On "Coming Out" From the Pulpit

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It would be absurdly innapropriate for a priest to talk about his own battles with lust from the pulpit.
 
Because the rest of the congregation aren’t sinners are they? I’d rather a homosexual was coming to church and hearing the word of God than not, i think it’s absurd to think otherwise. When Jesus defended the adulterous woman, he wasn’t endorsing her sin. Nobody is bullying you into endorsing homosexuality, you also never had the right to judge or say who was welcome in Christianity.
 
I don’t think it does totally reject them. As i say, no member of the congregation has the right to tell a gay person to stop turning up to mass. Likewise a gay person doesn’t have the right to demand that the church changes its stance on homosexuality. There’s a middle ground where gay people can be shown kindness without an endorsement of homosexuality.
 
As someone who is not a practising Christian then I’d say you have no basis for morality. Without a belief in absolute truth, morality becomes impossible; in my opinion and the opinion of many. You can see a long debate on this between william lane craig and sam harris if you are interested. Otherwise the rest of what you said was non sequitur or ad hominem.
 
I don’t see how. It’s in our nature, the priest really is talking about something that affects all of us.
 
we don’t reject those who have same sex attraction, we are against the sin of sodomy.

Catholicism is for everyone, and is a hospital for sinners.
 
If a priest wants to “come out” to his congregation for any reason (for example, gossip), the appropriate way would be for him to write a letter for distribution to the parishioners. I would presume he would also discuss this with his diocesan superiors.

It would not be appropriate for him to announce this “from the pulpit” at Mass. He is supposed to use the pulpit to discuss and teach about the Scripture reading of the Mass, not to make speeches about his personal business. As i posted on the other thread about the gay priest article, the pulpit is not a TV talk show and the priest is not Ellen DeGeneres.

Some other people also expressed concerns that they didn’t want their young children to hear discussions about being gay from the priest at Mass. I can understand this and the priest should be sensitive to it as well.
 
Agreed. There’s a time and place for everything. Hypothetically, unless it was interfering with my ministry or leading to a scandal, I would keep that stuff to myself.
 
So what the author is saying is ‘sweep it under the carpet’. Doesn’t it then become the ‘elephant in the room’?
 
There is a time and place for everything. How does it serve a group to know their priest has a real hard time combating lustful thoughts when he see’s their wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers? Obviously some of them do, and that’s perfectly natural, but why do I need to hear that? What possible purpose could be served? For some asinine ‘Well shucks, he’s just like me!’ moment?

From the Pulpit especially, when we are supposed to be focusing on Christ, suddenly the priest is going to bring all focus and attention onto himself? That would be wildly innapropriate, even if he wasn’t ‘coming out’ which is doubly innapropriate as it will obviously scandalize.

A priest should never ‘come out’ in any way to anyone but his confessor.
 
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ChunkMonk said:
How does it serve a group to know their priest
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You are right on the parts regarding Lust concretely. For the priest to say something personal, of his own experience, I have thus far not found contrary to my sense of morals. To the contrary, I’ve found to my liking and of good taste all those instances - perhaps because the priests I know are exemplary and I have not yet witnessed any exception to the rule.

[I will remind that the original article spoke at length about homosexuality - an issue I am not interested in the least - I have at present no contact with any person requiring my knowledge of it. I will not read through it.]
 
I don’t care for the reports that say the priest said “he was born that way”. How does anyone know what dispositions they were “born with”?
 
Bon_Croix said:
I don’t care for the reports that say the priest said “he was born that way”. How does anyone know what dispositions they were “born with”?
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Why are some people more musical than others? Why are some people more artistic? Why can some people roll their 'r’s and others can’t?
 
Bon_Croix said:
How does anyone know what dispositions they were “born with”?
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Because there are traits that change and traits that don’t, traits that correlate with other things and traits that don’t correlare with anything. Statistics in other words.
 
florin1 said:
it bothers me a lot that gay and lesbians who are also “good Christians” do not want to create their own religion.

Copy it from Christianity, if you like it, but don’t bully the Christianity to accept your way of living, when this is seen as a sin and perversion.
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Yes. This is the very crux of the matter, to me.

You know what the Church teaches. You don’t like it. Why join it? What right do you have to go in and tell it to change?!

I could join the KKK and try to argue for respect for Catholicism and try to force them to respect all ethnicities as equal.

But I prefer to not to associate with ideologies I despise. Unless and until they change, I would never join.

If you hate what the Church teaches that much, why on earth would you want to be a part of it? It feels like an assault.

Especially from the priesthood. They make vows to uphold and defend the faith. To then try to subvert it and change what it has been for 2000 years to what you like better is deplorable.
 
The Church doesn’t teach that you cannot be a homosexual. It says you should not have homosexual sex.

The rest of your post sounds like an arguement in favour of fundamentalism. I wonder if you really intended that or just didn’t think it through?
 
Heresy was very dangerous when all you knew was the Church. You could potentially mislead hundreds, thousands of eternal souls.
So, it seemed better for the lives of thousands to be taken over the mere earthly life of one.
Is it right? Is it wrong?
Either way, I do not think we can blame them very harshly for doing what was meant to be right.

Nowadays, you can accidentally run into many different heresies and blasphemies with ease.
 
stupidisasstupiddoes said:
The Church doesn’t teach that you cannot be a homosexual. It says you should not have homosexual sex.
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My post wasn’t clear. I am sorry for that.

Struggling with same sex attraction is not wrong. It is just a temptation.

I have been tempted to all kinds of sin. I don’t identify myself by those things because they are not me. They happened to me. I was more or less successful in battling those temptations. I am still me. I am not a sum of my sins.

The Church does, however, teach that no one is just “a homosexual.”

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.”
John Paul II

They define my experiences. They don’t define me.

I believe that every human person has dignity because of “their capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.” It is an huge under-valuation of their worth to focus on just that one thing.
 
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