This whole thing stinks. Can anyone possibly imagine a saintly pope like St. Pius X listening to a couple telling him to “welcome” unrepentant sinners in the Church?
There have always been sinners of all kinds in the Church (I´m one to start with), but the crucial difference is that now we are being told to forget about the sin and pretend everything is hunky dory. Sin is no longer an issue, and nobody is allowed to call a spade a spade anymore. It´s all about “pastoral care”, whatever that means. It´s the “Church of Nice”, where nobody EVER says anything that could possibly hurt anyone´s feelings. Of course, Jesus NEVER offended anyone, did He?
If instead of a son taking his male partner to Christmas dinner it was a daughter taking her pimp, would we see the situation differently? Sodomy used to be called one of the four sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance. Now we are instructed to be NICE to the sodomites.
And some people think the Church is doing just fine???!!!
I agree with your assessment that we should not just let go of sin by ignoring sin. I think the best way of handling it is to make homosexual sex sin to be on par with other sexual behavior deemed disordered. This way we can treat and address all sexually disordered behavior the same and without discrimination.
According to a U Columbia report, 80% of men have masturbated in the past year and 90% of men admitted to having masturbated in their life times. The number is on the 60s for women. This sexual disordered behavior is far more prevalent than homosexual behavior. Yet we hear nothing about it in RE classes for children and rarely in discussions among Catholic adults. While homosexual sex and masturbation are considered gravely disordered actions by the Catholic Church, we seem to ignore one while pointing our fingers at the others. Let’s call it as it is. We do discriminate against people engaging in gay sex more harshly than the 80% of our male members engaging in masturbation. Both acts are unnatural, sinful and are true examples of how we weak we are when it comes to self gratification at the expense of God. Let’s make a large and louder concerted effort to address masturbation in our Catholic schools, in our pulpits, in our newsletters, in our RE classes and throughout social media since it is such a pervasive problem within our church today. I think then, our message about gay sex will ring true since we are concerned with all sexual disordered members of our church and not just gay ones. We need to stop making lame excuses for homosexual and masturbatory behaviors. No person is forced to engage in either. We can all abstain if we love and trust in God enough to make the sacrifice. And those so weak that they succumb to their desires can be counseled both pastorally and professionally if needed. There are mental techniques and/or medications that will curb desire for masturbation and homosexual behaviors if all else fails. No amount of societal influence, stress, habit, or excuse that can stop a truly committed Catholic from curbing his sexual sins when there is so many supportive therapies that can help him.
While making a loud and clear stand against the grave sin of masturbation, we also need to address oral sex involving men that does not result in the deposition of sperm into the womb. It too is a pervasive disorder.
Catechism: 2352 By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action."138 “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."139
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
