Grace & Peace!
Ed,
I believe we need to ask any LGBT supporter that bears the moniker
Christian
Anglican
Methodist
Born Again
or whatever Christian stripe the following question…
Do you accept the teaching authority of the Catholic Church as a Christian?
Do you accept the Protocanonicals as the Word of God as opposed to the Catholic Bible with the Deuterocanonicals?
No to any of those questions allows you to say…
Well then…
I do not accept the opinions of the American Psychiatric Association, The American Medical Association, The National Association of Social Workers or any society or professional organization that accepts the LGBT agenda…
I accept the DSM I, DSM II and DSM III…I do not accept the DSM IV or V…and if asked why, because you believe that they are false teachings based on a political point of view and there is no obligation to accept them.
If there is any question…then ask when it will be that they accept the teaching authority of the Church or the acceptance of the Deuterocanonicals…
Revealed truths vs Politicized progpaganda…
Coptic, it seems that what you’re saying in this post is that what all of this comes down to is a question of authority. And authority may play a part here. But the way that you’re presenting your point, at least in this post, suggests that the sort of authority the APA has and the sort of authority the Catholic Church has are part of the same spectrum of authority but are, perhaps, on different ends of it. But what that sort of rhetoric does is misconstrue the nature of the Church’s authority as well as the nature of the APA’s authority (such as it is).
I.e., by evaluating the APA’s authority, findings and opinions
in terms of (as opposed to
in the light of) the Catholic Church’s authoritative teachings on faith and morality, you simultaneously conflate the APA’s authority and diminish the Church’s authority by suggesting that the terms by which you understand the one or the other are interchangeable…and then you fault the APA for not being the Church. In sum, you’re not letting the Church be the Church and the APA be the APA. (And, to be honest, I fear that this is all a function of a kind of relativism to which you’ve fallen prey–you believe what you do with regard to homosexuality, the Church does not expressly oppose it, but the APA does…so what’s really under debate here is neither the Church’s nor the APA’s authority…but
yours.)
Your rhetoric is further complicated by your acceptance of DSM I, II and III. Why recognize III and not IV? On what basis was the scientific authority of the APA in compiling DSM III compromised when they compiled DSM IV? Is it just on the basis of their shift in an understanding of homosexuality? And how does the refusal to classify homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder go against the authority of the Church, particularly when the church in its catechism does not classify it as a psychiatric disorder either?
Moreover, is it not to be expected that in both medicine and psychiatry that various understandings of disorders, diseases and behaviors will change given experiential and experimental evidence which warrants change be made? Isn’t it on the quality of that evidence and the quality of its evaluation that scientific authority is determined? Would you argue that DSM V is
entirely unacceptable on
scientific terms when you disagree
on moral terms with what does
not appear in it?
Furthermore, is not an authoritative scientific approach substantially
different from the way the Church authoritatively views and teaches doctrine and dogma? And isn’t that okay? Should the sciences cease experimenting and observing because the Roman Catholic Church will not alter it’s doctrine and dogma? No! Should the Church change what is unchangeable because the sciences are constantly changing and refining our understanding of ourselves and the world around us? No! But can the findings and opinions of scientific and/or medical authorities be integrated into a faithful Catholic understanding of the human adventure? Of course!
So what’s the big deal?
I know you (and others) allege that the APA and similar organizations were over-run with homosexual activists, leading to a shift in their respective organization’s understandings of homosexuality. But in terms of the simple fact of same-sex attraction, it does not appear as if same-sex attracted people are any more psychiatrically impaired then opposite-sex attracted people from leading healthy human lives by virtue of the nature of their sexual attractions. If same-sex attraction (i.e., homosexuality in its most basic or fundamental sense) should be seen in the same light as obsessive compulsive disorder or some other psychiatric disorder, then I’m afraid that what’s really at issue here is: what constitutes a true psychiatric disorder? And I don’t think the Church will be weighing in on that any time soon.
(By the by, I, as an Anglican, believe that the Deuterocanonicals are fully the Word of God. But naturally, if I fully accepted the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the same way that Roman Catholics do, then I wouldn’t be Anglican…)
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!
