SILVER
Your position on the sinfulness of homosexual acts and other inmoral actions is consistent with Catholic teaching. But your approach to the individual is not consistent with the Church’s teachings today.
You say that Jesus talks about a sword, but his Church condemns violence as a means to combat evil and sin. Is the Church wrong? The Church even has reservations on capital punishment. See the quote I posted above. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have openly said that the US invasion of Iraq was inmoral, even if the end was good.
Not always, that is why there is a just war doctrine. And that is also why the Church allows violence to prevent evil as in the case of self defense.
As to the issue in MA, the Church is not rejecting the homosexual person, it’s rejecting the normalization of an inmoral act by introducing it into the school’s curriculum. Check out Cardinal O’Malley’s blog, the Archbishop of Boston. Observe that the Church always calls us to speak about and treat human beings as brothers and sisters, not as evil. We have no right to judge people’s soul or their character.
How do you suggest we interpret the words of Mother Teresa who was recently beatified and on the fast track to canonization?
“It doesn’t matter if a person is a Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Communist, we are all brothers and sisters and we must love each other and take care of each other.”
When she opened her home for AIDS victims, “I only see Jesus and he is sick.”
Or the Catechism of the Catholic Church
*2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. *These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
I’d say the Church doesn’t allow unjust discrimination, but these is such as thing as justified and righteous discrimination. That is the only think i am advocating, also Mother Teresa is not requiring everyone to do as she does, its up to you if you want to risk a moral disaster by not staying away from immoral people, others like me will not take that risk.
Or the pastoral letter on homosexuality
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.
The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a “heterosexual” or a “homosexual” and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.
There was another pastoral letter issue to families of homosexual people by the Bishops of the United States called ALWAYS OUR CHILDREN in which they denounced separating or excluding their homosexual children from family life as contrary to Christian charity and contrary to what the Church is trying to teach.
I believe that the Church’s moral position on this issue is sound. But it is a stretch to justify negative behavior toward any sinner, “let him who has no sin throw the first stone.” We all have problems that we have to grapple with.
Some problems are more serious than others, we cannot treat each problem as if they have the same magnitude. Homophilia is of the same magnitude and seriousness as other kinds of sexual deviance like pedophilia.
For the record, i am not advocating commiting violent acts against homophiles, but i am in favor of criminalizing homophile acts under pain of jail time.
As for excluding homophile children from family life, i don’t see how it would even be possible not to, anymore than it would be possible not to exclude pedophilic children from family life, their very sins exclude them from being functional members of the family or of society.
Homophilia is not only a sin and a disorder, it is also dysfunctional.
The only time they can be included again to family life is if they have turned away from their sins.
Even sins like fornication adutery and drug abuse are serious enough to render someone excluded or separated from family life.
We can love sinful individuals, even like bin laden, but we cannot treat them the same way we treat good decent people, we must treat them differently.
Some people may prefer only to look at the good side of people, i for one do not, i look at both, the good and the bad. I look at the totality and the whole person.
The problem with sin is it stains the entire person. Sin begets sin.
The best way to love sinful people is to pray for their conversion.
Making them feel they are accepted or tolerated sends the wrong message, it doesn’ help lead them to the right path.
