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SacredHeartFan
Guest
I’m 17. This stuff flies over my peers heads. Gay is what they know. Gay is what I’ll stick with. I appriciate the concern though!
- Status
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Baelor
Guest
One can be asexual. Homosexuality is what it is. I see no reason not to just state the truth outright. I cannot see how accuracy is a negative thing, and saying “not attracted to the opposite sex” is clearly not the most correct answer.
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Elizabeth502
Guest
I see no reason to “state the truth” about personal, let alone private, matters, unless someone asks me and such person has a legitimate need for “the truth.” It is not “keeping a secret” from others not to declare my sexual orientation upon the first meeting, or even many successive meetings. 
As I was raised, it is…well, good taste.
Imagine.
As I was raised, it is…well, good taste.
Imagine.
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manualman
Guest
I appreciate your patient explanations. I’ve often thought that the mark of someone who really understands something complex is that they are able to summarize it in simple terms. You’re a long way down that road (probably further than me), but I still believe I see holes in your reasoning. Or they may be holes in my comprehension. Some of both?..
I agree that there are some who seem to imply that homosexual persons have a more specifically evil nature than others even if they don’t act on their impulses. I agree that this a wrong thinking. Temptation is not sin. Perhaps you are hearing ‘disordered inclination’ and hearing a denunciation that really isn’t there. A heterosexual person is attracted to the opposite sex. That attraction serves as a natural assistance in directing that person towards the formation of a permanent marriage, which is the way in which humanity most closely reflects the image of God (life giving love). In other words, that attraction is “ordered towards” marriage as God designed. A homosexual person has attractions that are NOT ordered towards the “whole”, as you put it. Instead they lead that person away from such a union. This is the sense in which they are DISordered.
Agreed. But if you in a non-groggy condition had a peculiar desire to constantly eat nothing but paperweights, wouldn’t you call that a ‘disordered inclination?’ I really don’t think it is meant as a pejorative. I agree with the fragments explanation you provided so far. It is no fault of the person in question if the fragments they hold motivate them in a direction that results in unhealthy behavior. They desire a true good and are reacting in a way that they genuinely think leads them towards it. But they still break their teeth when they act on it. Thus, the desire itself is disordered. I may just lack the vocabulary here to get your point, but I humbly suggest that most other people will too, so please think about that.
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manualman
Guest
Not quite agreed. Missing from this whole picture is the other side of the equation. The sum equals “humanity most fully reflecting the image and likeness of God.” This is not a quibble. This is how all this is demonstrably not arbitrary!
Agreed and well put!
Being attracted to the female is a characteristic of this man that is ordered towards the formation of relationships that can turn into marriage. Thus the attrraction is properly ordered. What he does based on that can still be disordered in that he can objectify the woman and focus only on the female body fragment in your terms. I certainly agree with that and know far too many of these guys!
Agreed. There is nothing ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’ about his attraction. But his attraction is not ordered towards the formation of a marriage. It is ordered against such a thing happening. DISordered. It’s not a reflection on his character, its a problem he has. Not necessarily worse than problems I have.
Here’s where I suspect the train of thought derails. This implies that there is no essential difference between the love between a husband and wife and that between two men. That only the plumbing incompatibility prevents them from being able to live the whole thing. I doubt this. Catholic teaching on the nature of humanity as a unity of body and soul suggests that the outward differences we have reflect spiritual differences, which are likely as much or more a reason that the love between two men is fundamentally incomplete compared to that between a husband and wife (in its potential, if not typical achievement!). So I am not in agreement that the experience that two men have of falling in love is a healthy expression that is ordered towards the two of them living up to their nature as beings created in the image and likeness of God. We live so immersed in a culture that is determined to wipe out non-physical gender differences that I doubt we’ll have much theological insight or advancement in our lifetimes on the topic. And speaking of concupiscence, such a scenario would be like a lifelong meat lover who really needs for health reasons to eat mostly grains and vegetables taking a job as a chef at a steakhouse - bad idea!
Maybe I agree. A homosexual person commits no sin if he falls in love with a close friend and remains chaste, but the devil lies waiting in the details here. Human weakness suggests that if the other one feels the same way, there will eventually be a disaster. As an outsider, I can offer limited advice, but I suspect that the only way chastity can be maintained in the long term is to go to great lengths to avoid mutual attractions rather than encourage them in the false hope that the limited intimacy available to such a couple could allow them to glipse the big picture in a stronger manner than their disordered desires (vocabulary defended above) pull them in the other direction.
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manualman
Guest
Only if you truncate the definition of heterosexuality to one of lust. Such a vision of sexuality is IMO as disordered as SSA (though many get mad at me for saying so). To me, heterosexuality is the whole equation we’ve discussed above.
Disconnect. Nobody says ‘disordered’ = evil. Certainly not the church. It means “Not correctly ordered.” I stand by it still. Again, the attraction itself is not a wrong that incurs culpability.
In other words, homosexual persons have the same GOOD desire for human intimacy as heterosexual persons. Agreed. Unfortunately their lower appetites are ordered towards an end that does not fulfill that true intimacy. (take that, dead horse: disordered)
Not when you account for the fact that God demonstrated FIRST the salvific power of that Incarnation on a woman. Perhaps not a coincidence
I have nothing authoritative to back this up, but it seems to me that Genesis says that when God created man in his image, that description applied to Adam BEFORE God removed a rib and fashioned Eve from it. That sequence suggests to me that man and woman together most fully reflect the image and likeness of God in the marriage relationship where their self sacrificial love holds the power to bring forth new life in the same way that the power of love within the Trinity created the universe. The implication seems to be that we each LESS fully reflect God as individual sexes than when we are bonded in marriage. This has profound implications beyond the mere physical for the relationship potential between two same sex persons. We think we’ve got our souls all figured out, but really we’re naive fools when it comes to matters of the soul. There is more depth there than any of us has remotely begun to contemplate.
Thanks for the discussion.
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FaithBuild18
Guest
I’d like to see a statistic of the number of people who actually “all gays go to hell” versus “all gays go to heaven regardless of sexual activity.” You tell me which one is the most prominent widespread ideology in our culture.
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manualman
Guest
Sigh. Is that really the best we can do? Point out that one grotesque error is more common than a second, so we should feel about some holding to the second as some sort of counter-balance to the first?
How about we articulate the third option: Christ.
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Baelor
Guest
My post was in response to someone advocating a particular answer. It is clear that the underlying assumption is that an answer is being given. Your own insertion was as catty as it was unnecessary.I see no reason to “state the truth” about personal, let alone private, matters, unless someone asks me and such person has a legitimate need for “the truth.” It is not “keeping a secret” from others not to declare my sexual orientation upon the first meeting, or even many successive meetings.
As I was raised, it is…well, good taste.
Imagine.
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Deo_Volente
Guest
Grace & Peace!
So anyway. Lets assume we’re all ordered toward image AB. AB represents human fulfillment and flourishing in the best possible way. If sensual fragment A attracts me to it, I’m still relating to and ordered toward AB. If I’m attracted to fragment B, I’m still relating to and ordered toward AB–my attraction to either A or B must always be referred to the overarching thing to which I’m ordered, which is AB.
Now, if I’m an A and I’m attracted to an A, then the pieces that my lower appetite is putting together don’t quite make up the totality of AB. I can’t pretend that AA=AB. But my attraction to A doesn’t mean that my orientation, the thing to which I’m ordered,is AA. No. I remain oriented to AB. Whatever relationship I have with the A to which I’m attracted, I know it can’t be AB, but I also know that it’s because of my orientation to AB that my attraction to A is even possible–because the A in AB is part of what I’m oriented towards to begin with. I can understand AB, I can even understand it through my relationship with A. And while I can’t actualize AB and all of what it means, I can realize that it’s because of AB in me that I’m able to be in an appropriate relationship with an A or B to be begin with.
So even though I’m an A, I’m not disordered in being attracted to another A. But I am disordered if I think that image AA is actually the same as image AB.
Now. If we were to say that our fulfillment is not image AB, but is image A for Bs and B for As, then an A who is attracted to an A is objectively disordered–because the thing to which the A is attracted has nothing whatsoever to do with the thing toward which he’s oriented, which looks like image B. In trying to construct image B, all the fragments A has to work with are other As! He can’t do it. He can’t even come close. He can’t construct B at all. He’s completely lost. Whatever in him that’s desiring another A is completely broken. He has to suppress that thing or rid himself of it somehow if he wants to avoid depravity.
Can you see where this is going? Simple as it is, I think it’s illustrative of the problems of conceiving of human sexuality as binary rather than unitary.
Or, looking at in from another perspective. I could only want to eat the paperweight if I somehow thought it was good for me–if I was tricked into wanting nothing but paperweights, if my senses were truly haywire, or if my eating of paperweights were presented to me as a good (i.e., you may not like eating paperweights, but good people eat paperweights, and you wanna be good, don’t you?). No one desires evil qua evil.
Maybe none of that made any sense. If it didn’t, it’s probably in part because I’m tired!
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Peace! Deo Gratias!
Good! I’m grateful for your willingness to engage with all this, manualman. I’m definitely still thinking my way through all of this, and your insights and challenges are most appreciated.
I understand what you’re saying here, and I know that the RCC isn’t meaning denunciation when it calls an inclination a disorder. In this context, though, I think that language of disorder (when applied to the inclination, but not when applied to an act) has some unintended consequences for how we understand human nature, desire and grace and I’m trying to figure out how to express what I and others are thinking in this regard.
Thinking of a unitary human sexuality toward which we’re all oriented makes me wonder about your conclusion here, though…and let me be clear, I’m not under any illusion that I’m right in what I’m thinking here or in how I’m approaching this–just trying to think things through in a different way, or in a way that challenges my own assumptions…
So anyway. Lets assume we’re all ordered toward image AB. AB represents human fulfillment and flourishing in the best possible way. If sensual fragment A attracts me to it, I’m still relating to and ordered toward AB. If I’m attracted to fragment B, I’m still relating to and ordered toward AB–my attraction to either A or B must always be referred to the overarching thing to which I’m ordered, which is AB.
Now, if I’m an A and I’m attracted to an A, then the pieces that my lower appetite is putting together don’t quite make up the totality of AB. I can’t pretend that AA=AB. But my attraction to A doesn’t mean that my orientation, the thing to which I’m ordered,is AA. No. I remain oriented to AB. Whatever relationship I have with the A to which I’m attracted, I know it can’t be AB, but I also know that it’s because of my orientation to AB that my attraction to A is even possible–because the A in AB is part of what I’m oriented towards to begin with. I can understand AB, I can even understand it through my relationship with A. And while I can’t actualize AB and all of what it means, I can realize that it’s because of AB in me that I’m able to be in an appropriate relationship with an A or B to be begin with.
So even though I’m an A, I’m not disordered in being attracted to another A. But I am disordered if I think that image AA is actually the same as image AB.
Now. If we were to say that our fulfillment is not image AB, but is image A for Bs and B for As, then an A who is attracted to an A is objectively disordered–because the thing to which the A is attracted has nothing whatsoever to do with the thing toward which he’s oriented, which looks like image B. In trying to construct image B, all the fragments A has to work with are other As! He can’t do it. He can’t even come close. He can’t construct B at all. He’s completely lost. Whatever in him that’s desiring another A is completely broken. He has to suppress that thing or rid himself of it somehow if he wants to avoid depravity.
Can you see where this is going? Simple as it is, I think it’s illustrative of the problems of conceiving of human sexuality as binary rather than unitary.
Yes,because the paperweight doesn’t form a fragment of anything that constitutes the Whole Eating Picture for me. As such, the desire to eat only paperweights would be a foreign imposition on my will or nature and represent some sort of compulsion. Consequently such a desire would be indicative of a pathology of some kind and would not be impervious to treatment, and I might still be able to eat something or be fed something nutritious or more in concert with my nature during the course of the treatment. But we don’t generally understand same-sex attracion in those terms (foreign, pathology, compulsion, treatable) unless we’re being particularly uncharitable or particularly anti-science.
Or, looking at in from another perspective. I could only want to eat the paperweight if I somehow thought it was good for me–if I was tricked into wanting nothing but paperweights, if my senses were truly haywire, or if my eating of paperweights were presented to me as a good (i.e., you may not like eating paperweights, but good people eat paperweights, and you wanna be good, don’t you?). No one desires evil qua evil.
Sure! But that’s the thing…the desire an A has for another A may be ordered to AB by virtue of the fact that an A forms a part of AB, but attempting to confuse AA with AB may prove injurious.
Maybe none of that made any sense. If it didn’t, it’s probably in part because I’m tired!
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Peace! Deo Gratias!
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manualman
Guest
Mark,
I must confess I’m not entirely sure if I’m getting it. So let me ask you some follow up questions.
Since you assert that the inclination should not be termed ‘disordered’ since the end desired is really the good that God intended, what are you claiming that the healthy relationships of such persons should look like? At times, it appears as if you are attempting to justify homosexual persons pursuing mutual attractions, falling in love with each other, basically doing everything a couple does right up to, but not across the line of sexual touching. Or am I reading you wrong? Because your reasoning suggests it and regardless of high reasoning, such a thing doesn’t pass the common sense test.
I would think that the only healthy thing to do in such a scenario is the same thing I do as a married man in situations where I find a woman attactive: I stay relatively formal, avoid intimate situations or conversational topics and generally guard the sanctity of my marriage relationship with a sturdy line of defense. Would not one of same sex attraction need to guard his chastity similarly?
I’m not sure we can redeem the way the “two As” as you put it feel about each other as completely as you suggest as if what they feel is really AB in disguise. It isn’t AB, and that’s the problem. If it were, the merely physical incompatibility would be a flimsy reason to deny their coupling (we don’t deny marriage to hopelessly infertile couples). As I keep returning to, AB is more than a physical incompatibility. Male and female are not just plumbing parts, skin deep. The physical differences are manifestations of more significant differences.
While I would never tell a person who self identifies as homosexual that he ought to get therapy to fix his orientation, I also won’t say it can’t happen. I happen to be related to someone who once thought he was gay, but his conversion allowed him to really explore a lot of things inside him. He’s been married for 18 years now and has 5 kids. He’s pretty open about his past and I think it highly unlikely he’s faking it. But he’s a single example and no two are the same. Thus, I think it’s uncharitable of you to assert that it is cruel or unscientific to suggest that SSA in some people DOES result from pathologies that can be addressed. (He was adopted late and had that stereotypically distant relationship with his father, which by no means is universal among homosexual men). One size simply doesn’t fit all on this issue.
I must confess I’m not entirely sure if I’m getting it. So let me ask you some follow up questions.
Since you assert that the inclination should not be termed ‘disordered’ since the end desired is really the good that God intended, what are you claiming that the healthy relationships of such persons should look like? At times, it appears as if you are attempting to justify homosexual persons pursuing mutual attractions, falling in love with each other, basically doing everything a couple does right up to, but not across the line of sexual touching. Or am I reading you wrong? Because your reasoning suggests it and regardless of high reasoning, such a thing doesn’t pass the common sense test.
I would think that the only healthy thing to do in such a scenario is the same thing I do as a married man in situations where I find a woman attactive: I stay relatively formal, avoid intimate situations or conversational topics and generally guard the sanctity of my marriage relationship with a sturdy line of defense. Would not one of same sex attraction need to guard his chastity similarly?
I’m not sure we can redeem the way the “two As” as you put it feel about each other as completely as you suggest as if what they feel is really AB in disguise. It isn’t AB, and that’s the problem. If it were, the merely physical incompatibility would be a flimsy reason to deny their coupling (we don’t deny marriage to hopelessly infertile couples). As I keep returning to, AB is more than a physical incompatibility. Male and female are not just plumbing parts, skin deep. The physical differences are manifestations of more significant differences.
While I would never tell a person who self identifies as homosexual that he ought to get therapy to fix his orientation, I also won’t say it can’t happen. I happen to be related to someone who once thought he was gay, but his conversion allowed him to really explore a lot of things inside him. He’s been married for 18 years now and has 5 kids. He’s pretty open about his past and I think it highly unlikely he’s faking it. But he’s a single example and no two are the same. Thus, I think it’s uncharitable of you to assert that it is cruel or unscientific to suggest that SSA in some people DOES result from pathologies that can be addressed. (He was adopted late and had that stereotypically distant relationship with his father, which by no means is universal among homosexual men). One size simply doesn’t fit all on this issue.
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Elizabeth502
Guest
Your post responded to post 74. The poster who wrote post 74 considers it unnecessary to state “identity” as “gay” if one is not acting on the attraction. That is why she made, in that post, the distinction (in dialoguing not with you but with the OP), that attraction is accurate enough to specify, as the attraction per se does not equate to identity, nor does it suggest acting on that attraction (necessarily). That is precisely the meaning of her post.My post was in response to someone advocating a particular answer. It is clear that the underlying assumption is that an answer is being given. Your own insertion was as catty as it was unnecessary.
I was agreeing not with your response but with her opinion.
Further than that, I maintain that too often in modern American society, it’s considered “necessary” to offer private information when private information is not being asked. In the situation the OP imagined (to which ISOG responded), I suppose a response in that scene might have been compelled, but not necessarily. Also, males and females of all persuasions can recognize and appreciate beauty and “sexiness” without necessarily discussing his or her own personal attraction to that body/person. If another woman asks me if I find a certain woman particularly beautiful, I will respond honestly. It doesn’t have to mean that I’m physically attracted to the woman being referred to. I have opinions on the “sex appeal” of particular men and particular women, and offering that opinion (if asked) does not label me as having a particular sexual preference. I know all kinds of homosexual men who have particular opnions about what they find attractive in a woman. It doesn’t mean that they’d like to go to bed with that woman; they’re simply admiring physical attributes and perhaps the personality as well.
This country, and this era, is WAY too sexualized. It’s ridiculous. Not everything is a sexual comment.
It’s unfortunate that you find my disagreement “catty,” but I take no responsibility for that inappropiate characterization. I did comment, and am commenting again, on the gratuitous and tasteless disclosure of one’s sex life which seems to be “demanded” at all levels of society.
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Dakota_Roberts
Guest
Mark & manualman, your conversation is flawed in that marriage is not the ultimate expression of our humanness and is indeed unnecessary. Count the number of married Saints v. the number of celibate Saints. Is the love of a spouse the greatest love? I would like to point to John 15
Deus caritas est,
pax
If you are a man and you truly love another man you could not engage in sex with him, how could you say you love him when you help him sin? To not engage is sex would be a true act of love, as you are placing another’s wellbeing in front of your own. What greater love is there than to sacrifice yourself as Christ did for the sake of your friends, your beloved?
Deus caritas est,
pax
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Elizabeth502
Guest
I do hate to distract from Dakota’s excellent post above, but I’d like to respond further to this:
If you don’t find person X sexy or physically alluring, that’s a matter of subjective preference, including if you “should” be attracted to person X, or if “everybody else” of your gender is attracted to him/her. It is not, in itself, a sign of orientation.
I don’t expect other women to have the same taste in men that I do. I find certain popular male actors not particularly “sexy” – in fact, quite a few of them. That says absolutely nothing about my heterosexuality, which is intact, thank you.
And when the shoe is on the other foot, there is also no need to reveal private information. IOW, once a lesbian was discussing in my presence how attracted she was to this or that public female; she wanted to go on about it, and her preferences. Why would it have been necessary for me to comment to her that I am not a lesbian? What the socially correct thing to do in that situation, was to let her talk, because clearly in that situation it was she who “needed” to disclose these aspects of herself. She didn’t ask me if I was also attracted to those females, so why should I offer that I’m not?
And back to heterosexuality: if a woman was going on about “hot” men, and wondered aloud why I wasn’t joining in that conversation, the appropriate response, if I do not find those men “hot,” is to say just that. That would be true whether I were or were not heterosexual. Nothing more is necessary to say. I don’t need to defend my heterosexuality just because my taste in men differs from hers, nor (if I were lesbian) would I need to disclose such private information to which she had zero right.
One of the cardinal Christian principles of Truth is that it is not necessary to reveal truth to those who have no right to it. No one has a right to private information such as sexuality, such as sin, such as family secrets, such as what salary you make as a private individual, except particular people in professional positions (the IRS, a confessor, a therapist you are seeing, etc.), and those to whom you freely choose to disclose these matters. One is not being “untruthful.” One is exercising discretion. Big difference.
My very point is that there should be no “So” about it. That is not a logical excuse to inquire about a person’s sexual orientation, and for anyone to do so is presumptive and invasive. Just because any individual is not “checking out” bodies (whether the same sex or the other sex’s) is not an excuse for any other person to demand to know the orientation of the person who is silent or not participating. (And similarly, it does not create a social requirement for the silent person to explain his silence.) I realize that men tend to have “sex on the brain” more often than women do, but I have encountered plenty of red-blooded heterosexual men who do not participate in such exercises, nor do they feel a need to explain why they are not participating. Some of them consider it juvenile; others consider it to be in poor taste.
If you don’t find person X sexy or physically alluring, that’s a matter of subjective preference, including if you “should” be attracted to person X, or if “everybody else” of your gender is attracted to him/her. It is not, in itself, a sign of orientation.
I don’t expect other women to have the same taste in men that I do. I find certain popular male actors not particularly “sexy” – in fact, quite a few of them. That says absolutely nothing about my heterosexuality, which is intact, thank you.
And when the shoe is on the other foot, there is also no need to reveal private information. IOW, once a lesbian was discussing in my presence how attracted she was to this or that public female; she wanted to go on about it, and her preferences. Why would it have been necessary for me to comment to her that I am not a lesbian? What the socially correct thing to do in that situation, was to let her talk, because clearly in that situation it was she who “needed” to disclose these aspects of herself. She didn’t ask me if I was also attracted to those females, so why should I offer that I’m not?
And back to heterosexuality: if a woman was going on about “hot” men, and wondered aloud why I wasn’t joining in that conversation, the appropriate response, if I do not find those men “hot,” is to say just that. That would be true whether I were or were not heterosexual. Nothing more is necessary to say. I don’t need to defend my heterosexuality just because my taste in men differs from hers, nor (if I were lesbian) would I need to disclose such private information to which she had zero right.
One of the cardinal Christian principles of Truth is that it is not necessary to reveal truth to those who have no right to it. No one has a right to private information such as sexuality, such as sin, such as family secrets, such as what salary you make as a private individual, except particular people in professional positions (the IRS, a confessor, a therapist you are seeing, etc.), and those to whom you freely choose to disclose these matters. One is not being “untruthful.” One is exercising discretion. Big difference.
L
LaSainte
Guest
I have a gay uncle who lived chastely with his beloved for over 30 years. It is definitely possible and I don’t see how they did anything objectionable.
M
manualman
Guest
It is true that the intimacy between a person and God has the potential to be even deeper than that between man and wife. I don’t think Mark or I are disputing that. I, at least, am discussing the way in which God created male and female with the design for their relationship to be in his image and likeness and how that relationship is more than just physical. This in no way negates the way in which priests and brothers marry the church and nuns and sisters marry Christ himself (did you know that it was once common for nuns to wear a wedding dress on the day they took vows?).
As to the second paragraph, Mark’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t remotely consider homosexual physical activity morally acceptable. If you are thinking that he’s trying to justify it, you need to re-read his posts. I, personally, think his position is akin to saying the we need to prevent the grizzly bear from getting into the cabin, but refusing to close the door, but I’ll let him defend his own assertions!
(I could be misunderstanding him, after all…)
D
Deo_Volente
Guest
Grace & Peace!
It may be true that the reception these teachings have received is out of proportion to what was intended due to the turmoil in the public sphere regarding same sex marriage and other developments in the world, couple with an apocalyptic and defensive mindset people tend to develop when the world seems to be moving in strange or unusual ways. I’ve always thought this mindset represented a kind of low-level frequency throughout most of human history, but perhaps the recent explosion of media access and the entrenchment of the 24 hour news cycle has contributed to its heightened pitch and a general feeling that we’re all doomed and we need to hunker down and get back to basics or rediscover one thing or another or whatever. I don’t know. But there’s definitely a tension between what you point out, Dakota, and what the teaching on marriage is perceived to be. (Or maybe the distortion in perception regarding marriage that I’m noticing is just a function of me spending too much time on these forums!)
This does bring up some issues, though.
It’s generally believed that two men in love, for instance, are not actually in love, but in lust, and therefore incapable of expressing true love (presumably true love refers to the love between a married man and woman, which love is impossible to be expressed between two men or two women…). So for two men who are in love and who love each other so much that they refuse to have sex with each other, does their love mean that they must be out of love or out of relationship in order to actually love each other, or can they continue to be in love and still be in a relationship? I.e., does true love for two men who love each other mean mutual alienation or a cordial friendship or can it be something like the love shared between two people in a Josephite marriage? Is it just the case that homosexuals can only ever actually love someone with whom they’re in love by removing themelves (either geographically or emotionally) from the life of the person with whom they’re in love, as if the love they may have to give, even when it is committed to chastity, is poisonous or diseased or something of which they should be ashamed? If a faithful and chaste homosexual falls in love, is the proper response to that love a concerted effort to repress it?
Perhaps the basic questions here are: how do we understand, honor, give and receive love in a way that contributes most to human flourishing (growth in love and grace)? What does that tell us about human relationships and our capacity to form them, and how does that relate to what we know about who we are meant to be in the light of God’s love for us?
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
Dakota, you make an excellent point, and it reveals just how complicated this issue can be. On the one hand, you’re absolutely correct regarding celibacy and love. On the other hand, how else are we to read the RCC’s recent teachings on the nature of marriage but that it is at the heart of our identities as men and women? Those teachings may not be dogmatically definitive (I’m not sure), but they’ve certainly been received as such; they’ve been received in such a way that suggests that marriage is the principle relationship toward which all human relationships tend. Granted, this may be too much for the institution of marriage to bear, proving problematic to your regular married couple who finds they have a hard time measuring up to the romantic and mystical ideal set forth, and who may conclude that their marriage lacks sufficient grace, or that they’re not doing it right.
It may be true that the reception these teachings have received is out of proportion to what was intended due to the turmoil in the public sphere regarding same sex marriage and other developments in the world, couple with an apocalyptic and defensive mindset people tend to develop when the world seems to be moving in strange or unusual ways. I’ve always thought this mindset represented a kind of low-level frequency throughout most of human history, but perhaps the recent explosion of media access and the entrenchment of the 24 hour news cycle has contributed to its heightened pitch and a general feeling that we’re all doomed and we need to hunker down and get back to basics or rediscover one thing or another or whatever. I don’t know. But there’s definitely a tension between what you point out, Dakota, and what the teaching on marriage is perceived to be. (Or maybe the distortion in perception regarding marriage that I’m noticing is just a function of me spending too much time on these forums!)
I think this articulates the fundamental RCC position very well!
This does bring up some issues, though.
It’s generally believed that two men in love, for instance, are not actually in love, but in lust, and therefore incapable of expressing true love (presumably true love refers to the love between a married man and woman, which love is impossible to be expressed between two men or two women…). So for two men who are in love and who love each other so much that they refuse to have sex with each other, does their love mean that they must be out of love or out of relationship in order to actually love each other, or can they continue to be in love and still be in a relationship? I.e., does true love for two men who love each other mean mutual alienation or a cordial friendship or can it be something like the love shared between two people in a Josephite marriage? Is it just the case that homosexuals can only ever actually love someone with whom they’re in love by removing themelves (either geographically or emotionally) from the life of the person with whom they’re in love, as if the love they may have to give, even when it is committed to chastity, is poisonous or diseased or something of which they should be ashamed? If a faithful and chaste homosexual falls in love, is the proper response to that love a concerted effort to repress it?
Perhaps the basic questions here are: how do we understand, honor, give and receive love in a way that contributes most to human flourishing (growth in love and grace)? What does that tell us about human relationships and our capacity to form them, and how does that relate to what we know about who we are meant to be in the light of God’s love for us?
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
S
SacredHeartFan
Guest
Once again, I’m 17. We don’t really dissemble our every single action and examine every possible implication.
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
I don’t see how they did, either (given what you state). He may be “gay,” but his current live-in relationship can best be described as committed friendship.
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
OK, well I forgot about the age.
My bad.Just understand that there are broader discussions occurring here as well. If, as a 17-year-old, you feel compelled to bare all to every other adolescent you chat with informally (about girls, guys, whatever), that’s your business. My point, and the point of some others (perhaps), is that within all ages generally, sharing private information is at the discretion of the person who owns that information, and that sharing it is not required in order to be “truthful.” It doesn’t mean that one is conducting a charade if you don’t make announcements to the world.
- Status