Speaking as a practicing Catholic who tries her best to uphold and defend the faith, as a “cradle” Catholic who has fallen even more in love with Christ and our Church as she has gotten older and prayed for God’s gift of Faith and Grace, speaking as a sinner, who has fallen under the temptations of lust, among many others, speaking as a friend of practicing homosexuals, even those who have abandoned me because of my profession of love for Christ, the Eucharist and his Church that gives us His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, I pray that you might be able to pray and understand God and what I have come to understand about God, his Love, Mercy and Saddness for our sins.
Some of my Catholic Brothers and Sisters who are more versed in appologetics might be able to help me out here, I believe that Pope John Paul II wrote, Theology of the Body??? If you want to find the “Catholic Perspective” on all things having to do with Human Sexuality, I’d start there before just brainstorming on CAF.
The Catholic Answers page has this on the Catholic perspective on Homosexuality as well:
catholic.com/library/Homosexuality.asp
As a Catholic who had a hiatus from the Church and came back, many of my practicing Homosexual friends demanded that I justify to them why, in the exact words of one in particular, “you would willingly join or belong to any club or organization that would not accept me for who I am.” I was maybe 20 at the time. This was a HS buddy of mine. We had weathered abusive family issues together. Mine due to familial dysfunction, his due to familial dysfunction and his sexuality. Even in HS I would go with him to “Support Groups” for homosexual teenagers. At that young of an age, I had problems with the adults in the group, teaching the adolescents to solely identify themselves with their sexuality. I was friends with this particular individual since before sexuality was an issue. I was friends with him because he made me laugh, he was kind and caring and all of the things that a young adolescent, early pubescent person looks for in a friend. I shared with him my thoughts that this group was missing the point, I shared with the group that I thought that they were missing the point. If the world was going to persecute Homosexuals because of their choice to live a homosexual lifestyle, than why identify with only that part of your personality, why not let the world know about all of the gifts one has to offer to the world instead of focusing on just that one.
That boils down to the issue that everyone has with sexuality in general. It isn’t just about Sex and “feeling good.” Any time you separate sexuality from the rest of the person, you focus it on just the feeling, just the flesh, not the person, not the spirituality, you’re missing the point. It is so easy in today’s world to think that one is, hetero or homosexual, connecting with someone on a spiritual level when engaged in expressing their sexuality. It isn’t until one receives the Sacrament of Marriage, that that spiritual connection, as witnessed by the Church (family and friends who believe), and God (through the intercession of a Priest connected to the first priest through the Pope) is true, strong and viable, alive. God gave humanity our sexuality as a gift to be given to the One person He chose for another to love as God has intended that person to be loved, that is a great gift and responsibility. To truly be open in the expression of that love, there needs to be an openness to one another and God’s will, the creation of human life. Therefore God asks all unmarried to remain Chaste, to save themselves for the one God has chosen for us, or to offer up our suffering to Christ as penance.
I hope this helps.
