When St Paul makes tolerance intolerable

[Justin_Swanton]

Let me start by wishing everyone a happy and holy Advent in preparation for a blessed Christmas.

And next let me quote from St Paul: I Cor 5: 1-11

It is absolutely heard that there is fornication among you and such fornication as the like is not among the heathens: that one should have his father’s wife. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned: that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this thing.

I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath so done, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus: to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
…
I wrote to you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators. I mean not with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous or the extortioners or the servers of idols: otherwise you must needs go out of this world. But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat.

What is one supposed to make of this? Just a few chapters later St. Paul writes his great passage on charity: ‘Charity is patient, is kind…beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things…’ How does one square this with statements that, if he made them today, would get him a lot of correspondence of the legal kind?

Bearing in mind that the case of fornication St. Paul was referring to was not biological incest. A man’s mother died and his father remarried. The father himself died and his son attempted marriage with his father’s widow. One can understand it: she was not his mother and probably had not brought him up. It is probable she was nearer his age than his mother had been. They had lived in propinquity and so got to know each other, and so on. Not the worst sin. And St Paul sics the devil on them?

But it is the last paragraph that takes the cake: to keep no company with fellow Christians suffering from alcohol addiction, sexual addiction, anger management issues, or an excessive fondness for money. Huh?

Either St Paul was an intolerant bigot of a unique class of fanaticism (know any bigots who deliver the subjects of their censure to fleshly destruction by the devil?) or there is something in the whole tolerance-intolerance debate that is not immediately obvious. So what is it?

Let me attempt an answer by affirming something personal of which I am not one jot ashamed: I ***abhor ***the idea of homosexuality. I feel an immediate revulsion at a newsreel of two same-sex individuals kissing at a gay rally. It is not just an intellectual or moral stance - it is a gut reaction, and it is a very natural and healthy one.

Does that make me a homophobe?

Yes, if out of my revulsion for homosexuality, I make a homosexual a personification of it, someone who lives only for his homosexual practice, is totally identified with it, thinks, wills, dreams of nothing else. I call this the orc transposition. The orcs of Middle-Earth are irremediably evil, created as perversions by the first Dark Lord. It is inconceivable that they could ever turn to good; they are foul through and through, in their appearance, their words, their deeds. Their existence is one of wickedness and misery, and killing them is a mercy. Thus the picture of a homosexual painted by a true homophobe.

Knowing, though, that there is a great deal more to a human being than his or her sexual proclivity is the foundation of charity, of which there have already been many excellent posts. People come to the Church more through the charity of its members than for any other reason: a charity that goes with the understanding, compassion and generosity that has been described so well elsewhere in these forums. (to follow)

 

[Justin_Swanton]

That being the case, what does one make of St Paul? He makes sense, as an Apostle and as the great proponent of fraternal charity, only if he is understood as not tolerating any manifestation or affirmation of sin itself in a Christian milieu.

We humans are social creatures; it is a component of our human nature. We mature, form our concepts, our judgments, become human, in the society of others. There is a mutual trust, a mutual give-and-take (even if with bickering), built on inviolable norms, among members of a close-knit social group like a family or an early Christian community. This is important as an individual can fully be himself only in a group of like-minded peers. A castaway on a desert island is stunted, socially starved and quite capable of going mad if left alone long enough. There are some strong-minded types who can survive in isolation, but they are exceptional.

Hence the consensus, or identity, that holds a group together is crucial. The greater and better the consensus is, the better off the individuals of the group will be (granted we also need our individual space - I’m not talking 1984). For a Christian group, anything that damages its consensus is quite simply verboten. This is all obvious.

Question then is, what damages a Christian group’s consensus? The answer is any attempt to present as normal, and to be accepted as normal, a code of conduct that is inimical to the norms that bind the group together. This is easily seen in the case of children. Children follow the lead of the adults and don’t make nice distinctions. If a couple are received into the family circle as Mr and Mr Smith – i.e. their homosexual condition, not just themselves, is put forward for acceptance - and are treated pleasantly and normally, without any reference to their marital status, a child would conclude that there is nothing really wrong with it, though perhaps he wouldn’t do it himself. Homosexuality is inserted as part of the normal fabric of his world. And this despite any careful explanations before or afterwards by the parents. The child would not conclude that homosexuality is a grave disorder and a serious sin, but that one must have compassion and understanding for the homosexual. Those kind of nuances are over his head.

This is very different from a homosexual as an individual coming into the family home and being welcomed as such. His homosexuality is not put on social display, he is not asking anyone to accept it as normal. He is there in his capacity as a human being, nothing more. The real problem today, of course, is that most SSA couples, especially those who are legally married, want the first kind of acceptance as well as the second. They have decided to come to terms with their sexual leanings, they have arranged their lives to suit it. They want the rest of the world to accept it: to justify, make normal, permanent, real, the groove they have settled into. They want it more than anything. And they can’t have it.

All this of course doesn’t just apply to homosexuality. I would show the door to the following guests in the family circle:

• an alcoholic, if he drank to inebriation,
• a porn addict, if he opened his laptop in the lounge and began to surf blue sites, making a joke about it to those around him,
• a verbally abusive individual if he got irritated and began unload his vocabulary for everyone’s benefit.

I would make clear my opposition to the viewpoint of a racist, an anti-semitic and anyone who began to air views that are clearly contrary to the Catholic ethos. If the individual became abusive or aggressive I would indicate the direction of the front door.

It is an urban legend to think that one cannot explain this to a homosexual in a way he can understand without feeling demeaned, ostracised or marginalized. I had an acquaintanceship with a Catholic homosexual for a number of years. I never cold-shouldered him though he knew exactly where I stood on the issue. He was troubled by his homosexuality, not by me. I don’t think he would have had any greater difficulty with St Paul.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

A persistent concern of St. Paul was that the newly established churches were backsliding into old pagan ways, and that a lot of behavior was being carried on more-or-less openly (such as having a sexual relationship with one’s step-mother, or homosexuality (covered in the original word used by Paul in this passage, porneia, which included homosexuality).

St. Paul seemed to be concerned not with the fact that people sinned by such behavior, but that people overlooked or even celebrated it in their fellow church members. St. Paul said elsewhere that members of a church should take a sinning fellow member aside and explain to him that what he was doing was wrong (something like what we would call an intervention.)

One could only imagine what Paul would have written if he had seen some of the “inclusive” “gay-friendly” church services and openly homosexual priests in some of the sects nowadays. Or even a clown mass.

 

[fhansen]

Let me start by wishing everyone a happy and holy Advent in preparation for a blessed Christmas.

And next let me quote from St Paul: I Cor 5: 1-11

It is absolutely heard that there is fornication among you and such fornication as the like is not among the heathens: that one should have his father’s wife. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned: that he might be taken away from among you that hath done this thing.

I indeed, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him that hath so done, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus: to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
…
I wrote to you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators. I mean not with the fornicators of this world or with the covetous or the extortioners or the servers of idols: otherwise you must needs go out of this world. But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator or covetous or a server of idols or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner: with such a one, not so much as to eat.

What is one supposed to make of this? Just a few chapters later St. Paul writes his great passage on charity: ‘Charity is patient, is kind…beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things…’ How does one square this with statements that, if he made them today, would get him a lot of correspondence of the legal kind?

Bearing in mind that the case of fornication St. Paul was referring to was not biological incest. A man’s mother died and his father remarried. The father himself died and his son attempted marriage with his father’s widow. One can understand it: she was not his mother and probably had not brought him up. It is probable she was nearer his age than his mother had been. They had lived in propinquity and so got to know each other, and so on. Not the worst sin. And St Paul sics the devil on them?

But it is the last paragraph that takes the cake: to keep no company with fellow Christians suffering from alcohol addiction, sexual addiction, anger management issues, or an excessive fondness for money. Huh?

Either St Paul was an intolerant bigot of a unique class of fanaticism (know any bigots who deliver the subjects of their censure to fleshly destruction by the devil?) or there is something in the whole tolerance-intolerance debate that is not immediately obvious. So what is it?

Let me attempt an answer by affirming something personal of which I am not one jot ashamed: I ***abhor ***the idea of homosexuality. I feel an immediate revulsion at a newsreel of two same-sex individuals kissing at a gay rally. It is not just an intellectual or moral stance - it is a gut reaction, and it is a very natural and healthy one.

Does that make me a homophobe?

Yes, if out of my revulsion for homosexuality, I make a homosexual a personification of it, someone who lives only for his homosexual practice, is totally identified with it, thinks, wills, dreams of nothing else. I call this the orc transposition. The orcs of Middle-Earth are irremediably evil, created as perversions by the first Dark Lord. It is inconceivable that they could ever turn to good; they are foul through and through, in their appearance, their words, their deeds. Their existence is one of wickedness and misery, and killing them is a mercy. Thus the picture of a homosexual painted by a true homophobe.

Knowing, though, that there is a great deal more to a human being than his or her sexual proclivity is the foundation of charity, of which there have already been many excellent posts. People come to the Church more through the charity of its members than for any other reason: a charity that goes with the understanding, compassion and generosity that has been described so well elsewhere in these forums. (to follow)

If we lump all sin under the rubric “addiction”, which it can certainly become, and which can reduce our culpability, we can also end up making sin no longer sin-removing *all *culpability or moral responsibility. When you speak of having charity remember that sin is intrinsically opposed to charity-they are mutually exclusive. And since many in Paul’s audiences had been enmeshed in sinful lives and addictions themselves, keeping company with the old crowd was probably not the smartest idea. Jesus, and people of greater strength spiritually speaking, could handle mixing it up with the world better than many newer converts. In any case, while Christianity is about loving everyone, ultimately the wheat and the chaff, good and evil, are to be separated.

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

That being the case, what does one make of St Paul? He makes sense, as an Apostle and as the great proponent of fraternal charity, only if he is understood as not tolerating any manifestation or affirmation of sin itself in a Christian milieu.

We humans are social creatures; it is a component of our human nature. We mature, form our concepts, our judgments, become human, in the society of others. There is a mutual trust, a mutual give-and-take (even if with bickering), built on inviolable norms, among members of a close-knit social group like a family or an early Christian community. This is important as an individual can fully be himself only in a group of like-minded peers. A castaway on a desert island is stunted, socially starved and quite capable of going mad if left alone long enough. There are some strong-minded types who can survive in isolation, but they are exceptional.

Hence the consensus, or identity, that holds a group together is crucial. The greater and better the consensus is, the better off the individuals of the group will be (granted we also need our individual space - I’m not talking 1984). For a Christian group, anything that damages its consensus is quite simply verboten. This is all obvious.

Question then is, what damages a Christian group’s consensus? The answer is any attempt to present as normal, and to be accepted as normal, a code of conduct that is inimical to the norms that bind the group together. This is easily seen in the case of children. Children follow the lead of the adults and don’t make nice distinctions. If a couple are received into the family circle as Mr and Mr Smith – i.e. their homosexual condition, not just themselves, is put forward for acceptance - and are treated pleasantly and normally, without any reference to their marital status, a child would conclude that there is nothing really wrong with it, though perhaps he wouldn’t do it himself. Homosexuality is inserted as part of the normal fabric of his world. And this despite any careful explanations before or afterwards by the parents. The child would not conclude that homosexuality is a grave disorder and a serious sin, but that one must have compassion and understanding for the homosexual. Those kind of nuances are over his head.

This is very different from a homosexual as an individual coming into the family home and being welcomed as such. His homosexuality is not put on social display, he is not asking anyone to accept it as normal. He is there in his capacity as a human being, nothing more. The real problem today, of course, is that most SSA couples, especially those who are legally married, want the first kind of acceptance as well as the second. They have decided to come to terms with their sexual leanings, they have arranged their lives to suit it. They want the rest of the world to accept it: to justify, make normal, permanent, real, the groove they have settled into. They want it more than anything. And they can’t have it.

All this of course doesn’t just apply to homosexuality. I would show the door to the following guests in the family circle:

• an alcoholic, if he drank to inebriation,
• a porn addict, if he opened his laptop in the lounge and began to surf blue sites, making a joke about it to those around him,
• a verbally abusive individual if he got irritated and began unload his vocabulary for everyone’s benefit.

I would make clear my opposition to the viewpoint of a racist, an anti-semitic and anyone who began to air views that are clearly contrary to the Catholic ethos. If the individual became abusive or aggressive I would indicate the direction of the front door.

It is an urban legend to think that one cannot explain this to a homosexual in a way he can understand without feeling demeaned, ostracised or marginalized. I had an acquaintanceship with a Catholic homosexual for a number of years. I never cold-shouldered him though he knew exactly where I stood on the issue. He was troubled by his homosexuality, not by me. I don’t think he would have had any greater difficulty with St Paul.

too long to read. can you resume this in 3 points?

 

[Nita]

What is one supposed to make of this? Just a few chapters later St. Paul writes his great passage on charity: ‘Charity is patient, is kind…beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things…’ How does one square this with statements that, if he made them today, would get him a lot of correspondence of the legal kind?

It’s not that difficult if you understand charity/love properly. To love as Christ loves means to be concerned first and foremost for the eternal good of the person’s soul. One does not love another if they aren’t concerned if the other person spends eternity in hell. Thus, when we are aware that someone is persistently living in a state of grave sin, we should do whatever we can to awaken them to the danger they are in. That is what Paul is doing; and that is true Christian charity. It shows loving concern for the spiritual welfare of the sinner and loving concern for the spiritual welfare of the rest of the Christian community.

When people persist in grave sin without repenting, if they refuse to even believe it is grave sin, we do them no favor by treating that behavior as an acceptable option for them.

**Isaiah 26:10 If favor is shown to the wicked, he does not learn righteousness; **

 

[JM3]

I Cor 5: 1-11

It is always helpful, when trying to understand St Paul, not to leave out part of the text.

1 Corinthians 5

5: you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6: Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
7: Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.
8: Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9: I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men;
10: not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.
11: But rather I wrote to you not to associate with any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber – not even to eat with such a one.

St Paul is excommunicating this person and saying that such people are not to be allowed to receive at Mass.

Remember: context.

 

[Melinda_Selmys]

Justin,

I first of all would like to say that this is the most intelligent and cogent presentation of this argument that I have yet encountered. Kudos.
With regards to the definition of “homophobia,” the visceral reaction that you describe on seeing two gay men kiss is not, I would argue, a moral or psychological problem. My “ick” reaction doesn’t kick in that early, but I tried to watch an episode of “Queer as Folk” when I was doing research for my book, and I have to admit that there comes a point when I have that same visceral gut reaction to male homoeroticism – and I feel that in spite of having been a practicing lesbian for years. I think when most reasonable LGBTQ people talk about homophobia, what they’re referring to is the ostracism, exclusion and revulsion which many queer people experience quite irregardless of how sexually explicit they are in the presence of straight people. It’s a really sore spot for a lot of gays and lesbians because there are a lot of personality traits (particularly effeminacy in gays and masculinity in lesbians) which many homosexual people have, which they have had since early childhood, possibly since birth, and which cause people to treat them badly. When someone in the Christian community reacts to a moral problem, like gay marriage, the reaction that they’re triggering in an LGBTQ person is not fundamentally about the moral question at all – it’s about years of being name-called or excluded on the basis of traits over which the homosexual person has absolutely no control. This really has to be taken into account whenever you’re encountering someone who IDs as gay or lesbian, or even just someone who has same-sex attractions but doesn’t ID. There’s a massive psychological sore-spot there, and in the same way that you would be particularly careful if you were trying to minister physically to someone with a broken arm, you have to be particularly careful when trying to minister psychologically and spiritually to someone who has suffered a lot of unmerited rejection in their life.
This is getting long, so I’m going to address the Saint Paul thing in a second post.

 

[fhansen]

Justin,

I first of all would like to say that this is the most intelligent and cogent presentation of this argument that I have yet encountered. Kudos.
With regards to the definition of “homophobia,” the visceral reaction that you describe on seeing two gay men kiss is not, I would argue, a moral or psychological problem. My “ick” reaction doesn’t kick in that early, but I tried to watch an episode of “Queer as Folk” when I was doing research for my book, and I have to admit that there comes a point when I have that same visceral gut reaction to male homoeroticism – and I feel that in spite of having been a practicing lesbian for years. I think when most reasonable LGBTQ people talk about homophobia, what they’re referring to is the ostracism, exclusion and revulsion which many queer people experience quite irregardless of how sexually explicit they are in the presence of straight people. It’s a really sore spot for a lot of gays and lesbians because there are a lot of personality traits (particularly effeminacy in gays and masculinity in lesbians) which many homosexual people have, which they have had since early childhood, possibly since birth, and which cause people to treat them badly. When someone in the Christian community reacts to a moral problem, like gay marriage, the reaction that they’re triggering in an LGBTQ person is not fundamentally about the moral question at all – it’s about years of being name-called or excluded on the basis of traits over which the homosexual person has absolutely no control. This really has to be taken into account whenever you’re encountering someone who IDs as gay or lesbian, or even just someone who has same-sex attractions but doesn’t ID. There’s a massive psychological sore-spot there, and in the same way that you would be particularly careful if you were trying to minister physically to someone with a broken arm, you have to be particularly careful when trying to minister psychologically and spiritually to someone who has suffered a lot of unmerited rejection in their life.
This is getting long, so I’m going to address the Saint Paul thing in a second post.

Nice, helpful post.

 

[Corpus_Cristi]

Justin,

I first of all would like to say that this is the most intelligent and cogent presentation of this argument that I have yet encountered. Kudos.
With regards to the definition of “homophobia,” the visceral reaction that you describe on seeing two gay men kiss is not, I would argue, a moral or psychological problem. My “ick” reaction doesn’t kick in that early, but I tried to watch an episode of “Queer as Folk” when I was doing research for my book, and I have to admit that there comes a point when I have that same visceral gut reaction to male homoeroticism – and I feel that in spite of having been a practicing lesbian for years. I think when most reasonable LGBTQ people talk about homophobia, what they’re referring to is the ostracism, exclusion and revulsion which many queer people experience quite irregardless of how sexually explicit they are in the presence of straight people. It’s a really sore spot for a lot of gays and lesbians because there are a lot of personality traits (particularly effeminacy in gays and masculinity in lesbians) which many homosexual people have, which they have had since early childhood, possibly since birth, and which cause people to treat them badly. When someone in the Christian community reacts to a moral problem, like gay marriage, the reaction that they’re triggering in an LGBTQ person is not fundamentally about the moral question at all – it’s about years of being name-called or excluded on the basis of traits over which the homosexual person has absolutely no control. This really has to be taken into account whenever you’re encountering someone who IDs as gay or lesbian, or even just someone who has same-sex attractions but doesn’t ID. There’s a massive psychological sore-spot there, and in the same way that you would be particularly careful if you were trying to minister physically to someone with a broken arm, you have to be particularly careful when trying to minister psychologically and spiritually to someone who has suffered a lot of unmerited rejection in their life.
This is getting long, so I’m going to address the Saint Paul thing in a second post.

Come sempre, bravissima.

 

[Melinda_Selmys]

Now to dissect 1 Corinthians 5. St. Paul here is writing to a newly formed Church, as you pointed out, where the people are freshly converted to Christianity and the Church is growing. I think that these are all really important factors. I remember when I first converted to Christianity, I broke-up with my same-sex partner, and drifted away from her and from many of my old friends into a new circle of Catholic friends. The spirituality that I adopted at that time was very much the sort of tight, legalistic spirituality that I often see in conservative Catholic circles. I think that was really important, just as it was necessary for the new Church that St. Paul was writing to, and also, if we look back to the Old Testament, for the newly formed Jewish community following the Exodus. There really is a time and a place where the right thing to do if you find a guy gathering wood on the Sabbath day is to take him out and stone him. The reasons for this are precisely the reasons that you so aptly articulated in your post, concerning the creation of a social milieux that encourages the growth of a fledgling faith community. Let’s call this the spirituality of the nest: it involves living your faith within a sheltered sanctuary that is removed to a certain degree from the rest of the world.
The problem is that this spirituality is a preparation. As a Church, or an individual, matures the problems and temptations assailing them will change. Christ basically came to a Jewish world that had become moribund because the Pharisees and scribes insisted on clinging to a sheltered, legalistic spirituality that no longer served to protect the faithful, but that rather served to alienate all but the most puritanical. The nest had ceased to be a place where a delicate faith grew into something robust, and had become a place of shelter for pride. When this happens to a Church, the result is that people turn away. They come to associate virtue and religion with god-bothering hypocrisy, and the Church starts to hemorrhage members. It’s really obvious that this is the phase of development that the modern Church in North America is at. We’re not a newly formed community, we’re a faltering community that is desperately trying to cling to its legal strictures in the hopes that we will somehow manage to hang on to the few members that we still have.
This is, of course, the reason why the Vatican has called for a new Evangelization. The cradle Catholics, the people who were first invited to the feast, are no longer showing up. This is really evident in my own small-town parish: last Sunday the Church had three times the attendance that it normally has. The Priest wryly observed that his congregation had massively swollen, and pointed out the reason: there was nothing else going on that week in Tweed. Anything from an Elvis festival to a baseball game is sufficient reason not to come to the Eucharistic table. Christ was really clear that when this happens, it’s time to go out into the streets and find anyone and everyone that you can, and start inviting them in. This is the time for evangelizing, the time to “Be Not Afraid,” the time to open the doors and let the people come in, even if they are ragged, wretched, dirty, or even gay.

 

[Church_Militant]

Maybe in Canada cradle Catholics are not showing up, but they’re all over the place here in the Southern U.S. Just sayin’

His Holiness has some insights on tolerance and truth in his book Light of the World.

In his futuristic novel Brave New World, the British author Aldous Huxley had predicted in 1932 that falsification would be the decisive element of modernity. In a false reality with its false truth—or the absence of truth altogether—nothing, in the final analysis, is important any more. There is no truth, there is no standpoint. Today, in fact, truth is regarded as far too subjective a concept for us to find therein a universally valid standard. The distinction between genuine and fake seems to have been abolished. Everything is to some extent negotiable. Is that the relativism against which you were warning so urgently?

It is obvious that the concept of truth has become suspect. Of course it is correct that it has been much abused. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. To that extent people are afraid when someone says, “This is the truth”, or even “I have the truth.” We never have it; at best it has us. No one will dispute that one must be careful and cautious in claiming the truth. But simply to dismiss it as unattainable is really destructive. A large proportion of contemporary philosophies, in fact, consist of saying that man is not capable of truth. But viewed in that way, man would not be capable of ethical values, either. Then he would have no standards. Then he would only have to consider how he arranged things reasonably for himself, and then at any rate the opinion of the majority would be the only criterion that counted. History, however, has sufficiently demonstrated how destructive majorities can be, for instance, in systems such as Nazism and Marxism, all of which also stood against truth in particular.

Benedict XVI, Pope; Peter Seewald (2010-11-23). Light Of The World (Kindle Locations 754-766). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

 

[Dee_S]

My “ick” reaction doesn’t kick in that early… and I have to admit that there comes a point when I have that same visceral gut reaction to male homoeroticism – and I feel that in spite of having been a practicing lesbian for years.

“For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. . . . Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.”—Romans 1:26-27, 32

St Paul had considerably more than an “ick” reaction to an intrinsically evil act. How long it takes to ‘kick in’ is not relevant to the topic.:bigyikes:, it only serves to prove that it would be inhuman not to have a reaction to the unnatural.

There’s a massive psychological sore-spot there, and in the same way that you would be particularly careful if you were trying to minister physically to someone with a broken arm, you have to be particularly careful when trying to minister psychologically and spiritually to someone who has suffered a lot of unmerited rejection in their life.

It would be in the best interests then, of these already compromised individuals to do everything in their power not to attract any sort of attention that, as you correctly say, may lead to psychological and spiritual damage.

Insisting on being socially accepted in their relationships or ‘marriages’,cause them much suffering; sadly a self inflicted cross.

In their defence, they are actually victims of those who promote and encourage them to insist on social acceptance *…" but they also that consent to them that do them.” *This is a cruelty without parallel, and in no way constitutes an act of charity on their behalf.

 

[Nita]

…This is, of course, the reason why the Vatican has called for a new Evangelization. The cradle Catholics, the people who were first invited to the feast, are no longer showing up. This is really evident in my own small-town parish: last Sunday the Church had three times the attendance that it normally has. The Priest wryly observed that his congregation had massively swollen, and pointed out the reason: there was nothing else going on that week in Tweed. Anything from an Elvis festival to a baseball game is sufficient reason not to come to the Eucharistic table. Christ was really clear that when this happens, it’s time to go out into the streets and find anyone and everyone that you can, and start inviting them in. This is the time for evangelizing, the time to “Be Not Afraid,” the time to open the doors and let the people come in, even if they are ragged, wretched, dirty, or even gay.

Yes, but it MUST be an evangelization that is true - that professes and practices the truths of the Church.

Jesus of course had contact with sinners - all are sinners. But His message is “Go, and sin no more” (cf. John 8:11); not “Go and don’t worry about it for now”. Jesus has many parables about the need to be prepared when the Master comes - and since we cannot know the hour, we must always be prepared.

 

[fhansen]

Now to dissect 1 Corinthians 5. St. Paul here is writing to a newly formed Church, as you pointed out, where the people are freshly converted to Christianity and the Church is growing. I think that these are all really important factors. I remember when I first converted to Christianity, I broke-up with my same-sex partner, and drifted away from her and from many of my old friends into a new circle of Catholic friends. The spirituality that I adopted at that time was very much the sort of tight, legalistic spirituality that I often see in conservative Catholic circles. I think that was really important, just as it was necessary for the new Church that St. Paul was writing to, and also, if we look back to the Old Testament, for the newly formed Jewish community following the Exodus. There really is a time and a place where the right thing to do if you find a guy gathering wood on the Sabbath day is to take him out and stone him. The reasons for this are precisely the reasons that you so aptly articulated in your post, concerning the creation of a social milieux that encourages the growth of a fledgling faith community. Let’s call this the spirituality of the nest: it involves living your faith within a sheltered sanctuary that is removed to a certain degree from the rest of the world.
The problem is that this spirituality is a preparation. As a Church, or an individual, matures the problems and temptations assailing them will change. Christ basically came to a Jewish world that had become moribund because the Pharisees and scribes insisted on clinging to a sheltered, legalistic spirituality that no longer served to protect the faithful, but that rather served to alienate all but the most puritanical. The nest had ceased to be a place where a delicate faith grew into something robust, and had become a place of shelter for pride. When this happens to a Church, the result is that people turn away. They come to associate virtue and religion with god-bothering hypocrisy, and the Church starts to hemorrhage members. It’s really obvious that this is the phase of development that the modern Church in North America is at. We’re not a newly formed community, we’re a faltering community that is desperately trying to cling to its legal strictures in the hopes that we will somehow manage to hang on to the few members that we still have.
This is, of course, the reason why the Vatican has called for a new Evangelization. The cradle Catholics, the people who were first invited to the feast, are no longer showing up. This is really evident in my own small-town parish: last Sunday the Church had three times the attendance that it normally has. The Priest wryly observed that his congregation had massively swollen, and pointed out the reason: there was nothing else going on that week in Tweed. Anything from an Elvis festival to a baseball game is sufficient reason not to come to the Eucharistic table. Christ was really clear that when this happens, it’s time to go out into the streets and find anyone and everyone that you can, and start inviting them in. This is the time for evangelizing, the time to “Be Not Afraid,” the time to open the doors and let the people come in, even if they are ragged, wretched, dirty, or even gay.

The Church has to be open to all-that’s the heart of God-and we’re all sinners. But the new converts will need the same sanctuary that you needed-to be assured that they’re safe-guarded against the mentalities that would compromise the Church’s message on sin-and leave open the door for falling back into that world.

 

[Melinda_Selmys]

It would be in the best interests then, of these already compromised individuals to do everything in their power not to attract any sort of attention that, as you correctly say, may lead to psychological and spiritual damage.

Insisting on being socially accepted in their relationships or ‘marriages’,cause them much suffering; sadly a self inflicted cross.

In their defence, they are actually victims of those who promote and encourage them to insist on social acceptance *…" but they also that consent to them that do them.” *This is a cruelty without parallel, and in no way constitutes an act of charity on their behalf.

Dee,

When LGBTQ people made the decision to come out of America’s closets en masse, it was because they wanted to see change. They wanted to identify themselves, so that everyone could clearly see who they were, and how many of them there were. The reason for this is fairly straightforward: it’s really unpleasant to live in a world that casually treats you like dung, where everybody behaves as though it’s perfectly normal, natural and acceptable to ridicule, deride, incarcerate, pillory, experiment on, castrate, rape and even kill a group of people because they have attractions or gender-traits that they did not choose. By making the issue a public one, by bringing it out in the open, LGBTQ people have gained a considerable advantage in terms of how painful it is to have SSA. I’m Canadian. I’ve suffered a little bit from homophobic sentiments on the part of people in my environment, but not very much. I’ve been to the States, and frankly, I was appalled by the level of casual scorn and disdain that I saw poured out on gay and lesbian people – and not just on account of LGBTQ people “flaunting” their sins. There are limits to tolerance, and tolerance always has to be accompanied by a firm dedication to telling the truth, but you don’t tell the truth to people by treating them like lepers.

 

[Dee_S]

It is always helpful, when trying to understand St Paul, not to leave out part of the text.

St Paul is excommunicating this person and saying that such people are not to be allowed to receive at Mass.

Remember: context.

Please can you let us have a link to your information on this excommunicated person not being allowed to receive at Mass.
I supply this link to the Homily of St John Chrysostom, where no mention is made of this event. It appears to refer to the distinction or rather lack of distinction between those in the world or ‘a brother’ in his condemnation of fornicators.

orthodoxyouth.org/1cor/html/5chrysostom.html Homily St John Chrysostom
HOMILY XVI.
1 Corinthians 5:9-11

I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world: but now I write unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a drunkard, or a reviler, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

For since he had said, “You have not rather mourned, that such an one should be taken away;” and, “Purge out the old leaven;” and it was likely that they would surmise it to be their duty to avoid all fornicators: for if he that has sinned imparts some of his own mischief to those who have not sinned, much more is it meet to keep one’s self away from those without: (for if one ought not to spare a friend on account of such mischief arising from him, much less any others and under this impression, it was probable that they would separate themselves from the fornicators among the Greeks also, and the matter thus turning out impossible, they would have taken it more to heart: he used this mode of correction, saying, “I wrote unto you to have no company with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world:” using the word “altogether,” as if it were an acknowledged thing. For that they might not think that he charged not this upon them as being rather imperfect, and should attempt to do it under the erroneous impression that they were perfect, he shows that this were even impossible to be done, though they wished it ever so much. For it would be necessary to seek another world. Wherefore he added, “For you must needs then go out of the world.” Do you see that he is no hard master, and that in his legislation he constantly regards not only what may be done, but also what may be easily done. For how is it possible, says he, for a man having care of a house and children, and engaged in the affairs of the city, or who is an artisan or a soldier, (the greater part of mankind being Greeks,) to avoid the unclean who are to be found every where? For by “the fornicators of the world,” he means those who are among the Greeks. “But now I write unto you, If any brother” be of this kind, “with such an one no not to eat.” Here also he glances at others who were living in wickedness.

 

[Dee_S]

When LGBTQ people made the decision to come out of America’s closets en masse, it was because they wanted to see change. They wanted to identify themselves, so that everyone could clearly see who they were, and how many of them there were.

I was appalled by the level of casual scorn and disdain that I saw poured out on gay and lesbian people – and not just on account of LGBTQ people “flaunting” their sins. There are limits to tolerance, and tolerance always has to be accompanied by a firm dedication to telling the truth, but you don’t tell the truth to people by treating them like lepers.

Melinda,
In order to be protected by society, one must identify with it…is an old saying that has some bearing on this issue.
The tragedy is that these people were encouraged, with militancy, to identify themselves to a society that could not accept them. The numbers of those affected, did no more than fuel the vain expectancy of acceptance into a society that could only consider them alien.

Surely anyone can work out that human beings have a deep need to be accepted and to belong/identify with their fellow humans? Sadly, this was an illogical concept that bore bitter fruits for those who most hungered for identity, becoming now not just victims in hiding, but the sport and derision of the family who rejects with cruelty, the mutant or deformed offspring.

The ‘uncharitable Christians’ and those who fear and love God, are themselves having to struggle against their natural revulsion; dealing with spiritual growth themselves.

It was cruel to bring them out of the closet…and true charity to show kindly that they must separate from any disordered intimate unions, in order not only to be accepted with dignity but mostly to please and serve their Creator.

The Church is our mother, and God does not tempt above what one can bear, but gives grace to those who ask. It is our duty as Catholics to pray for each other, as Christ has made us co-redeemers with Him.

Showing ‘tolerance’ and social acceptance to gay couples, can be considered as spiritually murdering our brothers and sisters.

 

[Melinda_Selmys]

Melinda,
In order to be protected by society, one must identify with it…is an old saying that has some bearing on this issue.
The tragedy is that these people were encouraged, with militancy, to identify themselves to a society that could not accept them. The numbers of those affected, did no more than fuel the vain expectancy of acceptance into a society that could only consider them alien.

Surely anyone can work out that human beings have a deep need to be accepted and to belong/identify with their fellow humans? Sadly, this was an illogical concept that bore bitter fruits for those who most hungered for identity, becoming now not just victims in hiding, but the sport and derision of the family who rejects with cruelty, the mutant or deformed offspring.

The ‘uncharitable Christians’ and those who fear and love God, are themselves having to struggle against their natural revulsion; dealing with spiritual growth themselves.

It was cruel to bring them out of the closet…and true charity to show kindly that they must separate from any disordered intimate unions, in order not only to be accepted with dignity but mostly to please and serve their Creator.

The Church is our mother, and God does not tempt above what one can bear, but gives grace to those who ask. It is our duty as Catholics to pray for each other, as Christ has made us co-redeemers with Him.

Showing ‘tolerance’ and social acceptance to gay couples, can be considered as spiritually murdering our brothers and sisters.

Dee S,

I am so grateful that the people who were involved in leading me to the Church didn’t have this attitude. They tolerated and socially accepted me, and then, when they had earned a place of trust by showing the love of Christ to me in their actions, they spoke to me about their faith, and they made me understand why I would want to love Christ so much that I would leave my same-sex partner. I know a lot of people with SSA, and the only pattern that I have ever seen bear any fruit in helping them to live in accord with the teachings of the Church is the pattern of love first, Catechesis second. Being a ‘co-redeemer’ means that you go out into the place where the person that you want to reach is – just as Christ left His lofty seat in the Heavens and came down to share in our humanity. Those who merely condemn, without first manifesting active love and compassion, are like the scribes who “load on men burdens that are unendurable, burdens that you yourselves do not move a finger to lift.” [Lk 11:46]

 

[JM3]

Please can you let us have a link to your information on this excommunicated person not being allowed to receive at Mass.

drbo.org/chapter/53005.htm

He excommunicates the incestuous adulterer and admonishes them to purge out the old leaven.