Someone please tell me: Why are there so many of these sorts of posts? And, why are nearly all of them so wordy and whiny?
I would imagine that every single possible question and answer has been addressed like 5000 times already, no? It’s like a venting station. And if you read them, they never lead to a conclusion or decision. It’s just a huge gasbag of feelings and angst and disorder.
I have wondered aloud the same thing, and recently on one of these duplicative threads. I agree, for the vast majority of those who start them, and many who race to join them, there is no sincere interest in truly learning answers, from the sources, to the questions posed. Their purpose, largely, i.m.o., is to wear down Catholics and Catholic positions to mental exhaustion and the point of surrender. There are selective few posters who themselves are gay and who struggle and sincerely are trying to live in step with Catholicism; sometimes they contribute, and when they do so I believe they are sincere. There’s another (also small) segment who are not Catholic, or gay, and are nevertheless trying to learn. But often this group is difficult to persuade, because as I mentioned here or elsewhere, if you are not willing to learn the theoretical principles behind the moral theology, the theological conclusions will be difficult to understand. People want shorthand, sound-bite answers to all their moral dilemmas nowadays. If they can’t have them (because such answers aren’t available, or because they’re too impatient to study), then they tend to abandon the search for philosophical consistency, and just march on and randomly argue from a more shallow, more intellectually or politcally convenient place.
Can’t we just have some code that auto sorts all of these posts into an enormously long thread. They all end up unraveling to the same point of disorder anyway.
I think I suggested a long time ago (maybe I didn’t, but wished it) a composite sticky in the Apologetics forum, listing all the links to date wherein this subject has been discussed (homosexual behavior and gay marriage/unions). People would be directed there first for such discussions. If a poster tried to open yet another thread, there would be a convenient hyperlink combining those threads, to which the first replier could immediately direct him or her.
Yes, it’s been discussed ad nauseum: the same questions and answers, over and over.
The only similar syndrome is that pertaining to masturbation, and the same efforts are exerted there, by posters who essentially want others to exonerate them or give them permission, or non-Catholics on a campaign to discredit Catholic moral theology. As with SSA, there are stickies, I think, but in the case of neither topic is there a collective list of links where this has already been debated
for several years.
For Catholics (gay, straight, teenage, adult) there is actually no excuse for not knowing where the Church stands on sexual issues. The information is abundant in the Catechism, on
newadvent.org (Catholic Encyclopedia online), on CAF, and through one’s local parish priest – which I would trust as the definitive word more than some catechetical programs, not all of whose leaders are well-trained or well-informed.
I’m sure that if those sources are not sufficient, any sincere inquirer could request of the parish priest, or the diocesan office, that some pamphlet/brochure/flyer become available on sexual morality, which compiles in simple language the essence of some of the above.
