Cardinal Tobin discusses the Catechism’s language on homosexuality

[Wesrock]

True enough, but what if your friends used that expression to talk about your desire for the vocation of a family? Your desire to romantically love a partner and the desire to undyingly love your children? Would it be ok then for them to say that your inclination is disordered? That there is something seriously wrong with you?

There’s nothing disordered about an inclination to start a family, children, and romance. If the object of romantic love is ordered towards someone of the same sex, then it is not ordered to its natural ends. Therefore, it is the same sex attraction that is disordered, not the inclination for family or children.

 

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Hoosier-Daddy:

It is disordered. God did not order it as a natural law.

We derive our understanding of natural law from nature, from the world. In nature, there are humans who have same-sex attraction. It’s just the way it is. Again, I don’t see how it’s helpful to anything to tell these people that the inclination itself is “disordered.” I see that actions can be disordered. But inclinations that are beyond one’s control? Those can be disordered? I’m not even sure what that means.

All sorts of sexuality is disordered. People who are married may be attracted to others not their spouse. A brother and sister may be deeply in love and wish to be together, a person may be completely involved in a fetish that is unhealthy or degrading. All of these things are disordered. And if you add infidelity into the mix, many many people have disordered inclinations. And all of these can be between two completely consenting adults. This does not make them ordered to God’s design of Man and Woman. Natural Law in this case does not mean something we as animals compare ourselves to other animals with. Natural law in nature depicts homosexual acts in many animals. But here we have to see our different nature, our different creation from the animals. God’s image, and immortal soul. Knowledge of Good and evil and most importantly, free will come into play.
It is DIS ordered from the order of our created purpose and will.

 

[goout]

phil19034:

But what does “less than the best” even mean?

Less good, either qualitatively or quantitatively.

See below my responses to Edward George and tafan on what makes it different when we are incorporating the “disorder” into the deep desire for the vocation of a family.

SSA is different from masturbation in that the desire for romantic love is oriented toward another (rather than collapsing in on self).
Different from pedophilia in that the love is oreiented toward a human morally capable of making her own decisions on sexual-advances - an adult (kids have no such capability).

The purpose of marriage is not merely to have some of the goods of relationships, however good those might be.
A married couple does not gaze just at one another, together they gaze in love at God and the rest of humanity, and participate with God in the creation of it.
Marriage is not for the purposes of the partners, it is about the “transcendent third”. (Trinitarian)

No other type of relationship is like this.

 

[Wesrock]

phil19034:

But what does “less than the best” even mean?

Less good, either qualitatively or quantitatively.

See below my responses to Edward George and tafan on what makes it different when we are incorporating the “disorder” into the deep desire for the vocation of a family.

SSA is different from masturbation in that the desire for romantic love is oriented toward another (rather than collapsing in on self).
Different from pedophilia in that the love is oreiented toward a human morally capable of making her own decisions on sexual-advances - an adult (kids have no such capability).

And different from properly ordered love in that the ordering towards the object of the attraction is contrary to human nature.

 

[prayerrider]

More truth here.

 

[prayerrider]

And here. How inconvenient truth is!

 

[tafan2]

I was trying to use your word, immoral, although I admit I was guessing that was the word you intended, as opposed to “moral”. I had put my assumption in parentheses.

Nevertheless, if the goal is just to teach that homosexual acts are immoral, how would you explain why, in language that would be acceptable?

 

[Wesrock]

And SSA (and masturbation) isn’t on the same scale as many other irregular situations.

To compare it to gluttony, this isn’t like choosing an extra slice of chocolate cake instead of an apple for a snack. This is like having an inclination to eating something that isn’t food at all.

 

[tafan2]

So you are saying that homosexual act are simply not-the-best, but moral?

 

[goout]

So change the language.
"Homosexuality is not ordered to the goods of marriage and family. "
You can massage the words any way you want, it’s still a cross for the person who deals with it.

But you can’t neglect or speaking falsely about the primordial sign of God’s love in the world, the marriage of man and woman.
To do so detracts from the good of all human beings. It’s deceptive.

 

[CRV]

The desire for a family, to have a special someone to romantically love, the desire to have babies/children are all a good. The object for/the direction in which these desires are directed towards the fulfilling of these is where the issue of disorder lies. When these are directed to a person of the opposite sex, that is how God ordered things - until through Adam and Eves fall, the concupiscence to sin entered mankind, which is when all disordered desires, attachments entered.
Acting upon any disordered sexual attractions - same sex, adultery, pedophilia, bestiality is when the person sins and is culpable for the actions whether it be in thought, word, deed. Consent to these thoughts, words, deeds are sinful and the person is culpable.
We all have to fight against immoral desires, to turn our thoughts away, to not act upon them.
Think of a lady who was abandoned by her husband. She is on her own. She still has sexual urges, the desire to be love by someone and to share her life with another. But until her spouse dies, she is to live chastely and do her best to not consent to sinful thoughts or acts either with herself or with others. So in this example, if this was to occur when the lady was in her late 20s or early 30s, and assuming both she and her husband lived until their 80s, then she would be on her own for 50 years or so. It is a sacrifice she can offer to the Lord. It’s not what she wants, but it is what is morally just in Gods’ eyes.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Again, this sounds like people want to be Christian but deny original sin.

I’m sure you can deal with this dilemma, unlike people with SSA who feel alienated and don’t have your understanding of Church teaching.

What alternative language would you use to express that same sex attraction is an attraction ordered contrary to the proper expression of conjugal love in human nature?

See how easy that was. Good job. If you can do it so can the CDF.

 

[prayerrider]

Sometimes I think a huge schism in the Church is inevitable over this issue (the real issue) of normalizing homosexual intercourse and its inevitable sequela, same Catholic Church “marriage.”
I don’t know if schism is inevitable or not but if it is, I wish it would just hurry up and happen. And those of us who are faithful to Biblical and Church teaching and natural and Divine law can get on with rebuilding the Church and stop having to hear the incessant and often sneakily worded dissent from some lay and clergy who most definitely do want normalizing of homosexual intercourse and same sex marriage in the Catholic Church, though they may lack the guts to say so outright.

 

[Moose]

The Cardinal is obviously and metaphysically wrong, of course.
That he can be wrong evidences the strength of my faith.
That I might know he is wrong evidences the strength of my GOD.
That my GOD cannot be wrong evidences the strength of the truth.

 

[Magnanimity]

You are observing that fatherhood/motherhood is a vocation. Fine.
And then proceed to make an equivocation between homosexual romantic desire and the vocation of parenthood.

Not quite. I think we all agree that the vocation is toward family, not merely parenthood, which presumed an adult “beloved.”

The love of a man and woman directly participates in the vocation of parenthood in a wholly unique way.

I will grant you that having both genders (bc they are really different in important ways and should really be there for the kids, whenever possible) is a good that would not subsist in a SS parental household. This is true, but it would also be true in a single-parent household.

 

[Magnanimity]

If the object of romantic love is ordered towards someone of the same sex, then it is not ordered to its natural ends.

Agreed, which makes it “less than” the best—less than the Church’s ideal.

Just out of curiosity, would you call single-parent homes disordered? Homes where one of the parents was barren and the couple only adopted, disordered? They are less than the best, to be sure. “Disordered?”

A married couple does not gaze just at one another, together they gaze in love at God and the rest of humanity, and participate with God in the creation of it.

Absolutely, that’s why the SSA person I’ve been describing has a deep desire for family. In her honest opinion, this is her vocation.

And, sad to say, the pervasiveness of abortion is evidence enough that procreation is an imminently biological phenomenon. The pervasiveness of abortion, in a way, trivializes the procreative act. It makes it biological and ordinary. To raise children however, especially children that are not biologically your own, now that is the hard work.

And different from properly ordered love in that the ordering towards the object of the attraction is contrary to human nature.

What does that mean? To be sexually-drawn to your partner as the object of attraction is the very thing that makes procreation possible.

 

[bobperk]

Cardinal Tobin is just echoing Pope Francis, who insists that a “listening Church” is actually more relevant and responsible than a teaching Church. What the Pope means by this is that the Church (which is supposed to teach the truth) is now subordinate to academic studies on certain topics. So if enough “authorities” outside of the Church now insist that homosexual inclinations are not disordered, but are rather just normal attractions within the human population, then the Church would be too rigid in upholding the traditional teachings on the matter. See, the Church can’t be seen as “behind the times” with these newfound truths (which all just so happen to fall in line with left-wing and liberal causes), so it must adapt, and repackage teachings as having “evolved” or “developed.” Then somehow this will be advertised as “following the Spirit” (which spirit, only God knows), as our claims to teaching and uphold the truth continue to be chipped away by novelties in teaching, changes to the Catechism, etc.

I have a reprint of an old book published during the papacy of St. Pope Pius X called, “The Catholic Church, The Teacher of Mankind.” That book was first published just over 100 years ago. How much we have changed since then, since now the Church apparently just has to “listen” to mankind.

 

[Magnanimity]

You are asking very challenging questions, and I appreciate that.

So you are saying that homosexual act are simply not-the-best, but moral?

I would say, per my long post above on the graduated continuum of family varieties, that homosexual families lack a certain good that is substantially in the interest of the children raised in those households. As an example, if it’s an all-male parental house, the children will be neglected by a lack of all the goods that femininity brings to a home. And the reverse would be true for the all-female couple. And I would emphasize that the “lack” is not trivial. Just as in single-family homes where (say) it’s only the mother who is raising the children, those children are deprived of a good in their lives, a good that the presence of a father would bring.

But just as I don’t call single-parents (or their homes) “disordered” bc of this lack of a good, which would ideally be present, so too for the SSA household. Does that make sense?

My view of evil and sin are medieval. I agree with St Augustine that evil is not a thing in itself—it has no ontological status. Rather, it’s a privation of some good. Sin too is a “missing of the mark,” which presumes goodness was aimed at. But the arrow didn’t perfectly hit the bullseye. But I’m not in the habit of calling people’s inclinations “disordered” when they are trying for as much good as they can bring about, even if their attempts do lack some good(s) that would make the acts “better.”

Is this making any sense?

 

[prayerrider]

Aaaargh I wish I could say I disagreed in any way. But I can’t.
Pope St. Pius X was prescient and prophetic.
I love his Catechism, by the way. Lean and mean (in a good way). No vague language, no parsing meaning. Just the straightforward truth.

 

[neophyte]

True enough, but what if your friends used that expression to talk about your desire for the vocation of a family? Your desire to romantically love a partner and the desire to undyingly love your children? Would it be ok then for them to say that your inclination is disordered? That there is something seriously wrong with you?

Such desires are not intrinsically disordered in and of themselves. The disorder arises, in this case, when the object of those desires is someone of the same sex as the one who desires.