Leviticus Menstrual Impurity and Homosexuality

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6of12SGR

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Leviticus 18: 19-23
You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual impurity…you shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination… etc

The Church does not forbid intercourse during menstruation but it does forbid homosexuality. I have been looking for a satisfying reason why Leviticus has a list of morally wrong sexual acts that are all condemned by the church today except for the part about “Menstrual Impurity.”

I have found a few explanations but I am trying to connect all the dots.

On another thread about the same topic, user Todd_Easton provided this explanation:

“Lev 18:19 refers to sexual activity between a man and a ritually unclean woman… homosexual activity…is not a matter of ritual uncleaness but of intrinsically sinful behavior…”

The Moral Law requires obedience to the Ceremonial Law of the time, which has been fufilled by Christ. This would suggest that women are “clean” now at all times IF it is a ceremonial cleanness that we are talking about.

The confusion is that this one act that is supposedly sinful because of “ceremonial uncleaness” is surrounded by sexual immorality that is based on the Moral Law itself.

On the one hand, this explanation makes enough sense to me by itself. I want to be sure I am not missing something or thinking about it in the wrong way. What are your thought?
 
6of12SGR said:
This would suggest that women are “clean” now at all times IF it is a ceremonial cleanness that we are talking about.
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No… it would suggest that the Church doesn’t define ritual purity. So, there is neither the implication of “clean” nor “ritually impure.”
The confusion is that this one act that is supposedly sinful because of “ceremonial uncleaness” is surrounded by sexual immorality that is based on the Moral Law itself.
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Not sure what you mean by that. Are you simply saying that the Mosaic law restrictions on sex during menstruation are physically located near other purity laws regarding sexual behavior?
 
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If the OT law was also upheld in the NT, generally the Church teaches that.

If the OT law was not mentioned in the NT, generally the Church teaches it was abrogated.
 
Spyridon said:
If the OT law was also upheld in the NT, generally the Church teaches that.

If the OT law was not mentioned in the NT, generally the Church teaches it was abrogated.
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You’re painting with rather broad strokes, don’t you think?
 
It’s in the same list and catergorized as equally immoral as incest and adultery
 
Of course sleeping with a woman during her menstruation is to sleep with her in the knowledge there is no chance of procreation when sex is supposed to be for procreation. Shouldn’t one wait until she is fertile? Homosexual sex is forbidden because it does not result in a fetus and is only for pleasure. Sex during menstruation is the same, no?
 
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TheButler said:
Homosexual sex is forbidden because it does not result in a fetus and is only for pleasure
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Homosexual acts are sinful because they are intrinsically disordered, also because all sexual acts outside of a valid marriage are sinful. These acts are not ordered toward procreation is a sin.

“resulting in a fetus” is a gross distortion of the valid marital act.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Homosexual acts are sinful because they are intrinsically disordered, also because all sexual acts outside of a valid marriage are sinful. These acts are not ordered toward procreation is a sin.

“resulting in a fetus” is a gross distortion of the valid marital act.
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If you continue to read the Catechism (2357) after ‘disordered’ it says homosexual acts “are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life.”

Therefore sex during menstruation also ‘closes the sexual act to the gift of life’, no?
 
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No, the marital act during menstruation is still ordered toward procreation.
 
TheButler said:
Therefore sex during menstruation also ‘closes the sexual act to the gift of life’, no?
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No. No human closed the sexual act to life.

Consider: Sarah and Abraham had a child during her menopause, the supposedly totally infertile time of a woman’s life. The scriptures indicate that she could no longer even menstruate. The point of the scripture, is that menstruation is an indication of fertility; and since Sarah no longer had that ability she was not expected to get pregnant.

In scientific terms, because a woman bleeds does not automatically preclude her getting pregnant. It happens to be a time where it is very un-likely, because the egg has already passed through the tubes and the lining is beginning to deteriorate. But menstruation can be stopped by hormones of a fetus, and it’s possible for the egg to be delayed in coming down the tubes for various reasons.

An interesting side issue, is that the hormones of the birth control pill were originally developed by a Catholic who thought that since hormones were “natural” that they would be accepted by the church to regulate births. How wrong…

Back on topic:
Homosexual acts were still forbidden in the New Testament after Paul reflected on the purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice in the flesh in order to make all people (men and women) “one flesh” with him; a Wedding of men and women, to a man “Jesus” but without a sexual act. (eg: Ephesians 5:32-33 )

The condemnation of Homosexual Acts found in Romans is precisely because they are exchanging the Truth revealed by Jesus for a lie.

Consider the ritual uncleanness laws for food. The explanation that Jesus gives is that all foods are effectively clean because they pass through the stomach and out through the latrine. They don’t enter into a heart of man. So, Jesus has not declared that the food itself is clean … just that it’s moot because the uncleanliness goes out the butt and into the toilet.

What then, is a homosexual act? It’s an attempt to take the clean seed of a man and put it in an unclean place where it will always, and only, pass into the latrine. No one ever expects a pregnancy to result, and God never has shown a miracle of that kind.

On the other hand, the flesh that Jesus gives us in the Eucharist … being clean food, is at the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s meant to go in a mans mouth, that it find it’s way into his heart.

Blood is not unclean, when it’s the Eucharist. As a fore-shadowing of the Eucharist, Jewish priests sprinkled blood from animals on people during the atonement ceremonies. But they ONLY did so after the blood was touched to an altar.

So, stop and think a minute about why Moses would want to point out that the women’s menstruation before Christ’s coming was unclean. Can you see that something might have changed after Christ came and became greater than a stone altar upon the Cross? 1Corinthians 6, and 1Corinthians 7:14.
 
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