Saints with SSA

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HomeschoolDad said:
The media onslaught to normalize gay behavior, to represent it as cool, hip, enlightened, and possibly even to make it preferable , is relentless.
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Not just gay behaviour, but the full suite of modern attitudes to sex. The normal progression for couples is presented as:
  • meet
  • go out a few times;
  • have sex;
  • fall in love;
  • move in together;
  • maybe get married.
 
I’d suggest that the underlying issue is one of the seven deadly sins, lust. I’d recommend, therefore, St. Augustine, a prime exemplar of a person who not only suffered from lust and felt the weight of that chain (his own graphic description) but also gave into it for much of his young life, sleeping around a lot, living with a woman and fathering a son with her. He knew the agony of the struggle to give up what he so badly wanted and his body craved once he began to see the light of Christianity. Read The Confessions of St. Augustine–this book has helped many understand the struggles with lust and the freedom Jesus offers. Augustine would be a great confirmation saint!
 
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I assume the latter is the point. That it’s always outrageous to claim something without evidence. So we should avoid doing it.
 
Actually I can see this being a relevant saint indeed, since there are parallels between a worldly human ruler who would try to push people into homosexual practice, and the demonic ‘ruler’ of the fallen world (the devil; the enemy) who would try to push people into homosexual practice. St. Charles Lwanga’s resistance to this evil is commendable, and relevant.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Why does everybody get so excited when someone suggests that St. John Henry Newman might have had SSA? For the third (or umpteenth) time, there is nothing bad about having SSA as long as you do not give in to the temptation.
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I assume most of us agree with your latter statement. But in answer to your initial question, I think it’s mainly people feeling frustrated with amateur psycho-analyzing about the potential inner lives of dead people who can’t speak for themselves anymore. Personally I’d tend to agree that unless someone clearly self-identified as experiencing something in life, it’s kind of… idle curiosity? to speculate after their death about it. The truth is we don’t know, so why not move on to cases that are clearer?

(I imagine when it comes to speculating about SSA too, some of the frustration comes from people who dislike having to justify their own same-sex friendships and explain constantly that their closeness to people of the same sex isn’t sexual; so when they see people who are dead and can no longer explain the same thing on their own behalf, they want to jump in and remind people not to speculate. From my observation it’s usually men who get this speculated about them (because our culture typically makes it out to be ‘weirder’ for men to have close friendships with each other than females), and therefore men who get the most annoyed about it. And I don’t see people getting less annoyed, and I do kinda see their point about not speculating about the hidden inner lives of the dead, so that’s the general approach I’d agree with too. To find a confirmation saint who more definitely self-identified as something relatable, than someone about whom strangers speculate something that the saint themselves never saw fit to actually reveal, even if true).

(It also reminds me of how people look back and speculate that male and female saints were in love with each other if they were friends, etc. Men and women who are friends with people of the opposite sex today, can get annoyed about such speculation too. It’s mainly that it’s tedious, not offensive. Not every affection is sexual, and reducing everything to that is just… boring. And makes it seem as if there isn’t more texture to life than that. Again, if a saint self-disclosed a given sexual attraction, that’s totally different… But if they didn’t, I just don’t think it’s our place to project it onto them.)
 
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The swell folks over at TIA are claiming that the total decomposition of Newman’s body - nothing found when his grave was opened - is “proof” of his lack of sanctity and, by implication, both his SSA and his acting on it with his friend St. John. Not that I believe any of that.
 
That’s balderdash. I tend to think decomposition in this case was a gift from God so that the Church would not get into a protracted public argument with the gay lobby who acted like it was a crime to move the man’s remains out of the shared grave.
 
I saw a documentary about it that suggested he had picked to be buried in conditions he knew would lead to complete decomposition to avoid a circus in the future over this very issue.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
The media onslaught to normalize gay behavior, to represent it as cool, hip, enlightened, and possibly even to make it preferable , is relentless.
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Agreed. I’m not sure how much press it gets, but I think it might be good to contemplate that a person seeking a spouse, and committed to chastity before marriage, is going to be very limited as to whom they could get involved with in the first place. If the expectation is “sex by the third date”, what’s the point of even starting the relationship? How can you ever find a marriage partner if everyone expects that? Introduction apostolates such as CatholicMatch, Ave Maria Singles, and similar others, are sorely needed in today’s world. It gets a lot of issues out of the way right up front. (One certainly hopes the whole NFP question gets resolved up-front as well — prevents a lot of unpleasant surprises down the road. Any couple contemplating marriage is very well-advised to ask the question “what are we going to do if we’ve prayerfully considered that our family is complete, and NFP doesn’t work so well?”. Might kill a little of the giddy-silly romance of the moment, but better to confront it before the marriage, than to get several years in, have difficulties to emerge, and find that there’s not a meeting of the minds.)

And then there is the “hookup culture”. In that mentality, it goes more like:
  • meet
  • have sex
  • pass the "sex test"
  • maybe go out a few times;
  • maybe fall in love;
  • maybe move in together;
  • maybe, just maybe, even get married.
My elderly parents, who never heard of such a thing in their day, correctly note that this is living at the level of animals. 🐶 🐱 🐰
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Pitcairn17 said:
The swell folks over at TIA are claiming that the total decomposition of Newman’s body - nothing found when his grave was opened - is “proof” of his lack of sanctity and, by implication, both his SSA and his acting on it with his friend St. John. Not that I believe any of that.
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Uncanny! Dostoevsky satirised this exact line of thinking in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. A Russian Orthodox starets passes away, and his body begins to exude an unfortunate smell during the funeral. By all accounts the starets was exceptionally holy, but Dostoevsky characterises the villagers as gullible rumour-mongers who think that the smell is proof of the starets’ wickedness.
 
I was thinking about it and about to post, but luckily I saw your post first.
 
Pitcairn17 said:
The swell folks over at TIA are claiming that the total decomposition of Newman’s body - nothing found when his grave was opened - is “proof” of his lack of sanctity and, by implication, both his SSA and his acting on it with his friend St. John. Not that I believe any of that.
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Most bodies totally decompose - whether saint or not. The ordinary actions of the natural world say nothing about his sanctity. Neither does his orientation, IMO.

I’m sure there are any number of saints that were gay, why would there not be? There are over 10,000 saints, after all. Seems likely that hundreds of them were gay.
 
I agree with this. I mean, I wouldn’t care if they were gay, but there is no reason to think that.

One of the issues here, I think, is that modern western men (maybe especially in the US) are so concerned about appearing gay that they are careful to never show affection toward other men. That is not the case in most cultures. So, ironically, it is the macho western man’s fear of looking gay that makes him see “gayness” in completely platonic relationships.
 
confusedcatholic1 said:
Are there any saints with SSA who powered through it with God’s Grace? I am wondering because I suffer SSA and am trying to choose a Confirmation Saint.
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Many people struggle/struggled with Chastity - whether same sex, opposite sex, anything aka LUST

Seek the assistance of the Divine Physician Jesus - to overcome any Temptation … and be free of them
 
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Can’t say as I ever actually heard or read anyone try to do that. And I first read it while a teenager in the Southeastern US (at that time one of the most gay-skittish if not outright homophobic cultures I have personal experience with).
 
I don’t doubt it for a second, I just never saw it myself. And frankly don’t want to as the very notion is, as you so eloquently put it, ludicrous.
 
Many such theories abound. Like one I read about Draco Malfoy being on fire for Harry Potter.

It’s literature, and people read whatever they want into it. It’s part of the literary discourse-people add and add until you end up with commentaries on the text that the author may have never dreamed of.
 
I just got a book on the New Criticism. Been interested in it for years.
 
Plot of every Romantic movie and TV show since, what, the 1970’s?
 
And let’s not forget Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street.

Something so completely innocent, and people have to try and make a novel out of it.
 
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