Is the church more lenient towards heterosexual sex outside of marriage than homosexual relation?

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WildCatholic

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First of all, i don’t know where this question fits so if it needs to be moved please do so. Anyway, my question stems from a discussion I had with my non-practicing, formerly Lutheran (as in she was Lutheran, then became Catholic, now isn’t practicing any faith) where we were talking about gays in the church. I mentioned how the church teaching is that Gay actions are wrong, not gay people. Anyway, she mentioned how hard it was and that it wasn’t right. Then she brought up how a lot of people she knows who are fornicators and have sex outside of marriage still receive the sacraments (she works in a Catholic school part time for the local public school district and knows or hears about teachers in both school systems who aren’t very moral) and her logic basically is that since these people can still get the Sacraments, that practicing gay people should get them too.

So does the church see fornication and heterosexual sex outside of marriage as less evil than Homosexual sex? I have a feeling the answer is no, but since all sins are not equal, is it worse to be a practicing homosexual, than to be a fornicator?

Also, how do i get my mother to understand these people who supposedly are not chaste, are not following the rules? She seems to think that the church sees sex outside of marriage between man and a woman as less wrong than homosexuality.

Sorry for the long question, but any help would be appreciated.
 
Both are mortal sins. But, people who do either can receive the sacraments if they confess and receive absolution first. Of course, this does require at least an intention to try and stop sinning.

As to gravity, it is generally considered that homosexual sex is a worse sin than fornication. e.g. in the Scriptures, sodomy is one of the four sins mentioned that “cry to heaven for vengeance”, along with murder of the innocent, defrauding the worker of his wages, and oppressing widows and orphans.

This is generally considered so, because homosexual sex is an inherently sinful act (it is never good), whereas heterosexual sex is not inherently sinful. It is only sinful when done outside of the proper marital context.

St. Thomas has a long discussion on the different sins of Lust, and their gravity, in the Summa.

newadvent.org/summa/3154.htm

God Bless
 
You were right when you surmised that heterosexual sin is no different in the eyes of the Church than homosexual sin.

The difference isn’t in committing sexual sin, it’s in the intention of the sin. The person who fornicates may not be aware that it is a sin. Many young people have been poorly catechized and have come to believe that “if I’m not hurting anyone whatever I do is okay.” Of course, that is not Church teaching. So, they think that as long as they are careful premarital sex is fine, especially if they are engaged to be married. They need to be educated and accept that what they are doing is wrong.

As for homosexual sex, these folks have the same notion, but for different reasons. They want to believe that they have no choice but to be homosexuals and that to “deprive” them of “love” is cruel and unjust. They are often as uninformed as their heterosexual friends, but with the current cultural push to accept homosexual behavior as “normal” they have less reason to accept that it is wrong and to repent of it.

People love to feel virtuous even if they aren’t. Accepting the gay “lifestyle” is all the rage just now, as was “free love” in the 60’s. No one wants to be thought unjust or out of step with everyone else. Being counter-cultural is to be a pariah in America, especially when we are force fed lies day in and day out about what the Church teaches and how unfair the Church is being and so on. People weak in their faith are easily led by such force feeding. So, it’s no surprise that they will accept whatever society tells them is right and just over the Church with which they have poor connections of about which they really know next to nothing.
 
bilop said:
Both are mortal sins. But, people who do either can receive the sacraments if they confess and receive absolution first. Of course, this does require at least an intention to try and stop sinning.

As to gravity, it is generally considered that homosexual sex is a worse sin than fornication. e.g. in the Scriptures, sodomy is one of the four sins mentioned that “cry to heaven for vengeance”, along with murder of the innocent, defrauding the worker of his wages, and oppressing widows and orphans.

This is generally considered so, because homosexual sex is an inherently sinful act (it is never good), whereas heterosexual sex is not inherently sinful. It is only sinful when done outside of the proper marital context.

St. Thomas has a long discussion on the different sins of Lust, and their gravity, in the Summa.

newadvent.org/summa/3154.htm

God Bless
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Thanks for the links. I think what my mother was gettingg at though was that these people don’t go to confession (it’s an area she struggled with even when she was Catholic) yet still take the sacraments. Part of it is too with her is that in some senses i’m the only fully devout catholic she knows personally, since most of her acquaintances, even those who go to mass all the time, are poorly catechized in all likelihood.
 
WildCatholic said:
Thanks for the links. I think what my mother was gettingg at though was that these people don’t go to confession (it’s an area she struggled with even when she was Catholic) yet still take the sacraments. Part of it is too with her is that in some senses i’m the only fully devout catholic she knows personally, since most of her acquaintances, even those who go to mass all the time, are poorly catechized in all likelihood.
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Many people do receive the Eucharist unworthily; either out of ignorance, or more likely, pride that they know better than the Church.

God Bless
 
This is a point that I make whenever someone argues with me about how “unjust” the Church is regarding homosexuality. It is a sexually perverse mortal sin. Just like fornication, masturbation, pornography, lust, etc. The Church is NOT more lenient towards heterosexual fornication than homosexual fornication.
 
The church believes in clarity AND charity. That makes for difficult pastoral decisions. When a couple who has been dating a long time attend mass and come up for communion, what do you expect, an miniature inquisition asking if they’ve been behaving? The priest can’t and doesn’t know and must assume the best. To my knowledge, there are no “fornication pride” flags or sashes such people wear as badges of honor by which they proclaim their evil as good.

And you know what? The church generally gives the SAME benefit of the doubt to everybody. Nobody is denied communion or interrogated because of their flamboyant clothes, effeminate manners or suspicious lack of girlfriends over time. It’s only when a person stakes out a claim that his sins are no sins at all that the church is forced to react.

The same happens for heterosexual folks. Those who divorce and remarry outside the church are explicitly taught not to come up for communion. Like “out” gay people, they have declared their defiance publicly and the church no longer has a choice. So where are you contending that there IS a difference or a double standard?
 
Ophelia23 said:
This is a point that I make whenever someone argues with me about how “unjust” the Church is regarding homosexuality. It is a sexually perverse mortal sin. Just like fornication, masturbation, pornography, lust, etc. The Church is NOT more lenient towards heterosexual fornication than homosexual fornication.
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Actually I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that nowhere in the bible does it state that masturbation is a sin.

I don’t doubt that masturbation can lead to sin, just as alcohol can but to cut it out completely seems a step too far for me.
 
Solitaire said:
Actually I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that nowhere in the bible does it state that masturbation is a sin.

I don’t doubt that masturbation can lead to sin, just as alcohol can but to cut it out completely seems a step too far for me.
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The word is not used but any kind of self-gratification is regarded as lewd behavior to be avoided by those who wish to remain chaste in God’s eyes no matter their state in life.

For, what does a person have to do to get satisfaction from such behavior if not lust after some image, imagined or real, of a person, making other human beings mere objects of lust? Does this lead to holiness? Does this teach us to regard each other with the dignity and respect due to fellow beings created in the image and likeness of God himself? I think the answer is obvious.
 
Solitaire said:
Actually I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that nowhere in the bible does it state that masturbation is a sin.

I don’t doubt that masturbation can lead to sin, just as alcohol can but to cut it out completely seems a step too far for me.
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As a catholic, you should know better than to expect the bible to be a comprehensive catechism. Nowhere does it suggest that it is.

Rationally, masturbation has to be sinful if fornication is sinful. It’s downright incoherent to claim a moral difference. They’re both wrong precisely because they damage the human potential for union with the spouse in a manner that is selfless, not selfish. Masturbation is nothing less than narcissism in training. People today are unable to see that precisely because we are immersed in a culture that celebrates narcissism as if it were a good thing.
 
Della said:
The word is not used but any kind of self-gratification is regarded as lewd behavior to be avoided by those who wish to remain chaste in God’s eyes no matter their state in life.

For, what does a person have to do to get satisfaction from such behavior if not lust after some image, imagined or real, of a person, making other human beings mere objects of lust? Does this lead to holiness? Does this teach us to regard each other with the dignity and respect due to fellow beings created in the image and likeness of God himself? I think the answer is obvious.
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I don’t agree with the Churches interpretation of this issue. I don’t look at women as ‘objects’ nor do I lust after them which is probably why I’m still single at 38. I think the churches teaching on this issue is outdated and one of the reasons why I’m seeing a declining younger presence in the churches around me and why I’m reading about the churches aging population. If you took every ‘old’ person out of my church you’d be left with just a handful of people
 
WildCatholic said:
First of all, i don’t know where this question fits so if it needs to be moved please do so. Anyway, my question stems from a discussion I had with my non-practicing, formerly Lutheran (as in she was Lutheran, then became Catholic, now isn’t practicing any faith) where we were talking about gays in the church. I mentioned how the church teaching is that Gay actions are wrong, not gay people. Anyway, she mentioned how hard it was and that it wasn’t right. Then she brought up how a lot of people she knows who are fornicators and have sex outside of marriage still receive the sacraments (she works in a Catholic school part time for the local public school district and knows or hears about teachers in both school systems who aren’t very moral) and her logic basically is that since these people can still get the Sacraments, that practicing gay people should get them too.

So does the church see fornication and heterosexual sex outside of marriage as less evil than Homosexual sex? I have a feeling the answer is no, but since all sins are not equal, is it worse to be a practicing homosexual, than to be a fornicator?

Also, how do i get my mother to understand these people who supposedly are not chaste, are not following the rules? She seems to think that the church sees sex outside of marriage between man and a woman as less wrong than homosexuality.

Sorry for the long question, but any help would be appreciated.
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Sadly your ex-Lutheran friend is being set a bad example by those so-called Catholic teachers and I can say the same thing for many of my kids Catholic teachers also.

The difference in these two sins is that pre-marital sexual relations are contrary to the purpose of marriage and same sex sexual relations are ‘objectively disordered’ meaning contrary to the purpose of nature itself. The first is natural (conforming to nature) and the second is unnatural (against nature). As St Thomas Aquinas said ‘divine law presupposes natural law’. Nothing in same sex sexual relations pertains to the natural life affirming instincts of creatures.

Through the sexual union of a man and woman, God achieves His ongoing work of creation and His ongoing gift of love. All sexual unions that are rendered barren through human will or are fundamentally barren by nature are corrosive to humanity and against divine and natural law. (I must stress here that those suffering the disease of infertility are not ‘fundamentally barren’.)
 
manualman said:
As a catholic, you should know better than to expect the bible to be a comprehensive catechism. Nowhere does it suggest that it is.

Rationally, masturbation has to be sinful if fornication is sinful. It’s downright incoherent to claim a moral difference. They’re both wrong precisely because they damage the human potential for union with the spouse in a manner that is selfless, not selfish. Masturbation is nothing less than narcissism in training. People today are unable to see that precisely because we are immersed in a culture that celebrates narcissism as if it were a good thing.
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Fornication is sinful (adultery) I don’t agree with your use of the word ‘narcissism’

Narcissism is a term that originated with Narcissus in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Currently it is used to describe the pursuit of gratification from vanity, or egotistic admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, that derive from arrogant pride.

That above quotation has nothing to do with masturbation. Also masturbation does not damage the human potential for union! I’d wager a very large sum of money on the fact that 99.9% of married couples had masturbated at some point in there lives. As with everything if you take it to an excess it can be damaging but that’s no reason to ban it.
 
Solitaire said:
I don’t agree with the Churches interpretation of this issue. I don’t look at women as ‘objects’ nor do I lust after them which is probably why I’m still single at 38. I think the churches teaching on this issue is outdated and one of the reasons why I’m seeing a declining younger presence in the churches around me and why I’m reading about the churches aging population. If you took every ‘old’ person out of my church you’d be left with just a handful of people
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Every sin that human beings have ever wanted to commit has been classified as “outdated” when they want to commit it. That’s no argument for any sin.

If we have lost younger people it’s because of poor catechesis not for calling sins sins. We need to let them know what sins are and how they damage our souls in order to help them understand not pander to their sinful inclinations.

Again, no sin helps us become holy nor teaches us how to love others with the respect due to all human beings. It’s always been a sin and always will be a sin.
 
Solitaire said:
Fornication is sinful (adultery) I don’t agree with your use of the word ‘narcissism’

Narcissism is a term that originated with Narcissus in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Currently it is used to describe the pursuit of gratification from vanity, or egotistic admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, that derive from arrogant pride.

That above quotation has nothing to do with masturbation. Also masturbation does not damage the human potential for union! I’d wager a very large sum of money on the fact that 99.9% of married couples had masturbated at some point in there lives. As with everything if you take it to an excess it can be damaging but that’s no reason to ban it.
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You should read the link I posted earlier in the thread to St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.

St. Thomas would tell you that masturbation (grouped with homosexual acts under the title “the Unnatural Vice”, is a worse sin that simple fornication). Fornication at least follows the natural order of sexuality, while masturbation perverts it.

God Bless
 
Solitaire said:
Fornication is sinful (adultery) I don’t agree with your use of the word ‘narcissism’

Narcissism is a term that originated with Narcissus in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Currently it is used to describe the pursuit of gratification from vanity, or egotistic admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, that derive from arrogant pride.

That above quotation has nothing to do with masturbation. Also masturbation does not damage the human potential for union! I’d wager a very large sum of money on the fact that 99.9% of married couples had masturbated at some point in there lives. As with everything if you take it to an excess it can be damaging but that’s no reason to ban it.
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Nobody is saying that masturbation is the uber-sin. Heaven would have no men were that the case. But the human weakness in that regard is a result of the fall, not evidence that the action in question isn’t wrong. 100% of people alive today are guilty of telling lies at some point in life. Shall we declare THAT no longer sinful as well?

Your assertions that it does no damage are pointless in the face of the fact that the church has always asserted otherwise. Even the secular medical research on the brain chemistry involved is instructive. Sexual release triggers chemical responses associated with human bonding in the brain. Training yourself to experience that as a solitary experience absolutely degrades and damages the intended unitive function of sexuality. By the time you actually marry, you’ve inured yourself from experiencing the bonding emotions as they were intended to function. The more you experience orgasm alone, the more it becomes ONLY about you. You live the way you train.
 
Just because people who fornicate recieve communion, that doesn’t mean it’s right. If you have committed a mortal sin you are nt to recieve communion without going to confession first except in grave circumstances.
 
I understand this, its not an issue with me. I just wondered if maybe the church feels homosexuality is a worse sin than fornication or pre marital sex. I figured the answer was that all sins in a sense are equal since both are mortal sins. The issue with this is my mother who always uses the example of Catholics who are unchaste who go up for communion and states how catholics are hypocritical.
 
Both have the quality of grave matter for being sex outside of the sacrament of marriage, however, homosexual relations have the added quality of being unnatural sexual relations. Still, I wouldn’t stress that difference. We need to focus on educating about the gravity of both activities.
 
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