alcholism in no way a core component of human life. sexuality is. its basic instincts, man!
And here is a very key point. As Catholics, we believe very strongly in the
Grace of God.
According to Catholic (and 95% of other Christian belief), our basic instincts are disordered as a result of sin. The only way to be free of sin and it’s effects is God’s Grace, which He is more than willing to provide.
And so, whether one’s instincts direct them toward sexual relations with members of the same sex, towards eating in gross excess, or towards overly aggressive and violent behavior or anything else, the solution is in God’s Grace, which will enable each of us to say no to our instincts and cease to be slaves to them.
And this is what it is really all about - being slaves or not being slaves. Individual men and civilizations have fought and died over the right to be free from slavery, for to be without control of one’s own self is the most degrading of human experiences. Yet we are all slaves to sin, all of us utterlly unable to be in control of ourselves when it comes to so many things.
The world has no answer. To the world, those whose instincts direct them towards sex with small children have no hope. Psychology now suggests that there may be no cure for these people. Society treats them as utter outcasts with no hope for living happy or meaningful lives, relegating them to lives of lonliness, rejection, and isolation.
The sexuality of a pedophile is as much a core part of his or her life as the sexuality of a homosexual or a heterosexual or of any other sort of “sexual” there may be. We cannot embrace the living out of homosexuality as something that is simply in the genes of homosexuals and yet reject the living out of pedophilia though it may be in the genes of pedophiles. Yet we do just this, condemning pedophiles even to prison for what is simply “in their genes,” their “basic instincs.”
The world has no answer for these problems. Yet they are very real problems.
Christ has the answer, and it is in His Passion and Death and the Grace which flows from this. Christ rescues us from the slavery to our genes and to anything else. And so if homosexuality is indeed in the genes of some, Christ can rescue those souls from that slavery.
I myself was once utterly unable to cease masturbating. It was just as much instinct as it is for Teen4Christ or anyone else. This was not something that was a choice for me. I was forced to do it by the slavery of my desires and of my sexual urges. Yet through
Grace, I escaped. And I can attest that it is far greater a freedom to be able to say no when once I could only say yes, than it was to be able to say yes at any time. And, consequently, from reading Teen4Christ’s posts, it sounds as though he, too, is in a similarly inescapable situation.
The world has no answer. If we reject the teachings of Christ on this matter, then we must admit that we are all slaves and have no recourse. There will be no President Lincoln to proclaim us emancipated. And so we must either accept all the requirements of our instincts, or be forced to play God ourselves, hypocritically condemning some and acquitting others.
The argument that any action must be acceptable because it is in our genes, our instincts, or any other aspect of nature is simply an argument that we live in a world with no hope, and a world in which we are all even now condemned on earth to lives of misery, slavery, victimhood, and hypocrisy.
The argument that in Christ is found the freedom from this slavery is on attested to by the lives of countless men, women, and young people who live out lives of freedom from their instincts where others are bound to dwell in the mire. I would ask you to humbly consider this.
