F
fix
Guest
Anyone who self identifies as “queer” is not an authority I would seek out to defend my position.
- Status
F
fix
Guest
Having a foot in both worlds makes one confused it seems.
D
Dakota_Roberts
Guest
And I thought you objected to people making it the sine qua non of their existence.
S
Seeker1961
Guest
And 17 pages later…the point is still the same. I admire you and Kolbe for continuing to make it and make it so well.
I’m still in the same place-it’s all about the goal. (I guess all that soccer and hockey as a kid made an imprint)
If the goal is to define people your way, then, by all means, don’t consider the possible ramifications. Don’t think about that interaction being the only picture of Jesus they may ever see.
However, if the goal is to reach out to people who really need to meet Jesus, then considering the ramifications might be a good idea.
D
Dakota_Roberts
Guest
To a degree they do consider it, after all I have never heard these people condemn an unmarried woman who had an abortion as a slut, murderer, evil, baby killer, filth etc. instead they talk about compassion and being kind.
S
Seeker1961
Guest
That thought has crossed my mind as well.
D
Dakota_Roberts
Guest
It isn’t hypocritical, it is pragmatic…
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
… in which case (the latter), there is no point in hyphenating one’s identity outside or inside a Catholic context, if that’s all it is: an orientation.
“What are you, Elizabeth?”
“I am a straight Catholic.”
Sounds stupid, no?
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
She has explained (several times, just fyi, including on EWTN) that she is attracted only to her husband. Several of us wonder out loud, Why is more than that necessary, actually?
What I’m thinking of is other women I have known in my life, even briefly, who are actually very similar, and in their case it might not even be that they are generally SSA, just generally need a special guy interested in their core personality and in how well the relationship works and not for a particular gender role to which they don’t fit. (And it has been true of all these women: they are not “typically” feminine in the way that most people define or recognize that.)
Melinda has talked about this relationship working for her, and the mutual understandings they have, including about her (sustained) SSA, and how accepting he is of that. That was a big feature for her in deciding to marry him, unless I misunderstand her.
In a less pronounced way, it could be said that many heterosexuals have been attracted to one (or maybe just few) of the opposite sex. I may notice lots of hunky guys, but the instant Hunky Guy X starts acting arrogant or vain or detached, I immediately turn off. Similar, I would think, for guys. Men have said that obsession with her looks can make him lose interest in a beautiful woman; ditto if she has no sense of fun or has a poor self-image.
There’s an awful lot that goes into attraction for an awful lot of people. It’s not just physical.
L
Linux
Guest
Inside a Catholic context I would argue that categorical distinctions such as “straight” is just as problematic since it implies that “gay” is a normal orientation among other other orientations. Should a person who is for no fault of there own attracted to children label themselves as having a pedoe-orientation? That’s ridiculous. I person should not call themselves straight or gay.
C
Charlemagne_II
Guest
Dakota
**To a degree they do consider it, after all I have never heard these people condemn an unmarried woman who had an abortion as a slut, murderer, evil, baby killer, filth etc. instead they talk about compassion and being kind. **
But neither would I for a moment consider calling her by the euphemism “gay”. There is nothing gay either about abortion or sodomy. Both are downright sad, not to mention condemned by Saint Paul. We can reach out compassionately to both for their forgiveness and recovery, but we don’t have to do so by befouling the language.
Christ called the hypocrites in the temple “vipers”. He didn’t call them “gay”.
We don’t call a murderer gay.
We don’t call a liar gay.
We don’t call a thief gay.
But we must call a sodomite gay?
**To a degree they do consider it, after all I have never heard these people condemn an unmarried woman who had an abortion as a slut, murderer, evil, baby killer, filth etc. instead they talk about compassion and being kind. **
But neither would I for a moment consider calling her by the euphemism “gay”. There is nothing gay either about abortion or sodomy. Both are downright sad, not to mention condemned by Saint Paul. We can reach out compassionately to both for their forgiveness and recovery, but we don’t have to do so by befouling the language.
Christ called the hypocrites in the temple “vipers”. He didn’t call them “gay”.
We don’t call a murderer gay.
We don’t call a liar gay.
We don’t call a thief gay.
But we must call a sodomite gay?
M
Melinda_Selmys
Guest
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.
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.
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
Melinda,
Call me odd, but I would be troubled if someone felt a need to identify herself as “an autistic Catholic woman.” Autistic has nothing to do with Catholic. There are a few categories of people who would or might need a voluntary announcement about autism. They would be:
(a) educators (teachers, administrators, including college administrators)
(b) medical doctors
(c) potential employers
Would you find it appropriate that someone introduced themselves as “a disabled (such as in a chair) Catholic?” Why? The disability (and autism is a disability in terms of function) has no bearing on religious membership.
Autistic does not, in terms of language/grammar, qualify Catholic, properly speaking. What would qualify the term Catholic would not be a personal condition such as that, or an attraction, or even one’s self-aware level of sinfulness. The modifiers to Catholic have to do with membership status or origin, thus:
A practicing Catholic
A non-practicing Catholic
A new Catholic
A former Catholic now affiliated with a different religion
A cradle Catholic
etc.
It seems to me that the minute we start adding non-membership identifiers to the term Catholic is when we set up an implicit division within Catholicism. (The autistic Catholics vs. the non-autistic Catholics, etc.)
I do understand what you’re saying about language outside of the Vatican documents. I would have no problem with that if, in the secular world, “gay” really did mean one thing and one thing only, and in Catholic circles it meant something different but uniformly different (such as SSA). But the problem is, that this is not true at all. And in terms of evangelizing (which has certainly emerged as an important theme in this discussion), I would think one would want to be especially clear about how one’s orientation can no longer be acted upon once Catholicism is embraced, making the term “gay” moot in that context.
I actually do see the point, by the way, in the kind of LGBT ministries within parishes which I mentioned earlier, because in those cases the purpose is explicit, and I do think that gathering with a view to support each other in the struggle for sanctity, within an understanding of similar temptations, is positive.
Call me odd, but I would be troubled if someone felt a need to identify herself as “an autistic Catholic woman.” Autistic has nothing to do with Catholic. There are a few categories of people who would or might need a voluntary announcement about autism. They would be:
(a) educators (teachers, administrators, including college administrators)
(b) medical doctors
(c) potential employers
Would you find it appropriate that someone introduced themselves as “a disabled (such as in a chair) Catholic?” Why? The disability (and autism is a disability in terms of function) has no bearing on religious membership.
Autistic does not, in terms of language/grammar, qualify Catholic, properly speaking. What would qualify the term Catholic would not be a personal condition such as that, or an attraction, or even one’s self-aware level of sinfulness. The modifiers to Catholic have to do with membership status or origin, thus:
A practicing Catholic
A non-practicing Catholic
A new Catholic
A former Catholic now affiliated with a different religion
A cradle Catholic
etc.
It seems to me that the minute we start adding non-membership identifiers to the term Catholic is when we set up an implicit division within Catholicism. (The autistic Catholics vs. the non-autistic Catholics, etc.)
I do understand what you’re saying about language outside of the Vatican documents. I would have no problem with that if, in the secular world, “gay” really did mean one thing and one thing only, and in Catholic circles it meant something different but uniformly different (such as SSA). But the problem is, that this is not true at all. And in terms of evangelizing (which has certainly emerged as an important theme in this discussion), I would think one would want to be especially clear about how one’s orientation can no longer be acted upon once Catholicism is embraced, making the term “gay” moot in that context.
I actually do see the point, by the way, in the kind of LGBT ministries within parishes which I mentioned earlier, because in those cases the purpose is explicit, and I do think that gathering with a view to support each other in the struggle for sanctity, within an understanding of similar temptations, is positive.
M
Melinda_Selmys
Guest
Hey Elizabeth,
This is a simple grammatical confusion, probably caused by the fact that in common usage commas are generally no longer used in lists of less than three adjectives. When I use the word “queer” to describe myself, it is a separate adjective which qualifies “woman” but does not qualify “Catholic.” w/r/t the confusion with respect to behaviour vs. attraction, this is really easy to clear up. You just say “I’m queer, but I’m in a heterosexual marriage.” Or, “I’m gay and celibate.” It’s a very simple way of being clear without resorting to terms like “SSA” which are simply incomprehensible to non-Catholics.
This is a simple grammatical confusion, probably caused by the fact that in common usage commas are generally no longer used in lists of less than three adjectives. When I use the word “queer” to describe myself, it is a separate adjective which qualifies “woman” but does not qualify “Catholic.” w/r/t the confusion with respect to behaviour vs. attraction, this is really easy to clear up. You just say “I’m queer, but I’m in a heterosexual marriage.” Or, “I’m gay and celibate.” It’s a very simple way of being clear without resorting to terms like “SSA” which are simply incomprehensible to non-Catholics.
L
Linux
Guest
There is nothing incomprehensible about SSA. It simply means same sex attraction. If you say “I have same sex attraction”, you are simply stating a fact. The term gay or queer means more than that; it means you count yourself as a member of the pro-gay community representing their ideology and politics. “Gay” isn’t just an orientation, its a movement. I don’t see the point in trying to present it as something other than what it historically has always been.
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
I didn’t address this earlier, so I will now. The Catholic Church has always recognized that being a member of the Body of Christ does not necessarily mean that inconvenient aspects of the self will immediately fly off the rainbow. However you had any other understanding perplexes me. That’s precisely what the Body of Christ means: diverse gifts, diverse natural virtues, diverse responses to God, diverse attractions, diverse disorders, diverse sinfulness, diverse needfulness, diverse personalities in all those aspects. One (unified), but many (diverse). That is the theology which defines the Body of Christ. On a personal or individual level, one need not dissolve into bland sameness. One brings an intact and unique set of characteristics to the reality of the whole Body. However, on a spiritual level, what is important is what unites us, the Life that flows among us and between us.
It is essentially different from the dynamic we see so much in the secular world.
Thank you, though, for your clarification about the grammar part.
D
Dakota_Roberts
Guest
I’ve never seen that the fact that someone is right handed come up, but I have seen that someone is left handed will come up. Norms are assumed, exceptions are not assumed; if a Catholic joined a Catholic Bible study group there would be no need to bring it up, but if an Orthodox joined said group there might be a need to bring this up.
We don’t call a horse a dog.Dakota
**To a degree they do consider it, after all I have never heard these people condemn an unmarried woman who had an abortion as a slut, murderer, evil, baby killer, filth etc. instead they talk about compassion and being kind. **
But neither would I for a moment consider calling her by the euphemism “gay”. There is nothing gay either about abortion or sodomy. Both are downright sad, not to mention condemned by Saint Paul. We can reach out compassionately to both for their forgiveness and recovery, but we don’t have to do so by befouling the language.
Christ called the hypocrites in the temple “vipers”. He didn’t call them “gay”.
We don’t call a murderer gay.
We don’t call a liar gay.
We don’t call a thief gay.
But we must call a sodomite gay?
We don’t call a parrot a dog.
We don’t call a cat a dog.
But we must call a canis lupus familiaris a dog?
If it is only used as an abbreviation it is not magically known what it means. In most cases if someone introduced themselves because as same sex attracted most people would probably respond with “so you’re gay?” with minority responses being “Repent!” And “Huh?”
F
fix
Guest
Thank you for pointing out the obvious. I am sorry it is necessary.
D
DexUK
Guest
That is quite deliberately missing the point though.
Homosexually inclined people don’t go about their daily business describing themselves, when asked, as “Same Sex Attracted”. The phrase doesn’t get used. They describe themselves as “gay” as part of their general parlance, whether they’re practising or not.
If we talk to individual gay people on a personal basis (I use the term as synonymous with ‘SSA’) it’s fine to use the ‘SSA’ term, since it’s understandable to the individual. But the moment we decry anything ‘gay’ then the individuals who consider themselves gay in simple ‘SSA’ terms hear that they are being condemned for simply being SSA.
How difficult is it to understand? We need to ensure that when we make a public statement that we don’t inadvertently ensure that people who we aren’t actually condemning feel condemned.
I can’t think of any other way to say this. To condemn ‘gay’ people (which many people do by using the term politically) indisputably includes within it those people who are not political about their sexual orientation.
How we are even arguing about it is beyond me.
It’s simple objective truth - some (I would say most) English-speaking homosexual people define themselves as gay based on nothing more than the recognition of their sexual orientation. I can say it’s an objective truth because I have met them. In person. I have shaken their hands and talked to them. Others I know more indirectly. Some are even priests! (Shock, horror!)
Why do people believe that by using a particular term that’s in common parlance, a person automatically buys into all the political history of it?
A teenager who has no particular understanding of gender politics hears a term being used to describe people who are attracted to the same gender. They recognise the attraction and accept that term as being appropriate to themselves. They don’t go investigating ‘gay rights’ marches, or the ‘Stonewall Riots’ or anything along those lines. They just feel within themselves what their orientation is, they hear the term, it fits, they use it - even if they never wanted to feel the orientation in the first place or act upon it.
Why do people assume that anyone calling themselves ‘gay’ is deliberately cocking a snook at society? Why is it so difficult to believe that for very many people it’s just an adjective with a simple meaning nowadays?
Why - very much why - do we persist in making sweeping statements about the people that use that adjective in such a way that they ALL would feel condemned, regardless of whether would actually be condemning them? If we use a word that has multiple meanings, we’re naturally going to catch people in our condemnation who we shouldn’t be condemning. To not recognise that is irresponsible. Literally. It is our responsibility to be charitable and truthful and to appear to be charitable and truthful - there’s not point feeling ‘charitable and truthful’ if nobody perceives it as such: then it just becomes feel-good vanity while everyone else suffers.** It’s a pharisaical approach that we really ought to know better about.**
Since this is crystal clear to me, I have to ask you - what do you think I’m arguing for? (Because I can pretty much guarantee that I’m not!)
F
fix
Guest
There is nothing charitable in using these political terms. They confirm people on this erroneous ideology. It is the opposite of charity.
- Status