How to Respond Gracefully - Gay Friend Getting Married

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fide said:
But to do good for a person is certainly not always to do what they think would be good! An old phrase that used to be understood was, “tough love” - something that I think all parents have learned. “Tough love” is not easy for the one loving, nor - at least right away - for the one “tough loved”. But if it is true, its goodness will be seen in time.
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Giving a present is just a sign of friendship and nothing more.
FiveLinden said:
What would you say to a friend intending to marry a divorced person?
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The same thing.
 
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Yes. It says consult with your spiritual director. It doesn’t say you can attend, it doesn’t say you can’t.
 
stacie said:
There are so many sins.

Same-sex sex strikes me as such a minor one. Yet it gets condemned so much.

I agree with C.S. Lewis that sins of the flesh are pretty minor, as sins go.
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The Bible certainly does not treat homosex as a “minor sin”. I will concede that, if I were not informed by divine grace — and I am not suggesting this of you — I would say “it might not be the ideal thing to do, but who’s it hurting? — it’s not as though anyone can get pregnant from it, and if you’re careful, the risk of disease is very low to nonexistent”. But the Word of God, and the perennial teaching of the Church through her magisterium and moral theologians, have something entirely different to say.

Any deliberately and voluntarily sought sexual expression, outside of the conjugal use within marriage when conception is not deliberately excluded, is mortally sinful. Homosex contains the additional malice of being contra naturam — against nature itself. (And heterosexual couples can act contra naturam as well.)
stacie said:
I wish corporal punishment of children got as much attention - it is a sin worse by orders of magnitude.
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I have never corporally punished my son. I made a decision long ago that this would never happen in our home. I will agree that some forms of corporal punishment, in their intensity and duration, are horribly evil, some of the more extreme forms being no doubt worse than sexual sin. I have heard of cases where Social Services definitely should have been called. People who think those forms of corporal punishment are acceptable should never get married and have children in the first place.
 
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27lw said:
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phil19034:
…

My argument is that no where in the Bible or Catholic teaching does it say which is worse (sodomy vs adultery). They are BOTH bad and should be BOTH CONDEMNED equally.
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Sodomy is called a “sin that cries out to heaven”.
What Are Sins That Cry to Heaven for Vengeance and Sins against the Holy Spirit? | Catholic Answers
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Yes, I know. However, I would argue that more people probably wind up in hell (or at least risk hell) due to adultery.

LOOK - I am NOT trying to downplay the sinfulness of sodomy.

I’m trying to emphasize that too many of us downplay the sinfulness of adultry & fornacation (but esp adultery)

We will never get someone to understand why same-sex marriage is bad if we continue to have many Catholics who think nothing about the divorced and remarried (without annulment). How many people say things like “well, at least they are legally married,” etc? Or they say things like “I think they should be allowed to receive communion.”

The divorced & remarried (without annulment) are risking hell too.
 
Humility said:
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phil19034:
In reality, this is very similar to the divorced & “remarried” (without an annulment). We Catholics should not be celebrating such “weddings” either.
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I’ll redirect you [here] where it states that: (Can I attend the wedding of my divorced friend? - Relevant Radio)

“In the case of a marriage that is presumed invalid, Canon Law does not prohibit Catholics from attending, but it’s something that you must carefully discern. Put a lot of thought and prayer into your decision and understand that each situation will be different. Factors to consider include maintaining peace between family members, the circumstances of the divorce or reason for marrying outside the Church, and whether or not you are showing approval of an invalid marriage by your presence.”
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Yes, exactly. Though, I will point out that Father Vincent Serpa, OP who used to be the chaplain on Catholic Answers Live used to take a pretty strong stance on this and say “you should not go, period.”
 
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phil19034 said:
We will never get someone to understand why same-sex marriage is bad if we continue to have many Catholics who think nothing about the divorced and remarried (without annulment). How many people say things like “well, at least they are legally married,” etc? Or they say things like “I think they should be allowed to receive communion.”

The divorced & remarried (without annulment) are risking hell too.
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We need more people in the world who “tell it just like it is”, and you seem to be one of those people. Thanks for speaking up.
VanitasVanitatum said:
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HomeschoolDad:
Because a heterosexual wedding, even if it turns out to be invalid, is within the order of nature, and consummating it doesn’t involve an abomination.
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Sin is sin.
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True, but some sexual sins are worse than others. Homosex is among the worst of sexual sins. I hate to take the discussion to this level, but only bestiality is worse. (Thankfully, this is not a common sin, and there is no push in the larger society to normalize it… not yet, anyway. I chuckle to contemplate a society where one would be seen as intolerant or judgmental if they wouldn’t go to the wedding of a friend who wants to marry their Irish Setter or Lhasa Apso 🐶)

Any kind of rape, or sexual abuse of children and the weak, also carries malice and violence far worse than the sexual sin taken all by itself.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
True, but some sexual sins are worse than others. Homosex is among the worst of sexual sins. I hate to take the discussion to this level, but only bestiality is worse. (Thankfully, this is not a common sin, and there is no push in the larger society to normalize it… not yet, anyway.)
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There’s is no practical reason to bring this up.
 
VanitasVanitatum said:
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HomeschoolDad:
True, but some sexual sins are worse than others. Homosex is among the worst of sexual sins. I hate to take the discussion to this level, but only bestiality is worse. (Thankfully, this is not a common sin, and there is no push in the larger society to normalize it… not yet, anyway.)
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There’s is no practical reason to bring this up.
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Father Heribert Jone does in his Moral Theology, but then again, there’s not a lot that Jone doesn’t bring up. A huge part of his book is devoted to, of all things, the moral aspect of business contracts.
 
A book of moral theology has its purpose, but aside from Confession and Judgement Day, it hardly has anything to with the practical application that the OP is asking for.
 
VanitasVanitatum said:
A book of moral theology has its purpose, but aside from Confession and Judgement Day, it hardly has anything to with the practical application that the OP is asking for.
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No, Jone certainly didn’t anticipate same-sex marriage, almost 100 years ago. Nobody did. You had semi-clandestine “Boston marriages” of women — which did not necessarily have any sexual element to them whatsoever — but that was about it. All of this stuff nowadays is entirely uncharted territory.

I use Jone fairly frequently in assessing the moral life.
 
CJS said:
I think the more loving thing to do is to go and support your friend. Taking the kind of stand that the others are suggesting seems divisive and not christian. I know this is a conservative site but there are other ways to look at this.
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You make it sound as though the friend is in need (of support). I don’t think that’s the situation at all. The friend simply would like all her good friends present. Declining to attend might ruin the friendship but that does not condemn the decision. To act in Christian love does not always mean to do what another asks.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I am merely saying that many non-Catholic couples bring to a marriage a confusing, difficult-to-sort-out-from-a-Catholic-perspective history of past marriages.
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I guess that’s where “what does many mean” 5% or a majority? I would say more the former than the latter.
 
As is denying a worker of their fair wages, yet, I never see people climbing on soapboxes about that one, do you?
 
TheLittleLady said:
As is denying a worker of their fair wages, yet, I never see people climbing on soapboxes about that one, do you?
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Well, do you see people here advocating denying a worker their fair wages? Wouldn’t it be illegal to deny a worker their fair wages? Is it a fashionable social cause to deny a worker their fair wages, like it is to “tolerate” and even promote same-sex “marriage”?
 
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TheLittleLady said:
As is denying a worker of their fair wages, yet, I never see people climbing on soapboxes about that one, do you?
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I do.
Not so much on here on CAF, but on professional forums where people complain that they wind up regularly having to work through lunch, or unpaid overtime, or getting crap about calling out sick, etc.

But I think that would be a really interesting thread topic.
 
TMC said:
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stacie:
I would say that denying workers their fair wages is a much greater sin than gay sex.
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And a lot more common.
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Apparently they are both bad enough that the Church says that they cry out to heaven for vengeance, but we don’t have to rank them on this thread. 😅

Why does the Church teach that about sodomy, though?
 
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