Guilt and conscience are not always straightforward.
I see where they are coming from, but at the same time everyone needs community. Loneliness is painful and would make it easier for one to be influenced in going into the gay lifestyle
Yup, and
to that claim.Bingo. The sin of masturbating was almost tangential. It was the WANTING TO that I considered terrible, not the doing. And that is a sign that the Church was not teaching me well about the nature of sin.
Temptation is the wanting; doing is the sin. Thus avoid the occasion of sins by staying clear of places, people or things that are cause of temptation.
The problem is that you didn’t study what the Church teaches.
Aye, yes, bring on the moral diagnosis.
So, are heterosexual tendencies also nothing more than a “psychological condition”? The biological or genetic mechanism that produces a homosexual orientation is probably similar to the one that produces a heterosexual orientation, but with a variation in the gender towards which the attraction is directed. And I don’t think that homosexuality is merely “psychological”. There is probably a biological or genetic component to it.catholic1seeks:
Until people realize that having homosexual tendencies is a psychological condition, they will never understand that celebrating the condition and calling it normal is not helping anyone…
The problem for an 11-year-old is NEVER that they haven’t studied Church teaching. Never. They shouldn’t have to study. I listened closely to what the Church was telling me, and they told me that my desires were a sin. That was FALSE.
Maybe most are keeping it to themselves. I haven’t been honoured to receive that confidence from anyone yet.
Nonsense. There are such a thing as sinful desires. What one cannot help are sinful thoughts that pop into one’s mind, which should be quickly dismissed; when one entertains them that they become sinful desires.
“Desire” is ambiguous in English – it can mean “unchosen mental experience” or “chosen intention”. I was talking about the former. I was taught, and I knew, that LUST was sinful. But the unchosen experience of wanting to look at naked guys was not sinful in the slightest. If I had known that, I would have been more free to resist temptation.
If a man wants to look at naked women for pleasure it is certainly sinful, what do you think pornography is all about?
“Want” is ambiguous too. See my above post. I want to look at naked women all the time, and I hardly ever endorse that desire or pursue it. I don’t lust after them, ordinarily. If I am not lusting, I am not sinning sexually in my “wanting”.
The moment you dwell on it and entertain the thought it can quickly become lust. If you willfully imagine naked women (or naked men) to satisfy your desire, that is an impure, sinful thought. It’s like virtual pornography…
It’s the exact same vocation everybody has in life, namely to become a saint, wherever you live, among the people you know and meet, and within your own unique circumstances in life. There’s only 1 you. That’s the ONLY will of God for all of us; that we become saints, by dying to our old self and allowing Christ to live in us. It’s about following Christ’s footsteps all the way to the cross; we are to crucify our passions, our sinful attractions, our disordered appetites, whether it is gluttony, pride, lust, envy, wrath, etc. in order to DIE TO OURSELVES out of LOVE for God. Here is a good short talk by Archbishop Sheen:
I agree. But I don’t know if you realize how easily a person like myself can experience benign momentary physical attractions to guys (or women). That happens a lot, especially in certain settings. I very rarely imagine people naked to satisfy my desire, and I certainly would see such a thing as lust.
The catechism says we have a perverse attachment, which sounds like inclination, to me, in relation to any/all sin. Inclination towards sin is disordered in that it orients us away from God. A consequence of the fall.