San Diego bishop calls for a practical ‘apology’ to L.G.B.T. Catholics

[irenaeus1]

As for practical apology, I am glad to see my local Catholic bishop taking a lead on this issue. I know from talking to people that his outreach to the gay community in San Diego has been appreciated.

The question is what does that outreach look like - genuine love and compassion while faithfully presenting the gospel, or simply being friendly, accommodating, ‘loving’, and affirming the lifestyle as one morally licit option among many.

 

[Padres1969]

The question is what does that outreach look like - genuine love and compassion while faithfully presenting the gospel, or simply being friendly, accommodating, ‘loving’, and affirming the lifestyle as one morally licit option among many.

A little of both it seems.

 

[Lion_IRC]

Strydersroom;14059038:

I disagree. My marriage is natural, good, healthy and my husband is Christian.

You are objectively wrong about these claims.

You forgot to put the words “I believe” in front of your claim zz912.

Strydersroom believes a certain thing is natural, good, healthy. I disagree. But I don’t know anyone other than God who can prove such a claim objectively wrong. #epistemology

And people are allowed to self-identify as Christian while simultaneously asserting that XYZ is morally acceptable, or ‘good’ for them.

 

[irenaeus1]

You forgot to put the words “I believe” in front of your claim zz912.

Strydersroom believes a certain thing is natural, good, healthy. I disagree. But I don’t know anyone other than God who can prove such a claim objectively wrong. #epistemology

And people are allowed to self-identify as Christian while simultaneously asserting that XYZ is morally acceptable, or ‘good’ for them.

That, my friend, is moral relativism. And of course, God has revealed to us things that are objectively wrong.

 

[irenaeus1]

I’d like to know when LGBT Catholics are going to apologize for advocating, encouraging, and even demanding that the Catholic Church change her teachings and accept the homosexual lifestyle as morally licit. In large measure, it has nothing to do with accepting an LGBT individual with regard to the respect and dignity as a human person, which is their due, but rather in regards to agreeing with their lifestyle and accepting homosexual acts as part of the moral norm.

 

[Lion_IRC]

That, my friend, is moral relativism. And of course, God has revealed to us things that are objectively wrong.

Yep.
And what shall we say to a person who claims that God told them their “marriage” is good and healthy etc.?

 

[irenaeus1]

Yep.
And what shall we say to a person who claims that God told them their “marriage” is good and healthy etc.?

What are we to tell any individual who claims that God told them that a certain objectively immoral act is good and healthy?

And just for the record, this particular individual didn’t claim that God told them this.

 

[JosieN]

Yep.
And what shall we say to a person who claims that God told them their “marriage” is good and healthy etc.?

If they are Catholic they should be given the teachings of the Church as it is taught in the Catechism. I have copied a part of it here:

"I. MARRIAGE IN GOD’S PLAN

1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the **creation of man and woman **in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb."85 Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its “mystery,” its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal “in the Lord” in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.86

Marriage in the order of creation

1603 "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage."87 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity,88 some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."89

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm

Same-sex marriages cannot be holy as marriage according to God’s plan is between a man and a woman according to the teachings of the Church. They may believe what they like and say what they like, but that does not make it true.

 

[Paganus]

“What we need to project in the life of the church is ‘You are part of us and we are part of you.’ [L.G.B.T. Catholics] are part of our families.”

I know a B.L.T. Catholic but he’s not a part of my family, he’s just a coworker.

 

[Lion_IRC]

…And just for the record, this particular individual didn’t claim that God told them this.

I wasn’t paying that much attention to the particulars but I see now, reading back, that someone else did actually bring a member of their own family into an otherwise impersonal and generic discussion of the issues. Maybe that was mistakenly seen by others as an invitation for discussion about that person’s personal situation.
(Thanks for the guidance Robert Bay)

Can a self-professing Christian, who thinks that their marriage is sacramentally and morally acceptable to God, assert that they have a personal revelation from Him consenting to that?

 

[Lion_IRC]

Sorry, should have clarified the above post.

Can a self-professing Christian, who thinks that their gay marriage is sacramentally and morally acceptable to God, assert that they have a personal revelation from Him consenting to that?

…presumably someone with a monogamous heterosexual marriage wouldn’t feel the need to invoke God’s affirmation/revelation.

 

[TMC]

Sorry, should have clarified the above post.

Can a self-professing Christian, who thinks that their gay marriage is sacramentally and morally acceptable to God, assert that they have a personal revelation from Him consenting to that?

…presumably someone with a monogamous heterosexual marriage wouldn’t feel the need to invoke God’s affirmation/revelation.

Why would a person with a homosexual marriage feel the need for a personal miraculous revelation? There are millions of Christians who believe that same sex marriages are morally equivalent to opposite marriages, and many Christian sects that perform and bless those marriages. They don’t need a “Road to Damascus” moment any more than heterosexuals do.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

I blame love marriages for making people think marriage is about love instead of makign and rearing children.

 

[TMC]

I blame love marriages for making people think marriage is about love instead of makign and rearing children.

Yeah, its terrible. All those deluded people who actually love their spouses. Let’s go back to forced marriages between strangers who can barely stand each other.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Yeah, its terrible. All those deluded people who actually love their spouses. Let’s go back to forced marriages between strangers who can barely stand each other.

That’s really not how arranged marriages work and semi-arranged marriages would quite possibly be the optimal solution.

 

[TMC]

That’s really not how arranged marriages work and semi-arranged marriages would quite possibly be the optimal solution.

Seriously? A return to loveless marriages is not something the Church supports, thank God. And how would you implement your plan? Refuse to marry those that seem to be actually in love?

You do raise a good point, however. The idea that marriage is an unchanged institution since antiquity is completely false. Marriage has changed many times over the centuries, and the current form of marriage is not much like marriage in ancient times.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Seriously? A return to loveless marriages is not something the Church supports, thank God. And how would you implement your plan? Refuse to marry those that seem to be actually in love?

You do raise a good point, however. The idea that marriage is an unchanged institution since antiquity is completely false. Marriage has changed many times over the centuries, and the current form of marriage is not much like marriage in ancient times.

Note, I am playing Devil’s Advocate

Oh no, it isn’t loveless marriages per se, it means marriage isn’t solely based on love anymore. After all, if you marry for love, why not get divorced if you don’t love each other anymore? There is a reason marrying for love was mocked and derided, because founding a marriage on love is like building on quicksand, what madman (or madwoman) would build something so permanent as marriage on something so transient, so unstable, so likely to shift under one’s feet? Passionate love, the kind people associate with lovesickness and “being crazy about someone” is often really infatuation in this day and age where people will start dating and get married in a year, a time so brief that infatuation very well might not have worn off. How can we expect people to make serious and permanent decision while in such a mind altering form of madness as infatuation?

 

[Padres1969]

Note, I am playing Devil’s Advocate

Oh no, it isn’t loveless marriages per se, it means marriage isn’t solely based on love anymore. After all, if you marry for love, why not get divorced if you don’t love each other anymore? There is a reason marrying for love was mocked and derided, because founding a marriage on love is like building on quicksand, what madman (or madwoman) would build something so permanent as marriage on something so transient, so unstable, so likely to shift under one’s feet? Passionate love, the kind people associate with lovesickness and “being crazy about someone” is often really infatuation in this day and age where people will start dating and get married in a year, a time so brief that infatuation very well might not have worn off. How can we expect people to make serious and permanent decision while in such a mind altering form of madness as infatuation?

Counterpoint, the average marriage age has never been higher. People are not just jumping into marriage after a year. Using personal anecdotes, I was “dating” my wife for 7 years before we got engaged. My brother for a good 4 before he got engaged.

My parents in the previous generation, were together a mere 6 months before they got engaged by comparison.

 

[Prodigal_40s]

Homosexual desires aren’t natural. They are intrinsically disordered. Please do not promote the falsehood that they are natural, good, healthy, holy, or compatible with a Christian life.

Absolutely spot on. The Church abhors adultery and sodomy in the same way and the OneTrue Church will never endorse sin.
The issue is that this is the modern contemporary sole focus but it is in fact one of many disordered desires. The media have made this a “value” but that’s why the media despise the Church. The media’s constant drive to celebrate sin is part of their motivation to destroy the faith. They’ll never succeed.

 

[JosieN]

Note, I am playing Devil’s Advocate

Oh no, it isn’t loveless marriages per se, it means marriage isn’t solely based on love anymore. After all, if you marry for love, why not get divorced if you don’t love each other anymore? There is a reason marrying for love was mocked and derided, because founding a marriage on love is like building on quicksand, what madman (or madwoman) would build something so permanent as marriage on something so transient, so unstable, so likely to shift under one’s feet? Passionate love, the kind people associate with lovesickness and “being crazy about someone” is often really infatuation in this day and age where people will start dating and get married in a year, a time so brief that infatuation very well might not have worn off. How can we expect people to make serious and permanent decision while in such a mind altering form of madness as infatuation?

My parents only met a few times before they were married, and there were many marriages in the Bible that were arranged marriages. Would you call these types of marriages loveless, or marriages built on infatuation? Then explain to me how those marriages lasted longer than the ones we see today. Love is something that takes a lifetime together to build and it takes a real commitment. They believed death was the only way to be separated and their children felt secure knowing this. These marriages were not perfect, but they loved each other till the end of their lives because they knew God would be waiting for them and reward them for their faith and their obedience to His laws. The relationship between and man and a woman was by God’s design. It is an intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws.

Conjugal fidelity

2364** The married couple forms "the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws; it is rooted in the conjugal covenant, that is, in their irrevocable personal consent."146 Both give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh.** the covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble.147 "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."148

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P86.HTM