Sexual concessions to married couples and homosexuality

[Rau]

No - you know from previous threads that I think we should each respect the privacy of others and that I will never understand why the Church (mainly run by celibate men) insists on creating rules about matters which should remain outside its remit.

So, Morality does not exist in the realm of private behaviour! Sin is purely a public phenomenon?

 

[clem456]

No - you know from previous threads that I think we should each respect the privacy of others and that I will never understand why the Church (mainly run by celibate men) insists on creating rules about matters which should remain outside its remit.

The Church does not create morality. God is the foundation and source of morality.

I am the way, the truth…

God reveals himself. Christ is God’s full revelation personified. Christ is the fullest expression of morality. The Church observes and expresses what is revealed.

“Nature” is one of the ways God reveals himself.

 

[Emily2014]

So, Morality does not exist in the realm of private behaviour! Sin is purely a public phenomenon?

As I’ve stated ad nauseam, I don’t think that anyone has the right to judge the private lives of others nor to comment upon their consensual, adult sexual relationships. I truly cannot understand why homosexuality or trans gender issues arouse such anger and bigotry. God loves us all equally.

 

[Rau]

As I’ve stated ad nauseam, I don’t think that anyone has the right to judge the private lives of others nor to comment upon their consensual, adult sexual relationships. I truly cannot understand why homosexuality or trans gender issues arouse such anger and bigotry. God loves us all equally.

How is that connected with my post? I speak of morality, not the exploits of any particular individuals.

Does morality apply to acts done in private Emily?

 

[Joseph6279]

As I’ve stated ad nauseam, I don’t think that anyone has the right to judge the private lives of others nor to comment upon their consensual, adult sexual relationships. I truly cannot understand why homosexuality or trans gender issues arouse such anger and bigotry. God loves us all equally.

I think there is a misunderstanding going on with the above quote about judging that is a common one today. While Jesus said “Do not judge, lest you be judged” he also outlined in very clear terms what actions are sinful, including sins that would be considered “private sins” (fornication, adultery, withholding forgiveness, looking at a woman lustfully etc.) and charged the apostles to “teach all that I have commanded you.” Hence it is the Church’s job to outline and teach what acts are sinful.

Judging enters in when we look at the sins of particular individuals whom we either know to be (or wrongfully think we know to be) engaging in certain objectively immoral actions and presume to judge their personal responsibility. The intentions of the heart are something known only to God, and hence we “play God” and act as judge on matters we are not qualified to make when we try to pin down someone’s personal guilt. Only God knows the heart. This is what Jesus meant, and this is explained in the Catechism when it talks about “rash judgement.” (don’t have the number on hand)

There is nothing of the sort going on in this post. No individuals are being targeted, and know presumptions about anyone’s personal culpability. It is important that the Church teach us what is right and what is wrong even when it involves “personal sins,”, and it is important for all of her members to understand what Christ’s Church teaches. As far as I can tell, this is what the folks in this post are seeking to understand. There is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it is our duty as members of the Christ body to do so.

 

[Rau]

There is nothing of the sort going on in this post. No individuals are being targeted, and know presumptions about anyone’s personal culpability. It is important that the Church teach us what is right and what is wrong even when it involves “personal sins,”, and it is important for all of her members to understand what Christ’s Church teaches. As far as I can tell, this is what the folks in this post are seeking to understand…

You are quite right Joseph, however Emily takes the view that “private” matters are not subject to the Church’s moral teaching authority. She writes earlier in this thread:

[Emily2014] “…you know from previous threads that I think we should each respect the privacy of others and that I will never understand why the Church (mainly run by celibate men) insists on creating rules about matters which should remain outside its remit.”

It’s a remarkable line of thinking, and not remotely connected to any aspect of Catholicism. If the Church’s teaching remit does not extend to acts in privacy, then this would suggest that all such acts are, by default, moral. It seems to be a denial of the authority given to St Peter:

*Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18)*Jesus did not specify that “private acts” are an exception to this authority, or outside His Church’s “remit”.

 

[kozlosap]

I think there is a misunderstanding going on with the above quote about judging that is a common one today. While Jesus said “Do not judge, lest you be judged” he also outlined in very clear terms what actions are sinful, including sins that would be considered “private sins” (fornication, adultery, withholding forgiveness, looking at a woman lustfully etc.) and charged the apostles to “teach all that I have commanded you.” Hence it is the Church’s job to outline and teach what acts are sinful.

Judging enters in when we look at the sins of particular individuals whom we either know to be (or wrongfully think we know to be) engaging in certain objectively immoral actions and presume to judge their personal responsibility. The intentions of the heart are something known only to God, and hence we “play God” and act as judge on matters we are not qualified to make when we try to pin down someone’s personal guilt. Only God knows the heart. This is what Jesus meant, and this is explained in the Catechism when it talks about “rash judgement.” (don’t have the number on hand)

There is nothing of the sort going on in this post. No individuals are being targeted, and know presumptions about anyone’s personal culpability. It is important that the Church teach us what is right and what is wrong even when it involves “personal sins,”, and it is important for all of her members to understand what Christ’s Church teaches. As far as I can tell, this is what the folks in this post are seeking to understand. There is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it is our duty as members of the Christ body to do so.

Try living your life without using your own conscience, heart and intellect and you are in for a disaster of monumental proportion. I fought for years with my own heartfelt and well researched view on gay issues. Finally, a priest told me that it is important to realize that sometimes I’m just going to disagree with the CCC. As a straight person, I have no real horse in the race and I need to pray that gay people will be welcomed into the Church without reservation.

 

[Rau]

Try living your life without using your own conscience, heart and intellect and you are in for a disaster of monumental proportion. I fought for years with my own heartfelt and well researched view on gay issues. Finally, a priest told me that it is important to realize that sometimes I’m just going to disagree with the CCC. As a straight person, I have no real horse in the race and I need to pray that gay people will be welcomed into the Church without reservation.

Is there anything in the CCC on this topic you think is wrong?

 

[clem456]

Try living your life without using your own conscience, heart and intellect and you are in for a disaster of monumental proportion. I fought for years with my own heartfelt and well researched view on gay issues. Finally, a priest told me that it is important to realize that sometimes I’m just going to disagree with the CCC. As a straight person, I have no real horse in the race and I need to pray that gay people will be welcomed into the Church without reservation.

How are they are not welcomed?
Are you speaking of unwelcoming attitudes of individuals or parishes, or of the Church and it’s teaching?
Specifically please, how is the Church not welcoming?

 

[kozlosap]

Is there anything in the CCC on this topic you think is wrong?

Yes, IMHO LGBTQ individuals are not intrinsically disordered.

 

[kozlosap]

How are they are not welcomed?
Are you speaking of unwelcoming attitudes of individuals or parishes, or of the Church and it’s teaching?
Specifically please, how is the Church not welcoming?

At the Parish level, there really is no problem with LGBTQ people being welcomed, they are! It’s here on the internet and on the majority of Catholic Radio Programs that one reads and hears about those “disordered pedophiles”.

 

[Rau]

Yes, IMHO LGBTQ individuals are not intrinsically disordered.

Me too. But the CCC doesn’t say that. It says that same sex sex acts are intrinsically disordered. It says the same thing about quite a number of other acts too eg. Calumny.

Do you disagree with that, or are other statements in the ccc on this topic with which you disagree?

 

[clem456]

At the Parish level, there really is no problem with LGBTQ people being welcomed, they are! It’s here on the internet and on the majority of Catholic Radio Programs that one reads and hears about those “disordered pedophiles”.

How did you get from LGBTQ to disordered pedophiles in the same paragraph?

Really, can you be specific please when you are disagreeing with something? It’s hard to have a meaningful discussion otherwise,

 

[fpt]

Well said.

By the way, the “release of seed”, as one poster above put it, is not the sole basis for determining if a sexual act in marriage is moral. There is no basis in Catholic moral theology for the claim that, as long as the husband completes the act within natural intercourse, that all else is moral.

Each and every sexual act in a marriage needs to be open to the possibility of conceiving a child. In other words, each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. So sexual acts that are inherently non-procreative are inherently immoral.

As Pope Pius XII so aptly said (in address to midwives) –
“the spouses must know how to keep themselves within the limits of a just moderation. As with the pleasure of food and drink, so also with the sexual, they must not abandon themselves without restraint to the impulses of the senses…”

“The right rule is this: the use of the natural procreative disposition is morally licit only in matrimony, in the service of, and in accordance with, the ends of marriage itself… And this law, so very reasonable, concerns not only the substance, but also the circumstances of the act, so that, even when the substance of the act remains morally safe, it is possible to sin in the way it is performed.”

“If nature had aimed exclusively, or at least in the first place, at a reciprocal gift and possession of the married couple in joy and delight, and if it had ordered that act only to make happy in the highest possible degree their personal experience, and not to stimulate them to the service of life, then the Creator would have adopted another plan in forming and constituting the natural act. Now instead, all this is subordinated and ordered to that unique great law of the “generatio et educatio prolis,” namely the accomplishment of the primary end of matrimony as the origin and source of life.”

Procreation is the primary end of marriage and the marital act. Marital sexual acts must be of the procreative type; otherwise, the substance of the act is morally disordered (i.e. the act is intrinsically evil).

Do you share few parts of their “theology” concerning about the marital act with all the corollaries?

Only for information:

allmonks.com/natural-family-planning-and-contraception/natural-family-planning-and-sexual-pleasure.pdf#page=1&zoom=auto,-73,403

allmonks.com/sexual-pleasure-and-lust/

Good luck for the reading, if you have some sharings with them about the operative mode of marital act, you do not have the same religion than me. The dialogue is almost impossible.

 

[kozlosap]

How did you get from LGBTQ to disordered pedophiles in the same paragraph?

Really, can you be specific please when you are disagreeing with something? It’s hard to have a meaningful discussion otherwise,

I apologise for being opaque! If you listen to many callers and read many of the threads concerning anything having to do with LGBTQ issues, you will discover that many equate being gay with pedophiles.

 

[clem456]

I apologise for being opaque! If you listen to many callers and read many of the threads concerning anything having to do with LGBTQ issues, you will discover that many equate being gay with pedophiles.

You should provide citations so we can address common issues and have a discussion. Otherwise you are merely throwing flames.
So?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You should provide citations so we can address common issues and have a discussion. Otherwise you are merely throwing flames.
So?

He’s right that many people here mention pedophilia in the same breath as homosexuality. But I don’t see many people “equate” the two.

On Catholic teaching, both inclinations are disordered; that’s why the two are often mentioned together. Some people overplay this similarity, and act like they’re basically the same thing, or act like consensual gay sex is almost as bad as child rape. At the same time, other people sometimes allege that people are “always” conflating the two on this forum, which is (so far as I can tell) completely false.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

He’s right that many people here mention pedophilia in the same breath as homosexuality. But I don’t see many people “equate” the two.

On Catholic teaching, both inclinations are disordered; that’s why the two are often mentioned together. Some people overplay this similarity, and act like they’re basically the same thing, or act like consensual gay sex is almost as bad as child rape. At the same time, other people sometimes allege that people are “always” conflating the two on this forum, which is (so far as I can tell) completely false.

The thing that doesn’t make sense is that fornication is intrinsically disordered and is much more comparable to gay sex than child molestation does. Of course it is much easier to condemn people if you compare them to monsters than comparing them to you as that would humanize them.

 

[Sarcelle]

I apologise for being opaque! If you listen to many callers and read many of the threads concerning anything having to do with LGBTQ issues, you will discover that many equate being gay with pedophiles.

I have met agnostics and atheists that also equate being gay with being a disordered pedophile. This view is clearly not the official view of the Church. Official as in being stated in accordance with the catechism of the Catholic Church. People, Catholic or otherwise, do hold views that are contrary to what the Church teaches. Has anyone said in this forum that gay people are disordered pedophiles? What have you said to them in return?

Just because individual Catholics may say it, does not mean that is what the Church teaches as its official view.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The thing that doesn’t make sense is that fornication is intrinsically disordered and is much more comparable to gay sex than child molestation does.

The desire to fornicate – at least, as many people experience it – is not intrinsically disordered. It is only disordered when it involves lust. But it was perfectly well ordered for me to want to have sex with my wife, when I was dating her. There was nothing disordered about it. The action would have been wrong, but the desire was the desire for proper marital intimacy. By contrast, it it objectively disordered for me to desire to have sex with a man, no matter what relationship I have with him, and even if I desired without lusting.

But yes, gay sex is MUCH more similar to fornication than to child abuse.

Of course it is much easier to condemn people if you compare them to monsters than comparing them to you as that would humanize them.

Yes. Although there does seem to be something wrong with thinking *anyone *is a monster, especially when this judgment is based on desires, not on actions. The gay community should know this more than anyone – they spent centuries being called monsters for their desires. Now they get the upper hand, and they simply perpetuate the same thing, with different monsters.

I’m reminded of a letter by a group of prominent Californians, when the SF bishop agreed to speak at a marriage rally. They wrote:

If he attends as scheduled … he will be “marching and sharing the podium” with individuals who “have repeatedly denigrated lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”

The letter then quotes other event participants who have likened homosexuality to incest and bestiality.

By standing alongside those participants and organizers, “you appear to be endorsing their troubling words and deeds, which directly contradict the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pastoral teaching that ‘God does not love someone any less simply because he or she is homosexual. God’s love is always and everywhere offered to those who are open to receiving it.’”

Notice how the letter clearly and unambiguously implies that God does not love those who commit incest, bestiality, and (I’m sure we could add) pedophilia. That’s a really worrying trend in our culture, but it’s entirely false. God loves people who have all sorts of disordered attractions and actions. If we’re concerned with humanize people, we should humanize everyone that God loves.