Difficult articles on homosexuality

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These two Martyrs were dressed as women during a public humiliation for professing their faith, then flogged. St Bacchus died from that flogging. This was in times when to be Christian was very dangerous and Christians who did not also worship the Roman gods were martyred. The Romans believed the Christians not participating in the Roman festivals that worshipped their gods would bring famine and disaster .
St Sergius was beheaded in Syria.
The blood of the martyrs of the early Church is the seed of the Church. It is deeply sad to me to read some are attempting to appropriate these two martyrs to their own ends.

Dressing these men in womens clothing in no way makes them a married gay couple. It was part of the Roman public spectacle to bring Christians to heel.
 
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QwertyGirl said:
I was, however, discussing people here at CAF who seem so pre-occupied with all things sexual.
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It’s mostly just two people who keep posting threads about those types of topics.
 
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I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I ask because this is a genuine question that keeps my friends need converting from actually commuting. Other young people I talk to care deeply that we as Catholics didn’t just pull these things out of thin air and that we care about the people they affect. I’m also sorry if you disagree that we are obliged to follow church teaching but I believe wholeheartedly that this is the church Christ founded and I won’t separate myself from Peter even if I don’t understand what he says.

I also feel that the half dozen questions I’ve posted have all been about relatively serious faith questions. I’m not a trol I’m a young person who recently came back to the faith. I’m trying to sort out some faith questions that hang me up and make it harder to bring my friends into the church with me. I don’t mean to make my faith struggle anyone else’s problem.
 
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Revisionist history: everyone was gay, bi, a transvestite, a pedophile, yaddi yaddi etc. etc. and there’s no end to the slander which in the case of Holy Scripture and the Church can border on blasphemy.
 
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Well now why, it’s no more or less “Catholic” than America Magazine.
 
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No, I’m not talking about you. I think maybe three people are the ones that hi-jacked this.
 
Ok I’m glad. I hope people don’t ge the impression I’m trying to start fights. I know these are hot button issues and ones that divide us. If asking the question causes more harm than good I can just bring it to my spiritual director only instead.
 
Dialogue is always good. I don’t perceive it as fighting. I encourage you to keep asking your questions. That is how we learn. And if you are asking a question, no doubt other people probably have the same question and haven’t bothered to post it.
 
JosephJohn said:
… I have trouble seeing the natural law argument …
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There can be no marriage unless there can be consummation by sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is, of course, only between different sexes. See in canon law:
CIC Can. 1084 §1 Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have sexual intercourse, whether on the part of the man or on that of the woman, whether absolute or relative, by its very nature invalidates marriage.

CIC Can. 1096 §1 For matrimonial consent to exist, it is necessary that the contracting parties be at least not ignorant of the fact that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman, ordered to the procreation of children through some form of sexual cooperation.
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JosephJohn said:
Those two saints are also [according to boswell] described by a Greek word which basically means “loving pair” (with Eros not Philia as the root). Again I can’t find the primary source so maybe it’s just a fabrication.
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I haven’t been able to find much on that beyond “gay Christian” bloggers citing Boswell. However, as the last source shows, he isn’t a reliable authority on this subject matter, and the fact that everyone has to go back to him rather than a myriad of historians and linguists is a red flag.

But we could do a bit of a thought experiment. Let’s say that writings did describe a passionate love between them. So what? “Love” in a Christian context has always been understood very different from how it is understood in a modern Western context.

But let’s say that they were sexually attracted to each other. Again, so what? They weren’t married (again, Boswell’s attempts to show so are based on ignorance), so they couldn’t indulge that. Part of their love may have been to remain chaste so as to protect their own soul and the soul of the other. (Really, I think this is why Boswell tried to manufacture a marriage.)

Overall, there’s just really nothing here.
 
Hey my friend sorry to veer off topic but it just popped into my head you were worried about your health some time ago. Hope that’s going ok.
 
Try to focus on the fact when you are speaking to friends that orientation does not and will not keep people separate from God in and of itself. Most people I know think that Christians and especially Catholics ‘are against homosexuality’ in very broad terms. They don’t realise that it’s just as spiritually bad for you to have sex outside of marriage as it is to have sex with the same gender. They are even more surprised to learn that nobody is ‘off the team’ due to who they are sexually attracted to. The sticking point is when sexual acts become involved. It used to be easier to come at it in terms of vocation - well there is marriage, Holy orders or the single life. But now there is ‘gay marriage ‘ many people who don’t have a church background understandably have the lines blurred. Don’t get me wrong when it comes down to it I believe in equal rights, but is a gay marriage/civil partnership pleasing to God? Things in scripture and tradition tend to suggest the answer could be no. I can’t honestly say otherwise if someone asks me that point blank. God understands that you might romantically love someone of the same gender but if you’re Catholic you need to stay celibate. My go to phrase is, ‘it’s not up to me. It’s up to that person and God and to be honest the most important thing they need to do is get right with God , get baptised, form a relationship with God’. (And then from there partake in the sacraments). Those are the big things that we must address first and foremost. In my life, God has dealt with one thing at a time with me. So it is for those who are struggling with this
 
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puppson said:
Revisionist history: everyone was gay, bi, a transvestite, a pedophile, yaddi yaddi etc. etc. and there’s no end to the slander which in the case of Holy Scripture and the Church can border on blasphemy.
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Ah yes, the “Queen James Bible,” Jesus approved of gay unions because he healed the centurion’s servant, Leviticus doesn’t really condemn homosexuality, etc. Everything has to be looked at through the lens of homosexuality.
 
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Some go much farther, even to make insinuations about Jesus Himself. That is blasphemy. Foul, diabolical blasphemy.
 
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I really appreciate your thoughtful and honest answer. This is basically where I am too. I don’t have a clean argument against it accept that I’m certain Catholicism is true and Catholicism requires me to believe this. For the time being I try to be as charitable with the church’s teaching as I can be without approving of something I shouldn’t.
 
Silly as some of the claims are dont we have an intellectual responsibility to refute their “evidence”.
 
How then does a culture which has tried to eradicate homosexuals justify that they still exist? Those who were placed into concentration camps under Nazi rule for being gay (with the pink triangle) were also liberated from the camps but were thrown back into prison afterwards for being gay. Yet, they are still in Germany!
 
Actually can’t be bothered because I’ve read responses to other threads and I know it will not lead to anything productive.
 
This is a misunderstanding of why homosexual acts are sinful.

(1) sex acts must be ordered towards procreation
(2) the ordering of any act, whether it is a sex act or not, is deduced by its most proximate end
(3) More precisely, “ordered towards procreation,” is deduced by the moral object of the act with its two dimensions. By the actor willing the concrete act, and cognizing the object, he performs an act inherently connected with some proximate end.

(A) the actor deliberately and knowingly wills the concrete, material act (the exterior behavioral pattern that he chooses),
(B) the actor’s reason recognizes other inherent constituents of the object itself, and the end that the act is (by its nature), ordered towards.

Inherent constituents of the object are not circumstances, but are essential elements of the object itself. For example, while adultery may not be any different in the ‘behavioral pattern’ than the conjugal act, since the actor’s reason recognizes that he is not married to the person (an essential constituent of the object itself), this allows him to deduce the act’s conformity with the good of marriage.

The actor is the author of his actions. By deliberately and knowingly willing an act, he chooses to perform the act, which like all acts, is inherently connected to a proximate end. In the case of the conjugal act, it is insemination (even if the actor fails to acheive this end). For example, it may take many attempts to perform sexual intercourse, but the acts are inherently moral as long as they are ordered towards procreation. That is, as long as sexual intercourse remains possible.

Older couples, infertile couples, etc, with the potential to perform intercourse, who move their will towards performing this one conjugal act, indeed perform procreative acts. Homosexual acts fail to observe the right sex. They fail to observe the right manner of copulation too (sexual intercourse). Simply, they are sex acts that are not ordered towards procreation. It is as simple as that.
 
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