off shoot from Catholic and Homosexual thread

[DianaCC]

Some heterosexuals I know are emotionally immature. … Would you share with me why you believe that it is impossible for homosexuality to be seen as a gift in any way but an ironic way?

The universality of emotional immaturity in the gay community implies homosexuality is a species of emotional immaturity. But I was speaking to your point about human wholeness, which is incompatible with emotional immaturity. Your redirection is telling.

It’s impossible for homosexuality to be seen as a gift in any way but an ironic way partly because of what a gift is, and partly because of what homosexuality is. A gift of God is a perfection of a natural ability; but the frustration of the sexual faculty is not a perfection, so homosexuality is no gift. Homosexuality is an inclination to an intrinsic evil; no gift of God has evil as an object, so homosexuality is not a gift of God.

Something evil in itself can be good in an ironic sense if you ignore the evil and focus on the good that God can being out of it. The fall of man can be seen as a happy fault because it triggered the redemption, for example. But homosexuality in and of itself is not a good thing, and the good that God can bring out of it is no justification.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Hi, Michelle. As I’m having considerable difficulty crafting a response to John that doesn’t rely on snark or bitterness, I’ll jump ahead a bit (sorry I’m skipping your posts for the time being, Elizabeth, but what I’ve to say here is not unrelated to your post at the top of this page).

1. “as disordered as it is claimed to be” implies that there are levels of disorder. there are not. there’s just “disordered”.

Agreed. Perhaps my phrasing was infelicitous–I didn’t mean to imply degrees of disorder–I intended to indicate something along the lines of “if it is disordered like the catechism says it is…”

1. I’m not going to concede that there is no remedy. I think that this is going to have to be part of our base line argument. I believe there are remedies, to-wit: sublimation, reparation, God’s grace.

It’s definitely part of our fundamental disagreement, if not the very heart of it as, ultimately, both of our lines of thought hinge on one of two propositions: 1–Homosexuals are basically just disordered heterosexuals; or 2–Homosexuality is a non-pathological minority expression of human sexuality. Both propositions have significant consequences. If you believe the first proposition, you’ll likely believe that homosexuals can become heterosexuals or, failing that, must live their lives with the constant consciousness of their disorder. If you believe the second proposition, you’ll likely believe that homosexuality is not a disorder and is therefore capable of bearing good fruit or contributing directly to human flourishing.

Only 3 of those deal with the homosexual inclination. for instance, “2520 Baptism confers on its recipient the grace of purification from all sins. But the baptized must continue to struggle against concupiscence of the flesh and **disordered **desires. With God’s grace he will prevail”.

If the baptized (aka everyone) continues to struggle with disordered desires, then no good could come from anyone ever. right? that’s what follows from your premise.

Therefore, we all struggle with disordered desires/inclinations and that does not make all the fruit rotten (to twist the analogy).

The difference is this from the catechism:

1. Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.

A disordered desire doesn’t indicate an inability to desire rightly. But an intrinsically disordered sexuality that is characterized by a “deep-seated” tendency toward behaviors that are characterized as “grave depravity”? It seems clear that sexuality, from which human affectivity springs, is clearly broken in such a case. We should expect no good to come from something that is singularly oriented toward depravity.

But that’s the problem. My experience shows me that homosexual relationships (and therefore, homosexuality) is capable of producing good fruit, human flourishing. For me to deny that and to call homosexuality disordered would be for me to call a good that I know to be good something evil–because an evil tree cannot bear good fruit. Moreover, I have yet to be shown any overwhelming or compelling evidence that homosexuals are just broken heterosexuals. All of which is why the language of disorder makes no sense to me.

As ever, Michelle, thank you for your thoughts!

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[InSearchofGrace]

…
My experience shows me that homosexual relationships (and therefore, homosexuality) is capable of producing good fruit, human flourishing.
…

Excuse me for getting in before Michelle’s reply to your post, Mark.

Would you please explain the above, how homosexual relations produces good fruit, human flourishing. You have said this in other posts in similar threads and I’m afraid I don’t follow, so your explanation would be appreciated.
,

 

[Elizabeth502]

1. Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.

You are taking (as usual) a paragraph out of its context. You cannot do that with Catholic thought, Mark. I have mentioned this before, on previous threads. Catholic theology is integrated; it is a unit. Here, posters, is the complete section, from which Mark extricated a single paragraph, applying a different and singular meaning to it than is intended. The referring concepts are not those of sexual orientation or attraction but the bolded title below – IOW, sexuality as in distinct differentiation of the two sexes:

I. “**MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM . . .” **

2331 "God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image . . … God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion."115

“God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them”;116 He blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply”;117 "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created."118

2332 Sexuality ** ^ ^** affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.

2333 Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.

and the ‘sexual identity’ referred to in Paragraph 2333 has a context of male and female, not homosexual and heterosexual. That is clear from the very syntax.

2334 "In creating men ‘male and female,’ God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity."119 "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God."120

2335 Each of the two sexes… (etc.)

After this section, there’s a further explication of chastity, then the oft-quoted three paragraphs 2357-2359, then this, once again recalling the term ‘sexuality’:

**III. THE LOVE OF HUSBAND AND WIFE **

2360 Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman. In marriage the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion. Marriage bonds between baptized persons are sanctified by the sacrament.

2361 "Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses… (etc.)

So the context of this moral theology explication in the Catechism is of traditional sexual differences and sexual relationships, not a discussion of homosexuality and heterosexuality as distinguished from each other, let alone as somehow “analogous” to each other. The Catechism most certainly does not imply that they are analogous.

I would respond more, but it seems that you prefer to have a restricted public dialogue with Michelle.

 

[InSearchofGrace]

It’s pretty difficult to find anything at fault in quoted paragraphs by Mark in the OP. Just consider the first paragraph:

In a general sense, our sexuality is fundamental to our capacity to form relationships, fundamental to our desire to move beyond ourselves and into communion with others, on all sorts of levels. It is fundamental to our relationship with God.

CCC 2347, which talks about divine friendship says:“The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.”

and

CCC 2359 which talks about the quality in the human friendship that homosexual persons are to have: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection,”

with chastity defined as the gift of the person, with self-mastery ordered to the gift of the person in CCC 2346.

If a homosexual were to have a friendship with someone of the same sex, something that the Church recommends and certainly does not prohibit, the instructions in 2359 call for support by prayer and sacramental grace towards Christian perfection, and “disinterested friendship,” meaning to say that sexual desire or activity is not to be an element in said friendship.

In no way does the reading of any of these parts of the Catechism support what Deo Volente is saying and what you appear to support, the conclusion that our sexuality is fundamental to form relationships with others on ALL sorts of levels, connecting this to our fundamental relationship with God. What would kill our relationship with God is disregard for the natural purpose of sexuality.

There is no equating the chastity in marriage of a man and a woman, with the ‘chastity’ in a sexual / romantic relationship between a man and another man, or between a woman and another woman, however committed and faithful it is. If that is the bottom line of what Deo Volente is presenting in so many words, it would just be invention or wishful thinking on his part. If you were to agree with it, that would be buying into his invention or wishful thinking.
,

 

[chrysostim83]

Hi InSearchOfGrace,

I’m not sure I understand your objections. If chastity blossoms in friendship both with others and with God, and if conversely lust “blossoms” in estrangement from others and from God, does it not follow that the capacity governed by chastity, viz., sexuality, plays a fundamental role in our most important relationships?

Naturally, by “relationship” I don’t mean (and I don’t think Mark meant) to talk about sexual or romantic relationships because then, as far as Mark’s statement applies to “relationships” with others, it would be tautological: there’s nothing controversial about saying sexuality is fundamental to our capacity to form sexual relationships.

As for the “on all sorts of levels” thing, I don’t think it pays to read it as a mathematician would. In my experience, it’s usually a verbal tic that serves to emphasize what came before it.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Mark, please know that the Catechism does not say that only heterosexual married parents are good, or that they are qualitatively or comparatively “better” than other categories of people. Nor does The Book of Genesis say that.

All creation is good. Because of fallen nature, creatures can get sidetracked, encumbered, derailed from that goodness – by will, by accident, and by the dynamics of human affairs – but there is a core goodness which is always redeemable and which is subject only to God’s perfect perception and judgment, not mankind’s imperfect, flawed, variable judgment. A person with SSA does not have less “goodness,” by that attraction alone, than a person without SSA. The attraction does not poison everything he does, permeate (negatively) everything he is. The Roman Church does not embrace an either/or version of humanity. It accepts that Man – all men, all women – is both saint and sinner, throughout our lives. And other than attributing a scale of gravity-versus- lightness (to sin), it does not categorize human beings as “good” or “bad.” God declares what is Good. He did so in Genesis. To Him alone is allowed the power and privilege of “naming” Goodness.

Similarly, a person without SSA is not, by that fact, “better” than a person without it. It does not mean that because he is fortunate not to be affected by SSA, “everything he does” is blessed. All of us are continually blessed by our behaviors, not by our tendencies, temptations, lack of temptations, personality weaknesses, or even our (unused!) gifts. Recall the OT: “Because” so-and-so did such, “God blessed him.” This is an outright refrain in Hebrew Scriptures. Not, because he was from a certain geography, because he had a certain number of children, because he was short or tall, because he had a weakness in his character, because he was innately clever, but because he responded to the covenant and to God’s personal call.

The Roman Church does not believe that a person with SSA is ontologically different than a person without SSA. That would be the height of arrogance on the part of the Church: it would be seizing to itself the singular power of God to name Goodness. Yes, Man participated in the naming of the lower animals, but it was God who was responsible for the creation of categories of His creation. And He didn’t create a sub-species of ‘Mankind with SSA’. It doesn’t matter that “now we have a different understanding of sexuality” (in your words, not mine). God is eternal, not dependent on (haha) “our” knowledge which derives from Him. Human knowledge does not alter God’s absolute pronouncements about Good and Evil. He declares all mankind Good, and he declares Evil only what mankind does, not who mankind is.

The Roman Church also does not believe in Determinism. Again, a grounding in Catholic philosophy would help you to see this. Man’s free will is what comes into play in the issue of sin (vs. mere temptation, attraction; vs. clinical compulsion; vs. physical force). The Church does acknowledge the contributions of science in recognizing tendencies (explcitly mentioned in the CCC), but it does not go so far as to assign permanence or determinism to those tendencies. Even a person born an introvert can evolve into an extrovert. I’ve seen it with my own eyes countless times & heard such stories.

And although, Mark, you do have a tendency to pick and choose CCC paragraphs out of context, I do think that your misunderstanding is somewhat shared. Another poster, as you recall, recently proclaimed that if he only had heterosexual attraction instead of SSA, he would have been “guaranteed” Heaven. No! No more or less a “guarantee” than anyone without SSA has. When heterosexuals are behaving in right order with regard to each other, that behavior is blessed by God, and thus they are blessed. But when a man disrespects his wife, his behavior is not being blessed. He is acting outside of the right order of the universe and outside of the right order of his personal call & responsibility, and he’d better get himself to Confession. He doesn’t get ‘greater blessings for everything he does,’ categorically, by being heterosexual. As a husband, he has a new set of responsibilities that he will be called to account for at his Personal Judgment.

 

[michelleds]

Elizabeth!

 

[Elizabeth502]

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU WILL KNOW THEM”

Mark, be careful of this one. You’re falling into the “doctrine” of subjectivism: Because I “feel” fine about some behavior of mine, I can validate that behavior morally; I experience this behavior to elevate my goodness somehow, even provide what appears to be a “peak experience” (Maslow). This is making of oneself a self-validating island. There is no standard against which to measure that subjective perception, and the Slippery Slope is that it can be applied to any category of behavior and single incident. A murderer (taking revenge for the murder of his child) could feel “fine” and even ennobled by his behavior because of the sense of participating in cosmic justice. It may give him a temporary or permanent “high” to have effected closure, and certainly an intellectual validation. A cheater who was cheated more egregiously than his own act of dishonesty may ‘feel,’ likewise, that he has participated in righteousness. Someone who engages in detraction may “feel” morally validated because the object of his detraction engaged in calumny and slander against himself.

Then there is the problem of validation by repetition. Lots of couples “feel fine” about their unmarried cohabitation, but many of them, when reminded about the absolute standard of unitive marriage, and reflecting about that, remove themselves from their self-validating lifestyle, and suddenly have a far different perception of that relationship, as now qualitatively different. (A married vs. an unmarried state.) Notice that they have stepped outside of their personal validation, and a result of that have a more objective perception.

Radical phenomenology has been rejected by the Roman Church as a valid philosophical framework from which to derive a morality. What is acceptable is more the orientation of the Catholic phenomenologist Gabriel Marcel, who embraced primary reflection (objective & analytic standards) and secondary reflection (personal experience). But note that the secondary is dependent on the primary and subordinate to it. The experience of goodness follows and validates a behavior of goodness. It is not the starting point.

Nevertheless, any time we treat one another nobly, we are ennobled and they are ennobled, within an absolute moral structure. Because I sin against my neighbor, it doesn’t invalidate or erase all the other occasions in which I supported and loved that same neighbor. (It doesn’t toxify, retroactively or in a composite way, my previously good behavior.) Behaviors are discrete moments in time, and discrete settings.

(And btw, thank you, Michelle. )

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

You are taking (as usual) a paragraph out of its context. …] So the context of this moral theology explication in the Catechism is of traditional sexual differences and sexual relationships, not a discussion of homosexuality and heterosexuality as distinguished from each other, let alone as somehow “analogous” to each other. The Catechism most certainly does not imply that they are analogous.

Thanks for this, Elizabeth–although I don’t see how the context detracts from my point–it expands the scope of what sexuality is and means according to the RCC. Basically, the catechism says that men and women, by virtue of their sexual identity, have particular roles to play, intrinsic to their nature as men and women, with regard to the ordering of sexuality to the conjugal love of man and woman. None of that detracts from my point. Because if we can still say in some of these men and women there is a deep-seated tendency toward grave depravity which fundamentally affects how they live out their manhood or womanhood, fundamentally affecting, in turn, how they behave toward or relate with men and women, then in what way has the expanded context changed things? In what way can we say that the relationships of such people with such tendencies are not fundamentally wrong? In the “Instruction
Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations
with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies
in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders,” we have this with regard to people with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies”

“Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women.”

How does all of that context manage to challenge what I’ve said?

Are you saying that the catechism doesn’t see homosexuality as a sexuality to begin with? You’re right, it doesn’t, but I’ve never pretended that it did–the catechism does not believe in heterosexuality or homosexuality as sexualities, at least not explicitly–though saying that “sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman” does a very good job of making the assumption that everyone is naturally a heterosexual as we understand that term. It has been my understanding that the catechism views homosexuality as a disorder pertaining to sexuality. Are you suggesting that the catechism believes homosexuality is a disorder of something else, and not sexuality? What evidence do you have of that? Is that really your point?

I guess, in the end, I’m unsure of the point you’re trying to make. I see the larger context and I’m grateful that you’ve pointed it out–but I don’t see that that opposes anything I’ve already said regarding the repercussions of seeing homosexuality as a disorder. My point has always been that the catechism does not understand homosexuality accurately–the broader context of the misunderstanding only compounds the potential damage it can cause.
[CONTINUED…]

 

[Deo_Volente]

…CONTINUED & COMPLETED]

For instance, if I try to conceive of a circle only in terms of a rectangle, I’m probably not quite going to actually get what a circle is or means. I’ll only ever think of a circle as a really wrong or poor imitation of a rectangle. The catechism can only think of homosexuality in terms of something that looks very much like heterosexuality, so naturally, it’s going to look wrong.

But all evidence, experiential and scientific, points to homosexuality being a non-pathological minority variant of human sexuality, neither a malfunction of our capacity to form the “proper” relationships toward which sexuality is ordered nor an impaired ability to live out our identities as men and women in relationship with other men and women. But the catechism doesn’t understand any of that. The catechism understands disorder, and it doesn’t stop to consider what a language of disorder actually means for a homosexual trying to live a life that leads to flourishing, a life in which his or her sexuality can actually be integrated fully into the wholeness of their being in chastity.

To such a person, the catechism seems to say this, “The only way to be whole is to be chaste. Sure. But in order to be chaste, you should probably first come to the conclusion that the way you desire human intimacy is actually quite irredeemably wrong, so wrong, in fact, that you can’t actually relate correctly to other men and women. So while, in the case of most other people chastity represents the fulfillment of their sexuality and it’s integration in wholeness, we’ll just say, for you, as long as you don’t have sex and are able to demonstrate self-mastery with respect to how this disorder is expressed, we’ll consider that a stab at chastity–this chastity will become a totem of the naturally ordered sexual identity and desire that lies dormant or stillborn or crippled under your disorder. It’s not something you can ever achieve, mind you, because your sexuality is disordered, and disorder can’t be integrated. But if you really want to be good, you might want to consider forgetting that you had any desire for human intimacy at all. While that technically wouldn’t be chastity either (as it’s less of a fulfillment of sexuality and more its willful destruction or suppression), we’ll let you call it chastity and keep the totem. Sound good?”

That’s what the catechism appears to be saying to me. That’s what everything you’re saying says to me, Elizabeth. And no, in fact, it doesn’t sound good.

So how does expanding the context of the catechism turn this bad news into good news?

I would respond more, but it seems that you prefer to have a restricted public dialogue with Michelle.

I’m sorry, Elizabeth. If you recall, I mentioned previously that I would try to respond to everyone in order. Life is complicated, and often the best laid plans have to be put aside for a bit in order to make room for the unplanned. If I feel I should respond to a more recent post, given the tenor or drift of the conversation, or given where my head happens to be when I read this thread, I will (as I did with Michelle’s post). It’s nothing at all personal. And I am clearly not only interested in being in dialogue with Michelle (though I am, of course, interested in being in dialogue with her).

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

“BY THEIR FRUITS YOU WILL KNOW THEM”

Wanted to try and respond to this post quickly before heading to bed. I’m knackered.

Because I “feel” fine about some behavior of mine, I can validate that behavior morally

I’m not talking about being okay with my relationship as a good fruit, nor am I talking of my feelings as evidence of good fruit. InSearch asked me what the good fruit I was referring to meant. I should have responded to her/him directly, but I’ll mention them here: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, and (yes) Self Control.

I don’t feel like my relationship is “fine” because I’m not out murdering people with my partner like Myra Hindley. I experience my relationship as good because I have experienced an increase in good fruits, by God’s grace, as a direct result of my relationship.

Then there is the problem of validation by repetition. Lots of couples “feel fine” about their unmarried cohabitation, but many of them, when reminded about the absolute standard of unitive marriage, and reflecting about that, remove themselves from their self-validating lifestyle, and suddenly have a far different perception of that relationship, as now qualitatively different. (A married vs. an unmarried state.) Notice that they have stepped outside of their personal validation, and a result of that have a more objective perception.

I’m glad those people do that. I pray for grace to be able to step outside myself as well.

The experience of goodness follows and validates a behavior of goodness. It is not the starting point.

Are you saying that we experience a thing as good because it has been revealed to us beforehand (either by reason or some other source) as good? How is this different from saying that we can only experience goodness if we are told beforehand what sorts of things belong in the category of goodness?

Is it your contention that our experience of a good cannot instruct us regarding the nature of the good experienced, but only validate what we’ve already been told (by reason, or by some authority) is good? That is, an experience of a good cannot actually provide any insight that the good experienced was actually good?

Are you hinting, perhaps, that the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. that I’ve found in and from my relationship by God’s grace, because they are from my relationship which the RCC judges depraved, are actually not love, joy peace, patience, kindness, etc., but delusions at best, or evils in disguise at worst? I can only tell you that I have experienced these goods in this relationship, and that I am convinced that, were I to call them delusions or evils in disguise, that I would be sinning against the good by calling it by the name of evil.

I must say that all of this seems designed to appeal to fear: “how do you know that the good which you think is good is actually good? The RCC doesn’t include it in its a priori listing of good things, so how do you know? Don’t you think you might be wrong? What if you’re wrong?”

To someone who asked me this question the other day, I responded with the parable of the talents. The two who risked being wrong with what was entrusted to them, who risked losing it, were rewarded, while the one who was too afraid of being wrong to risk anything was condemned. I don’t want to be afraid of being wrong, not when it’s clear to me that the Lord of Bliss is asking me to take a risk and to trust in the sufficiency of his love and goodness.

Nevertheless, any time we treat one another nobly, we are ennobled and they are ennobled, within an absolute moral structure. Because I sin against my neighbor, it doesn’t invalidate or erase all the other occasions in which I supported and loved that same neighbor. (It doesn’t toxify, retroactively or in a composite way, my previously good behavior.) Behaviors are discrete moments in time, and discrete settings.

Agreed.

Now. To bed.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[michelleds]

To someone who asked me this question the other day, I responded with the parable of the talents. The two who risked being wrong with what was entrusted to them, who risked losing it, were rewarded, while the one who was too afraid of being wrong to risk anything was condemned. I don’t want to be afraid of being wrong, not when it’s clear to me that the Lord of Bliss is asking me to take a risk and to trust in the sufficiency of his love and goodness.

Since it was me who asked the question, I want to state what the question was. I said that when I was first struggling with these issues and thinking about converting, I spent a lot of time and energy arguing that homosexuality was like being lefthanded and the Church was saying that being lefthanded was immoral and what if I was born without a right hand, how could being lefthanded still be immoral? but then my friend finally asked me, “what if you’re wrong?”

I then asked DeoVolente, “what if you’re wrong?”

For me, the “what if you’re wrong” question brought me up short and enabled me to take the first step towards obeying God’s commands.

Buried in Deo’s response is the very modern conception of a kinder, gentler God, a God who is love and mercy and therefore without judgement. people are no longer afraid of God, no longer feel a holy fear, because society has successfully emasculated God. see all of the comments on CAF where someone says, God loves me, He won’t send me to Hell for X. but the NT has several verses telling us to have that holy fear–because God is also Justice in addition to Love and Mercy. Calling Him “Lord of Bliss” and implying that whatever we do here on earth with good intentions or right reason will still pay the price of admission is to completely ignore 2 Phil 2:12-13 and 1 Pet 2:17, to name two.

 

[Elizabeth502]

I’m not talking about being okay with my relationship as a good fruit, nor am I talking of my feelings as evidence of good fruit. InSearch asked me what the good fruit I was referring to meant. I should have responded to her/him directly, but I’ll mention them here: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, and (yes) Self Control.

InSearch is a she.
Above, you are essentially lifting from St. Paul (Gal 5:22), the Fruits of the Spirit.
Again I refer you to my own comment that you agreed with: When we behave nobly, we enjoy those noble fruits, as do those persons (I will add) to whom we bestow that nobility. Anytime we love someone selflessly – be it a relative, a child, another adult, or a stranger – there is grace and nobility there. The Gifts of the Spirit can be a sign of that selfless love.

You conveniently disregarded (unless I didn’t see it) my conversation with mariafrancesca – unless it was on another thread, I think it was on this one – regarding my emotionally intimate relationship with my best friend and roommate, which was for us a paradigm of heterosexual marriage. It was very ennobling, very uplifting – including all the fruits you list above. Let me add another one, since you also referred to it: Bliss. This is the proof that one can have all that with a member of one’s sex, without having sexual contact (whether or not there is attraction). In our case, there was not attraction; in the experience of others who do have attraction, a few have testified on CAF that they are able to maintain the essential nobility of mutually self-forgetful love while removing the sexual component. They do so with prayer and discipline, usually not while cohabitating, because of the problem of sexual tension and temptation, but apparently some people can overcome that.

Not all legitimate 'falling in love" is explicitly or implicitly sexual. Mariafrancesca uses that phrase ‘in love with’ to refer to a variety of spiritual and real relatiionships. I agree with her, as I said in my post which responded to hers. Mark, when a woman gives birth, she literally falls in love with her baby. And vice-versa. But they don’t ‘make-out,’ obviously, nor do they have to in order to experience the literal ecstasy of their relationship. What a gift of God; what a precursor to the Beatific Vision, quite literally. There’s a period in infant development, I forget exactly the timing since my daughters are older now, but I remember it clear as a bell in the precise imagery: It usually occurs during feeding (doesn’t have to be breast), when the infant returns an intense gaze upon its mother that can only be described as unitive. The gaze is deep and speaks of profound attachment and internalizing the mother’s love. Bliss. Precisely. Bliss for the infant, bliss for the mother. It is a profound exchange of nonverbal love which begs to continue indefinitely and in which neither party can turn away; that’s how “gripping” it is.

So again, I am not invalidating the noble aspects of your relationship that are not sexual. No one is in a position to do so. Nor is it necessary. Friendship is noble. But not all friendship needs to be sexually intimate in order to reach high levels of bliss. That’s what I’m saying. What I have read in your posts over the last year is that somehow not to act on the sexual attraction of it is to de-legitimize the friendship or to dis-integrate it. I don’t see any moral, philosophical, biblical, or practical support for that. Because that would imply that for all relationships, sexual contact is ultimate intimacy, and somehow the relationship falls short if there’s not a sexual component, whether or not (but especially if) there is sexual attraction. That would mean that healthy (non-incestuous) parents can only partially love their children, that celibate priests can only partially love other people - in some kind of stunted love that is a poor excuse for love. Nonsense.

I don’t mean to get gross, but I must use imagery: the deepest penetration is spiritual penetration. It crosses all boundaries, ages, sexes. God can choose to “violate” our physical borders, and does. He positively ravages human beings with His love, if we will let Him. The most profound intimacy is not sexual, but spiritual. Separately, sexual intimacy results in an “ecsatic” experience with climax, but one cannot conclude that because I’m having a sexual experience with someone of the same sex, and because with that someone I also experience a selfless non-physical love, that the sexual aspect spiritually enhances the non-sexual aspects, or that the noble aspects of that friendship sanctify the sexuality.

 

[michelleds]

Elizabeth, again, awesome post.

I’m going to slip into the anecdotal here by way of supporting what E says in her post.

Separately, sexual intimacy results in an “ecsatic” experience with climax, but one cannot conclude that because I’m having a sexual experience with someone of the same sex, and because with that someone I also experience a selfless non-physical love, that the sexual aspect spiritually enhances the non-sexual aspects, or that the noble aspects of that friendship sanctify the sexuality.

During my 20 odd years in the gay lifestyle, I was fairly well-read in what’s called Queer Theory as well as in LGBT fiction and autobiographies etc. I can state with a fair amount of certainty that this is EXACTLY what is taught in the LGBT world, to-wit: because one has a sexual experience with someone of the same sex . . . the sexual aspect spiritually enhances the non-sexual aspects.

I have seen Deo’s posts wherein he claims that there is no gay agenda and if there is, he wasn’t at the meetings. This is, at best, disingenuous. After 20 years, I not only know that there’s a gay agenda, I was at the meetings–on college campuses, in gay bars, in readings, in queer theory classes, in living rooms, it’s in the magazines, etc. Sure, there might be a divergent pattern of thought here and there, but I am well familiar with Deo’s claim to “gift” and “otherness”. it’s not original to him. I personally can datemy reading of the idea that homosexuals traverse to the borders/edges and bring back interesting and valuable ideas to the rest of society to Paula Grahn who was writing in the early 70’s.

the gay sex=greater spirituality can be found throughout the new age movement with lesbians and bisexual women being encouraged to validate their woman-love through same sex sexual activity.

It is all cloud cover–smoke and mirrors. I guess that’s why I feel so strongly about taking on the gay apologists when I’m so new at all of this–I fell for all of this and I want to at least throw up some warning signs to anyone else in danger of falling.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

InSearch is a she.

Thanks! I thought as much, but I didn’t want to presume.

You conveniently disregarded (unless I didn’t see it) my conversation with mariafrancesca – unless it was on another thread, I think it was on this one – regarding my emotionally intimate relationship with my best friend and roommate, which was for us a paradigm of heterosexual marriage. It was very ennobling, very uplifting – including all the fruits you list above. Let me add another one, since you also referred to it: Bliss. This is the proof that one can have all that with a member of one’s sex, without having sexual contact (whether or not there is attraction). In our case, there was not attraction; in the experience of others who do have attraction, a few have testified on CAF that they are able to maintain the essential nobility of mutually self-forgetful love while removing the sexual component. They do so with prayer and discipline, usually not while cohabitating, because of the problem of sexual tension and temptation, but apparently some people can overcome that.

I didn’t disregard it, I just haven’t gotten to respond to it (I’m still trying to address John’s post, which it might be better to just let be–I’m realizing that anything I say to him will be wrong. I could tell him God is love, and he’d probably say, “this man is trying to make God complicit in his free love homosexualist agenda! What hubris!” Needless to say, it makes it hard to have a dialogue, and maybe I should just take the hint that he doesn’t want one!). Perhaps this can be my response.

I think maria’s attitude is beautiful–fall in love with Our Lord, fall in love with Our Lady. And I think that the relationships you’ve both described are nothing short of beautiful. And I think that for those homosexual Roman Catholics who wish to remain loyal to the magisterium, this is the kind of relationship to which they should aspire, and which, as you note, can indeed arise from and include sexual attraction without including sex. It’s very difficult, though, to receive such an affirmation on these forums. Most people are too afraid of getting it wrong to even contemplate the possibility that two Roman Catholic homosexuals who are in romantic love with each other can have such a relationship–a relationship like that of Our Lady and St. Joseph.

I will be honest with you–I feel that such a relationship does challenge the judgment that homosexual desire is disordered, principly because the integration (as opposed to the repression) of that desire into the relationship in chastity is evidently possible. I have maintained that this possibility is a direct outgrowth of the catechism’s fundamental understanding of sexuality broadly (even given the wider context of the discussion), but presents challenges to a language of disorder. It has nontheless seemed like a faithful possibility, all things considered.

Let me be clear once and for all–I do not think it is wrong for the RCC to stipulate that sexual acts should only occur between married men and women. I don’t think it’s wrong for the RCC to make such statements and to require such things of her faithful. I don’t think it’s unfair or unjust or not nice or whatever that the RCC denies the possibility of gay marriages–marriage is a sacramant and what it means cannot be determined by the state, but by the institutions to which the sacraments have been entrusted. What the state decides to do with how it confirms rights and responsibilities should have nothing to do with how a sacrament is understood. I do think, however, that calling homosexuality a disorder is wrong. That does not mean that Roman Catholic homosexuals should not be held to the same standard of behavior as other Roman Catholics. But it does mean that Roman Catholic homosexuals should be able to abandon feeling anguished about their sexuality, as well as all the concomitant feelings of being cursed with a burden of unnaturalness, and be able to move forward with their lives in a faithful way, a way that includes chastity as a real as opposed to merely forensic possibility.

[CONTINUED…]

 

[Deo_Volente]

…CONTINUED & COMPLETED]

Mark, when a woman gives birth, she literally falls in love with her baby. And vice-versa. But they don’t ‘make-out,’ obviously, nor do they have to in order to experience the literal ecstasy of their relationship.

Agreed whole-heartedly. Perhaps what grouses me is the idea that “disinterested friendship” is the best a homosexual can hope for. The relationships you have described so beautiful are hardly disinterested. What they most certainly lack is any mercenary quality. Which I suspect is the idea of disinterested at which the catechism is getting, but disinterest, to me, has a bit of a chill to it that doesn’t speak to the apatheia of the saints in the least.

But not all friendship needs to be sexually intimate in order to reach high levels of bliss. That’s what I’m saying.

Agreed whole-heartedly.

What I have read in your posts over the last year is that somehow not to act on the sexual attraction of it is to de-legitimize the friendship or to dis-integrate it.

I think we must have profoundly misunderstood each other, Elizabeth. I’ve always preferred the term “homosexuality” to the term SSA as the latter seems like a term of art or a disease like SARS. I understand (perhaps late in the game) that lots of people to whom I’ve been talking think of homosexuality as explicitly referencing both the attraction and sexual behavior. I tried to distinguish between the two in my writing. If I was unclear, I never meant to be.

My relationship with my partner has included sexual acts, and we have experienced these acts as unitive. (I’m clearly not Roman Catholic.) Such acts are not the sine qua non of our relationship. The sine qua non in our case, is the romantic love we share and our desire to share in the joys and burdens of each other’s lives as if they were our own. I’ve a number of friends of whom I’m incredibly fond, many of whom I find physically attractive. In no way am I interested in having sex with them. Those relationships could not withstand such a gesture, and it would severely damage my relationship with my partner as well. I value those friendship relationships as they are very much–there is no “next level” of intimacy possible in them which would also include sexual intimacy.

So I want to make it clear that I would not counsel anyone (homosexual or heterosexual) who wished to remain faithful to the magisterium to include sex, casual or otherwise, in their relationship unless they were sacramentally married to the one with whom they were going to have sex (in which case, the whole idea of “casual” becomes moot to begin with). Because I do not share the RCC’s understanding of what sex is principally for doesn’t mean that I desire that everyone share my understanding or go against their beliefs.

Moreover, just for the record, I want to make it clear that I’ve never argued that everyone should do whatever they want, as long as it feels good. Such a way of living is clearly contrary to love.

If I have appeared to advocate such things in the past, I clearly did not express myself well. If I have actually advocated such things in the past, I retract my advocacy.

I don’t mean to get gross, but I must use imagery: the deepest penetration is spiritual penetration.

That’s not gross at all. The famous sculpture of St. Theresa in ecstasy is a real and vivid example of this teaching–the figure of love is not carrying an arrow for nothing.

I hope I’ve gone some way toward clarifying my position, Elizabeth. In short, it all revolves around the word “disorder” and its repercussions.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[DianaCC]

Most people are too afraid of getting it wrong to even contemplate the possibility that two Roman Catholic homosexuals who are in romantic love with each other can have such a relationship–a relationship like that of Our Lady and St. Joseph. … I feel that such a relationship does challenge the judgment that homosexual desire is disordered, principly because the integration (as opposed to the repression) of that desire into the relationship in chastity is evidently possible.

In what way is a gay relationship like the relationship of Mary and Joseph, and what does chastity mean in the context of a gay relationship?

 

[DianaCC]

…I do not share the RCC’s understanding of what sex is principally for…

What *is *sex principally for?

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Buried in Deo’s response is the very modern conception of a kinder, gentler God, a God who is love and mercy and therefore without judgement.

Hi Michelle,

Kinder, gentler, with reference to what? Are we to understand that God’s kindness is tempered by his wrath? That the one who would not break a bruised reed would nonetheless really like to, and, eventually, will? That the one who comes to us like dew on fleece would much rather come to us like a lead pipe over the head? Is God’s judgment separate from his mercy that the two have to argue with each other before God passes judgment in his wrath, or is it not wonderfully, awesomely, mind-bogglingly certain that God’s judgment is in fact his mercy, and that that mercy was most visibly show to us in Christ–that God’s judgment looks precisely like the crucified and risen Christ? I don’t need to make out that God is kinder or gentler than he is–he is the transcendent exemplar and well-spring of kindness and gentleness.

This is hardly a new idea, Michelle. Here I’ll refer you to some astonsihing excerpts from the writing of the medieval mystic, Dame Julian of Norwich. You can read about her on the catholic encyclopedia: newadvent.org/cathen/08557a.htm . It’s worth a look.
…I saw truthfully that our Lord was never angry, nor ever shall be, for He is God: He is good, He is life, He is truth, He is love, He is peace; and His power, His wisdom, His Love, and His Unity do not allow Him to be angry. (For I saw truly that it is against the character of His Power to be angry, and against the character of His Wisdom, and against the character of His Goodness.) God is the goodness that cannot be angry, for He is nothing but goodness. (Ch. 46)

I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us….which failure is not in God but it is on our part — for we, because of sin and miserableness, have in us a wrath and a continuing opposition to peace and to love. (Ch. 48)

For this was shown: that our life is all based and rooted in love, and without love we cannot live. And therefore to the soul it is the most impossible thing that can be that God would be angry, for wrath and friendship are two opposites…. I saw no kind of wrath in God, neither for a short time nor for a long. (Ch. 49)

people are no longer afraid of God, no longer feel a holy fear, because society has successfully emasculated God.

Is it not possible that holy fear comes from a bewildering experience of God’s incredible mercy as opposed to an abject terror of God destroying us? Is it not possible that the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom is an acknowledgement, in love, of his awesome majesty which is not separate from his love? When Jesus gave us the example of service as the new model of lordship, do you think he was re-enforcing an image of God as the Wrathful Destroyer and encouraging us to see God’s power in precisely the same terms as we are accustomed to seeing the power of the state (i.e. God’s power represents an infinite superabundance of coercive force)? Does it emasculate God to deny that he has any part in such a conception of power? I don’t think so. Rather than emasculating God, I think it removes from us an image of power that is a reflection of our fallen-ness. It does not strip God of his power–it clarifies what that power means, and it reveals our conception of power to be incredibly flawed and inadequate in comparison.

Needless to say, there are a number of levels on which I can’t quite comprehend your objections here, Michelle.

see all of the comments on CAF where someone says, God loves me, He won’t send me to Hell for X.

We send ourselves to hell through our sin. God doesn’t need to send us anywhere.

but the NT has several verses telling us to have that holy fear–because God is also Justice in addition to Love and Mercy.

Again, God’s Justice is not at odds with his Mercy. And the goodness of both are beyond our full comprehension

Calling Him “Lord of Bliss” and implying that whatever we do here on earth with good intentions or right reason will still pay the price of admission is to completely ignore 2 Phil 2:12-13 and 1 Pet 2:17, to name two.

I never implied that anything we do will get us anywhere. It is God, working his righteousness in us, that gets us where his love is leading us.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!