Question: Is gay marriage sinful?

[theCardinalbird]

The division of the laws in the Old Testament into different categories, some of which are applicable and others not, is a Catholic invention. Orthodox Jews do not recognize any such distinctions. And who decides what things go into what categories?

There is a difference between moral laws and ceremonial laws and even the Apostles recognized this. When the dispute of circumcision arose, and was brought to Jerusalem, The Apostle Peter said such a law is not needed anymore. Circumcision was a ceremonial law and therefore is not binding on Christians.

Here’s a good article on the issue relating to this ceremonial law confusion:

Why We Are Not Bound by Everything in the Old Law | Catholic Answers Magazine

 

[PetraG]

It does condemn lust. I agree, we shouldn’t enter into sex due to lust.

St Paul specifically cites “…their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.”
(Rom. 1:26-28)

Exactly how graphic did you want the Apostle to get?

I think this is getting heated without cause. So could we all take a breath? I am hoping for a sensible and goodwilled discussion on a hard topic.

When you are told what the Church teaches, you respond with, “Well, I read it this way…”

OK, we can take a breath. This is a Catholic website. We don’t abandon the unchanging teaching of the Church because someone with an agenda chooses a convenient new interpretation of moral law.

You say that Our Lord never mentioned homosexuality…well, he certainly never gave the go-ahead to re-defining marriage to include same-sex marriage.

It isn’t as if the whole idea of same-sex marriage was unknown in the ancient world. Homosexual relationships were widely tolerated. The Church has always rejected this thinking, and in no uncertain terms. It is preposterous to pretend that the Church has simply been confused about what Divine Law is for all these years. No, that is not the case. These are disordered acts and under no circumstance can they be offered up as the equivalent of those acts that are intended by God to be sanctified by marriage. That was recognized by the Church of the 1st century, it is recognized now, and it has been recognized for the entire history and in every corner of Catholic Christendom.

Persons of the same sex may form a household, they may live together in fraternal love and advance the Kingdom of God. Of course this is fine: this is only what monasteries and convents have always done. The Church does not have any objection to adults of the same sex living together or even legally setting up arrangements of mutual care. That is not morally forbidden at all.

What they may not do is to engage in immoral sexual behaviors and pretend that these are the equivalent of marital acts or that their other virtues are sufficient to excuse whatever sexual behaviors they care to indulge in on the grounds that they care about each other so deeply. No, it does not work that way.

 

[Thorolfr]

This just shows how changeable God is. First He says in Deuteronomy that pigs are abominable, don’t eat their meat or even touch their dead bodies. Then the Catholic Church says that they aren’t really abominable after all, it’s fine to eat them.

 

[PetraG]

This just shows how changeable God is. First He says in Deuteronomy that pigs are abominable, don’t eat their meat or even touch their dead bodies. Then the Catholic Church says that they aren’t really abominable after all, it’s fine to eat them.

The laws of kashrut were not part of the Noahite Law that Jews taught applied to all of humankind and they never were. The Jews always recognized the existence of righteous gentiles, even though the gentiles recognized as such did not observe the laws of kashrut but only Noahite Law. St. Peter and the Twelve established from the very beginning of the Church that converts were not bound to follow Jewish law, but rather Noahite law, which includes avoiding sexual immorality such as same-sex acts, which have always been taught to be inherently immoral.

If this is a distinction you don’t happen to like, oh well. Accept that it has been a part of Christian teaching since the very beginning, though. I don’t care how “devout” someone is in other respects. No one has the authority to change this understanding of moral law.

 

[Thorolfr]

Alex337:

It does condemn lust. I agree, we shouldn’t enter into sex due to lust.

St Paul specifically cites “…their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.”
(Rom. 1:26-28)

Exactly how graphic did you want the Apostle to get?

It’s a little bit hard to believe that this passage in Paul applies to committed same-sex couples nowadays. They aren’t “burning with lust for one another” any more than the average straight couple “burns with lust” for one another. And if you read down further in Romans 1:28-31, it says:

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters,[f] insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Most people realize that the gay men they know that are their relatives, friends and co-workers are not filled with wickedness, evil, malice, envy, murder, slander, etc. They aren’t foolish, faithless, heartless and ruthless. Some of them are even Christians and are far from being “God-haters.”

 

[PetraG]

It’s a little bit hard to believe that this passage in Paul applies to committed same-sex couples nowadays. They aren’t “burning with lust for one another” any more than the average straight couple “burns with lust” for one another. And if you read down further in Romans 1:28-31, it says:

Most people realize that the gay men they know that are their relatives, friends and co-workers are not filled with wickedness, evil, malice, envy, murder, slander, etc. They aren’t foolish, faithless, heartless and ruthless. Some of them are even Christians and are far from being “God-haters.”

It is not at all hard to believe that people both now and in St. Paul’s time have believed they are personally wise enough to re-write moral law. That is hardly restricted to gay couples, but I don’t have to wonder what St. Paul would have to say about it. Same-sex households were not unknown in the ancient world, but they were utterly forbidden by the Church from the start. Converts were required to give up unlawful marriages of every kind.

Did St. Paul ever teach that Christianity offered a way of life that would evolve, that its teachings would change? No, he very specifically warned against those who even then were coming along and attempting to offer alternatives to what the Apostles taught. “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” (2 Thes. 2:15)

We have the successors of the Apostles to teach us, even today, and they have been absolutely clear on this point. We don’t have to wonder how to interpret how the Gospel applies in our time. We can know. We do know. The question is whether or not we’re going to accept it or whether we’re going to give ourselves permission to rebel and go our own way.

 

[Eddie18]

It is irrelevant when the actual word “sodomy” came about. The issue at hand is, Scripture condemns the act, and no one can challenge this.

 

[PetraG]

You had already said yourself that you’d seen examples of historical homosexual marriage, so as I mentioned I saw no reason to go over it again. We can if you like but I do feel its been shown that marriage comes on many forms.

No, not if one is sticking the red letters. Our Lord gave his definition of marriage very specifically:
Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?” He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Matt. 19:3-6)

This is not a law given to Abraham or to Moses, but a model for human behavior that was put into place with Adam and Eve. Lest there be any confusion on whether the defining characteristic was merely a convenant between any two people, Christ himself defined marriage as being specifically and from the beginning a joining not of any “two people who love each other,” but only a joining of male and female. He chose to put in that distinction in his explanation of marriage. He did not leave room in his explanation for the addition of same-sex relationships into the definition of marriage.

 

[Thorolfr]

Did St. Paul ever teach that Christianity offered a way of life that would evolve, that its teachings would change? No, he very specifically warned against those who even then were coming along and attempting to offer alternatives to what the Apostles taught. “Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.” (2 Thes. 2:15)

Paul’s letters were written to address specific circumstances and specific people and in most cases, we don’t even know the full context in which the letters were written. Also, Paul’s understanding of human sexuality is a 1st century one, not a modern one. Most psychologists and scientists know that homosexuality doesn’t suddenly arise because someone who is straight has become wicked and has rejected or refused to acknowledge God and is therefore given up to lustful passions. Most people who are gay realize this when they are 12 or 13. They’re still children. I was baptized when I was 13, the same year I realized that I was attracted to other guys. So, I certainly didn’t become gay because I rejected God.

 

[PetraG]

Paul’s letters were written to address specific circumstances and specific people and in most cases, we don’t even know the full context in which the letters were written. Also, Paul’s understanding of human sexuality is a 1st century one, not a modern one. Most psychologists and scientists know that homosexuality doesn’t suddenly arise because someone who is straight has become wicked and has rejected or refused to acknowledge God and is therefore given up to lustful passions. Most people who are gay realize this when they are 12 or 13. They’re still children. I was baptized when I was 13, the same year I realized that I was attracted to other guys. So, I certainly didn’t become gay because I rejected God.

The Church does not teach that people with the inclination to be attracted to persons of their own sex have rejected God, nor did Judaism. The teaching has always applied to behaviors, which usually are a choice, and not in-born inclinations, which are not chosen.

No one in their right mind really says that every inclination we can be born with may be acted upon without any concern over whether or not it violates moral law. Someone who naturally has a quick temper does not have carte blanche to be quick-tempered. A person naturally prone to be sexually impulsive does not have moral permission to act on those impulses. No, instead those who really have no control over themselves are held to not be culpable for objective violations of moral law. Even a natural incapacity to follow moral law at all does not change moral law, however.

What reason is there that an inclination to commit certain immoral sexual acts should be in a different class than the inclination to commit other immoral acts? Should someone with a high sex drive be allowed to have many sexual partners, because they were born that way? No, that isn’t the way it works.

As for St. Paul’s understanding being a “1st century one, not a modern one,” how do you explain the writings of St. John Paul II? Are you arguing that he taught as he did because he didn’t understand human sexuality in a modern way? That is nonsense.

I will have to bow out of this thread. Suffice it to say that Catholic Answers has provided some very good explanations of why the Church’s teaching on homosexuality are not going to change. If someone proposes to come here and teach all of us what’s what, they can save their keystrokes. We have reliable teachers to teach us what is what. We can have discussions about different ways to explain it or how to understand it, but what is what is not in question. The Christian understanding of marriage as handed down from the Apostles from the beginning clearly does not allow for same-sex marriage in any form. The moral culpability of those who pretend it is possible is a matter for Heaven alone to judge, but the practice itself is morally forbidden. Period.

 

[Thorolfr]

The Church does not teach that people with the inclination to be attracted to persons of their own sex have rejected God, nor did Judaism. The teaching has always applied to behaviors, which usually are a choice, and not in-born inclinations, which are not chosen.

That’s not what Paul says, however:

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions…And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.

He clearly says that the “degrading [homosexual] passions” and “debased mind” were because of their rejection of God. This is not speaking about the actions but what is already in the mind.

 

[PetraG]

That’s not what Paul says, however…He clearly says that the “degrading [homosexual] passions” and “debased mind” were because of their rejection of God. This is not speaking about the actions but what is already in the mind.

As I noted, the Church has explained these things, including the difference between the inclination to be attracted to the same sex (which is not a sin) and the decision to give oneself permission to decide what is right and wrong independently (which is the cardinal sin of pride or hubris, which is what St. Paul is talking about).

Again: there is no reason to hash this all out as if we have no guidance on the matter. We can profitably explain the teachings in many ways, as that may improve our understanding, but there is no profit in beginning with the premise that the teachings themselves might be incorrect. They are reliably correct. We can bank on that.

 

[Thorolfr]

No one has the authority to change this understanding of moral law.

It’s sometimes difficult to take the morality of the Old Testament very seriously considering that it also condoned slavery. According to Leviticus 25:44-46:

44 As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. 45 You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. 46 You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.

The notion that human beings can be considered property and can be inherited as property seems atrocious and that has been recognized to be immoral by most people nowadays. Some human beings were once in the same legal category as what our pets or farm animals are today. And God apparently didn’t seem to mind.

 

[theCardinalbird]

The idea that God somehow accepts modern gay marriage is not based on scripture nor theology. Here is what we know, every time homosexuality comes up in the Bible it is always seen as negative. Those who advocate for gay marriage in the Church, I have a question: If God somehow accepted gay marriage, then why is it not mentioned? If God truly believed marriage could be between man and woman, man and man, and woman and woman, then why didn’t he say that in Genesis? Why didn’t he say it in the Gospels?

The answers could be that such relationships never existed (though we do see references of cohabitating same sex couples, found in Mesopotamia, Rome, and Greece). We could also say however that perhaps God didn’t agree with such unions as it contradicted the nature of marriage he instituted (which is both for procreation and unity between husband and wife, where the sexual act cannot have one of these characteristics removed without degrading its nature), and therefore never created such a marital union.

Also, for those who try to say that, about the Bible passages concerning homosexuality, God wasn’t talking about all forms of homosexuality, I ask you this: If God truly agreed that homosexual acts can be committed within (lets us a common example) a monogamous relationship, then why wasn’t the distinction made between that and the condemned forms of homosexuality throughout the OT and NT? To avoid the confusion that all homosexual acts are sinful, shouldn’t the people writing down God’s words, who would have had a basic understanding of Judaic sexual ethics, make this so-called distinction (if there was a distinction)?

To answer all those questions I would say that perhaps there was no need of a distinction, because they knew that their readers would see that all homosexual acts are wrong and that no distinction can be made between “acceptable” homosexual acts and "not acceptable* homosexual acts.

 

[Thorolfr]

To answer all those questions I would say that perhaps there was no need of a distinction, because they knew that their readers would see that all homosexual acts are wrong and that no distinction can be made between “acceptable” homosexual acts and "not acceptable* homosexual acts.

People used to think all sorts of things were acceptable that we would now consider to be wrong and immoral. In antiquity, most people would have considered slavery to be acceptable. St. Augustine said that disobedient slaves should be whipped:

If you see your slave living badly, what other punishment will you curb him with, if not the lash? Use it: do. God allows it. In fact he is angered if you don’t. But do it in a loving rather than a vindictive spirit.

Thomas Aquinas believed that men are intellectually superior to women, something that most people now would not consider to be true.

If people believed that some things are acceptable that we now know are unacceptable, there are undoubtedly things that they considered to be unacceptable that we now know to be acceptable.

 

[theCardinalbird]

24 Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves.
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature.
27 And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.
28 And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient;

Most psychologists and scientists know that homosexuality doesn’t suddenly arise because someone who is straight has become wicked and has rejected or refused to acknowledge God and is therefore given up to lustful passions

In verse 24 clearly Saint Paul saw homosexual feelings as desires of the heart. In verse 26 we see him use the phrase: for this cause God delivered them up .God was not the author of their sins, but by withdrawing his grace, and so permitting them, in punishment for their pride, to fall into those shameful sins (such as homosexual acts)

Paul is saying that God withdrew his grace from those who changed the truth of God into the likeness of creatures and allowed them to fall into all manner of sin most notably homosexual acts. Keep in mind that Paul doesn’t say that committing homosexual acts and having SSA is always because of a refusal to acknowledge God, but that in Rome at the time, God had taken away his grace and so allowed them to fall into all manner of sin (including same sex intercourse) because of their pride in worshipping the creature.

It was the withdrawing of grace that permitted them, in punishment of their pride, to fall into those shameful sins. This does not mean rejecting God results always in one committing homosexual acts, but rather that he who rejects God will most likely fall into sin, one of which could be homosexual acts

 

[theCardinalbird]

People used to think all sorts of things were acceptable that we would now consider to be wrong and immoral. In antiquity, most people would have considered slavery to be acceptable. St. Augustine said that disobedient slaves should be whipped:

If you see your slave living badly, what other punishment will you curb him with, if not the lash? Use it: do. God allows it. In fact he is angered if you don’t. But do it in a loving rather than a vindictive spirit.

Ever hear of disciplining people? Augustine is not saying (from this little snippet) that it is acceptable to beat slaves to death or near death and/or for no good reason, but rather to whip them in a loving spirit. This shows the understanding that one should be disciplined if behaving bad, so that way he or she receives a punishment that will (hopefully) help him/her behave better and be a better person in the future. This is not a cruel punishment, but rather for discipline if done in a loving way and not done in a vindictive manner (having or showing a strong or unreasoning desire for revenge.)

Now, obviously in society today we are not allowed to discipline children that way. Discipline takes a variety of forms and in different degrees throughout the ages. In Augustines time that was an acceptable form of discipline (if done in a loving manner however and not in a vindictive spirit (having or showing a strong or unreasoning desire for revenge).

 

[theCardinalbird]

Thomas Aquinas believed that men are intellectually superior to women, something that most people now would not consider to be true.

And is this Church dogma? Men have their opinions and that doesn’t mean they speak for God or are infallible. We are not bound to follow what all the saints say.

In terms of homosexuality, we are dealing with something completely different as it is a divine law that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. This was not created by man but by God.

 

[OsculeturMeOsculo]

Jesus declared all foods cleaned in Mark 7:19 and in Acts 10:15 Peter has a vision that indicates this also.

 

[Alex337]

Friend, if I were to take every time the Bible warns against sexual relations built on lust and other poor foundations I could just as easily conclude by that logic that heterosexual sex is also quite wrong. I don’t have a metaphorical horse in that race, and everything I’ve seen condemns the incorrect form of union based on carnal lusts.

And while I may no longer be Catholic I don’t have an agenda, nor did I come to an interpretation that simply suits me. I don’t feel the need to convince any one to convert, I’m happy for folks who have found a way to be close to God even if it isn’t the same as mine.

I just enjoy a polite theological discussion with people who know about this stuff. Different views are important to both me and my faith after all. Quakers are told to question and consider things.