How to Respond Gracefully - Gay Friend Getting Married

[TMC]

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?

The why is likely beyond the scope of this thread, and I am not the right person to answer that. What I know is that the Church does not teach us to shun either the unscrupulous business man or those we deem to be committing sexual sins.

 

[27lw]

27lw:

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?

The why is likely beyond the scope of this thread, and I am not the right person to answer that. What I know is that the Church does not teach us to shun either the unscrupulous business man or those we deem to be committing sexual sins.

Oh, I don’t think the OP is talking about shunning, is she? Wherein all the friends, relatives and associates would shun her lesbian friend?
Are you possibly exaggerating a little, to say that not attending one event is “shunning”?

 

[TMC]

Oh, I don’t think the OP is talking about shunning, is she? Wherein all the friends, relatives and associates would shun her lesbian friend?
Are you possibly exaggerating a little, to say that not attending a mock wedding is “shunning”?

I do think that it is a form of shunning, and several other posters have advocated actual shunning.

Let me also comment on your decision to use the derisive term “mock wedding.” There is a tendency by some to insist that gay people are in a special class of the most bad people (or the most bad actors, if you prefer). That leads to a belief that it is OK to mock, belittle and demean everything that gay people do and care about. These are real people, who actually love and care for their families. To belittle them and mock their entire lives because you have a theological disagreement with them is neither charitable or Christian. If people told you that your love was not real, your relationships were evil, that you should not be allowed around children, and all the other things that are routinely said about gay people on this forum, how would you feel? Would that lead you to Christ?

 

[27lw]

Yes, I agree that was too extreme and I changed it.

OTOH, it is obviously a big issue for a lot of people – is attending an event condoning something? What do I do about a friend’s actions that sincerely are against my religious beliefs?

Can we just use that old phrase? “It’s against my religion”.

 

[Amac1]

OP, just go. You don’t have to agree. You didn’t ask your friend and her other half to be in a relationship. You didn’t propose or help with the engagement. You didn’t arrange the wedding. You’re not marrying them. You are merely a person who is going to be with her friend on a day that is important to her. You may not agree. It may be against your faith. Your friend will/should understand your opinion on everything. But you can still be there for her, have a meal and go home again.

 

[Rau]

OP, just go. You don’t have to agree. You didn’t ask your friend and her other half to be in a relationship. You didn’t propose or help with the engagement. You didn’t arrange the wedding. You’re not marrying them. You are merely a person who is going to be with her friend on a day that is important to her. You may not agree. It may be against your faith. Your friend will/should understand your opinion on everything. But you can still be there for her, have a meal and go home again.

Your advice is to go and celebrate the event, despite her beliefs about the nature of the event?

 

[phil19034]

Until the Bishops or some other body with teaching authority comes out and says we can’t, we can use our own discernment. Maybe ask our own pastors or spiritual advisors for help in discerning. But, just because one priest says no doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it and just because one priest says yes doesn’t mean we should.

Correct, there isn’t a firm line between orthodox and heresy here regarding whether to attend or not to attend.

 

[TMC]

Can we just use that old phrase? “It’s against my religion”.

Yes, we can.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

and several other posters have advocated actual shunning.

There were maybe two and one of them was a rhetorical question from an athiest.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Go and celebrate your friend.

 

[Basil]

I know this is going to hurt my friends’ feelings, but I don’t want to totally destroy our friendship or make them hate Christianity.

It’ll be hard, but speaking from my very own personal experiences, if you take your faith seriously, it’s better to cut down this relationship, the early the better. No matter what you do, you can neither inspire them to love the Church nor to hate it. Only Christ can do the former and devils the later. I wish I could simply believe it instead of learning it through agonies.
Before my conversion many years ago, I was very active in LGBTQQIP2SAA…(you name them) community, all my friends at college and workplace are queers. They all have good personalities and are very pleasant companies for that state of my life. Although after my conversion I kept associating with few of them who are less political. Yet as time passing by, it became impossible to form sincere friendships with them, because we all know too well that we strongly against each other on some principal issues. We don’t discuss those stuff in each other’s presence only for politeness/“tolerance”'s sake. So technologically speaking, there’re no grounds of friendship left between us, social convenience and habitual emotional attachment are sole reasons that we are still in touch, which appears morally problematic to me. Out of my weakness I allow things go like that for many years, util they eventually became occasions of grave sins.
Plus, think about how Fr. Robert Hugh Benson cut ties with Frederick Rolfe. If even Fr. Benson cannot inspire “Baron Corvo” going back to a reasonable Christian life, and decided it’s better to stay away from his company despise its sensible satisfaction, probably we all could learn something from it.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

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.

I guess that’s where “what does many mean” 5% or a majority? I would say more the former than the latter.

If you picked a dozen 35-or-older Southern non-Catholics at random, and asked their marital history, my SWAG (strategic wild aleatory guess) would be that 30-40% would have the kind of “intricate” narrative that I describe. It’s the least Catholic part of the United States, and many people marry young and often ill-advisedly. (But it is my beloved Southland and I find it very difficult to consider ever living anywhere else.)

Let me also comment on your decision to use the derisive term “mock wedding.” There is a tendency by some to insist that gay people are in a special class of the most bad people (or the most bad actors, if you prefer). That leads to a belief that it is OK to mock, belittle and demean everything that gay people do and care about. These are real people, who actually love and care for their families. To belittle them and mock their entire lives because you have a theological disagreement with them is neither charitable or Christian. If people told you that your love was not real, your relationships were evil, that you should not be allowed around children, and all the other things that are routinely said about gay people on this forum, how would you feel? Would that lead you to Christ?

The “most bad people” thing is a holdover from an earlier time when, I have to think, there were a lot of self-loathing homosexuals who not only couldn’t “come out of the closet”, but couldn’t admit their affliction even to themselves — most of them went ahead and married, and I don’t think it’s that much of a reach to think some of them became rabidly anti-gay as a reaction to their own secret, unwanted orientation. What better way to deflect suspicion?

I love gay people and I have had several gay and bisexual friends and valued coworkers. To tell the truth, in everyday life, it is really not all that big a deal. I don’t “love” what they do in the bedroom, because it’s against God’s Word, but I do love them. I don’t “love” what divorced-and-invalidly-“remarried” people, or what contracepting couples, do in the bedroom either. (And nobody ever had an abortion as a result of gay sex.) We had a family friend, gay and living with HIV, whom we loved as much as we would any relative. (Sadly, he died a few years ago, though not from anything HIV-related.) I have a close relative who is gay, and we all take pride in his considerable achievements in the business world. I had a gay coworker who helped me enormously with a project I was working on, and I tried to get him a job in our department when he got laid off. So there may be homophobes in the world, but I’m not one of them.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

And this might surprise some here (and possibly even anger some more conservative folks), but I do respect the non-sexual aspects of their relationships, including their family life. I don’t condone in vitro or surrogacy, and truth be told, I do have a problem with gay couples adopting (because of what the children will be exposed to), but the children are innocent in all of it, and I definitely do understand what it is to want a child and to raise that child as a single father (albeit a straight one). To say “would you rather see a child be raised by two supportive gay parents, or two abusive straight parents?”, I would really have to stop and think about that. There is much more to “gay” than immoral sex acts, and there is much more to “love” than sex. And I do realize that the relationships are very, very “real”. I know we are not supposed to “toot our own horns” — that’s not a Catholic “thing” — but for a traditionalist, SSPX-friendly Catholic, I am actually quite liberal about this issue (and other issues as well). Let’s just put it this way — what I have just said, I’d be very reluctant to say at any TLM parish. I’d either get kicked out or get the “stink eye” from anyone who heard me say it. (Yet one more reason I am happy that CAF is scrupulously anonymous.)

 

[Episcopalian]

I don;t think I would describe the forums as a conservative site, but rather, a site which seeks objective truth.

This sort of zealous hubris is exactly why I left Catholicism. Our faith is truly a great mystery which we proclaim weekly.

The Roman Church attempts to pigeonhole and legalize our theology as opposed to applying ancient Biblical teachings to a lifestyle and concepts the book’s curators could never dream of.

 

[TC3033]

If you picked a dozen 35-or-older Southern non-Catholics at random, and asked their marital history,

Narrowing down the field a bit, eh?

To be fair, if you did the same thing with Catholics nowadays, I bet the numbers wouldn’t be too far from each other.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

If you picked a dozen 35-or-older Southern non-Catholics at random, and asked their marital history,

Narrowing down the field a bit, eh?

To be fair, if you did the same thing with Catholics nowadays, I bet the numbers wouldn’t be too far from each other.

Not narrowing it down at all. Don’t see where you get that.

30 to 40 percent surely falls under the rubric of “many”. I never said it was everybody, or even a majority. Actually, a dozen random cases wouldn’t be enough. One of the first things they teach you in statistics class is that your sample size needs to be at least 30.

And, yes, sadly, Catholics are following suit, however, if you are not already aware of this, Catholic couples have to wait at least six months to get married in the Church, and the preparation is a fairly long, drawn-out thing. Are there any Protestant churches that have a similar procedure and waiting period? Catholics absolutely cannot elope to Gatlinburg, Branson, Las Vegas, or wherever, and find a priest to marry them. Doesn’t happen. If they do something like that, they’ve married outside the Church, no canonical form, ipso facto invalid marriage, no marriage at all in the eyes of the Church. Easiest thing in the world to declare null and void.

 

[Irishmom2]

So they should lie essentially, but cover the lie by driving out of town and back?

You don’t see that as deception? They weren’t called out of town, and that is not the reason they are not attending. Be honest if it means enough to you that you wouldn’t attend.

 

[Lara]

Red herring. It goes without saying on a Catholic forum that we should check for the splinter in our eye. Of course, we should be humble. And to be charitable in how we admonish sinners.

But, as Catholics, we ARE told to admonish sinners. My assumption when writing on this forum is that most readers are familiar with the basics, love the sinner, hate the sin.

 

[Lara]

Straw man argument. Most likely used because it was convenient.

Another basic is that Catholics know they don’t have the power to condemn anybody to hell.

Plus, when you correct one woman’s life choice, it does not follow that you think her whole life is an abomination.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

otjm:

I don;t think I would describe the forums as a conservative site, but rather, a site which seeks objective truth.

This sort of zealous hubris is exactly why I left Catholicism. Our faith is truly a great mystery which we proclaim weekly.

So are you saying that the Episcopal faith does not seek objective truth?

The Roman Church attempts to pigeonhole and legalize our theology as opposed to applying ancient Biblical teachings to a lifestyle and concepts the book’s curators could never dream of.

Nil novi sub soli. There is nothing new under the sun.

Homosexuality was well-known in ancient Greece (boy, was it ever!) and Rome. The Roman Empire was incredibly cosmopolitan, and I have heard that life in Corinth was like the Southern California of its time, mutatis mutandis for things such as the internal-combustion engine, electronic media, and computers, none of which existed (just stating the obvious). Human nature was the same, and people had the same spiritual problems then, that they do now. All times have been “modern times” to the people who lived in them — while it can’t be denied that medieval life had a Groundhog Day aspect to it, son did the same thing that his father did, and his father before him, and so on, people didn’t say to themselves “well, we live in medieval times now, but one of these days, ‘modern times’ are going to come, and then everything about our lives will change completely”.