Catholic Beliefs on Homosexuality

[SeekSalvation]

Matthew 7:13
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
Matthew 22:14
“For many are called, but few are chosen”

I do find it interesting you choice to be open about your life style on this forum. I ask myself why would you be here openly professing your life choice? Of course only you and the Father know and that’s OK. I’m certain nobody on this site is here to judge you, just to assist you based upon your own words. But let it be known everyone on this forum understands only the few will be rewarded the salvation in heaven we all seek on a daily basis. I pray you’re here seeking salvation as well. God bless you.

 

[OnAJourney]

I do find it interesting you choice to be open about your life style on this forum. I ask myself why would you be here openly professing your life choice? Of course only you and the Father know and that’s OK. I’m certain nobody on this site is here to judge you, just to assist you based upon your own words. But let it be known everyone on this forum understands only the few will be rewarded the salvation in heaven we all seek on a daily basis. I pray you’re here seeking salvation as well. God bless you.

I’m living chaste, so I would be very careful when you imply things about my “lifestyle.” I didn’t choose to have SSA and for the most part the Church takes my side on the matter, that in fact I didn’t choose SSA.

 

[SeekSalvation]

I’m not implying anything. I read your posting. Again, I’m not judging you, just offering advice. I pray you understand of course.

Matthew 5:21-37
Sin can be in Thought, Word, and Deed

 

[OnAJourney]

I’m not implying anything. I read your posting. Again, I’m not judging you, just offering advice. I pray you understand of course.

The way you worded your response looks an awful lot like you were implying that I’m not living chaste. Why else would you bring up my “lifestyle choices?”

 

[SeekSalvation]

You can live a life of chaste…and still sin in “thought”. This will be my last reply on this subject. Have a great day.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You can live a life of chaste…and still sin in “thought”.

As can straight people, in precisely the same way: by lusting. Being gay doesn’t somehow make lust bad. Lust is already bad.

 

[OnAJourney]

It seems like you’re treating lust unequally in this instance.

 

[Saxum]

No. I’m not interested in marrying a woman or having children. And there is no way to make someone like myself long for either of those things if the interest and desire is lacking

Fair enough. St Paul says that celibacy is better than marriage so you’ve made a good choice.

 

[HarryStotle]

Temptation and attraction are both passive experiences of a desire/need for something.
…
I certainly WOULD say that Jesus was attracted to the idea of turning stones into bread! Otherwise, the entire passage makes no sense. He was hungry, and wanted food. He was interested in the food part, not in the “following the devil” part. Similarly, people who are attracted to the same sex are fundamentally interested in a GOOD thing: complete intimacy with another person.

Good explanation. So the temptation isn’t to the evil, but to the good mixed with evil? Since the two are intermixed in many choices we make, we may be tempted to choose what is good in the mix, while missing or ignoring the evil.

So the actual temptation lies in our willingness to overlook the evil by being inordinately compelled by the good. If our compulsion draws us to choose the mix (including the evil) our moral/spiritual failure, i.e., sin, is in the weakness of will to avoid evil.

 

[qui_est_ce]

God bless you Prodigal. That’s not an easy thing to share.

 

[vsedriver]

Doubtless, many Christian pastors, let alone ordinary Christians, firmly believe that they are an accurate translation, and therefore genuinely believe that the Bible speaks out against homosexuality.

this could be true for non-Catholics since they base their theology on how they read the translations of scripture but it wouldn’t be true for Catholicism since the Catholic Church bases their theology on both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. It has been taught from the beginning that engaging in homosexual acts was sinful. It was taught by church leaders for whom Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek were native languages. if there was a different understanding of the sinfulness of homosexual acts the church would have expressed that to the congregations. As it is essential for the church to instruct the flock on what is and isn’t a sin.

There is no evidence that the church changed her teaching at any point in time on this matter.

 

[adgloriam]

One word invented by the eleventh century Catholic theologian Peter Damian was the word “Sodomite,” i.e. a person who engages in sodomy.

Deriving “sodomite” adjective-to-noun from “sodomy” is a derivation pattern of morphology.

Before that “sodomy” noun-to-noun from “sodom” the Toponymy.

“Sodom” is in the book of Genesis, thus the behavior and negative connotation predate Christianity.

However, vernacular languages were still in the making during the 11th -13th century, there were probably specific words for “sodomy” in the old languages that simply fell into oblivion through the ages.

@JimG @Thorolfr attributing the “negative connotation” to catholic theologians neglects explicit Scriptural Bible passages predating the New Testament. And it wasn’t simply a “connotation” but an explicit moral condemnation - like so many in the mosaic law. (I say this to avoid the error of attributing blame to catholic thinkers, as if it were an exclusive product of catholic thought.)

But what is more (!) and here the new covenant was innovative, the OT reduced the person to their sin through verb or adjective, whereas the new testament sees the person in their broader personal scope beyond sin.

 

[adgloriam]

Saxum:

Sbee0:

Being gay is part of who you are it’s not a choice and thus is not a sin.

Sexual preference does not define anybody. I like chocolate but chocolate isn’t part of who I am.

I disagree. Liking chocolate is definitely part of who I am. And liking blue more than green is also a part of who I am as is the fact that I don’t like broccoli. All my experiences in life and all my likes and dislikes are part of who I am and are among the many things that make up my personality. If all those things were stripped away, no one would recognize me as being the same person any more because I would have become an empty shell.

Beautiful post, I wish we’d get more of that here on CAF. Our tastes define us more than our opinions. This is actually one of the most neglected aspects in current catholic conversations: the appetites. (The catechism itself mostly forgoes the issue, because phenomenology isn’t its main focus.)

 

[GrowingInTheFaith]

I’m not an adult,

I respectfully disagree. I’m old enough to questions my beliefs and exchange in a mature conversation about something I am dealing with in a Christian environment. There are young people in public schools that are dealing with depression, suicidal thoughts, peer pressure, drugs or having friends who do them, homosexuality, etc. at a younger age then me. As for talking with my parents, that is a discussion that I do not want to have. At least while I am still living in my parents’ house. I’m not in a dangerous situation if they found out, but it would a weird and difficult conversation to have. As for talking with my pastor, he’s a nice guy and all but I don’t have a relationship with him. That would be weird in my church for someone my age. Catholics have confession so at least they talk to their priest that way, but there isn’t something like that in the Catholic church. Anyway, even if I did, my parents would want to ask why I’m talking with him and then someone at my church would know and… that would just be a whole mess.

 

[GrowingInTheFaith]

Thanks for sharing, Prodigal_Son. I know that is a short response when you just wrote out this long reply, but I do appreciate you sharing and responding knowledgeably. It seems you have done a lot of research in this topic. Do you have any suggestions or insight that you’ve gained as someone in my situation? Any good boundaries for me to have or things to read that back up what you said?

 

[GrowingInTheFaith]

Hello GrowingInTheFaith - welcome to the forums! I hope that find the answers you’re looking for here.

Hello SPBlitz! Thank you for the welcoming, doing research into my background, as well as for your patient response and insight.

 

[HarryStotle]

I disagree. Liking chocolate is definitely part of who I am. And liking blue more than green is also a part of who I am as is the fact that I don’t like broccoli. All my experiences in life and all my likes and dislikes are part of who I am and are among the many things that make up my personality. If all those things were stripped away, no one would recognize me as being the same person any more because I would have become an empty shell.

Yeah, not buying it. Liking blue, chocolate, broccoli and the colour blue are accidentals. You could change every one of those without changing essentially who you are.

If all those things were stripped away they would be replaced by other accidentals and you would still be essentially WHO you are, independent of any of them.

Most individuals have no clue who they really are because their WHO, their SELF, their locus of consciousness, is shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

Indeed, you might be better off not identifying yourself with incidentals and not basing you identity on current likes, dislikes, preferences, avoidances and proclivities. That self isn’t worth holding onto.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? (Mark 8:36-7)

Perhaps the “empty shell” would be more you than the you spending itself chasing after affectations?

 

[prayerrider]

Jesus Christ is omnipotent God, Second Person of the Holy Trinity and He can do any thing He wants to including liberating someone from any kind of sexual attraction, addiction, compulsion, vice, whatever. He can even liberate someone from this mortal existence if He wants to and in an instant, too. To argue that a sexual attraction, or any attraction to creature or thing is greater than the power of Jesus Christ is blasphemous nonsense.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

I disagree. Liking chocolate is definitely part of who I am. And liking blue more than green is also a part of who I am as is the fact that I don’t like broccoli. All my experiences in life and all my likes and dislikes are part of who I am and are among the many things that make up my personality. If all those things were stripped away, no one would recognize me as being the same person any more because I would have become an empty shell.

Yeah, not buying it. Liking blue, chocolate, broccoli and the colour blue are accidentals. You could change every one of those without changing essentially who you are.

If all those things were stripped away they would be replaced by other accidentals and you would still be essentially WHO you are, independent of any of them.

I don’t agree. As a person, there are many different things that make up who I am of which my likes and dislikes are part. The way I talk, the way I walk, my laugh, the intellectual interests that captivate me, the kinds of fiction I like to read, my quirks are also part of who I am. Recently I was with my relatives and I did something very typical of me that I’ve probably been doing my whole life and heard my aunt laugh and say to my mother (using my real name, of course), “That’s Thorolfr!” And being gay is also a part of who I am, too. The experience of being an outsider for much of my life has shaped me and my views about minorities, and social justice and discrimination, for example. If all those things were stripped away, I wouldn’t be the same person.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

One word invented by the eleventh century Catholic theologian Peter Damian was the word “Sodomite,” i.e. a person who engages in sodomy.

Deriving “sodomite” adjective-to-noun from “sodomy” is a derivation pattern of morphology.

Before that “sodomy” noun-to-noun from “sodom” the Toponymy.

“Sodom” is in the book of Genesis, thus the behavior and negative connotation predate Christianity.

However, vernacular languages were still in the making during the 11th -13th century, there were probably specific words for “sodomy” in the old languages that simply fell into oblivion through the ages.

There’s more to the words “Sodomy” and “Sodomite” than what you’ve given above and a whole book has been written about it by Mark D. Jordan, Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University (formerly he was at Harvard Divinity School). He has this to say in his book The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 1:

Sodomy is a medieval artifact. I have found no trace of the term before the eleventh century. It is also a medieval artifact as a category for classifying - for uniting and explaining - desires, dispositions, and acts that had earlier been classified differently and separately. But “Sodomy” is also a judgment. The judgment made in “Sodomy” has been as durable as any medieval artifact. So I speak of the invention of Sodomy for Christian theology as a whole: the medieval invention was the invention of Sodomy simply speaking. It was the invention that would be decisive for all later Christian theology in the West -hence for European or American legislation, medicine, natural science, and manners. The fearful abstraction in our use of the term is medieval, as is our prurient confusion over what the word really means.

Professor Jordan further says on page 29:

The credit - or rather the blame - for inventing the word sodomia , “Sodomy,” must go, I think, to the eleventh century theologian Peter Damian. He coined it quite deliberately on analogy to blasphemia , “blasphemy,” which is to say, on analogy to the most explicit sin of denying God. Indeed, from its origin, Sodomy is as much a theological category as trinity, incarnation, sacrament, or papal infallibility. As a category, it is richly invested with specific notions of sin and retribution, responsibility and guilt. The category was never meant to be neutrally descriptive, and it is doubtful whether any operation can purify it of its theological origins. There is no way to make “Sodomy” objective.