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

[OsculeturMeOsculo]

The title is kind of confusing.

 

[Fauken]

Because it uses LGBT as opposed to SSA?

 

[OsculeturMeOsculo]

No because it talks about what vocations there are and not how to live them out. LGBT is more of a wordly term and I wouldn’t use it but I guess it is okay.

 

[Gab123]

Are you saying people are gay because they are possessed by a demon?

No, I did not say anything like that, Not possessed, but rather tempted, or enslaved by Satan and his agents. Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the former chief exorcist in Rome stated that “Confession is more effective than an exorcism. . . Satan is much more enraged when we take souls away from him through confession than when we take away bodies through exorcism.”

where did you get this piece of theology from?

Insights from exorcists; the fallen angels were part of a hierarchy with different roles. The Book of Acts describes one woman who had a spirit of divination attached to her, though she had become possessed. (Acts 16:16)

 

[Gab123]

“Just don’t have sex and do penance” is extremely vague. What does that look like, exactly, when the single life as a vocation is not defined and they can’t enter the priesthood, get married (if it’s exclusive), nor enter religious life?

Maybe people are glossing over what the Catechism states. Unpack what this means:
“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.”

In other words, sanctify yourself. Live your regular daily work life as a doctor, as a teacher, a laborer, HVAC technician, as an expression of the way you live your personal life as a friend, brother, relative, etc. all in the spirit of sanctification with Jesus Christ as Lord and center of everything you do. this is the call for everyone, not just specific groups of people… no special vocation other than the Christian vocation of living a life of humility, purity of intention and love. In other words, the vocation of becoming a SAINT.

My advice is to read the New Testament. What do you think St Paul would say?

 

[catholic1seeks]

Not possessed, but rather tempted, or enslaved by Satan and his agents.

Then AGAIN, you make the mistake of equating homosexuality to mere temptation.

Is your sexuality a mere temptation? Or does it form part and parcel of you physiology and psychology?

Anyway – as I said above, for you still don’t get the point of this thread:

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.

I’m beginning to think some people can only sympathize with this if they are in fact gay, or if they in fact have close LGBT friends and family.

So might I suggest you start befriending a gay person in the church (or really just any LGBT person, whether inside or outside the church)?

 

[una_ecclesia]

What exactly in my post are you responding to? Is it just that I used the term LGBT?

Replace that with ”people who experience SSA” then, or whatever category you are more comfortable with that refers to people who struggle or have a particular inclination of erotic attraction to the same sex or are tempted to homosexual activities. But by this measure, if this is what you objected to, then all you are rebuking me for is being politically incorrect.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Then AGAIN, you make the mistake of equating homosexuality to mere temptation.

Is your sexuality a mere temptation? Or does it form part and parcel of you physiology and psychology?

I am not very sympathetic with Gab in this conversation, but I don’t think Catholics are under any obligation to endorse the claim that “sexualities” have ontological (i.e. genuine) existence. I, for one, do not believe that “heterosexuality” or “homosexuality” exist; I just believe that some people are exclusively attracted to the same sex, some are attracted to the opposite sex, and some are attracted to both. If sexualities don’t exist, then your claim that “your sexuality is more than temptation” doesn’t make any more sense than any other claim about nonexistent things.

If you want to say that gay people are not just interested in gay sex, then of course everyone should agree with you. But they may also say that there is nothing at all gay about men wanting hugs from other men, or wanting to go out to coffee with them, or even wanting to gaze into their eyes. All those things are things that straight men often want too. If you want to find something unique about “gay” men, it’s that they want sex with other guys. No?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Replace that with ”people who experience SSA” then, or whatever category you are more comfortable with that refers to people who struggle or have a particular inclination of erotic attraction to the same sex or are tempted to homosexual activities. But by this measure, if this is what you objected to, then all you are rebuking me for is being politically incorrect.

It’s about time someone called out the insistence that people not say “gay” as a form of political correctness. Smart!

 

[catholic1seeks]

Thanks for that.

But what t I said could go perfectly well with what you said.

Sexuality in general is more than temptation. That’s the point. The same if true for those with SSA. It’s not just a temptation for sex.

 

[Gab123]

Then AGAIN, you make the mistake of equating homosexuality to mere temptation.
Is your sexuality a mere temptation? Or does it form part and parcel of you physiology and psychology?

As physiology shows, man is physically designed to complement woman; it is the psychology that is disordered. Culture has had a massive impact on the mindset of people, and the fact that our culture is so saturated with selling sex it is easy to become sex-crazed and tangled up and entrapped in a disordered mindset leading to a disordered sexual attraction that becomes a blinding addiction and a style of living. The big problem is when people try to rationalize it and present it like something else…

Regarding homosexuality, many have bought into the teachings of the world about the subject, much like many have bought into the teachings of the world regarding abortion and contraception, even inside the Church; all three issues are very well rationalized, yet all three are very anti-life, all three spearheaded by the Culture of Death, and all three condemned by the Bible as abominations. Yet, there are people inside the Church gradually working to change Church teachings, and they realize that they have to slowly let the agenda creep in innocently under the guise of openness and inclusion and painting the “gay” issue differently than what it is…

Homosexuality is just one of many attractions to sin; we all are very attracted to sin and disordered lifestyles; it’s called the consequence of Original Sin. Experiencing the attraction is not sinful, yet the attraction itself is sinful and dangerous when we begin to entertain it in our mind. A man cannot help it if an impure thought enters his mind; it’s what he does with that thought that matters. One can commit a mortal sin with the mere thought itself simply by entertainining it in one’s mind; they’re called impure thoughts. If one is not careful, a tiny seeds can take root in one’s mind and grow deep and wrap around one’s mindset. And the problem with mortal sin is that it darkens the intellect to the things of the spirit.

If a man doesn’t want to have children and be a father and have a family, simply because he is not sexually turned on by what he sees, simply shows he’s looking at women superficially. Some men simply want to put a bag over a woman’s head and look at her body; how’s that for disordered sexuality?

A man who is attracted to women but does not want to have children and is not open to life for whatever reason legitimate or not, should not get married and would do him well to stop thinking about sex by occupying his mind on other things. But if people go through life identifying themselves as sexual creatures (“Pansexual” - how’s that for an excuse) the struggle to be chaste is certainly going to be hard…

 

[AlbMagno]

I may be wrong, as I didn’t read the entire thread, but I´m surprised that I haven´t read anyone suggesting some kind of psycotherapy to “change” the disordered attraction towards heterosexual attraction, that is always the idea I had on how to solve it.

After all, if it is a disordered state, then it is (to a much lesser and less perverse extent) something like a paraphilia, and paraphilias can be controled and (I think) even corrected with clinical psychology.

Yes, yes, I know, genes and prenatal testosterone are also linked to SSA, but, like many neurochemical/conductual things, this only translates in a TENDENCY towards SSA, you are not “predestined” to be gay.
Oh, and I think Gab123 post is pointing indirectly (and maybe unintentionally) to this hypothesis I have, if I got the meaning.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I may be wrong, as I didn’t read the entire thread, but I´m surprised that Ihaven´t read anyone suggesting some kind of psycotherapy to “change” the disordered attraction towards heterosexual attraction, that is always the idea I had on how to solve it.

After all, if it is a disordered state, then it is (to a much lesser and less perverse extent) something like a paraphilia, and paraphilias can be controled and (I think) even corrected with clinical psychology.

Yes, yes, I know, genes and prenatal testosterone are also linked to SSA, but, like many neurochemical/conductual things, this only translates in a TENDENCY towards SSA, you are not “predestined” to be gay.

Perhaps you haven’t heard that because such therapy hardly ever works?

 

[AlbMagno]

Maybe, as I implied, I´m no psychologist, but I would also like to see papers about statistics and experiments with therapies like this. When I have time I will look into them.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Maybe, as I implied, I´m no psychologist, but I would also like to see papers about statistics and experiments with therapies like this. When I have time I will look into them.

I’m same-sex attracted, and I’ve looked at lots of statistics. Changing orientation (through intervention) basically never happens. Changing behavior happens, but that’s not relevant to the question of this thread.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Maybe, as I implied, I´m no psychologist, but I would also like to see papers about statistics and experiments with therapies like this. When I have time I will look into them.

Experiments? Ugh. We’re talking about people here, not lab rats. If you think psychotherapy works, show us the ones that work.

 

[AlbMagno]

AlbMagno:

Maybe, as I implied, I´m no psychologist, but I would also like to see papers about statistics and experiments with therapies like this. When I have time I will look into them.

Experiments? Ugh. We’re talking about people here, not lab rats. If you think psychotherapy works, show us the ones that work.

With “experiments” I simply refer to statistical control i.e. a psychologist treats peope normally but they register and analyse caefully their results, and later a scientific center collects the data anonimously and makes a paper. Social experiments are made all the time in modern clinical psychology.

I haven’t encountered such therapy, but I didn’t investigate deeply in this topic either, it’s just an idea that always resonates with me when people mention SSA vocations.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

With “experiments” I simply refer to statistical control i.e. a psychologist treats peope normally but they register and analyse caefully their results, and later a scientific center collects the data anonimously and makes a paper. Social experiments are made all the time in modern clinical psychology.

Fine, yes, that’s done. I apologize for my impatience, I just get the sense from your posts so far that you haven’t given more than a cursory glance at this thread and what has been suggested, and you are certainly aren’t answering the question posed by the OP. Therapy and vocations are two very different things.

 

[AlbMagno]

No problem. No I haven´t read the 660 replies, I stopped before. I know therapy and vocation isn’t the same time, whay I´m trying to say is, IF moderate SSA can be transformed into heterosexual atttraction through treatment, then the solution to a person who is SSA is work in this treatment and later marry/become a priest as an heterosexual person. Of course, as I said multiple times, this is just an hypothesis and I don´t know if this is possible at all.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

If it were that easy don’t you think people would be doing it. If you read posts #576, #611, and #648 Thorolfr mentions Alan Cambers. A quote:

I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents"

Think about it this way. Let’s say it works. But it can take anywhere from 2 to 15+ years to work. Whether it’s two years or 15, that’s a lot of time for LGBT persons to wait around, especially on the longer side. What if it works but only in 5% of LGBT persons. Do we just let the other 95% flail? No? So the OP’s question is still relevant.