, adultery, contraception, theft, assault, bearing false witness, slander, detraction, and other actions are wrong. One needs to know that they are wrong before worrying about degrees of culpability.

When I got in trouble by doing some wrong as a kid, appeals to lack of full knowledge and consent didn’t hold much water with my parents. Nor, as an adolescent with traffic cops for that matter. Right and wrong: I was expected to know the difference and to do the right and avoid the wrong and not make excuses.

And wrong actions do have bad consequences regardless of culpability. I included contraception on the above list, for example. It has been considered a moral wrong for 2,000 years of Catholic teaching and 400 years of Protestant post-Reformation teaching, (being first excused by the Anglican church in 1930 for married couples, for serious circumstances. Sure.) But the bad social consequences could not be avoided. By unlinking marriage and sex, and delinking sex from children, it led in a direct line to the sexual revolution, leading to increased fornication, fatherless children, abortion, broken families and same sex ‘marriage.’ The consequences continue to play out, regardless of anyone’s lack of culpability.

 

[JosieN]

When I ask for the Church I mean the Magisterium, so use things like encyclicals and Councils to do so.

Unfortunately, the average Catholic is not familiar with these Magisteriums, encyclicals, councils etc. I do have a copy of the most recent Catechism of the Catholic Church but I am going to purchase an older one that is now out of print. It is called “The Catechism Explained” and is over 700 pages long. I found a second hand copy of it on the internet, as a new one is very expensive. I plan to purchase the Baltimore IV Catechism and the Catechism of the Council of Trent also in the future. As an average person I believe it will help me to know my faith better.

Everything in the Church today is changing so rapidly, I feel it is necessary to go back and read as much as I can from the old Catechisms. I would like to hang on to the faith of my grandparents and I believe the old Catechisms will help me do that. Clearly, Magisteriums, encyclicals and Councils are not much help for the average Catholic. If you are familiar with them, I would be interested to know what you find.

 

[JosieN]

Well, here’s the thing: Understanding degrees of culpability is useless if one does not first know right from wrong. Murder, fornication, adultery, contraception, theft, assault, bearing false witness, slander, detraction, and other actions are wrong. One needs to know that they are wrong before worrying about degrees of culpability.

When I got in trouble by doing some wrong as a kid, appeals to lack of full knowledge and consent didn’t hold much water with my parents. Nor, as an adolescent with traffic cops for that matter. Right and wrong: I was expected to know the difference and to do the right and avoid the wrong and not make excuses.

And wrong actions do have bad consequences regardless of culpability. I included contraception on the above list, for example. It has been considered a moral wrong for 2,000 years of Catholic teaching and 400 years of Protestant post-Reformation teaching, (being first excused by the Anglican church in 1930 for married couples, for serious circumstances. Sure.) But the bad social consequences could not be avoided. By unlinking marriage and sex, and delinking sex from children, it led in a direct line to the sexual revolution, leading to increased fornication, fatherless children, abortion, broken families and same sex ‘marriage.’ The consequences continue to play out, regardless of anyone’s lack of culpability.

 

[graciew]

Not quite sure what you mean.
All sin begins with transgression of a rule. This is the objective part and admits of an intellectual discernment of true or false. If true then an objective wrong has been done.

At this stage this is only “material sin”.

If full understanding and freedom from constraint is present then we have “formal sin”. And if the objective trangression is serious (ie grave matter) we have “mortal sin”.
It is mortal because the above conditions logically imply malice against God is present.

This alone defines true sin and is incompatible with grace.

I do not blame you. I will try to put my thoughts in order and come back to you later
I feel like someone made Beethoven sit down and write the 9 th Symphony right here and now And hand it in at 4pm!!
By telling a person one is a pervert,a liar,a disaster, all one gets is get stuck against a wall .
Who am I am? Where am I going?
The road map in our hearts and minds needs a gentle help towards God.
But it feels like one has to be ,you know, pulked up from here and planted there without understanding a thing and. .within 10 minutes
I understand that we get to Reconciliación without self justificatión,guess it is what Jim is saying,but how we get to that is a living,loving process
We learn through meaningful experiences.
I will ask back,Blue.Right now,I cannot do much better than I wrote.
Thank you for your patience.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I’m curious where you got the number 50 and why I have to limit myself to that.

Would 55 years be permissible?

Why can’t I use something from 250 years ago?

At any rate, I’ll prove it right after you show the Magisterial quote from the last 50 years that says that “[W]e never see a mortal sin, we only see someone engaging in grave matter.”

In other words you are unable to support your, to me, erroneous personal assertions with a Magisterial source when challenged to do so.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Well, here’s the thing: Understanding degrees of culpability is useless if one does not first know right from wrong. Murder, fornication, adultery, contraception, theft, assault, bearing false witness, slander, detraction, and other actions are wrong. One needs to know that they are wrong before worrying about degrees of culpability.

When I got in trouble by doing some wrong as a kid, appeals to lack of full knowledge and consent didn’t hold much water with my parents. Nor, as an adolescent with traffic cops for that matter. Right and wrong: I was expected to know the difference and to do the right and avoid the wrong and not make excuses.

And wrong actions do have bad consequences regardless of culpability. I included contraception on the above list, for example. It has been considered a moral wrong for 2,000 years of Catholic teaching and 400 years of Protestant post-Reformation teaching, (being first excused by the Anglican church in 1930 for married couples, for serious circumstances. Sure.) But the bad social consequences could not be avoided. By unlinking marriage and sex, and delinking sex from children, it led in a direct line to the sexual revolution, leading to increased fornication, fatherless children, abortion, broken families and same sex ‘marriage.’ The consequences continue to play out, regardless of anyone’s lack of culpability.

Here’s the thing Jim. Trying to understand God’s ways by analogies with imperfect parents or the police is doomed to fail. Last time I checked the Police are not known for being recognised by their love and mercy. They are heavily into justice, and blind justice at that.

Nobody here said that innocent wrong doing is without temporal consequences.
The thing is, are the eternal consequences equally rigidly linked in to non culpable wrong doing. And the clear answer from Jesus and correctly understood moral theology is a big No.

Your parents gave you correct worldly wisdom … but eternal wisdom it seems not so much.

 

[JosieN]

The thing is, are the eternal consequences equally rigidly linked in to non culpable wrong doing. And the clear answer from Jesus and correctly understood moral theology is a big No.

How is culpability defined? What does it mean to you? I think it can mean different things to different people. Also, how does anyone know that Jesus said that eternal consequences are not equally and rigidly linked in to non culpable wrong doings? Too many people say Jesus said this, or Jesus taught that, and do not back it up with His words, or any words from the Bible. I am curious to know where this teaching is in the Bible.

I was also wondering where in the Bible it says that a sin is not a grave sin if the the person had personal problems that prevented them from seeing the wrong they were doing, or they may have had too much stress at the time, or they may have been born with an addiction etc.? Shouldn’t we go to God if these problems occur in our lives and ask for His help? I always thought when we were unsure of whether something was sinful that we should go to God in prayer for the answers, and if we did something bad and then realized it was wrong we would ask for His forgiveness. Now, it appears we can make up all sorts of reasons why it was not as bad a sin as it really was, without any fear of eternal consequences.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Well, here’s the thing: Understanding degrees of culpability is useless if one does not first know right from wrong. Murder, fornication, adultery, contraception, theft, assault, bearing false witness, slander, detraction, and other actions are wrong. One needs to know that they are wrong before worrying about degrees of culpability.

When I got in trouble by doing some wrong as a kid, appeals to lack of full knowledge and consent didn’t hold much water with my parents. Nor, as an adolescent with traffic cops for that matter. Right and wrong: I was expected to know the difference and to do the right and avoid the wrong and not make excuses.

And wrong actions do have bad consequences regardless of culpability. I included contraception on the above list, for example. It has been considered a moral wrong for 2,000 years of Catholic teaching and 400 years of Protestant post-Reformation teaching, (being first excused by the Anglican church in 1930 for married couples, for serious circumstances. Sure.) But the bad social consequences could not be avoided. By unlinking marriage and sex, and delinking sex from children, it led in a direct line to the sexual revolution, leading to increased fornication, fatherless children, abortion, broken families and same sex ‘marriage.’ The consequences continue to play out, regardless of anyone’s lack of culpability.

Something can be wrong and sinful even without it rising to the level of mortal sin.

Unfortunately, the average Catholic is not familiar with these Magisteriums, encyclicals, councils etc. I do have a copy of the most recent Catechism of the Catholic Church but I am going to purchase an older one that is now out of print. It is called “The Catechism Explained” and is over 700 pages long. I found a second hand copy of it on the internet, as a new one is very expensive. I plan to purchase the Baltimore IV Catechism and the Catechism of the Council of Trent also in the future. As an average person I believe it will help me to know my faith better.

Everything in the Church today is changing so rapidly, I feel it is necessary to go back and read as much as I can from the old Catechisms. I would like to hang on to the faith of my grandparents and I believe the old Catechisms will help me do that. Clearly, Magisteriums, encyclicals and Councils are not much help for the average Catholic. If you are familiar with them, I would be interested to know what you find.

The Catechism only goes so far, it is a compilation of rules basically, but they all come from somewhere else and you find them in things like papal encyclicals, Church Councils and Apostolic Constitutions. Something written by Pope Benedict XVI for example within the last ten years is much more interesting than a book of rules. See Deus Caritas Est for example. I personally find that encyclicals add far more to my faith than possessing additional Catechisms because a Catechism isn’t designed to be all encompassing, only abbreviated bits on a variety of topics.

 

[Richca]

Why does She? Why does She oppose gay marriage?

The Church opposes gay marriage because it is against divine revelation, i.e., the word of God, Sacred Scripture; the institution of marriage which is from God - “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1: 27; cf. also Gen. 2:24); and the natural law and natural reason. God instituted marriage as between one man and one woman and it is obvious that only a man and a woman can produce offspring naturally. For more concerning the divine institution of marriage, confer Holy Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, other church documents and ecumenical councils, and the Tradition of the Church. For the time being, I’d like to focus and make some comments on the words below.

Is fornication also unnatural and intrinsically disordered? Is homosexuality intrinsically disordered? If so, why so, if not, why not? What does intrinsically disordered mean anyway? If it is not intrinsically disordered and instead objectively disordered then what does objectively disordered mean? To what degree is it objectively disordered?