I used to have two colleagues, both very nice guys, both practicing gay men. I wasn’t going to bring up the subject, but if any of them did, and asked for my opinion, what could I say to them?
You could say what the CC says about it. They weren’t protected from error when they produced it, but they did a nice job with this one. It’s a pretty good example of how Christians can do something right even though they’re not protected from error. I’m on board with Catholic teaching on this one, so that tells you something.
I could only say that according to some Christians, God approves of homosexuality, but according to others, God regards homosexuality as a serious sin.
While this is accurate, there’s a lot more you can say than just this.
And if I personally take the opinion that practicing homosexuality is wrong, while God approves it, then I am guilty of bigotry and creating divisions among Christians.
That wouldn’t happen, because God does not approve of it. Practicing homosexuality, that is.
But if I say that the practice of homosexuality is perfectly acceptable from a moral standpoint, while in fact God condemns it, then I risk the sin of misleading people who may want to discuss the subject with me, and I risk causing (in part) their destruction, by encouraging them to sin.
That would be a rather serious mistake. Don’t do that.
What I want to say is that I realized, these things are not without consequences. It was imperative to find out, if possible, who’s on the right side of issues and who’s in error.
How did you jump from “figuring out what’s right” to “figuring out who’s on the right side”? Why can’t you just figure out what’s right and what’s wrong? Anyone else can go wherever they want; that should make no difference to you. Your priority has to be knowing the will of God.
By listening to many Protestant ministries, it sounded to me as if, in their opinion, the Church is everywhere you can find Christians believers. That is, the Church is present in the Reformed Calvinist community that rejects homosexuality, and the Church is also present in the Episcopalian community that accepts and embraces homosexuality as a morally legitimate form of diversity.
The Reformed Calvinist folks would have serious reservations about calling someone a Christian believer if they practice homosexuality, though. If we assume that God condemns this sort of practice (and I think we both do), wouldn’t a God-indwelt Spirit-led regenerate Christian be convicted of sin if the following two circumstances are true?
- The practice of homosexuality is a sin.
- God indwells someone and regularly convicts them of sin.
Number 1 is non-negotiable for the Reformed Calvinist. So when the Episcopal who practices homosexuality isn’t ever convicted of it, the Reformed Calvinist will not assume that number 1 is untrue. He will assume number 2 is not happening to the gay Episcopal. Not just because he’s gay, of course- if he were celibate, that’d be a different story.
In contrast to the Protestant understanding of what the Church is, the Catholic creed says that there is ONE Church
We actually do say that.
(which, according to Catholic belief, is the Catholic Church), and true (error-free) teaching can be found in this ONE Church.
We don’t say any of that, and we often wonder how a Catholic like yourself can reconcile a moderate understanding of Church history and our present reality with any of this.
OK, more exactly, the Church is one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. It’s a visible organization that’s easy to find, even geographically and physically. And the Eastern/Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant Churches (or Protestant Faith Communities, more exactly) are not part of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church which is error-free and which has the fullness of truth.
The fact that you can talk to people like me means you’re not the only one, you can’t make an exclusive claim to holiness, Catholic can also be spelled with a small c, there’s other apostolic churches, and no one is error-free including you.
Everyone else says the same thing about who’s error-free. (With the exception of the Eastern Orthodox). We apply the rule to everyone. You apply the rule to everyone but yourself. We see that as special pleading.
According to Catholic understanding, Catholics are not the only Christians in the West. But only the Catholic Church, through its Magisterium and Bishops in Communion with the Pope, teaches the faith correctly.
And you demonstrate this by…presupposing that the CC is always perfect and assume that anything different is in error?
That’s not actually how you demonstrate that something is free from error. You don’t just assume it like that. You have to demonstrate it.
If that’s your starting point, you have an irrational starting point.
As a side note, Christianity is also divided in the East.
Not like it is in the West. Every new Protestant denomination is another example of how completely and irreparably broken the influence of the CC now is. In the East, no one completely rejects apostolic succession. It happens all the time in the West. That’s because the East hasn’t had any Reformations. They are avoidable, but the CC didn’t avoid them.
Just to give an interesting historical snippet about the divisions within Eastern Christianity, the Patriarch of Moscow (largest EOC, population-wise) broke communion at a certain point in the 1990s with the Patriarch of Constantinople (whom many EO regard as being at the place of highest honor among EO Patriarchs), but later they resolved their conflict that prompted this drastic measure from the Russian side, and they came back into communion with each other.
They sure did that quickly! Maybe the CC can learn something from them.
:idea:
I came the conclusion that, despite my personal struggles with some Catholic “particulars,” I am a Catholic. My faith, that gut instinct that I feel and the pull of the Holy Spirit, tells me to trust in my faith in the Catholic Church despite my own human failings. The more I have been here, the more I have realized where I belong and that the Church probably knows the truth better than yours truly. And the more I have read about the Reformation and become learned in its twists and turns, the more I would never place my trust in the “reformers.”
