Gods view in homosexuality

[speakttruth]

And I thought you objected to people making it the sine qua non of their existence.

Call me dumb, but I don’t understand what your saying:shrug:?

 

[fix]

fix,

That’s great that Courage decides to use certain diction. It’s also irrelevant. We who live in the world must meet people where they are if we are to draw them to Christ. Refusing to use “loaded” terms like “gay” is just another way we keep ourselves apart from other people.

I’m all for not buying into the ideology but using a term like “gay” does not lend any kind of weight or authority to any political agenda. It’s simply using common parlance in order to remove potential communication barriers.

You’re not doing the Church or active homosexuals any favors by immediately labeling them or specific words in a fashion that in any way intimates that they are a group of “others.” The Church is not in control of the culture; it hasn’t been that way for centuries. Thus we are left with either insisting that we talk on “our terms” or allowing ourselves to talk on terms where everyone knows what everyone else is talking about.

When someone says “I’m gay” does it mean he or she is actively engaged in sexual acts? I doubt it. Prior to my marriage, if I was to say “I’m straight” would that mean I’m sexually active with the opposite sex? Nope. Virgin on my wedding day.

No matter what you or Courage say, the common understanding of the terms “gay/straight/bisexual” refers to attraction not action.

If you want to embrace the word gay you may do so. Others disagree.

 

[The_Bucket]

(c) In my own communication with the “gay” segment of the population (which I discussed twice earlier, I think), I do not “insist” on certain terms, no. That would be alienating. But I also don’t introduce their terms either, or their understandings of how “inevitable” it is to act on an attraction, and how not acting on an attraction supposedly betrays the self and is some giant lie.

The most important role I play (I believe) in conversations with that population (which I don’t generally interface with as a group, although some of you may; mine is usually with individuals), is just to listen, receive, and accept. Accept nonverbally. I agree with anyone here that that is the most important and persuasive (“converting”) activity. (Or, passivity, is how I prefer to see it and say it.) I don’t patronize with a lot of modern lingo. I don’t pretend to buy into the subculture, or feel that I must do that in order to win their trust. And since I have earned their trust without doing that, I think that possibly proves my point.

I absolutely agree with this. Insisting on certain lingo in either direction is absurd. I know what someone means when he or she says “I’m gay” or “I think I’m gay” or whatever. I dealt with plenty of homosexual acquaintances in college. I didn’t for a second “celebrate” their homosexuality nor did I intimate that I somehow hated them as people. Of course, my leading the College Republicans caused plenty of people to make assumptions, but those gay people that were actually somewhat close to me knew that I treated people as people.

Being accepting or at least passive is absolutely the most important thing to do when trying to reach out to others. Christ preached but He also listened intently to the cries of those who came up to Him and was frequently “moved with pity.” Thus we must be as well.

Patronizing with different diction is a bad idea. Patronizing by pretending to buy into the subculture is probably an even worse idea. I think your way of doing things is quite well thought out.

 

[speakttruth]

Hey. Some of you I know, some not. Thanks Dakota!
It’s not a matter of a hyphenated identity, or of having “one foot on sea and one on shore” to make it easier to bale if the Catholic thing doesn’t work out, or any of the other silliness that has been suggested here. It’s a matter of recognizing that being Catholic does not automatically obliterate all other aspects of personality, nor does it necessarily mean that inconvenient aspects of the self will immediately fly off over the rainbow. If I said “I am an autistic Catholic woman” no one would be troubled, they would recognize that I was a Catholic woman who happened to have a neurological condition. End of story. It’s the same deal with saying that I’m queer. To people outside of the Catholic ghetto this is no longer a statement of ideology, it’s just an adjective. Since I’m not especially interested in preaching to the choir in language that only the choir can understand, I use language in a way that is commonly understood and agreed upon by most potential interlocutors. It’s not contrary to Church teaching to do so. The fact that the Church does not use this language in Her own publications is not a condemnation of those who do use it. Imagine how impossible it would be to participate in any discourse if we extended this logic to the rest of life and confined all of our utterances solely to words that had appeared in Vatican documents.

Melinda,
If you went to the Courage Conference did you know that the late Fr. Harvey and the whole of the Courage ministry states that we should not label ourselves Gay and why ? Just wondering if the bias of your opinion is based on the fact that you have or had SSA ? All of the ministries that use the words Gay and lesbian, transgender and Bisexual, that I have seen in many parish bulletins push homosexual behavior, some very obscurely, such as St Cecilia’s parish in Boston Mass, (Rainbow ministry) is to me an encouragement they are hoping that eventually the Church will change her mind with the times and accept not the person, but there open sexual relationships with the same sex as the person, and not about reaching them where they are. To me this is insincere. This is giving the activists exactly what they want in my opinion…

 

[speakttruth]

Homosexuality in itself is not sinful because concupiscence is not evil.

Homosexuality is the sin, homosexual inclinations is not.

 

[speakttruth]

Grace & Peace!

I find that a very ironic thing to say, fix–because it appears that, for you, charity has some very clear pre-conditions, one of which is that love is not an option (or must be radically re-defined) if it requires bending to take into consideration the weakness of a brother or sister. You’ll have nothing to do with that sort of thing. You have made it clear that your ideological integrity is more important than compassionating another person’s weakness.

Jesus counted his divinity as nothing, emptying himself for the sake of weak humanity. Paul declared that he was willing to be all things to all people that he might save some. If we value our own personal integrity over the needs of others (even if we have “principled” objections to those needs) how are we to empty ourselves as completely as we can in order to love others even half as much as we should? How are we to be all things to all people if all we’re actually willing to be is satisfied with our own uprightness?

Fix, they will know we are Christians by our love–not by how overbearingly correct we can be. If our attachment to being right is getting in the way of our ability to love others and build up the church of God–even at the cost of our own self-desolation–then we’re failing and have fallen into idolatry: our sense of correctness has become our god.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

This isn’t being about upright or correctness and it is not just about a word, but the meaning of the word in the public forum that can hinder someone’s perception of oneself. My son thinks this way and so do many of the men with SSA he knows accepts this meaning as there identity… Gay marriage, gay adoption, gay history, gay pride month. All against the Catholic teachings. How should we present ourselves as Christlike? Do you really think Jesus would use the word Gay knowing what is happening today? Does this word not put a stumbling block on our fellow man?
Do you know how many people are being helped by the Courage ministry that doesn’t encourage the use of the word Gay? Why are they doing this? Do you think they don’t understand why this is the case, they don’t know? They have been the only and I mean only ministry for SSA as stated on their website that has been approved from the Pontificate. I think after doing this for over 40 years they know what’s out there. The Cardinal that started this ministry will probably be a saint one day and he entrusted Fr. Harvey to help people with these issues. He was the most loving, HUMBLE man and the people with SSA loved him, along now with Fr. Check, and he didn’t need to use the word that meant labeling oneself only by their sexuality to meet people anywhere. His books would help anyone understand this. Just my thoughts

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

No one has claimed that we must be uncharitable.

I’ve not made the claim that you have called for un-charity–I’ve suggested that your understanding of charity has certain pre-conditions which limit your vision of the sort of self-emptying that charity demands of you, not that you are arguing that we must be uncharitable.

Those that place conditions on charity are the ones that demand we all embrace this novel ideology called "gay?.

No one has demanded you accept any novel ideology. However, it has been suggested that the ideologies we have should not be allowed to get in the way of our ability to love as completely as we should.

Paul writes that babes in the faith get milk while the mature get meat. We wouldn’t demand that an infant eat a steak before it suckles. Why would we ask people outside the church to agree with the meat of our terms before we give them the milk of the Gospel? Why would we give a thirsty pilgrim something they cannot digest before we’re willing to give them water to slake their thirst? Why demand that the cold and weary traveller build his own bed before we’re willing to give him someplace to lay his head? Who, when their son asks for a piece of bread, would give him a stone?

We are too willing to cast stumbling blocks before our brethren–hoops to jump through, hurdles to leap over, tests of their correctness or their sincerity or their accuracy, evaluations of their fitness to belong to our own little group–before we’re willing to consider them our brethren and meet them on the way. Paul’s conception of charity as expressed in I Corinthians is clear–you can do all the good, holy and pious stuff you want, you can be as correct as you can, as morally upright as it’s possible to be, but all of that is less than useless if you’re not emptying yourself completely for the least of your brethren and for the building up the church.

Ideological purity is lovely, fix. I imagine the Golden Calf was also a wonder to behold. And if we’re clinging to ideological purity as the main or defining feature of faith in the God-Man who emptied himself for us, who occupied the space of abjection and death for us, and who rose again for us not as Vengeance and Death, but as Forgiveness and Life, then I’m afraid that in some very fundamental way we’re yearning for the comfortable slavery of our own personal Egypt. Being right is easy compared with being broken by and for the sake of love.

Of course believing the right stuff is important. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good in our search for the purity of heart we so desire. We’re on a journey of faith, in the midst of a process of sanctification. That means not yet being at the destination. While we’re on the journey, we need to be okay with being on the journey–which mean being okay with not yet being at the destination. Across-the-board demands for ideological purity may, at best, represent a healthy dis-satisfaction with not being where we yet desire to be. But they can also represent an unhealthy or even latent disdain for the in-between/not-yet-ness of the journey which can, in turn, lead us to an unhealthy disdain for- or disregard of our fellow travelers, too. Unhealthy, too, is when our attachment to ideological purity leads us to give up on the journey entirely when some mirage of perfection distracts us too completely.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[speakttruth]

Grace & Peace!

I’ve not made the claim that you have called for un-charity–I’ve suggested that your understanding of charity has certain pre-conditions which limit your vision of the sort of self-emptying that charity demands of you, not that you are arguing that we must be uncharitable.

No one has demanded you accept any novel ideology. However, it has been suggested that the ideologies we have should not be allowed to get in the way of our ability to love as completely as we should.

Paul writes that babes in the faith get milk while the mature get meat. We wouldn’t demand that an infant eat a steak before it suckles. Why would we ask people outside the church to agree with the meat of our terms before we give them the milk of the Gospel? Why would we give a thirsty pilgrim something they cannot digest before we’re willing to give them water to slake their thirst? Why demand that the cold and weary traveller build his own bed before we’re willing to give him someplace to lay his head? Who, when their son asks for a piece of bread, would give him a stone?

We are too willing to cast stumbling blocks before our brethren–hoops to jump through, hurdles to leap over, tests of their correctness or their sincerity or their accuracy, evaluations of their fitness to belong to our own little group–before we’re willing to consider them our brethren and meet them on the way. Paul’s conception of charity as expressed in I Corinthians is clear–you can do all the good, holy and pious stuff you want, you can be as correct as you can, as morally upright as it’s possible to be, but all of that is less than useless if you’re not emptying yourself completely for the least of your brethren and for the building up the church.

Ideological purity is lovely, fix. I imagine the Golden Calf was also a wonder to behold. And if we’re clinging to ideological purity as the main or defining feature of faith in the God-Man who emptied himself for us, who occupied the space of abjection and death for us, and who rose again for us not as Vengeance and Death, but as Forgiveness and Life, then I’m afraid that in some very fundamental way we’re yearning for the comfortable slavery of our own personal Egypt. Being right is easy compared with being broken by and for the sake of love.

Of course believing the right stuff is important. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good in our search for the purity of heart we so desire. We’re on a journey of faith, in the midst of a process of sanctification. That means not yet being at the destination. While we’re on the journey, we need to be okay with being on the journey–which mean being okay with not yet being at the destination. Across-the-board demands for ideological purity may, at best, represent a healthy dis-satisfaction with not being where we yet desire to be. But they can also represent an unhealthy or even latent disdain for the in-between/not-yet-ness of the journey which can, in turn, lead us to an unhealthy disdain for- or disregard of our fellow travelers, too. Unhealthy, too, is when our attachment to ideological purity leads us to give up on the journey entirely when some mirage of perfection distracts us too completely.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

How did any of you (Gay) men on this site become chaste? If that is what your claim is. Was it another Gay chaste man? Was that the person who met you half way? Or was it Christ?
Just wondering.

 

[aprilfloyd]

It does not say the attraction (“homosexuality”) is OK. It says that the person is completely OK.

Lots of attractions we have – some clinical, like OCD, some moral, – are not healthy for us. But the person is not synonymous with the attraction.

I am synonymous with my attraction - how can I not be?

 

[The_Bucket]

I am synonymous with my attraction - how can I not be?

Pretty easily. I’m not synonymous with heterosexuality. Certainly I can identify myself as a father and husband but that’s not ultimately what I am. What I am at the very core of my being is a beloved son of the living God. That’s my identity. That’s all of our identities.

 

[aprilfloyd]

Pretty easily. I’m not synonymous with heterosexuality. Certainly I can identify myself as a father and husband but that’s not ultimately what I am. What I am at the very core of my being is a beloved son of the living God. That’s my identity. That’s all of our identities.

I hear what you are saying - me, I am just - me not the son of a god, and I can’t imagine how to separate my heterosexuality from the very core of who I am. I appreciate that you may well be - what you say you are, but so far all the people I have met are not sons or daughters of any god.

 

[Stephen168]

I am synonymous with my attraction - how can I not be?

Do you think pedophiles see themselves as synonymous with their attraction?

 

[aprilfloyd]

Do you think pedophiles see themselves as synonymous with their attraction?

I am not a paedophile, nor know any so can’t comment. But would read any references you can send.