What is the vocation of same-sex-attracted Catholics?

[MNathaniel]

your disrespect for the vocation standing with no clarification as to whether you accept that a group of female virgins with SSA cannot have the vocation to sacred virginity.

Also, this is exactly the problem. This statement sounds like a repetition of your seeming claim that it’s categorically impossible for a woman who experiences SSA to be a consecrated virgin. But when I ask if this is what you’re saying, you say you refuse to answer.

That is absurd.

And leaves the situation at you seeming to publicly spread false exclusionary criteria as if it is fact, when this seems actually to be merely your private opinion.

Which is a problem.

 

[sealabeag]

Well, that got heated while I was away! I doubt this debate will be resolved, tbh, but @SerraSemper I have a few simple questions, if you don’t mind, that might help clarify our positions:

1. Do you believe it is possible for a same-sex attracted woman to be maternal?
2. Do you believe it is possible for a ssa woman to choose, in spite of her ssa, to enter into marriage with a man? To love him as her husband, although there may be no particular physical attraction?
3. If the answer to any of the above is “Yes”, as I believe is evidently the case, why can a ssa woman not become a consecrated virgin or religious?

If possible I’d like to hear your thoughts on those questions without referring to spiritual fatherhood and priesthood, as although there are parallels, they are two different vocations and there are other reasons why a homosexual man is often excluded from the priesthood.

 

[DivineMercy01]

what is the vocation for the same-sex-attracted who are not supposed to marry but are also not supposed to be welcomed into religious life?

Swiss Theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar wrote about this in The Christian State of Life. In sum, individuals who experience SSA are part of a population called to a form of “Quasi-religious” lay life: living the single life in a cruciform way. These individuals are more free to serve others and give their time/money to the Church.

I’m a straight single woman and it’s confusing enough for me as I don’t feel called to religious life and at this point am content if I never marry.

Perhaps you simply have not met the right person, found the right order or discovered the right mission.

 

[DivineMercy01]

There are saints who were singles.

I don’t totally agree that this observation is relevant to this conversation. Most of the Saints to whom you refer were killed as teens (Joan of Arc, Carlo Acutis, Ciara Badano, Maria Goretti, Philomena) or made some form of vows(Saint Agatha, Saint Catherine of Siena).

I am not suggesting a single person cannot live a holy life. I am saying comparing a single person living today to one of these people is a poor excuse for someone to remain in perpetual bachelorhood because most of us are not going to be called to a Joan of Arc type mission.

 

[DivineMercy01]

I agree with you here. Love demands a vow (even if it is a non-public vow to Christ). With no commitment there is no love. The freedom a single person has exists to be given away.

 

[JMMJ]

Once again, all about the sex. Lol. SMH.

 

[Rau]

I claimed that a sacred virgin is a spiritual mother

With whom does she have such a relationship? Why might a degree of SSA prevent that?

My understanding is that you do agree a person experiencing SSA could become a consecrated virgin but not if that SSA is “derp-seated” - do I have that right?

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

I don’t suppose anybody will agree with me (except possibly some of the atheists and lapsed Catholics who also hang out on here!), but I can’t help feeling sorry for lesbian and gay people who follow a conservative faith such as Catholicism. I appreciate that that possibly sounds patronising or condescending, but I can’t think of a better way of phrasing it.

I think I can pre-empt the orthodox Catholic responses to such an observation:

1. Everybody is called to practise chastity according to their state in life. This means that sexual activity is restricted to people in a valid heterosexual marriage. Therefore lesbian and gay people are not unique in being called to abstain from all sexual activity. For example, a Catholic who is divorced without an annulment and has a former spouse still living is unable to commence an intimate relationship.
2. Not everybody is called to marriage. Many people are called to singleness. This is as much a vocation as marriage is.
3. It is better to forgo a sexual relationship in this life than to lose one’s eternal salvation.
4. A homosexual relationship cannot be compared with a heterosexual relationship, as a homosexual relationship is unnatural and disordered and not open to life.

That said, I still cannot help feeling sorry for people who are in this situation. Being married has been by far the best thing in my life. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without it. I appreciate that people can be single for all sorts of reasons (they are widowed or divorced or simply never met the right person), but there seems to be something uniquely unfair if somebody can simply never even think about being in an intimate relationship because the 50% of the species with whom they would like to be in such a relationship happens to be the same sex as themselves.

I can’t help thinking that if a lesbian or gay person were to have been an atheist, pagan, Unitarian Universalist, some kind of liberal Protestant or Jew, etc, then they could simply have had a completely different life in which they would have been able to seek an intimate relationship. Something like this happened to a guy I went to university with. He was always a very traditional Catholic (he once spoke of his admiration for Catholics in the Philippines who are crucified on Good Friday) and went directly from his undergraduate degree in theology to a seminary in Spain to train for the priesthood. And then all of a sudden he was an openly gay atheist and Liberal Democrat studying to become a barrister in Manchester. I couldn’t rejoice at his loss of faith, but it did seem as though a weight of sorts had been lifted from him.

 

[jeannetherese]

A difference between your concerns and the concerns of the faith is that your focus is on certain short term pleasures, whereas Catholicism takes the long view, the view of salvation history, which sees this lifetime as a very brief moment in our existence and is oriented towards heaven.

 

[catholiclala]

Perhaps you simply have not met the right person, found the right order or discovered the right mission.

Or I can be a faithful single Catholic as is allowed, as expressed in this thread. I may meet a husband or not, I’m just over the hunt and hoping. As far as an order, I doubt it. I’m 41, in grad school, and love my career and future path. I also live in NYC with roommates, the thought of living with a group of women, no thanks, I can’t wait until I can get my own place, haha! Anyway, it would take a lot for that path to happen. Missions? How would you define that? I feel my career choice is one of service as I am going into librarianship. I also donate time when I can to Catholic Charities, etc., and am considering becoming a big sister once I complete grad school. Are any of those things considered a mission?

 

[Jen7]

From what I’m gathering any choice could be a vocation as long as you are faithful to the Holy Spirit, the Church, the Gospel., or am I missing something? I find it hard to ask people I know because they are biased, haha!

There’s the concept that God is calling you to a specific vocation & it’s our job to discern / figure out HIS plan… not just pick what we want the way you might choose a job you think you’ll enjoy or pick out a new house that suits you. Theoretically a vocation may not emotionally be a persons first choice but they believe God is asking it of them. I was just reading some of St Teresa of the Andes’ biographies that talked about how being a nun didn’t appeal to her per se, but she believed God was calling her to that life.

 

[Jen7]

but there seems to be something uniquely unfair if somebody can simply never even think about being in an intimate relationship because

There are tons of reasons the Church doesnt let people have sex. Homosexuality is not even close to the only one. Anytime PIV sex that’s open to babies is NOT possible… there is no sex. I don’t think anyone is having tons of sex, except maybe while they’re pregnant (which is not exactly a picnic) or infertile (which is a massive cross for married couples as well).

 

[Jen7]

My understanding is these folks can become religious - just not be ORDAINED.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

I don’t think anyone is having tons of sex,

Lots of Catholic couples are having tons of sex. They’re just using contraception. I realize they’re not supposed to, but if the data is correct that’s the reality on the ground.

 

[Jen7]

Lots of Catholic couples are having tons of sex. They’re just using contraception. I realize they’re not supposed to, but if the data is correct that’s the reality on the ground.

Oh I know, haha! But I’m talking about the ones following Church teaching. I think if folks are going to be told they can’t have gay sex, we need to also share that the Church says you can’t have contraceptive sex… which hopefully is at least slightly comforting. Priests aren’t having sex, nuns aren’t having sex, gay folks aren’t having sex, single people aren’t having sex, and lots of married folks aren’t having much sex either. The Church is not so not singling out people with homosexual tendencies!

(And by “aren’t having sex” in all these groups - I do mean “aren’t supposed to be.” And many aren’t.)

 

[StudentMI]

Sure. Just like SSA men can be paternal; many are fathers. So how do you explain the Vatican’s position on priests and spiritual fatherhood?

Simple. Its a mistake that probably involved no consultation with people who actually experience SSA. As a man with SSA I can tell you I too have the urge to be a father, and this involves marriage to a woman and raising the child in a two parent household. It’s just that my actual attraction precludes that.

I don’t really care if you have a degree in this or that (for all I know you’re claiming those things; I’ve seen no proof), or if some figures in the Church have accepted your designation as a ‘bride of Christ’. All I can judge is what I’m reading. And I’m reading nonsense.

 

[MNathaniel]

As a man with SSA I can tell you I too have the urge to be a father, and this involves marriage to a woman and raising the child in a two parent household. It’s just that my actual attraction precludes that.

Yes, this sounds like one of my loved ones. He experiences SSA and at the same time he feels a much stronger desire to be a father than I, an OSA woman, feel to be a mother. (I mean, I’d be open to it, if married. And if I stop and imagine it, I can imagine feeling happy under the right circumstances. But the desire for it doesn’t intrude into my consciousness unless I actually stop and make an effort to imagine it. Whereas I think with my loved one, it’s higher up in his consciousness.)

Different individuals are different.

Also, incidentally, I think this man would be a good father.

 

[Cloisters]

One thing that the celibate SSA Catholics can do is practice their right to assembly. Then pray to the Holy Ghost to see where He will take them. Religious life is a SERVICE. How are they going to bring the love of Christ to the world?

I still maintain that obsessing with the fact that one is SSA is detrimental, and one needs to focus on what God wants them to do.

 

[jeannetherese]

I’m looking forward to the day when the identity we stand on is “children of God”.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

This is about vocations.