The Church has not issued an infallible statement on their interpretation of scripture, but you know that the Church has long taught against the practice of homosexuality.
For 16 centuries, the Church taught that gambling was evil,up to and including the council of trent, but then afterwards, some theologians pencil-whipped the matter and declared that gambling was OK, unless proscribed by the local bishop – and who has ever heard of that?
My parish has an annual festival including a beer tent, and they hold a Mass IN THE BEER TENT on the Sunday of the festival, to prevent the inconvenience of the workers from driving four small city blocks from the church to the festival grounds, even since the Saturday Mass was permitted a couple decades ago.
Homosexual advocates have done their own Biblical studies and pointed out that homosexuality as we know it today is not what the Bible talks about, either pagan ritual homosexuality or the discretionary male rather than a female partnership that Romans seems to imply.
Reformed Judaism is very radical in its rejection of the Torah, dismissing it as revelation-THEN, looking for revelation-NOW. In that branch of Judaism, there are, if am so wisely informed, both female and homosexual rabbis. Now, “rabbinic” Judaism is arguably not biblical either, and the other main branches of Judaism have it, except for those practicing non-rabbinic Judaism (which does not find rabbis in the Jewish Scripture).
The Church has a solid stance against approving homosexual conduct, as it has a solid stance against divorce. You cannot get remarried in the Church until your previous marriage has been annulled. I don’t think you’re even supposed to approach Communion if you are divorced; this has been a big controversy in the last year or two and the world is awaiting the Pope to summarize the recommendations of the synod on the family which recently took place a year or two ago.
While taking such a solid stance against homosexual conduct (and certainly homosexual unions), it has nevertheless written a Catechism which it holds forth as the “deposit of faith” which we must all hold to be true.
Para. 1735 says that a person may have diminished or nullified responsibility for an action…for a whole variety of reasons, including inordinate attachments, and psychological or social “factors.” Homosexual conduct is objectively disordered (says the Catechism of the Catholic Church), but according to 1735 – which I believe is about God’s mercy – homosexuality is not the “unforgivable sin” we must observe – a person may knowingly engage in h. behavior and yet MAY have diminished or even nullified responsibility for the obvious psychological and social factors – over which there is no scientific agreement.
So, I expect the Church will continue to condemn it, while at the same time, it is constrained by it own teaching (1735) from saying that an active homosexual may not have God’s mercy – I have sent an inquiry on the general meaning of 1735 to my local bishop, so far without a response.
Science has just announced the discovery of a gene for gray hair. There are a lot of mysterious genes which seem to have no known function, so there may be the genetic needle in the haystack left that science has not uncovered as yet. And, epigenetics is a vast field for future exploration.
The future question may be, if there IS a “cure” for homosexuality (nothing mankind has ever inflicted on itself so far has ever resulted in the change of sexual orientation), then will it be a sin to NOT “take the cure” ? e.g. a gamma knife procedure that destroys some locus in the brain.
