John, one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about your posts is their unerring ability to find and elucidate or insinuate the worst in just about anything someone with whom you disagree might say. It’s a peculiar talent.
It seems you can’t make up your mind about what it is you appreciate about my posts. There is quite a gulf between elucidating and insinuating. Let’s face it, your posts over the months have ranged between outright propogandising to the sublime manipulation of the homosexual issue as a whitewash for what it really stands for. You do recall those threads that were closed down, don’t you DeeVee?
That having been said, of course St. John was writing metaphorically.
You originally wrote that
“Our love for God is erotic love, as St. John of the Cross and others make quite clear in their works.” That is a very definiive statement. Yet here, when challenged, you admit that he was employing the use of metaphor. If metaphor is required, then the reality is not the same as that which the metaphor portrays, otherwise it would not be called metaphorical.
… if eros were merely the base thing you think it is, then the poem would not and could not be as successful as it is at conveying it’s central points,.
Plain wrong. Metaphor, by definition, does not literally represent the thing it is used to portray. The Song of Songs is allegorical, so between the two, the real meaning of our relationship with God as accounted for by the likes of St. John of the Cross is far removed from the possible reality of a relationship with a Supreme being.
I therefore maintain–our love for God is erotic.
Imagine the headlines around the world if the Pope made this claim.
… It seems to me that that was precisely St. John’s assumption which allowed him to express his longing for union with God in very human, very erotic terms, thereby showing us the true nature and direction of eros itself.
That is putting the horse after the cart. The subject is not the nature of eros, but the nature of our relationship with God. Erotic is the metaphor used to try to capture some meaning in understandable human terms.
Because you insist that lovers must have sex in order for them to be lovers. No tea leaves are required, John. You even say so later in your post.
People who are in a sexual relationship, according to the common parlance of our contemporary age, are said to be lovers. After all, don’t we near stories about people who eventually became lovers? Burton and Taylor come to mind.
Perhaps you’re assuming that a platonic love is merely a distant friendship? That would be a common, but nonetheless erroneous, assumption.
I am yet to say anything about what I think a platonic love is, yet you seem hell bent on telling me how I view it!!
Some folks certainly have an interest in portraying their relationship as including sex. …
Most folks in the gay scene portray sex as a meaningful aspect of their relationship and the title of this thread has that in mind. Gee, one look at a Gay pride march, or an in-your-face gay and lesbianis mardi gras makes that obvious.
Tell that to Dante and Beatrice. Or to Our Lady and St. Joseph.
Unrequited, distant love does not two people lovers make. Besides, Dante was supposedly a whole nine years old when he first laid eyes on Beatrice. That, my friend, is infatuation, which most of us grow out of.
In all of your denials, I’m detecting an alarmingly persistent insistence on two things:
I’m asserting. You are denying.
- Some people just cannot overcome their passions–same-sex attracted people are among such people. (And yet, for all of your denials, you indicate below that you believe chastity is possible for homosexual folks. Are all your denials merely rhetorical, then, and not to be taken too seriously? What is it, in fact, that you’re denying?)
Another disengenuous twist on things DeeVee. You and others have made numeous posts about the importance of sex in homosexual relationships. I recall many of your posts lauding the sexuality of homosexual relationships. It is the homosexual brigade that has persistently written about the poor, deprived homosexual lovers whose lot is the horrible trials of chastity. I and countless others have persistently said that’s not true; that heterosexuals can remain chaste, so why can’t homosexuals? Particularly when their sexual proclivities are disordered and unnatural.
- What is true or real is only true or real insofar as it corresponds to your idea of what the true or real is. Life can never surprise you by proving you wrong–or if it does, it will do so entirely on your terms.
Wrong again. I have persistently and consistently pushed the Catholic moral argument. That just happens to be objective and therefore your attempts at portraying me as someone shooting from the hip, all on my lonesome, is making you look rather silly.
Indeed–not only may they embrace chastity, but they may even fall in love and be in a relationship in which that love is reciprocated and which does not include sex…and still remain chaste.
Wishful thinking. Yes, it is possible, but human nature being what it is…
Now–to bring this back to the OP–should such a relationship be called or be susceptible to marriage? According to the RC understanding of the sacrament, no. And that’s that. But it doesn’t mean such relationships do not or cannot exist.
Well, that’s hedging your bets! The Church says “no” and it says “no” for very good reasons. The idea of two homosexuals in some sort of platonic relationship denies the very existence of the attraction the homosexual lobby claims is a valid one. Yes, it might be possible, but highly improbable too.
