Grace & Peace!
Homosexuality, or heterosexuality, isn’t the sum total of someone’s sexuality. Sexuality starts with maleness and femaleness. That cannot be denied.
Corki, thanks for engaging in the discussion. You are right that our attempts to define something are just that–attempts–and cannot be seen as exhaustive. Human sexuality and human sexual desire are very complex things. And you are correct, I think, to link biology with this discussion. Our bodies are important parts of this conversation!
It’s important, however, to remain aware of the distinction between biological male and femaleness and our cultural understanding of how the biological facts of male and female play out in the world. And that cultural understanding changes over time and over space. The cultural understanding of maleness among certain African tribes looks very much like a European understanding of femaleness. So called “Third genders” in which, for instance, a biological male is understood to be culturally female, appear in many different cultures.
All of which points to what I think you’re getting at: which is to say that sexuality, and biological and cultural gender are ways of relating to the world and to others. If that is, in fact, what you’re getting at–that the supreme value of sexuality and gender lies in their relational aspect–then I agree with you completely. Where we get into trouble, or at least where you and I may begin to disagree, is with how we proceed from there to a working understanding of normative social and sexual relations, and how we go on from that understanding to deal with difference. I.e., is normativity a standard to which all should or must conform, an ideal toward which all should strive, or representative simply of a statistical likelihood?
The catechism is quite clear that it believes that a homosexual’s relational faculties are impaired. Rome itself argues against men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” becoming priests, precisely because of its belief in the fundamental impairment of a homosexual’s relational capacity. Personally, I find this conclusion deeply disturbing as it suggests that *all *of a homosexual’s relationships are touched with disorder and are therefore somehow
wrong or perhaps *latently inappropriate. *And given that Rome understands sexuality to be an important part of our humanity, it will not take us long to reach the conclusion that homosexuals are prevented from being fully human by their disorder. Therefore, as Rome has confirmed, they should be prevented from acting *in persona Christi *as they cannot but fail to image the humanity of Our Lord appropriately. Again, I find all of this depply disturbing, but that’s where Rome’s logic gets us.
As with any disorder, such as blindness or parapalegia or OCD, the person dealing with the disorder needs to find a way to live a full life without the disorder defining him/her.
Your list of disorders does not quite work here. Blindness, parapalegia, etc. are not seen as* moral* disorders, i.e., affective disorders that severely impair or destroy our ability to
will or
desire the appropriate things. Homosexuality, however, is so characterized in the catechism. If homosexuality were, in fact, seen in the same sort of category of disorder as blindness, we would be having a very different discussion.
Yes, as long as one was a woman and one a man as was the case with Our Lady and St. Joseph.
Here you prove my point–that Roman Catholic culture cannot allow homosexuals to celebrate romantic intimacy even if it stops short of sexual consummation. Homosexuals must therefore be denied
any form of romantic intimacy. Which is to say: in order to live a moral life according to Rome, a homosexual must deny or destroy part of the relational capacity in them (their sexuality) which is generally recognized to be a key component of a person’s humanity.
Based on Rome’s logic, this is the unfortunate conclusion we must reach.
It is, in fact, true. Rome does not recognize homosexuality as an actual sexuality. Read the relevant parts of the catechism. It is reluctant even to use the term “heterosexuality” as that would give the impression that heterosexuality and homosexuality are somehow both natural expressions of human sexuality. Rome believes that there is one natural human sexuality and that homosexuality is a deviation therefrom. Homosexuals, in other words, are defective heterosexuals. This is Rome’s fundamental understanding of sexuality, an understanding that is, again, ever more revealing itself to be at odds with science, observation, and experience. But from this understanding spring the various prohibitions against homosexual conduct, as well as the unfortunate conclusions to which those prohibitions and attitudes lead us.
We already have been having that conversation for decades. Homosexuality is not a forbidden topic in the Church. The appropriate expression of homosexual desire within a Catholic moral context is well discussed.
The conversation we have not had can only happen when Rome readjusts its view of sexuality to align more closely with reality. In other words, the conversation we have not had revolves around this question, “Given that homosexuality is a minority variant of human sexuality and is not, in fact, a disorder of a natural heterosexuality, what does a moral homosexual relationship really look like?” It’s not a conversation we can have now, because Rome’s basic understanding of sexuality is flawed in some very significant places. But I am confident that this discussion will, eventually, be had in the Roman Communion.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
