Is it time we welcome the gay community to ours?

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anglo777 said:
This is a great is a great idea if you want the Church torn to shreds. The Gay community are Marxist foot soldiers and it’s their job to wreck the Catholic Church - and they will do a first class job. We know who the Lord and Master of the Marxist is.It really depends on what you want for the Catholic Church on this topic,it’s a no brainer.
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Woah this is excessively harsh. Not only are most gays NOT Marxist, but many gays are Christian themselves, either by deluding themselves with liberal Protestant ideas of reliance on sola fida or by personally struggling between their religion and sexuality.

To the OP: we should absolutely welcome them to the Church…provided they understand that acting on SSAs or encouraging SSAs cannot be reconciled with Church doctrine. We should show them that there is a better life in Christ than in temporal pleasure on Earth :).
 
Homosexuals are welcome to and in the Church. Being gay is not a sin; fornication is. Indulging in impure thoughts is also a sin or at least sinful. They do not, however, prevent you from attending Mass and giving praise, thanks and glory to God or following the Way of the Cross. To repent of these vain ways that lead only to death and accept Christ and Baptism is open to one and all. The only impediment for a homosexual to become a Catholic is their own will: if they value fornication and the life and way of sin more than they value God or His love, then they do exclude themselves from unity with the Church and Christ. But even then God can overcome such obstacles in their hearts. Even then they can still take a “leap of faith”.

At the heart of Christ’s mission on earth was reconciling the broader community. This is why we see Christ so often bringing hostile groups together at the common table to sup. Even the Apostles themselves are generally believed to have been selected in part as a reflection of the mosaic of the Jewish community at the time, with all its factions: from those who were likely descended from or part of the priestly caste and the Temple aristocrats, with an affinity no doubt to the Sadducees; to humble laymen, with respect no doubt for the Pharisees; to the Zealots; to tax-collectors who likely were in sympathy with the Herodians. He brought these people together and united them in and around Himself.

We can and do welcome the gay community. We strongly believe that the love of Christ can dispel all darkness and overcome any confusion. This is why we must pray for them. Christ died for them as much as he died for anyone else.

Certainly we can always do better to make these truths clearer in our speech and conduct; to remove and prevent any unnecessary potential obstacles to communion with God in His Church. But I don’t know any Catholic Church that hangs a giant sign saying “Gays not and never welcome here” above its doors.
 
Rhys_Sutherland said:
I’m a definite believer yes they should. Lets be honest the popularity of the church is declining at an alarming rate. And we need to get people excited about coming again and not chastise any walk of life we deem unfit.

Ps. I’m straight and catholic

So what is your view?
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I would say “no.”

“Gay” refers to an identity as part of a movement to promote the values of and acceptance for an active homosexual lifestyle. Gay advocates do not speak for all people experiencing same sex attractions (SSAs).

Any gay person or someone with SSAs who wishes can come into a Catholic Church. However, to welcome the gay community would be like welcoming a swingers club whose chief activity is wife swapping into the Church. How can the CC welcome and recognize as legitimate a community whose identity is based on activity contrary to Catholic moral teaching? It’s not possible.

The CC has “Courage,” an organization for people struggling with SSAs.
 
I’ve read a couple pages of this thread and (as far as I have read) nobody has offered a compelling reason as to WHY homosexuality is a sin. The same goes for masterbation; Why, exactly, is it a sin? I’ll admit that fornication leads to social ills… which is primarily what is meant by sin , correct?

In theory, if a homosexual person had sex after marriage, there would be no resulting social ill. The same arbitrary arguments have been posed multiple times in this thread:

“If everyone had only homosexual sex, then reproduction would cease”
True… But that’s just a scenario, not reality. When heterosexuality ceases to be the norm (never gonna happen) we can begin worrying about this.

“It is a sin”
A fleeting comment, but it is given no backing. It is just a mere statement of opinion until it has been deductively classified as “morally wrong”.

“God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman”
Assuming you got this from the Bible, or the teachings of the Church (which are derived from the Bible/tradition), I’ll make this point… I attended a Catholic school, and they taught that the authors of the various books of the bible were “guided by God”, even though they had cultural limitations. As a result of these limitations, not everything they said was 100% accurate. The teaching of homosexuality as unacceptable for marriage could have easily been a result of cultural limitations.

For a reference on my perspective, I’m a heterosexual atheist.
 
Dabucche said:
I attended a Catholic school, and they taught that the authors of the various books of the bible were “guided by God”, even though they had cultural limitations. As a result of these limitations, not everything they said was 100% accurate. The teaching of homosexuality as unacceptable for marriage could have easily been a result of cultural limitations.
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This is incorrect. All Scripture was written by God as primary author through a secondary human author who accepts with free will to write what God wants and no more. The entire Bible is infallible in all parts and in all ways. This is the definition of an inspired Scripture.
 
SMGS127 said:
This is incorrect. All Scripture was written by God as primary author through a secondary human author who accepts with free will to write what God wants and no more. The entire Bible is infallible in all parts and in all ways. This is the definition of an inspired Scripture.
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Understood. You are entitled to your belief, but please realize it is just that: a belief. Personally, and with all due respect, I believe that the Bible was written by humans, with no guidance at all. I could be completely wrong. But to base your beliefs (homosexual actions are wrong) according to the doctrines/expectations of others (the church and God) is not being an individual thinker. This brings me to my second point.

Do you mind answering my original question, why is homosexual sex morally wrong? It causes literally no problems in society. It’s either I’m missing something, or this is just ongoing, unwarranted prejudice.
 
Dabucche said:
Understood. You are entitled to your belief, but please realize it is just that: a belief. Personally, and with all due respect, I believe that the Bible was written by humans, with no guidance at all. I could be completely wrong. But to base your beliefs (homosexual actions are wrong) according to the doctrines/expectations of others (the church and God) is not being an individual thinker.
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I can’t speak for others, but following the dictates of the God through His Church isn’t so much a matter of not wanting to think for myself, but rather a recognition of two things:

  1. *]God is the creator and sustainer of everything, whose viewpoint encompasses all of time at once. He very likely understands things better than I do.
    *]The Church has been studying moral issues for 2000 years. Longer, if one considers the teachings of the Jewish faith on which the Church was built. Are they or I more likely to give a good answer to a complex moral question?

    It’s no different than accepting that E=mc^2 is a valid means for calculating the energy of a given mass at rest. If I choose not to replicate the series of calculations and thought experiments that led Einstein to that equation, am I guilty of “not being an individual thinker”?
 
Monkey1976 said:
I can’t speak for others, but following the dictates of the God through His Church isn’t so much a matter of not wanting to think for myself, but rather a recognition of two things:

  1. *]God is the creator and sustainer of everything, whose viewpoint encompasses all of time at once. He very likely understands things better than I do.
    *]The Church has been studying moral issues for 2000 years. Longer, if one considers the teachings of the Jewish faith on which the Church was built. Are they or I more likely to give a good answer to a complex moral question?
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  1. You recognize that these entities are better at answering moral questions than you are, but can you at least relay their explanation from them to me? There MUST be a fairly reasonable argument for this, but every answer I get is at least partially evasive. It never tells me WHY homosexual actions are morally wrong.

    The first response I received told me that the Bible was written by God, not man
    Ok, so even if I am incorrect, this doesn’t tell me God’s reasoning as to why homosexual actions are wrong.

    The second response, your response, tells me that both God and the Church would know what they’re talking about, more than you could ever know or reason out
    Ok, but even if they’re smarter on the subject than you are, they must have a reasoning for their perspective, right? Catholics don’t just hear a dictation and follow it, there are explanations behind this dictation, right?
    Monkey1976 said:
    It’s no different than accepting that E=mc^2 is a valid means for calculating the energy of a given mass at rest. If I choose not to replicate the series of calculations and thought experiments that led Einstein to that equation, am I guilty of “not being an individual thinker”?
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    I would say that’s not a close metaphor. E=mc^2 takes a great and wonderful mind to comprehend. While that is very complex, the question of homosexuality in society is not (or at least I haven’t been convinced that it is). You could weigh the benefits against the ills, and decide if it is worthy of acceptance in society. That is far easier to understand than the explanation of that math equation.

    I’ve written a fair amount so I’ll reiterate my question: Why does the Catholic Church/God consider homosexual actions to be morally wrong?
 
Dabucche said:
I’ve written a fair amount so I’ll reiterate my question: Why does the Catholic Church/God consider homosexual actions to be morally wrong?
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Again, speaking only from my understanding:
  • God has stated that they are. He is able to see and understand things far beyond what we can see and understand. As creator and sustainer of all creation, it is also His right to expect obedience from his creation, just as it is the right of parents to expect obedience from their children. If He states that something is bad, it is our duty to accept His declaration. Understanding some of the reasoning behind such a declaration is a bonus.
  • Philosphocally, it takes something with a clear purpose and distorts it with the only goal being the one’s own pleasure. Pleasure in and of itself is not a bad thing, but misuse of something purely for the purpose of one’s own pleasure has never resulted in positive consequences. Opium is a very effective painkiller, but misuse of it purely for the purpose of pleasure can hardly be seen as a good thing, right?
  • From a biological perspective, homosexual activity in males greatly increases the risk of diseases due to the damage done to the rectum and colon. It’s not an accident that AIDS first became widespread among the male homosexual population, and that sexually active homosexual men continue to make up the majority of both current and new cases.
Those are just a couple of reasons that I accept the teaching of the Church. For a more in-depth examination of not just the question of homosexual activity, but also why the Church opposes contraception and sexual activity outside of marriage, take a look at Bl. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. He explains things a lot better than I can 👍
 
I would also recommend this article (interview) from Catholic World Report. Homosexual activity, like other types of sexual sin, are wrong because they put us at cross purposes with our nature, which is not good for us.
 
esieffe said:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_AIDS

This is incorrect. The heterosexual population was ravaged for years before it became thought of as a “gay” disease in the west.
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According to that timeline, it was unrecognized as a specific disease until clusters of rare forms of pneumonia began appearing among gay male populations within the United States. Before that, it was only apparent through a review many years later of rare cases of “unassociated” other diseases which were highly unusual in themselves. Look up Gaëtan Dugas, the man personally responsible for many early cases of AIDS in New York. Also read up on Robert Rayford, the first case of AIDS in the United States (though he was not recognized as such until 1987 and had died in 1969), who - according to his own testimony - was not a user of IV drugs and had never had a blood transfusion, leaving sexual contact as the only reasonable path of transmission. Based on this, it is believed by researchers that he was homosexual, as rates for transmission for male homosexual sex are nearly an order of magnitude higher than the rate of transmission for sexual intercourse.
 
Dabucche said:
“God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman”
Assuming you got this from the Bible, or the teachings of the Church (which are derived from the Bible/tradition), I’ll make this point… I attended a Catholic school, and they taught that the authors of the various books of the bible were “guided by God”, even though they had cultural limitations. As a result of these limitations, not everything they said was 100% accurate. The teaching of homosexuality as unacceptable for marriage could have easily been a result of cultural limitations.
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One doesn’t even need to look towards the Bible to know that God designed Marriage to be between Man and Woman. Life is created only through Man and Woman, therefore it is natural. There is no other way to create life naturally except through Male and Female organs. Since the act is Natural, it is therefore designed by the Creator of Order (God) because nature is ordered. Since homosexuality puts man with man or woman with woman it is out of order and therefore unnatural because it cannot produce or perform naturally. This is what causes sin. Sin is unnatural and out of the Order of God’s way of life.
 
Dabucche said:
Understood. You are entitled to your belief, but please realize it is just that: a belief. Personally, and with all due respect, I believe that the Bible was written by humans, with no guidance at all. I could be completely wrong. But to base your beliefs (homosexual actions are wrong) according to the doctrines/expectations of others (the church and God) is not being an individual thinker. This brings me to my second point.

Do you mind answering my original question, why is homosexual sex morally wrong? It causes literally no problems in society. It’s either I’m missing something, or this is just ongoing, unwarranted prejudice.
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2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church (bolding emphasis mine)
There would be the Catholic Church’s reasoning. My reasoning is that homosexual acts are forbidden by God, period. Even if there were/is no secular reason why homosexual acts should be banned, disobeying God alone endangers one’s soul, because it shows a lack of willingness to deny oneself out of love for Him. He reaches out to us, but He does not force us to be with or choose Him. However, we have a responsibility to not allow others to endanger their souls if we can help it.

As for me not being an “individual thinker,” I never realized that, to be objective, one must necessarily deny God. Rather, one should take God’s moral law as a starting point and make objective viewpoints with it in mind. Otherwise, we fall into a Modernistic quagmire of relativistic viewpoints based on the flimsy false “consciences” of those who would rather delude others than face God themselves. Without a set moral law, everyone’s morals are correct, and then why should we bar slander? Why should we bar theft? If someone’s morals say stealing from someone who can take the loss is okay, why should we prosecute them? There must be a set moral standard from which to make philosophical pronouncements. I take this to be God’s law, a constant. You take this to be an inner moral law that changes as you yourself change throughout life, a variable. Clearly moral law is based on a constant? If no, I’d be glad to know why you disagree.
 
. . . all this talk, just to work through the clouds of confusion intentionally created by the politicians of homosexuality!

Truth has a cost, in terms of hard work to dispell nonsense.

With respect to the original question, it’s clear enough that active homosexuals are sinning and it’s clear enough that the Church is a place for sinners. If an active homosexual loves the Lord, he’ll stop. That’s it.

When one says “welcome the gay community” this is really code for “be nice to us, but let us keep practicing our sin and stop saying that our sin is really a sin.”

The whole business of “accepting” or “welcoming” is duplicitous. (It’s a bit like the Current Occupant’s notion of “compromise,” which really means, “you must do what I want to do.”).
 
Captain_America said:
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When one says “welcome the gay community” this is really code for “be nice to us, but let us keep practicing our sin and stop saying that our sin is really a sin.”
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I agree with the first part of your statement, we are asking that you have empathy for our struggles just as some of us struggle to have empathy for the intolerant in our churches.
 
frobert said:
I agree with the first part of your statement, we are asking that you have empathy for our struggles just as some of us struggle to have empathy for the intolerant in our churches.
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Empathy for what? For the struggles one would have with SSA?
I have yet to meet a Catholic who would not have empathy for that. I have also not seen the intolerant in our Churches, if by intolerant you mean someone who does not tolerate a human being.

By saying that some of you struggle with the intolerant in our churches you are leveling an accusation, or situation that I have never witnessed.

So, I ask you. Where are these parishes you speak of? Who are these people that are intolerant. And finally, who are those who do not empathize with someone struggling with sexual sin?

When the homosexual crowd is getting all the love from sitcoms, media, news, movies and shows, music, etc. and the prevailing winds are that saying something is immoral is akin to racism. I find it tired that the “victim” card is still played with such success.🤷
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
Empathy for what? For the struggles one would have with SSA?
I have yet to meet a Catholic who would not have empathy for that. I have also not seen the intolerant in our Churches, if by intolerant you mean someone who does not tolerate a human being.

By saying that some of you struggle with the intolerant in our churches you are leveling an accusation, or situation that I have never witnessed.

So, I ask you. Where are these parishes you speak of? Who are these people that are intolerant. And finally, who are those who do not empathize with someone struggling with sexual sin?

When the homosexual crowd is getting all the love from sitcoms, media, news, movies and shows, music, etc. and the prevailing winds are that saying something is immoral is akin to racism. I find it tired that the “victim” card is still played with such success.🤷
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🤷 Your posts speak for themselves, I empathize with your frustration.
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
Empathy for what? For the struggles one would have with SSA?
I have yet to meet a Catholic who would not have empathy for that. I have also not seen the intolerant in our Churches, if by intolerant you mean someone who does not tolerate a human being.

By saying that some of you struggle with the intolerant in our churches you are leveling an accusation, or situation that I have never witnessed.

So, I ask you. Where are these parishes you speak of? Who are these people that are intolerant. And finally, who are those who do not empathize with someone struggling with sexual sin?

When the homosexual crowd is getting all the love from sitcoms, media, news, movies and shows, music, etc. and the prevailing winds are that saying something is immoral is akin to racism. I find it tired that the “victim” card is still played with such success.🤷
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To be fair, I have gay friends who grew up Catholic who experienced it either in their parish or (in one case horrifyingly) in their family where fa*t and de were used almost without spare. To argue that there aren’t Catholics who jump on the “hate the sinners!” bandwagon of certain Protestant denominations is to deny reality. Just because the Church teaches one thing doesn’t mean its followers follow it. This is obviously true on the “liberal” side in terms of heterodoxy, but it is also true on the “conservative” side in terms of Pharisee-ical nonsense and hatred.
 
Fr_of_Jazz said:
I would say “no.”

“Gay” refers to an identity as part of a movement to promote the values of and acceptance for an active homosexual lifestyle. Gay advocates do not speak for all people experiencing same sex attractions (SSAs).
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That depends on who is defining the term ‘gay’. I know quite a few homosexuals, several of them as friends, one as a good friend, and all of them identify themselves as being ‘gay’. I know one of them who goes on ‘gay pride’ marches, but his ‘lifestyle’ (apart from his sexual relations) is no difference in appearance from any heterosexual. The others gay men I know don’t go on ‘gay pride’ marches or anything like that. They do not go about promoting homosexuality any more than the many cohabiting heterosexual couples I know take to the streets to promote heterosexual promiscuity.

I don’t know any homosexual man who refers to himself as SSA, they all refer to themselves as ‘gay’. Should we welcome these people into our Church? I think that if we seriously even have to consider such a question, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
 
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