Invitation to a Hoe Down

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After discussing the nature of the abuse crisis on one thread (George Weigel’s thesis that it was less about “pedophilia” and more about homosexual assault. I told my Homosexualist detractors that I would give them a genuine topic about Gay roles in the Catholic Church. My OP follows:

"Some felt my comments on another thread had something to do with the role of gays in the Roman Catholic Church. After much go round I commented: “The problem is that the issue is not the one you are passionately defending.”

"Then what is the issue?’ Jesse asked.

I responded by saying those who felt the recognition of gay culture in the US or the world or their passionately held homosexualist views wouldn’t understand the very specific challenges in the Catholic church.

That is open to the charge of being a put down so I thought I would at least demonstrate what I mean, even though I feel the topic is only of relevance to Roman Catholics as it is so narrow in its scope.

The problem, simply stated is that for a Catholic Homosexualist to exist they would need to deny one of the articles of the Creed, namely “We look for the resurrection of the dead.”

"Catholics believe in a special connection between themselves and their bodies. Without their bodies they are not really complete. Catholics also believe that God made them to live with him forever, not in disembodied souls, but in the glorified body raised up in the resurrection on the last day. …what you believe about life after death depends very much on what you believe about God.

If God exists, and if God has destined us for eternal life, then there is really no problem about the means for self-conscious experience. God will provide them. At the death of the body and before the general resurrection, God is fully capable of providing the means by which we enjoy his presence. No doubt …this will be very unlike the way we now experience…

Catholics also believe that the human person is a mysterious unity of matter and spirit. There is part of us that is extended in three dimensions and takes up space: this we call “matter.” But there is another facet of the unity we are which cannot be thought of in that way; this is the part of us we call “spirit.” Scripture says that God breathed life into lifeless matter, and that image of breath and life is most appropriate to the nature of spiritual being. The human spirit animates matter, gives it what vital energy and gathers it into a living organic unity. That is what God created it to do.

Thus Catholics believe that a human spirit exists for a body; it was made to exist in matter as its life-giving principle. This means that all those parts of human life that seem most essentially spiritual, like knowing and choosing also involve the body; the spirit experiences through the body. And so human life involves a most intimate relation between these two sides of our being: matter needs spirit to bind it into a functioning unity; spirit needs matter to release its potential for pursuing and enjoying all the goods, moral and intellectual, proper to human life.

That is why Catholics look forward to the resurrection of the body. It is part of their belief that the soul without the body is incomplete; that the full and complete person is present on the last day when matter and spirit, transformed and redeemed, are joined together in the resurrection of the just."
Peter Kreeft, The Handbook of Christian Apologetics

So when Jesus called upon his followers to “Repent the Kingdom of God is at hand,” we were called upon to repent our sins for the effect they have on our bodies which will be the eternal resting place for our beautiful souls. If we so scar ourselves during our time on earth, we won’t fulfill our destinies.

Homosexualism actively calls upon homosexuals to indulge in homosexual acts and argues that their goodness is in no way different from Heterosexual acts. Doesn’t this contradict Catholic Teaching and specifically the article all Catholics recite in the Creed?

I can think of nothing more fundamental to the understanding of who we are (from a Christian anthropological point of view) than the idea that we are Embodied Persons. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is a remarkable vision that builds on this Catholic doctrine. Dr.David L. Schindler begins an essay by defining six characteristics of it which I have separated out and presented on my blog. Respond to the article on embodied persons and show me how Homosexualism embraces or reconciles these beliefs and how it is possible for a Homosexualist Catholic to remain within the Church or even be Christian.

I will not respond to opinion or pronouncements. Note the stress on reconciliation. Note that it has nothing to do with “fairness” or gays in the general population or high school girls posting youtube videos of their coming out before school assemblies.

If you deal legitimately with the article and deal with the role of gays in the Church suggested by it I will respond to you. I look forward to your responses. "

You can find the thread here:

librarything.com/topic/108388

but you will need to go through the process of signing up to LibraryThing to post. As I am the only Catholic on the thread, I would appreciate your considered opinions and show how the debate between Catholics contrasts with one between a Catholic and Homosexualists. For those unfamiliar with the latter term, check out meaning #2 in the link.

dj
 
Here is a serious reply from one of the Homosexualists on the thread where I posted the above. I’m hoping to give him more feedback then just my comments (as one of the few Catholics on the forum I posted OP I am considered an automatic homophobe)

"Here goes. I am not a professional philosopher or theologian, let alone a scholastic. All I can do is offer some comments.

(1) “Male and female he created them”: a bioanthropological response.

Natural-born intersex individuals are a standing refutation of any anthropology which requires of necessity that all human beings are physically either male or female. The existence of these intersex persons, and those which psychology recognizes as suffering from gender dysphoria (including transsexuals) would also indicate that the connection between biological sex and psychological sex may not be a necessary one. To put it bluntly, the human race does not consist simply of persons who are straightforwardly either male or female, whether biologically, psychologically, or (by extension) spiritually.

This is despite the neatness of the arrangement, and its convenience for human mythologizing or philosophizing. Much persecution of homosexuals probably does not arise simply from emotional distaste for or moral disapproval of same-sex physical relations: even chaste homosexual people, in their non-“normal” desires and tendencies, disturb the patterns and symmetries by which human beings collectively rationalize their world. They transgress the religio-social categories with which people protect their accustomed ways of life and thought.

The male-female duality can therefore not be fundamentally and essentially bound up with the existence of the human person as an embodied soul. And the article specifically admits this: the fact that man is a ‘body’ belongs more deeply to the structure of the personal subject than the fact that in his somatic constitution he is also male or female or, I would add, both or neither (John Paul II); the sexual differentiation of mankind into man and woman is much more than a purely biological fact for the purpose of procreation but unconnected with what is truly human in mankind (Ratzinger).

Moreover, the scriptural tradition would lead us to posit that the male-female duality is unconnected not only with humanity as such, but with humans as members of the Body of Christ: In Christ there is neither male nor female (the Apostle Paul). To insist on making maleness and femaleness a primary issue in spiritual contexts is to cleave to the Old Covenant and reject the New Order of Christ.

(2) On being created homosexual.

What I am in my original constitution as a person has always-already been given to me by God (Schindler).

If you believe that the created order reflects in any sense the will of a Creator, then homosexuals are created as such. How should such a person go about being human?

Man is in God’s image and thereby he is a being whose innermost dynamic is likewise directed toward the receiving and giving of love.

Homosexual people are made and called to give and receive love. That includes love towards God, love towards other people in general, and love towards particular persons.

It is the relation to God that originally constitutes each person, and this relation immediately expresses itself in and as relation also to others, which is realized in a privileged way through relation to another who is the same kind of being as myself, differently.

This is the preamble to an assertion that such a privileged relation with a “different” person can only be truly had with a person of the other sex. But we have already suggested that the simple division of human beings into two types called “male” and “female”, whose ontological nature invariably coincides with their physical structure, is to oversimplify the way the world actually is. We are all different.

If my God-given psychological nature leads me unavoidably to same-sex attraction, then love must perforce be expressed through relation to another who is the same kind of being as myself, but whose difference is not expressed in male-female distinction, but is instantiated simply in their being a different person, a unique and distinct embodied soul.

continued next post…
 
(3) The possibility of moderate homosexualism.

I personally believe (as some do not) that the male-female relation is indeed a uniquely privileged one, primarily on a biological basis as the locus of human sexual reproduction, with the concomitant spiritual basis as the source of the relation of parent and child. However, I do not believe that this privileged status requires the suppression or condemnation of relations which do not partake of that status. It is surely possible for the “love more wonderful than the love of a woman” (2 Samuel 1:26, Jerusalem Bible) to be an expression of and participation in the divine generosity, and it may be fruitful in the spiritual order even if it necessarily lacks “fruitfulness” in the physical order.

Many homosexual couples do, I suspect, form loving partnerships which do not essentially revolve around physical relations. It has often been pointed out that to make assumptions about the physical relationship between two people who have a life partnership may be quite inappropriate. However, recognizing that homosexual relations are not physically fruitful, it may nevertheless be possible to assert that they are permissible for those to whom heterosexual attraction is not available. It may not be ideal (from the Catholic idealist point of view), but it is better than not loving at all (which is to reject the divine itself), or trying to sublimate one’s emotional energy and ending up diverting it into promiscuous or exploitative relations. (The apostle’s dictum “better to marry than burn” might thus be well applied to homosexuals.) (Strict homosexualists would reject this argument, but:) It is the ideal natural order of things for a child to have two parents, but if one parent dies, the other must do as best they can. It is the ideal natural order of things for people to be attracted to the other sex, but if they are not, they must do as best they can. The usual Catholic position is then to assert that “as best they can” is celibacy. This can be disputed. There are good reasons for regarding some sexual proclivities as aberrant, and enjoining repentance and celibacy (as with pedophilia, for example); but homosexuality is too prevalent, too psychologically normal, for this easy response to be appropriate. People who have been created homosexual (or transsexual, for that matter) should be free to be themselves, even as members incorporate in the mystical Body.

The Church regards them homosexual acts as sinful and harmful and leading to disorder. You would be arguing with dogma to contest this and that is obviously not the approach we wish to take as faithful Catholics.

Even for faithful Catholics, arguing with dogma on the basis of conscience is surely not impossible. Even if you consider that homosexual acts are always sinful (as many Christians do), they do not obscure or efface the human expression of generous divine love: although sin weighs down and profoundly skews the constitutively generous order of being, sin can never destroy the integrity of this order as naturally given (Schindler).

If you do not accept the traditional view that homosexual acts are inherently sinful, but rather the developed view that homosexual acts are sinful only for those for whom they are not psychologically natural, then a physical expression of relationship is appropriate in the context of a committed homosexual life-partnership.

Homosexualism actively calls upon homosexuals to indulge in homosexual acts and argues that their goodness is in no way different from Heterosexual acts…

As you will note, this is not a defence of hardline “homosexualism”, which asserts the absolute equality of homosexual and heterosexual relations. It is merely a defence of the acknowledgement and expression of homosexual love and relationships within the Catholic Church. If current Catholic teaching requires that homosexuals invoke conscience against dogma, so be it.

For a Catholic Homosexualist to exist they would need to deny one of the articles of the Creed, namely “We look for the resurrection of the dead.”

This is rhetorical exaggeration. “Bodyliness and sexuality are not simply identical” (John Paul II). The theory/doctrine of the embodied soul is not so monumentally interconnected with everything that disputing any small element beings the whole edifice of Catholic thelogy crashing down, and it does not depend on the precise view of sex propounded in the article. Even if I denied (as I have not) the spiritual significance of male-female relations in Christian anthropology, maleness/femaleness is, as Ratzinger states, “unconnected with what is truly human in mankind”, and so male-male/male-female/female-female relations must therefore also be unconnected with it.

For a Catholic Homosexualist to exist, though, they must, like any other homosexualist Christian, come to an understanding of Scripture which is more sophisticated than a straightforward acceptance of divine inspiration of the moral codes of first-century Romano-Jewish Palestine."

Homosexualism is a term I introduced. It’s meaning is to popularize and spread acceptance of the normalcy of homosexual acts. I thought the fellow above deserved a star for chutzpah when he quoted the Pope to show the normalcy of homosexual acts.

Any feedback you could give me for this would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

dj
 
dskysmine said:
What is the proper English? British English or American English?
Click to expand...
English is a universal language (in my view THE universal language).
Proper English is the correct way to use the English language in whichever country you may choose.
It does not matter if its American or British English. There is a correct way to use it.
I can’t imagine in America someone applying for a job would be entertained as a serious applicant if they use expressions like Hoe Down!
 
thistle said:
English is a universal language (in my view THE universal language).
Proper English is the correct way to use the English language in whichever country you may choose.
It does not matter if its American or British English. There is a correct way to use it.
I can’t imagine in America someone applying for a job would be entertained as a serious applicant if they use expressions like Hoe Down!
Click to expand...
There are certain expressions which may not seem like “proper English” to you, that is no reason to twist and shout about people not using correct English. It is dependent of place, and generation.

At least if you want to talk about using “proper” English, you would distinguish between “its” and “it’s”:
It does not matter if its American or British English
Click to expand...
The use of “its” above is incorrect.
 
Thistle, nothing wrong with a hoedown, that’s just a kind of a dance, but I don’t think the original poster did intend to invite us to one. I imagine he meant a throwdown, which is slang, but widely understood, in North America for a fight. A little odd to invite somebody to a throwdown though, because a throwdown can also be the invitation to fight itself.

If hoedown means a fight, the use must be restricted to some local dialects.
 
Whiggamore said:
Thistle, nothing wrong with a hoedown, that’s just a kind of a dance, but I don’t think the original poster did intend to invite us to one. I imagine he meant a throwdown, which is slang, but widely understood, in North America for a fight. A little odd to invite somebody to a throwdown though, because a throwdown can also be the invitation to fight itself.

If hoedown means a fight, the use must be restricted to some local dialects.
Click to expand...
I assumed he meant a dance when I first saw it, but oh well…🤷
 
Suspicious_Mind said:
There are certain expressions which may not seem like “proper English” to you, that is no reason to twist and shout about people not using correct English. It is dependent of place, and generation.

At least if you want to talk about using “proper” English, you would distinguish between “its” and “it’s”:

The use of “its” above is incorrect.
Click to expand...
Its actually a typo but I guess you were too eager to come up with a negative comment to consider that possibility!!
 
thistle said:
Its actually a typo but I guess you were too eager to come up with a negative comment to consider that possibility!!
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Isn’t it ironic that you considered what I said a negative comment, yet you don’t consider the way you dismissed the OP’s post based on the term “hoe down” as negative?

What’s even weirder is, you made the same mistake again. “It’s actually a typo” - whilst referring to it 👍 :rolleyes:

Just give up on this one.
 
Suspicious_Mind said:
Isn’t it ironic that you considered what I said a negative comment, yet you don’t consider the way you dismissed the OP’s post based on the term “hoe down” as negative?

What’s even weirder is, you made the same mistake again. “It’s actually a typo” - whilst referring to it 👍 :rolleyes:

Just give up on this one.
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hahaha! it’s easy to get you to rise to the bait!!
 
thistle said:
hahaha! it’s easy to get you to rise to the bait!!
Click to expand...
That’s not fooling anyone :rolleyes:

Conclusion: No one’s going to be taking you seriously anymore in regards to comments about “proper” English.

G’day.
 
Suspicious_Mind said:
What are you talking about mate? I’m from Australia, that’s how we say it here.
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Don’t I know it!! I have several close Australian friends and my sister is married to an Australian (they live in Mackay, Queensland but fortunately were not directly affected by the floods).
 
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