Same sex couples

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Edward_H said:
Not quite so…and in 1749 is the support.

Early actions done deliberately can contribute to a strengthening of inclinations/attractions. It’s the front side / growth curve that you’re trying to sweep under the rug.
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What are you arguing with? The CCC says what it says, and it is definitive for Catholics to believe.
Attractions are not actions. Actions are evaluated morally.
This is not to say that actions don’t lead to compounding sinful lifestyles. They do. The slavery of sin requires the cooperation of the actor. We should all know this in our own lives.

Even when a person is enslaved to sin, the cravings or attractions are not sins. They can be resisted or acted upon.
Actions.
The CCC is crystal clear on this.
 
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Consider that if attractions were sins, the lives of many saints present rampant sinfullnes. The testimony of the saints has many instances of awful temptations and attractions that were resisted heroically.

If every disordered urge or attraction or thought were a sin there would be no saints.
Actions are the subject of morality.
 
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You misunderstand the full message of the point you quoted and the nature of attractions, and in fact the capacity for freedom.

Attractions DEVELOP and can be strengthened and can be morphed.

We when don’t use our free will properly we can become less free. This is a fundamental tenet of moral theology.

You speak about attractions as if they were fixed forces. They are not.

We are given an intellect to seek the truth, and a will to pursue the good.

We are not automatons with fixed attractions…we have ownership in what we become.

You seem to be proof texting summaries of moral theology boosted from the CCC, but haven’t really gotten to the essence of what the church teaches.

Go to Veritatis Splendor and spend some slow time there.
 
Edward_H said:
You misunderstand the full message of the point you quoted and the nature of attractions, and in fact the capacity for freedom.

Attractions DEVELOP and can be strengthened and can be morphed.

We when don’t use our free will properly we can become less free. This is a fundamental tenet of moral theology.

You speak about attractions as if they were fixed forces. They are not.

We are given an intellect to seek the truth, and a will to pursue the good.

We are not automatons with fixed attractions…we have ownership in what we become.

You seem to be proof texting summaries of moral theology boosted from the CCC, but haven’t really gotten to the essence of what the church teaches.

Go to Veritatis Splendor and spend some slow time there.
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Amelioration of the language doesn’t alter the wrongheadedness of what you are proposing.
It’s simple.
Morality deals with the evaluation of human acts, not attractions.
 
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Didn’t the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith say that same sex attraction isn’t sinful?
 
That’s not correct, and is a gross distortion and shrinkage of what moral theology is.

How we use our freedom today affects our ability to choose the good tomorrow, owing to the dynamics of the human capacities of intellect, conscience, will power, the appetites.

Appetites are classifed as rational and the sensible.

Our “intellect” is a rational appetite, an inclination or attraction to seek the truth.

We also have sensible appetites, food, music, sex, etc.

The Church teaches that our appetites (all of them, including the intellect) must be harnessed to serve God and to do the good, and to avoid evil.

This is a life long, active and “vital” struggle, supported by the Sacraments, other graces, prayer, and the human virtues.

To pretend that our sexual appetites are on autopilot is a huge, and too popular, an error. But you apparently have fallen into this secular mindset.
 
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Joe1 said:
Didn’t the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith say that same sex attraction isn’t sinful?
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What Ed and others are trying to incorrectly emphasize is that SSA is a morally chosen act as opposed to an attraction, and so the attraction itself can be morally evaluated as an act. This is an attempt to deny any sort of born predispostion to a disordered inclination.

But that is a matter for science rather than moral theology, because again, morality valuates human acts rather than makes proposals for the genesis of attractions.
 
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Edward_H said:
That’s not correct, and is a gross distortion and shrinkage of what moral theology is.
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Ed, you might want to reconsider this statement.
I posted you directly from the CCC.
You also referenced Veritatis Splendor. Go to VS and do a search on the word “actions”.

You are making a leap too far. No one denies that actions have consequences.
But it’s settled Catholic teaching that attractions are not sins, actions are.
 
You posted a few lines and ignored the whole chapter…and proof pointed your way to the point you wanted to get to all along.

as I said go to Veritatis Splendor.

You continue to pretend that “attractions” don’t grow or be strengthened…and no serious behavioral researcher would agree with you.
 
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goout said:
What Ed and others are trying to emphasize is that SSA is a morally chosen act as opposed to an attraction, and so the attraction itself can be morally evaluated as an act.
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Oh really? Did Ed also give the reason for why someone would want to choose a life of pain and heartaches?
goout said:
This is an attempt to deny any sort of born predispostion to a disordered inclination.
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Well that is interesting. I’ve been attracted to men for as long as I can remember, I’m sure (but not definite) I had these feelings before I saw pornography, which made it all worse.

Nevertheless the Church has spoken of this matter and has declared Homosexual attraction not sinful.

Here’s a document

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...faith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
 
Edward_H said:
You posted a few lines and ignored the whole chapter…and proof pointed your way to the point you wanted to get to all along.

as I said go to Veritatis Splendor.
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Anybody reading this can go to these documents. Here are the links. I didn’t think it necessary to spoon feed the whole passage in a quote when the section I quoted clearly states the fact:
Morality evaluates human acts.
The Church is crystal clear on this, and all the dancing in the world doesn’t distract from it.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-p...hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a4.htm
 
Yes I am with the Church on this (I hope that was clear, maybe the post was not)
 
Morality doesn’t evaluate human acts.

To be clearer and more precise.

The intellect evaluates the moral goodness of possible actions, past actions, via a judgment made in the intellect (the act of conscience), using criteria available to the intellect.

How well the intellect does this work is influenced by how free that person still is…have they let their appetites run wild in the past pursuing pleasure without reference to the good, etc.

A person can become “less free” and can become enslaved to their senses and appetites. As I have said fifty times attractions can grow, be channeled, get off the rails of the good and the true.

See this Catholic medical doctor’s work.

http://www.purityispossible.com/about/
 
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As I said you’ve convinced yourself (or you want to convince others) that attractions aren’t dynamic and are instead fixed. And no serious Church document states this. Only the lukewarm armchair types.
 
Edward_H said:
Morality doesn’t evaluate human acts.

To be clearer and more precise.
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Yes, let’s:
ARTICLE 4
THE MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS

1749 Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil.

I. THE SOURCES OF MORALITY

1750 The morality of human acts depends on:
  • the object chosen;
  • the end in view or the intention;
  • the circumstances of the action.
The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the “sources,” or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.
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there’s lot’s of talk about why gays do not feel welcome in the Church.
Exhibit A is ignorance of Catholic thought
 
Edward_H said:
As I said you’ve convinced yourself (or you want to convince others) that attractions aren’t dynamic and are instead fixed.
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Let me get this straight. Are you saying that attractions can change and therefore a moral choice?

Please tell me once again what it is you truly want to explain. lest I get a bad impression from the wrong perception
 
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Edward_H said:
As I said you’ve convinced yourself (or you want to convince others) that attractions aren’t dynamic and are instead fixed. And no serious Church document states this. Only the lukewarm armchair types.
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I never said anything of the sort.
I am merely rebutting the error you are making, namely your insistence that attractions are sins, which they are not.

That is expressed by the CCC and VS. Which apparently you do not consider serious Church documents? How do you expect others to embrace conversion, when you cannot even give Magisterial documents the weight of seriousness?

This is a real problem. It’s scandalous for the Church’s evangelization to those struggling with SSA and/or homosexual lifestyle, and any other struggle for that matter.
 
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