The origin of love that homosexuals feel for one another

[LibralAteoJesus]

Don’t be deceived, as Eve was by the serpent in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t be tricked into thinking homosexuality is “love”. Love doesn’t go against God’s will.

Well, recall the Book of Genesis where God created us male and female, in the Divine image and likeness. The Divine image and likeness is a very special blessing we humans have, and we are also told we are temples of the Holy Spirit.

Man was to leave his father and mother and cling to his **WIFE…NOT **husband!
Further, the couple was to be fruitful and multiply.

There are a number of biblical references to homosexuality, and **NONE **of them talk about it in a positive light. You have the references to Sodom and Gomorrah where those two cities were destroyed, at least in part, due to the rampant homosexuality.

ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/zmorhombibl.HTM

All the biblical quotes on homosexuality use words like “abomination”,

1 Corinthians 6:9: “Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor homosexuals nor sodomites … will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Leviticus 18:22: “**You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.” **

1 Timothy 1:10: “… law is meant not for a righteous person but for the lawless and unruly … the unchaste,** practicing homosexuals**, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is opposed to sound teaching.”

Romans 1:26-27: “Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.”

Again, by defending homosexuality, one is not helping anyone, because it is very clearly going against God and nature.

How we are going against nature for defending homosexuality? why do then homosexuals love and lust over people from their same sex and not the other way around? No matter how they try , they will still be gays, it’s their nature which doesn’t harm you or hurt anyone in any way! You may see it as it goes against what you consider to be god, but if there is a tiny possibility that there is no god out there or at least what you see as god is differently to what it actually is, then when judging them, you would be very unjust.

 

[frobert]

How we are going against nature for defending homosexuality? why do then homosexuals love and lust over people from their same sex and not the other way around? No matter how they try , they will still be gays, it’s their nature which doesn’t harm you or hurt anyone in any way! You may see it as it goes against what you consider to be god, but if there is a tiny possibility that there is no god out there or at least what you see as god is differently to what it actually is, then when judging them, you would be very unjust.

Gays are a minority Why are any minorities attacked and disparaged? Perhaps it makes some people feel superior, maybe it’s ordinary prejudice, maybe they learned from their parents, for some it could be a reaction formation. There are many reasons but whatever the reason it is easy to hide behind the church when making negative statements about gays.

 

[LongingSoul]

For the most part, the question seems to be, “Is it possible to legitimately assert that two same-sex attracted people can be authentically ‘in love’ (in the same way that that term is generally understood)?” Many responses that I’ve read here make the assumption that this “in-love-ness” must necessarily involve sexual activity, and they’re quick to condemn same-sex sexual activity as de facto loveless when properly understood within the correct catechetical/moral-theological/natural-philosophical framework. Consequently, whatever “in-love” might mean in this context, actual love cannot have anything to do with it. Or so the argument tends to go. But the fundamental principle behind this argument–that the presence or possibility of sin in a relationship renders the relationship incapable of conveying, bearing, or imaging love in any authentic sense–is largely insupportable as it would render all human relationships loveless given the general propensity of human beings to sin. It’s a sad fact of our fallen condition: no human relationship is untouched by sin.

But in many ways, all of that is beside the point, because the basic assumption of the argument is not actually necessary: It is not necessary to assume that two same-sex attracted people who are “in love” are also having sex. Moreover, it’s not necessary to construe all same-sex couples as being in it for the sex, just as it’s not necessary to construe all unmarried heterosexual dating couples as would-be or actual fornicators.

When I contemplate and ponder on these issues, I do so in 3 contexts. First, that of the Church teaching which was my first education on the morality of human sexual conduct. Second, within the context of my own emerging sexuality and experience of love and lust… nowadays thirdly and most importantly, with regard to the education of my children who are all ready to fly the coop and make relationships and lives of their own. I need them to have an anchor lodged firmly in Truth and honesty regarding the sexual aspect of humanity and not feel confused by illusions and deceptions based on unlikely and unfamiliar scenarios.

We are all, every single one, called to the vocation of chastity pertaining to our state in life. Lets look at what the CCC teaches regarding chastity…

*II. The Vocation to Chastity

2337 Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man’s belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.

The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift.

2338 The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.*

Chastity needs to be understood as a virtue* that tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech*. In the phase of my life where I listened more willingly to the voice of my own feelings and experiences, I was very aware of this cross pollination of speech about lust and love. I was aware of the desire to call a sensation ‘friendship’ to legitimise it, but at the same time feeling intense need for closeness, an irritation for the boundaries and taboos in its way and most importantly… the presence of a jealousy that I could lie to myself was not sexual jealousy manifesting as a need for ‘exclusivity’. Luckily, through much resentful prayer and the grace of God I was plucked from the reaches of a fall by the indulging of a double ‘inner’ life and duplicity in speech.

The sacrifice became truly meaningful to me when the spiritual welfare of others ie. my children, pushed through the bubble of blind self interest that I found myself in, in the face of temptation.

 

[ready]

I have heard that God is love, and that all love is from God. God is indeed the source and originator of goodness and all that is love.

Now, what is it that homosexuals feel for each other?

Could we just put it down to eros or lust? I mean, you hear these remarkable stories of men who stay together well into their 80s, in what seems to be a truly loving relationship.

Now, if homosexuals did feel true love for one another, and God disapproves of homosexual relationships… then where is this love from? If all love is of God, and I know it’s a big ‘if’, but if homosexuals do truly love each other… where is it from? Could it still be of God, simply expressed in some distorted fashion?

Unlawful love (in God’s Eye) can only be lust.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Chastity needs to be understood as a virtue* that tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech*. In the phase of my life where I listened more willingly to the voice of my own feelings and experiences, I was very aware of this cross pollination of speech about lust and love. I was aware of the desire to call a sensation ‘friendship’ to legitimise it, but at the same time feeling intense need for closeness, an irritation for the boundaries and taboos in its way and most importantly… the presence of a jealousy that I could lie to myself was not sexual jealousy manifesting as a need for ‘exclusivity’. Luckily, through much resentful prayer and the grace of God I was plucked from the reaches of a fall by the indulging of a double ‘inner’ life and duplicity in speech.

The sacrifice became truly meaningful to me when the spiritual welfare of others ie. my children, pushed through the bubble of blind self interest that I found myself in, in the face of temptation.

Being honest with ourselves about how we feel, and attempting to see clearly the contours of our experience, the shape of our desires, the drift of our thoughts and affections is incredibly important and leads to the self-knowledge that is needful in order to truly lose ourselves in order to be found by grace, understanding that the only reason we have a self is so we can give it away in love. For what it’s worth, I commend you for your honesty, for your discernment, and for your self-knowledge.

I’m sure you are also aware that our own formative struggles, important as they are to us, are not necessarily the formative struggles of others. While others may pass through similar struggles or situations, they may do so with greater ease or less angst than we ourselves have passed through them. Being able to honor the experience of others as genuinely and sincerely theirs and being able to accept another’s evaluation of their own experience as honestly (though perhaps, from time to time, imperfectly) given is an important corollary to being able to be honest about and honor our own experience–it enables us to share our experience without insisting that all experience must conform to the patterns of our own.

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

I’m sure, too, that you were not suggesting that same-sex attracted people are in some way especially disposed to an unchaste duplicity of life or speech. And I’m sure that you were not suggesting that a chaste relationship between two same-sex attracted people who are in love with each other is in any way more duplicitous or blindly self-interested than a chaste relationship between two opposite-sex attracted people who are in love with each other.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Unlawful love (in God’s Eye) can only be lust.

Perhaps you would care to explicate what you mean.

Given that Paul states that love is the fulfilling of the law, “unlawful love” seems tantalizingly oxymoronic. If it is love, i.e., if it mirrors the radical self-giving of the Trinitarian Life of Love which characterizes God (God is Love, after all), if it seeks the good of others and disposes itself to the good of others above the good of the self, in what way can such a love be unlawful? What law can be made against such a love? And is it your argument that such a love is impossible for same-sex attracted people to either give or to receive? What is it that makes love, in the context of this discussion (and let’s be clear, we’re talking about love, not genital sexual expression, not love-as-euphemism-for-sex), unlawful?

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[ready]

Grace & Peace!

Perhaps you would care to explicate what you mean.

Given that Paul states that love is the fulfilling of the law, “unlawful love” seems tantalizingly oxymoronic. If it is love, i.e., if it mirrors the radical self-giving of the Trinitarian Life of Love which characterizes God (God is Love, after all), if it seeks the good of others and disposes itself to the good of others above the good of the self, in what way can such a love be unlawful? What law can be made against such a love? And is it your argument that such a love is impossible for same-sex attracted people to either give or to receive? What is it that makes love, in the context of this discussion (and let’s be clear, we’re talking about love, not genital sexual expression, not love-as-euphemism-for-sex), unlawful?

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

If we love someone romantically of the opposite sex, or someone married to another person, or a dog, or a minor, or a parent, or a sibling, etc., then we are not loving that person or creature in lawful way in God’s Eye. Thus we are guilty of the sin of lust. God bless you.

 

[LongingSoul]

Being honest with ourselves about how we feel, and attempting to see clearly the contours of our experience, the shape of our desires, the drift of our thoughts and affections is incredibly important and leads to the self-knowledge that is needful in order to truly lose ourselves in order to be found by grace, understanding that the only reason we have a self is so we can give it away in love. For what it’s worth, I commend you for your honesty, for your discernment, and for your self-knowledge.

I’m sure you are also aware that our own formative struggles, important as they are to us, are not necessarily the formative struggles of others. While others may pass through similar struggles or situations, they may do so with greater ease or less angst than we ourselves have passed through them. Being able to honor the experience of others as genuinely and sincerely theirs and being able to accept another’s evaluation of their own experience as honestly (though perhaps, from time to time, imperfectly) given is an important corollary to being able to be honest about and honor our own experience–it enables us to share our experience without insisting that all experience must conform to the patterns of our own.

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

I’m sure, too, that you were not suggesting that same-sex attracted people are in some way especially disposed to an unchaste duplicity of life or speech. And I’m sure that you were not suggesting that a chaste relationship between two same-sex attracted people who are in love with each other is in any way more duplicitous or blindly self-interested than a chaste relationship between two opposite-sex attracted people who are in love with each other.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

The reason for giving my experience of this love/lust dichotomy was not to expect others to follow my lead, but to demonstrate the nature of the a ‘double life and duplicity of speech’ that’s required to make what is lust into love. As for taking an ‘each to his own’ philosophy regarding the morality of sexual behaviour… I think that being Anglican, influences your beliefs here. As a Catholic, I believe that morality is a universal standard that engages our desire for God and we are all capable of appreciating it to the most. When I hear people saying that everyone has their own concept of love and they should be free to follow their heart without being told ‘our truth’… I think of the famed 18th century princess (mistakenly thought to be Marie Antionette), who upon hearing that the peasants had run out of bread, replied ignorantly ‘let them eat cake’ (cake being a mixture of flour and water that caked the bread tins to stop the bread sticking during cooking in the pre non-stick surface times). She had no thought of opening up the palace to the bounty she was blessed with to share with those less fortunate.

That is the same with the truth we are blessed with also. It is the bounty that nourishes and if we are saying ‘each to his own’ with regards this truth, we are doing others a disservice. Treating them like peasants and ourselves like royalty.

CCC…"* Chastity presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respect the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life."*

As for what I’m suggesting with regards to the difference between a chaste relationship between same sex couples and a chaste relationship between a man and woman, I refer you again to the Catechism for clarity. Chastity is different according to our state in life. As a married couple conjugal chastity permits the full sexual communion between a man and woman. As a dating or engaged couple, chastity permits romanctic regard along with the exclusivity pertaining to romantic regard. For single people, chastity means disinterested friendship and the freedom that pertains to friendship without being bound by the commitments and vows that pertain only to marriageable relationships.

More on the virtue of chastity from the CCC…

*2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. the alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. “Man’s dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end.”

**2340 **Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God’s commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. “Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity.”

2341 The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.*

continued…

 

[LongingSoul]

*2342 Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life.128 The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality is being formed during childhood and adolescence.

2343 Chastity has laws of growth which progress through stages marked by imperfection and too often by sin. “Man . . . day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions; and so he knows, loves, and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth.”

2344 Chastity represents an eminently personal task; it also involves a cultural effort, for there is “an interdependence between personal betterment and the improvement of society.” Chastity presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respect the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life

2345 Chastity is a moral virtue. It is also a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort. The Holy Spirit enables one whom the water of Baptism has regenerated to imitate the purity of Christ.*

The virtue of chastity is mutually exclusive with entertaining inappropriate sexual passions cut off from end goal of human sexuality. Striving for chastity has ‘laws of growth’ and while on that path we may continue to fall into sin, those episodes are marked by awareness of sin and remorse and resolve to overcome that weakness and by that attitude, we receive the grace to succeed in self-mastery and the peace and beatitude that accompany it. Self mastery is impossible without a genuine commitment to leave sin behind. I’m inordinately attracted to cheesecake but it’s bad for me. I don’t progress in self mastery by calling by the cheesecake shop, browsing the cake cabinet, sitting on a stool indulging all the senses… but not eating anything. To move forward, I have to leave the cheesecake shop behind and find a fruit and vej shop to wander in. The intensity of the passions of the flesh won’t be there, but the freedom to choose from what is good alone, elevates our experience of being human to a level of purity and holiness and true joy.

 

[James82]

I would like to take a shot at this…

The love you describe is from God, brotherly or intimate. If a homosexual relationship includes the act of sex then the line has been crossed. This is no different than a heterosexual relationship involving premarital sex - one is just as wrong as the other.

The difference between the homosexual and the heterosexual relationships that God approves is going to be in valid marriage. The church teaches that God only approves of the sexual act within a valid marriage and only one man and one woman make up a valid marriage, therefor only man and woman are only allowed to have sex. While society has desensitized itself to premarital sex acts and to a lesser degree homosexual acts, neither are approved by God and are equally wrong. The heterosexual premarital sex act can become an approved act by God only after the couple is validly married, the homosexual sex act can never be approved but he love in any of these relationships is always of God.

Hope this helps.
Peace!!!

Hate to be the stick in the mud…

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,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 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.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

The reason for giving my experience of this love/lust dichotomy was not to expect others to follow my lead, but to demonstrate the nature of the a ‘double life and duplicity of speech’ that’s required to make what is lust into love.

Yes, that’s what I understood you to be saying. For the most part, at any rate. But if you’re suggesting something regarding what I’ve written or regarding your perception of the emotional lives of same-sex attracted people, I wish you would actually openly say it. It’s difficult to respond to what you’ve written if I can only infer your intentions.

For instance, if you’re saying that same-sex attracted people have a more difficult time than others separating love from lust, I’d be curious regarding your reasoning. If you’re saying that same-sex attracted people are only capable of confusing lust and love, I’d say you were being insulting. If you’re actually going further and saying that same-sex attracted people cannot give or receive love, only lust, and that their attempts to discover love can only be sinfully duplicitous, I would say you were being cruel and rather sadistic in addition to being insulting.

As for taking an ‘each to his own’ philosophy regarding the morality of sexual behaviour… I think that being Anglican, influences your beliefs here.

Sorry, LongingSoul, I think you’re putting words in my mouth here or have completely misunderstood my point. I never once advocated for such a philosophy. First, I was very clear that I was not talking about genital sexual expression. Second, I was very clear regarding my understanding of love and lust–I think you would have to engage in some considerable feats of eisegesis to read into what I wrote any sort of advocacy for a “to each his own” philosophy. Third, such a philosophy is not a hallmark of Anglicanism.

As a Catholic, I believe that morality is a universal standard that engages our desire for God and we are all capable of appreciating it to the most.

Indeed.

When I hear people saying that everyone has their own concept of love and they should be free to follow their heart without being told ‘our truth’…

Wait. Who was saying that everyone has their own concept of love and should be free to etc.? I was writing of human love as if it were analogous to the radical self-giving that characterizes the Trinitarian Life of God–moreover, I was asserting that same-sex attracted people were capable of giving and receiving such love, experiencing in the midst of a chaste and loving relationship the conversion of eros into agape…which is what any other human being can hope to experience in the midst of a chaste and loving relationship.

I was affirming, in short, that there is not a double standard of love and loving when it comes to same-sex attracted people–that like other human beings, they too can have such a fundamental human experience as falling in love and having that love reciprocated without having to view that experience as a source of shame, disgust, or sin. There is not, in other words an understanding that we’re speaking of “love” when we speak of the capacity of same-sex attracted people to give and receive love and Love when we speak of the capacity of other, actual human beings to give and receive love. Consequently, never once did I suggest that love was either actually or conceptually different for different people.

As for what I’m suggesting with regards to the difference between a chaste relationship between same sex couples and a chaste relationship between a man and woman, I refer you again to the Catechism for clarity.

I don’t see how anything you’ve quoted regarding chastity contradicts anything I’ve written in this thread so far.

[CONTINUED…]

 

[Deo_Volente]

…CONTINUED AND COMPLETED]

Chastity is different according to our state in life.

Sure, chastity will be expressed in different ways according to our state in life. I never stated otherwise.

But your interpretation of what chastity means for dating and single people, while it bears a resemblance to magisterial teaching, is nonetheless an extrapolation from or an interpretation of it. It is not magisterial teaching in itself. To my knowledge, the notion that two same-sex attracted people who are in a committed and chaste partnership are somehow *not *being chaste because they are not and cannot be married by the RCC cannot be found in the catechetical teaching on chastity. I have yet to come across a magisterial teaching that same-sex attracted people must never fall in love or that they must never discover in love a depth of companionship that we might term a partnership.

The virtue of chastity is mutually exclusive with entertaining inappropriate sexual passions cut off from end goal of human sexuality.

I’m certainly not advocating the entertainment of “inappropriate sexual passions.” It would help, though, to understand what you mean by the phrase and the reasoning you have used to come to that understanding.

I’m assuming that by “end goal of human sexuality” you mean genital sexual expression within the context of marriage, as in “2360 Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman”. But are you suggesting that all relationships must be so ordered, given that “2332 Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others”? Is it your argument that *all *bonds of communion with others, regardless of context, must be ordered to marriage and the marital act? Because that sounds absurd. Would you make the argument that priestly celibacy is an unnatural thwarting of sexuality because it seems to willfully deny the possibility of “conjugal love of man and woman”? That, too, sounds absurd.

I doubt that those things are your arguments. But is it your argument that being attracted to someone necessarily means wanting to have sex with them, or that we’re attracted to people in order to have sex with them, and therefore attraction can only morally occur in relationships in which marriage is a potential outcome? I think that’s a difficult argument to make. Not impossible to make, I suppose…but I’ve not seen it made here, let alone made in any sort of convincing way. And again, it seems to be an extrapolation from/interpretation of the teaching on chastity and sexuality, and not a part of that teaching in itself.

Also, it make no sense: why should we want to have sex with someone simply because we’re attracted to them?

Again, it would be helpful to understand what you mean by “inappropriate sexual passions.” Surely you’re not suggesting that it is inappropriate for same-sex attracted people to experience what it is to be attracted to someone? Surely you’re not suggesting that it is inappropriate for same-sex attracted people to experience what it is to fall in love with someone? Surely you’re not suggesting that a same-sex attracted person must look at such a basic human experience as falling in love with someone to whom they’re attracted and who is capable of reciprocating that love as an experience of something disgusting or inappropriate or wrong? Surely you’re not suggesting that a same-sex attracted person who finds themselves in love with someone should refrain from saying, “I find myself in love! How great! I hope this relationship grows and matures in love!” but should rather say, “I hate myself for falling in love. I hope this relationship withers away and I shall do everything in my power to destroy it.”?

I’m inordinately attracted to cheesecake but it’s bad for me. I don’t progress in self mastery by calling by the cheesecake shop, browsing the cake cabinet, sitting on a stool indulging all the senses… but not eating anything. To move forward, I have to leave the cheesecake shop behind and find a fruit and vej shop to wander in.

Is it your understanding that two same-sex attracted people who are in a loving and chaste relationship are like someone in a cake shop “indulging the senses…but not eating anything”? Would you characterize other chaste relationships this way? Do you find that fundamental human experiences such as falling in love with someone who could potentially return that love must be construed as an indulgence for same-sex attracted people…because somehow same-sex attracted people cannot or should not be able to experience the fulness of the human experience without some form of indulgence? Do you experience some sense of injustice at the thought that same-sex attracted people could be in love and also chaste–because you believe that since whatever love they might share cannot be sexually consummated in any morally legitimate sense, their love must be worthless…so what good is it? Do you find that an inappropriate desire for cheesecake is generally an accurate analogy for being in love with an actual human being, sharing your life with them, and being for them in a way that is analogous to and patterned after the radical self-giving that characterizes the Trinitarian Life of Love?

Just wondering…

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[SuperLuigi]

I see what you’re getting at, I really do. If we can make the case that homosexual couples do in fact show real, genuine love to each other, then homosexuality can’t be all bad right? Nothing can be that sinful if it has love at it’s core…or something along those lines?

One of the devil’s greatest tricks is corrupting the word “love”.

The Church has it made very clear that simply being homosexual is not a sin. “Sin requires an act,” to quote one of the apologists.

Homosexual acts are evil because they are a lie; they attempt to mimic a relationship that cannot exist.

This promotion of homosexual behaviour probably hurts GLBTQ folks the most by leading them down a path ridden with false expectations.

 

[LongingSoul]

Yes, that’s what I understood you to be saying. For the most part, at any rate. But if you’re suggesting something regarding what I’ve written or regarding your perception of the emotional lives of same-sex attracted people, I wish you would actually openly say it. It’s difficult to respond to what you’ve written if I can only infer your intentions.

For instance, if you’re saying that same-sex attracted people have a more difficult time than others separating love from lust, I’d be curious regarding your reasoning. If you’re saying that same-sex attracted people are only capable of confusing lust and love, I’d say you were being insulting. If you’re actually going further and saying that same-sex attracted people cannot give or receive love, only lust, and that their attempts to discover love can only be sinfully duplicitous, I would say you were being cruel and rather sadistic in addition to being insulting.

If I could invite you out of the subjectiveness of how personal feelings are receiving the teachings of the Church and to ponder the bigger picture of what the teachings mean for the life of the world and the life of souls.

For single people regardless of their orientation, disinterested friendship and godly chastity are right and achievable to that state in life. Eros love, the type of love that inspires sexual and or romantic reciprocity, are proper only to marriageable relationships. There is no end other than marriage and procreation, that supports dedicating the self to an exclusive lifelong union. Without the natural fruitfulness implied by that union, that sort of commitment has not natural or divine merit.

Sorry, LongingSoul, I think you’re putting words in my mouth here or have completely misunderstood my point. I never once advocated for such a philosophy. First, I was very clear that I was not talking about genital sexual expression. Second, I was very clear regarding my understanding of love and lust–I think you would have to engage in some considerable feats of eisegesis to read into what I wrote any sort of advocacy for a “to each his own” philosophy. Third, such a philosophy is not a hallmark of Anglicanism.
Wait. Who was saying that everyone has their own concept of love and should be free to etc.? I was writing of human love as if it were analogous to the radical self-giving that characterizes the Trinitarian Life of God–moreover, I was asserting that same-sex attracted people were capable of giving and receiving such love, experiencing in the midst of a chaste and loving relationship the conversion of eros into agape…which is what any other human being can hope to experience in the midst of a chaste and loving relationship.

I was affirming, in short, that there is not a double standard of love and loving when it comes to same-sex attracted people–that like other human beings, they too can have such a fundamental human experience as falling in love and having that love reciprocated without having to view that experience as a source of shame, disgust, or sin. There is not, in other words an understanding that we’re speaking of “love” when we speak of the capacity of same-sex attracted people to give and receive love and Love when we speak of the capacity of other, actual human beings to give and receive love. Consequently, never once did I suggest that love was either actually or conceptually different for different people.

To be honest I can’t envision the type of relationship you are promoting here as licit and in keeping with the teachings of the Church. I’ve been alive for 51 years and experienced relationship as well as observed relationships… but this scenario you’re painting of two same sex people having romantic/sexual/’interested’ feelings for each other… but without the sex… is foreign to me. I know what it is like to be celibate and chaste whilst having such ‘interested’ attraction to another… but I would not conceive of that as having a natural trajectory into a lifelong celibate limbo. That to me sounds highly inconceivable. I’ve known the beauty of ‘best friendship’ with another, but those relationships have none of the romantic, sexual or ‘interested’ desires which inspire the surrender of self to a ‘two become one’ union demanding exclusivity and commitment. Early on I even had to discern a calling to a celibate religious life where I understand that that ‘interested’ love finds a natural home in that special vocation to love the Lord in lifelong communion belonging to that state.

The type of relationship you seem to be suggesting for same sex attracted people is not do-able.

 

[LongingSoul]

A good read by David Morrison a formally actively gay man who came into chastity. catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0001.html

He identifies 3 particular objection raised in defending gay relationships, the third being this…

…some say, “God is love. What I do with my lover has love as its focus. Therefore God must approve of what we do, or at least not disapprove of it, since God is love.”

He then goes on…"this line of reasoning can best be addressed by probing what is meant by “love,” both in the mind of the persons engaged in the conversation and in the mind of Christ as well as the magisterium of the Church. If one truly loves another person, does one join him in activity that frequently causes harm? (Even before the arrival of HIV, sexually-transmitted disease in homosexually-active men was the subject of epidemiological concern). If one loves the other person, does one demand that he serve as a sexual object? Can sexually-active homosexuality ever be more than this, given that there can be no other ultimate object than pleasure?

Modern people need to be reminded that God destined a dual purpose in sex, unity between man and woman as well an avenue for the procreation of children. When one completely and intentionally removes either one of these conditions, the use of sex degenerates into misuse.
I have left love for the end because, in the end, that is what this debate is all about. There is an old saying that all the best lies have an element of truth. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the discussion of homosexuality.

Gay activists appeal to the public mind by defending their “right to love whom they choose.” In doing so they count on the muddled understanding of love which is so much abroad right now, and on the lie that all loves are equal.

But while they teach truth in generality, there is falsehood in their specific. As much as gay activists might wish to claim gay love imitates the divine, it is simply not so. At the heart of divine love is the transcendent desire to lose self in the good of the other, and, as both my life’s experience and reason have taught me, an actively homosexual life precludes that desire. True love, Christ’s love, will not bow to the whims of erotic enchantment or desire. True love knows restraint.

Christ told us, just before he showed us, that there is no greater love than that we lay down our lives for our friends (John 15:13). The greatest love is his, the perfect sacrifice of self that others might benefit. It is this most holy, most difficult, most chaste form of love to which homosexual men and women are called. We are summoned, like the apostle Paul, to pour ourselves out for the good of the Kingdom, sharing with many the talents and fruit which, had we been heterosexually oriented, we might have shared primarily with spouse and children.

I do not mean to write glibly about this particular cross. If my words here sound bloodless or impersonal, it is only because I do not wish to make myself the focus. The story of the emotional struggle and sacrifice which have come with this path is long and deep enough that it cannot be told here. Although I have not dwelt on the emotional details, faithful Catholics need to know that there are devoted, chaste homosexuals in their parishes, religious orders, and apostolates and that many of us live lives of deep sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom. Most of us are quiet. Many of us you will never know. But all of us stand in need of your prayers, charity, and good will.

I end with two quotations relevant to identity and discipleship. The first is from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Julia is explaining her decision not to marry her lover, after their affair and after divorcing their original spouses. Her words have to do with choosing to serve God or something else – a choice we each face:

"How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I am not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable…the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I am not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s."6

The second is from Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship:

“And if we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we will have to go to him, for only he knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us to follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.”

 

[frobert]

Unlawful love (in God’s Eye) can only be lust.

Even though I do not understand how you know what God’s eye sees and how he interprets what he sees, I will accept that what you are saying is that “Unlawful love” is not love in the eyes of God. This comes from a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of church teaching which would not be the understanding of to the vast majority of the population including many Catholics. For a fuller appreciation of this understanding please read Scientific and Natural Law Analyses of Homosexuality: A Methodological Study by Stephen J. Pope in The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1997)

So what I am trying to get at: in practical terms wouldn’t it be much more efficient to let people know that CC catechism and interpretation of scriptures tells us Catholic’s that a gay relationship is sinful?

 

[ready]

Even though I do not understand how you know what God’s eye sees and how he interprets what he sees, I will accept that what you are saying is that “Unlawful love” is not love in the eyes of God. This comes from a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of church teaching which would not be the understanding of to the vast majority of the population including many Catholics. For a fuller appreciation of this understanding please read Scientific and Natural Law Analyses of Homosexuality: A Methodological Study by Stephen J. Pope in The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1997)

So what I am trying to get at: in practical terms wouldn’t it be much more efficient to let people know that CC catechism and interpretation of scriptures tells us Catholic’s that a gay relationship is sinful?

No, I don’t think so. God bless you.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

If I could invite you out of the subjectiveness of how personal feelings are receiving the teachings of the Church and to ponder the bigger picture of what the teachings mean for the life of the world and the life of souls.

I’ve not been arguing against church teaching here. And I’ve not been doing so because things like this…

Eros love, the type of love that inspires sexual and or romantic reciprocity, are proper only to marriageable relationships. There is no end other than marriage and procreation, that supports dedicating the self to an exclusive lifelong union. Without the natural fruitfulness implied by that union, that sort of commitment has not natural or divine merit.

…are not actually part of church teaching. Have you read Deus Caritas Est? Surely the conversion of eros into agape that the Pope Emeritus describes, as well as the warning he gives that the rejection of eros too easily becomes a rejection of the body and therefore a rejection of actual human wholeness, are both applicable to same-sex attracted people–otherwise we cannot actually speak of human wholeness where same-sex attracted people are concerned, and we must do all we can to prevent them from experiencing an eros that cannot bear agape fruit.

That sort of project, though–the extinction of eros in same-sex attracted people–receives no warrant from a magisterium that is reluctant to call even a disordered inclination toward homosexual genital acts sinful, and cannot even bring itself to address the ludicrous question of whether or not an inclination to be attracted to a human being (not a genital act) of the same sex is disordered.

Perhaps I’m having a hard time understanding your conception of attraction. Is it your belief that behind our attraction to those to whom we’re attracted there is always a desire to have sex with them? I think that’s a difficult way of conceiving of attraction that manages to elide over the fundamentally attractive nature of the beautiful (and the good and the true). Is it your contention that we find personally and/or physically beautiful people attractive because, in the end, we want to have sex with them, and not because beauty and a relationship to what is beautiful (and good and true) is a worthy and desirable end in itself? I live in a big city. I see attractive people around me all the time. If I find myself lost in another’s beauty, I often say a little prayer that runs like this, “Thank you, God, for this person! Thank you for the beauty you have given this person which is such a wonderful image of your own beauty. Bless this person and prosper them by your grace in the good you would have them do.” Just because I’m attracted to them doesn’t mean I want to have sex with them. So maybe you can help me out: are you actually saying that when we are attracted to a beautiful person what we really want to do is have sex with them?

To be honest I can’t envision the type of relationship you are promoting here as licit and in keeping with the teachings of the Church.

Simply because our imaginations cannot conceive of all the forms by which the good can come to us and by which we can apprehend the good does not mean that the good cannot come to us in those forms we cannot imagine. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard…

I’ve been alive for 51 years and experienced relationship as well as observed relationships… but this scenario you’re painting of two same sex people having romantic/sexual/’interested’ feelings for each other… but without the sex… is foreign to me.
…] ‘interested’ attraction to another …]
…] ‘interested’ love …]

I think you’re laboring under a misconceived notion of both what I’m saying and what “disinterested” means. The relationship I’ve been describing (as I wrote earlier) is unmercenary–the companions are in it for love of each other, not for what they can get from each other. That’s how I understand “disinterested”–the relationship does not degrade the participants by reducing its participants to their use-value. Truth be told, I cannot think of any relationship based on love in which the participants are not interested in the good of the other–in that sense, no loving relationship can be disinterested. Which leads me to reason that “disinterested” in the catechism is not a synonym for “lacking in emotion” or “from a distance” or “uninvolved” but is, again, unmercenary.

So if you think that I’ve been describing mercenary relationships in which the participants are in it for whatever they can get from each other, then I’m afraid you’ve completely misunderstood what I’ve been describing.

The type of relationship you seem to be suggesting for same sex attracted people is not do-able.

That’s an assertion for which I’ve yet to see any compelling reasoning or evidence. Perhaps you are correct in saying that the type of relationship you think I’m describing is not do-able because you understand the relationship I’m describing to be fundamentally mercenary and self-interested. But that’s not the relationship I’ve been describing…

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

[Quoting Morrison] If one loves the other person, does one demand that he serve as a sexual object? Can sexually-active homosexuality ever be more than this, given that there can be no other ultimate object than pleasure?

I’ll not comment on the suppositions and assumptions regarding same-sex attracted people that undergird these rhetorical questions but I will say this: I’m not describing the sort of relationship in which one demands that another serve as a sexual object. Nor am I describing a relationship in which there is homosexual genital activity. So I question the relevance of the lengthy Morrison quotation(s).

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[Rau]

… Nor am I describing a relationship in which there is homosexual genital activity.

Mark, is the type of relationship you describe one that you simply postulate for purposes of the discussion or one that you observe as commonplace?

If you observe it, do you observe it in both homosexual and heterosexual couples?

Would your argument change if the relationship involved the (homosexual) participants desiring, but for sake of argument, not acting on, mutual sexual release