What are your ideas for the LGBT person's vocation in the Church?

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Well, after reading (skimming) 80+ posts while I was away, my main question is: @Gab123, did you ever look into those videos of Eve Tushnet that I posted? I’m getting a strong indication from your series of posts that you still don’t quite understand this thread.

And also, regarding “praying the gay away,” remember that sexuality of any kind is not limited to a fleeting (or enduring) temptation. It’s not merely an attraction to commit certain acts (disordered or not). So the idea of a homosexual person “praying the gay away” is more like an amputee praying for God to give him a leg. That is, sure, it might be possible – but it’s akin to a miraculous intervention, NOT merely a development in grace and sanctity. It’s NOT like praying for the grace to diminish vices of lust, envy, and so on…

Or, again, “praying the gay away” is more like a heterosexual praying for God to take their sexuality away. Seems absurd, right? Well, it should. There’s a reason why many people refer to same-sex attraction as the homosexual orientation. You don’t have to believe that gay is its own “orientation.” But you do need to realize that, for the typical gay person, being gay resembles a typical heterosexual’s sexuality — only it’s not centered on the opposite sex.

So should a SSA person pray for God to make them heterosexual? Well, do you think an amputee should pray for God to give them a new limb?

Of course, that whole scenario is assuming that something is disordered about same-sex attraction to the extent that all SSA people should be actively trying to change (which of course is not the mandate of even orthodox Catholic ministries, like Courage.)
 
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Well, if vocation doesn’t have to be religious life/priesthood/marriage. Many have already mentioned that vocation could be anything as long as it leads other people back to God and a holy life fitting to a Christians.
But I guess, if you mean vocation in the strict sense of “religious life/priesthood/marriage”, there is another way out. You can always be a Consecrated Virgin, St. Catherine of Siena is the notable example of living out a life of holiness without being married or getting into a convent, and she was a consecrated virgin, third order Dominican. I’m not particularly sure about the guys, but I am sure there would be a male counterpart for consecrated virgins.
 
Not that “flaunting” is ever okay but I should point out that when heterosexuals do so, they aren’t flaunting a sexuality that is objectively disordered from the get go.
 
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grotto said:
The further references to Father have no place in a discussion of LGBT desires for vocations in the Church.
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How is the story of a good priest, a courageous man, a hero by any rational standard, who happened to be homosexual not relevant to the discussion of LGBT vocations?

The Church is the better for having had Father Judge as a priest. I think that’s highly relevant to the issue of vocations for homosexual men.
 
I think that’s actually where a lot of us are having difficulty. For many of us, it seems like the lay single life is treated as…sort of an awkward, unfortunate interval before you graduate to the adult’s table by getting married. Or worse, as a cause for suspicion (because if there weren’t something wrong with you, you’d be married).

People do want to be loved and supported in their own path, whether you want to call it a “vocation” or not. That’s always been my biggest personal struggle - that it seems like once you get past college age, marriage is the only acceptable solution to loneliness, and the other answer is basically “pray more and stop whining.” The idea of spiritual support or advice is pretty much nonexistent, because people don’t know what to do with you other than marriage advice and maybe suggest a few minor tasks.
 
But also the problem with a particular strand of this thread is forgetting that this thread already assumes that single life (i.e., not married) is a vocation.

LGBT Christians in the Catholic Church get that. We hear it all the time. We can’t get married. Got ya, capt’n.

My concern (and I think the bigger concern of faithful gay people in the church) is precisely being able to flourish in the single life in the Church. Being single does not negate the common human calling (and need) to relationship, to community, to service, to love, to closeness, to companionship.

And so here is where I think the Church is sometimes (often?) lacking: Promoting those means for single people to thrive relationally, communally, in love. One reason why there needs to be particular attention in the LGBT context is because we aren’t just talking about elderly people who are widowed or never got married. No, we’re talking about people old and young who are struggling to make sense of their place in the church. They typically would rather enter into romantic relationships. Etc.
 
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No you can’t because that’s how things work instead. Looks like your stuck or something in a sense.
 
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The Pope is fallible and is only infallible when he speaks ex cathedral. Plus the media likes to spin things to their agenda and take everything out context.
 
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There’s was article from a few years ago that was originally published in the Washington Post, “Growing movement of gay Christians choosing celibacy.” It has a quote from Eve Tushnet:
Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians, who find it easier to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the best-known of 20 bloggers on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and lesbian Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month…

The desire of these new celibacy advocates to emphasize the positive and to not have LGBT people defined by their sex lives has left what can look like a gaping hole: Virtual silence on the difficulty of not having sex. Or about sex in general. Many of the essays on the blog tend toward the academic, removed from physical human passions or desires.

Some say they are simply hesitant to speak or write publicly about topics, such as whether it’s okay to think about sex, or to masturbate, and whether they find celibacy difficult. Gay Christians considering or trying celibacy do sometimes discuss such things in private settings, [Josh] Gonnerman says.

Tushnet, a writer, anticipates some of these questions in her memoir “Gay and Catholic,” which positions her as kind of a non-judgmental Dear Abby to the celibate GLBT set.

“How do I deal with crushes? In terms of physical affection, how far can you go?” she asks in a “Frequently Asked Questions” section in her book.

She urges people not to focus so much on the sex they can’t have, and instead find other places to pursue intimacy, such as deeper friendships that could be seen as spouselike, co-living arrangements, public service and the arts as ways to express intimacy.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...istians-choosing-celibacy-20141214-story.html

One of the problems I see in these “spouselike deeper friendships” and “co-living arrangements” is that many some of these people will probably fall in love with each other and will end up having sex in the end. A lot of the books that I’ve read about ex-gay programs mention that many of the gay men in them who were trying to go straight ended up having sex with each other in secret. I think that staying celibate is very difficult and I doubt that most of these gay Christians who are trying to do this will be successful in the end.

And many conservative straight Christians, I believe, will continue to treat anyone gay, even those who are celibate, as second class, defective, mentally ill, etc.
 
Perhaps, but again this the Catholic context. Sexual activity outside of marriage will not be endorsed, at least in orthodox quarters.

So I see people like Eve Tushnet being helpful in that she recognizes the struggle (e.g., of not being married, or not having a romantic relationship) while also trying to be creative in ways to live it out (in a Catholic or traditional context). For some people, this may well include celibate partnerships or committed friendships. She does see the difficulties involved with celibate partnerships. I have corresponded with her over e-mail before, and she says that the trouble can be simply trying to find a substitute for romance/marriage (“How far can I go…?”). For her, that’s not the right focus.

But on the other hand, I think, at least as Christians, we have to recognize the value of celibacy in itself. Jesus was celibate; various Apostles recommended and practiced it; and saints have lived it over the church’s history.

Sex isn’t the center of everything; however, things like relationship, companionship, love, friendship are more pressing and universal. Hence, the churches DO need to at least try to find alternative ways (beyond marriage and romance) of emphasizing those outlets for gay people.

Cue this thread…
 
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Well there actually is. Sexuality is on a spectrum, right? There are people who have successfully stopped feeling same sex attraction

I don’t understand how someone can be born gay when science tends to suggest many of your sexual preferences develop way later on
 
SacredHeartBassist said:
Well there actually is. Sexuality is on a spectrum, right? There are people who have successfully stopped feeling same sex attraction

I don’t understand how someone can be born gay when science tends to suggest many of your sexual preferences develop way later on
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Very few LGB people have claimed that they completely stopped feeling any same sex attraction. I already quoted Alan Chambers above. He was the president of Exodus International, the largest organization that tried to help people change their orientation with “250 local ministries in the United States and Canada and over 150 ministries in 17 other countries.” At a conference in 2012 he said:
The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them have not experienced a change in their orientation.
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Also, someone’s sexual orientation is not exactly a “preference.” It’s not similar to someone, for example, preferring chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream. The chocolate is the one I prefer, but I could easily eat a bowl of vanilla ice cream, too. But as a gay man, I couldn’t have sex with a woman, so being gay is not really just a “preference.”

And what do you mean about our “sexual preferences” developing later on? I became aware that I was attracted to others of the same sex when I was about 12. I don’t think that most straight people have a “sexual preference” much before that, do they? For most gay and straight people, sexual orientation is established by puberty. Some LGB people try to hide or suppress their orientation because they’re afraid of how their families or friends or churches will react, and many of these end up coming out later.

And, yes, it’s true, that sexuality is on a spectrum. That’s why even a lot of men who consider themselves straight could sometimes probably feel a little sexual attraction to another man (although I doubt that they’d admit it).But it wouldn’t be nearly as strong as the attraction they feel towards women. And some gay men probably have a little attraction to women, but not nearly as strong as the sexual attraction they feel towards men. A small number might be equally attracted to both men and women. And some men are exclusively attracted to women and some are exclusively attracted to men.
 
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Fauken said:
So I got a question for you then. What if there would be a greater net spiritual good for the SSA person to continue struggling with their SSA? Or is that impossible?
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Obviously they have to if they want to grow spiritually. It’s not about praying for the attraction to simply pop out of existence overnight, but rather to pray for detachment from it. Realize that the cross in life is our conscience urging us to do what is right, when we want to do what is wrong; thus bearing our cross and learning from it is what sanctifies us and makes us grow spiritually, only if we detach ourselves from what has become our cross…

Jesus speaks about picking up our cross daily, as crosses are many different things and people that we all encounter through life, thus each one of these has to lead us to spiritual growth in different areas of our life, through the crucifixion of our disordered passions and death to the worldly attachments. So it’s a question of praying for detachment. Blessed are the poor in spirit, says Jesus, meaning, having no attachment to the legitimate and illegitimate things we have in this world.

And the problem with not detaching and just following religious rules is that there is no spiritual growth, thus one can find one’s self stuck lamenting the struggle and trying to will one’s way through life instead of letting go of self, and dying to the attachments altogether. That’s where the freedom begins. In this life we are either sanctifying ourselves by becoming detached, or we are demonizing ourselves by not letting go and embracing sin.

As far as sexual attractions, the sex drive is what perpetuates the human race, and it hormonally peaks rather early in life; thus romance in marriage is usually during the courting period; however, when sexual behavior becomes an addiction it can become a lifelong lifestyle of sexual pursuit for the sake of sexual pleasure, that is hard to detach from and becomes one’s center of existence. Sex is about procreation, thus when children arrive it changes the relationship between spouses; the wife becomes a mother and the husband a father, thus the natural paradigm unfolds within God’s plan. When sex is about lust it becomes insatiable, much like money. People who are attached to wealth always want more and can’t live without it. . . .
 
…and there are countless stories of wretched sinners from all walks of life attached to all the attractions of the flesh and the world who became saints by the time they exited this world. That’s the power of sanctifying grace and the purpose of everybody’s existence on earth. Thus the real issue is a disordered view of the purpose of our existence. When we seek happiness by attaching ourselves to things, we find out that the attachment becomes the cross which we must carry to a crucifixion. God’s only will for each and every one of us is our sanctification.

The problem is that the world today is successfully branding people with identities , from “gay”, “dragequeen”, “Trans” “Pansexual” , etc. which the Church has always defined as vice and sexual degeneration. Now gender theory, targeting even preschoolers, is having an impact on a person’s psyche that by the time the average kid has gone through puberty the public system’s production line has indoctrinated, perverted and encouraged promiscuity through pornographic sex-ed programs, ushering boys and girls into actively sexual relationships through the teenage years, that by the time one becomes an adult one is sexuality worn out and degenerated into sexual experimentation seeking different forms of fulfillment one thinks will bring happiness. It’s a web of deceit from the father of lies that ultimate leads to slavery to Satan’s machinations, deceiving people into living a lie that leads not to happiness, but the opposite; thus the high suicide rates among these groups that only Jesus Christ can set free. we’re all in the same world with the same purpose, only different crosses to bear for our sanctification…
 
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I don’t know. I suspect you already have an answer or something.
 
I think she said that because you use the word vocation in the thread and vocation usually refers to the states in life.
 
Gab123 said:
As far as sexual attractions, the sex drive is what perpetuates the human race, and it hormonally peaks rather early in life; thus romance in marriage is usually during the courting period;
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It sounds as if a marriage would be rather dull if there were no more romance after the “courting period.”
 
Wow, the Pope is fallible. You on the other hand sir, are not.
Good. I hope you have a happy life being full of yourself. But try to imagine that you could be wrong as well.
 
Thorolfr said:
One of the problems I see in these “spouselike deeper friendships” and “co-living arrangements” is that many some of these people will probably fall in love with each other and will end up having sex in the end. A lot of the books that I’ve read about ex-gay programs mention that many of the gay men in them who were trying to go straight ended up having sex with each other in secret. I think that staying celibate is very difficult and I doubt that most of these gay Christians who are trying to do this will be successful in the end.
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Why exactly is that a problem? People sin. That happens on Earth, and yes, God-fearing Catholics sin. If a person fails to be chaste once or twice, or thirty times, they just need to get up and seek chastity one more time, through the Holy Spirit.

And circumstantially, there is almost nothing in common between the ex-gay movement and the Spiritual Friendship crowd. Spiritual Friendship folks aren’t insisting on orientation change.
 
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Thorolfr said:
It sounds as if a marriage would be rather dull if there were no more romance after the “courting period
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No way; marriage is an adventure in sanctification; a lesson in love and forgiveness and spiritual growth. Again, your mindset has to be properly ordered; if your focus is merely carnal pleasures and selfishness then you have a recipe for unhappiness…
 
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