Why I believe many Gays turn away from the Church.

[markeverett49]

I didn’t claim that they weren’t promiscuous until they were taught, I claimed that when it became morally acceptable for heterosexuals to be promiscuous many homosexuals wanted that too.

I thought of this the opposite way: that as heterosexuals began to contracept and use abortion as a back-up, they came to see marriage as a primarily a sexual relationship with no necessary connection to children (-and without a connection to children, fidelity becomes less important, or as we now hear, ‘optional’).

I think many heterosexuals support same-sex marriage because THEY don’t see a significant difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

 

[Crescentinus]

I thought of this the opposite way: that as heterosexuals began to contracept and use abortion as a back-up, they came to see marriage as a primarily a sexual relationship with no necessary connection to children (-and without a connection to children, fidelity becomes less important, or as we now hear, ‘optional’).

I think many heterosexuals support same-sex marriage because THEY don’t see a significant difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

That is one of the reasons why there are heterosexual homosexualists.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

I thought of this the opposite way: that as heterosexuals began to contracept and use abortion as a back-up, they came to see marriage as a primarily a sexual relationship with no necessary connection to children (-and without a connection to children, fidelity becomes less important, or as we now hear, ‘optional’).

I think many heterosexuals support same-sex marriage because THEY don’t see a significant difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

I must have been unclear, I was actually supporting that

if you remove procreation from the picture there isn’t that much difference; they can both be for expressing “love” and/or for pleasure. Then toss in the “but we love each other, why can’t we marry” (which some probably do) and the heterosexuals go for it because the heterosexuals have debased marriage to the point where they don’t know what it means anymore.

 

[Mark121359]

Forgive me if someone has already said this but I haven’t read all of the posts. I see alot of accusations of Catholics hating being thrown around. And of the accusers I can’t help but thinking of Matthew 7:5… “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

 

[Seeker1961]

Forgive me if someone has already said this but I haven’t read all of the posts. I see alot of accusations of Catholics hating being thrown around. And of the accusers I can’t help but thinking of Matthew 7:5… “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

The crazy thing about that quote is that it goes for EVERYONE. Of course, nobody sees the beam, do they?

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

Forgive me if someone has already said this but I haven’t read all of the posts. I see alot of accusations of Catholics hating being thrown around. And of the accusers I can’t help but thinking of Matthew 7:5… “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

It’s a quite applicable quote to most people. It’s a slightly different situation when Catholics are reprimanding Catholics.

 

[CopticChristian]

The crazy thing about that quote is that it goes for EVERYONE. Of course, nobody sees the beam, do they?

Seeker,

I believe you generalize too much…here is what Chrysosotom says of this…

Judge not, that you be not judged.

What then? Ought we not to blame them that sin? Because Paul also says this selfsame thing: or rather, there too it is Christ, speaking by Paul, and saying, Romans 14:10 Why do you judge your brother? And thou, why do you set at nought your brother? and, Who are you that judgest another man’s servant? Romans 14:4 And again, Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come. 1 Corinthians 4:5

How then does He say elsewhere, Reprove, rebuke, exhort, 2 Timothy 4:2 and, Them that sin rebuke before all? And Christ too to Peter, Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone, and if he neglect to hear, add to yourself another also; and if not even so does he yield, declare it to the church likewise? And how has He set over us so many to reprove; and not only to reprove, but also to punish? For him that hearkens to none of these, He has commanded to be as a heathen man and a publican. Matthew 18:17 And how gave He them the keys also? Since if they are not to judge, they will be without authority in any matter, and in vain have they received the power to bind and to loose.

And besides, if this were to obtain, all would be lost alike, whether in churches, or in states, or in houses. For except the master judge the servant, and the mistress the maid, and the father the son, and friends one another, there will be an increase of all wickedness. And why say I, friends? Unless we judge our enemies, we shall never be able to put an end to our enmity, but all things will be turned upside down.

What then can the saying be? Let us carefully attend, lest the medicines of salvation, and the laws of peace, be accounted by any man laws of overthrow and confusion. First of all, then, even by what follows, He has pointed out to them that have understanding the excellency of this law, saying, Why do you behold the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in your own eye? Matthew 7:3

But if to many of the less attentive, it seem yet rather obscure, I will endeavor to explain it from the beginning. In this place, then, as it seems at least to me, He does not simply command us not to judge any of men’s sins, neither does He simply forbid the doing of such a thing, but to them that are full of innumerable ills, and are trampling upon other men for trifles. And I think that certain Jews too are here hinted at, for that while they were bitter accusing their neighbors for small faults, and such as came to nothing, they were themselves insensibly committing deadly sins. Herewith towards the end also He was upbraiding them, when He said, You bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, but you will not move them with your finger, Matthew 23:4 and, ye pay tithe of mint and anise, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. Matthew 23:23

Well then, I think that these are comprehended in His invective; that He is checking them beforehand as to those things, wherein they were hereafter to accuse His disciples. For although His disciples had been guilty of no such sin, yet in them were supposed to be offenses; as, for instance, not keeping the sabbath, eating with unwashen hands, sitting at meat with publicans; of which He says also in another place, You which strain at the gnat, and swallow the camel. But yet it is also a general law that He is laying down on these matters.

And the Corinthians 1 Corinthians 4:5 too Paul did not absolutely command not to judge, but not to judge their own superiors, and upon grounds that are not acknowledged; not absolutely to refrain from correcting them that sin. Neither indeed was He then rebuking all without distinction, but disciples doing so to their teachers were the object of His reproof; and they who, being guilty of innumerable sins, bring an evil report upon the guiltless.

This then is the sort of thing which Christ also in this place intimated; not intimated merely, but guarded it too with a great terror, and the punishment from which no prayers can deliver.

 

[Seeker1961]

Seeker,

I believe you generalize too much…here is what Chrysosotom says of this…

Your opinion of me is none of my business.

 

[BroomWagon]

Your opinion of me is none of my business.

Could you be a bit more specific on what you mean by that?

 

[lonelypetunia]

At the age of 15, I chose not to believe. At the age of 42, I chose to believe.

I think the opposite is happening to me. I appreciate and respect everyone’s views though.

 

[CopticChristian]

I think the opposite is happening to me. I appreciate and respect everyone’s views though.

Lonely,

History has a way of repeating itself…

Mark 9

But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” 23And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” 24Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”

you are among many that believe and need help with unbelief…

 

[theistgal]

Let me speak as an atheist: As a former Christian turned atheist, I can see it really wasn’t a choice. To a large extent (maybe entirely) I don’t think you can choose to believe anything. For some reason that baffles me, people think you can choose what you believe. They will say, “Well, you can choose to believe that if you want to blah-blah,” but you really can’t.

That is really well said! And I agree. I’m someone who has gone back and forth between Christianity and atheism several times during my life. It was NEVER a conscious choice - in fact, the times that I found myself sliding into atheism, I fought really hard to stop it from happening. The same with the times I slid back into theism!

Which is why I NEVER try to convince anyone else they should (or should not) believe - because I know from my own experience that no one else has ever convinced me!

I think the best metaphor for my own I’ve ever come across is the T.S. Eliot poem “The Spiral Staircase” - quoted extensively in Karen Armstrong’s book of the same name about her own experiences. I feel as though sometimes I can see everything (God, faith, etc.) very clearly; other times they’re completely obliterated and just don’t seem to be there at all. And now that I’m getting older and looking back at my life, I wonder if maybe I am on that “spiral staircase”, just going around and around the center, sometimes seeing the sunshine, other times seeing the darkness - and just hoping that at some point I’ll reach the top of the stairs and be able to see the whole scene clearly.

 

[lonelypetunia]

Lonely,

History has a way of repeating itself…

Mark 9

you are among many that believe and need help with unbelief…

I’ve been feeling like this for a while now. I never had the courage to admit that I had doubts. I’m at a point in my life, where I just don’t know… I don’t feel at home in my church, I was never a Roman Catholic. (It was stamped on my HS ID) I never converted because truthfully I don’t agree with everything the Catholic church teaches, once again I may not agree but I respect it.

I am not a militant in my views. I find when people are militant it pushes me away. I am a firm believer in being kind and generous to my fellow man, regardless of their religious convictions. I am proud to stand next to those who are kind and generous to others, once again regardless of their religion.

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

I thought of this the opposite way: that as heterosexuals began to contracept and use abortion as a back-up, they came to see marriage as a primarily a sexual relationship with no necessary connection to children (-and without a connection to children, fidelity becomes less important, or as we now hear, ‘optional’).

This shift in the popular understanding of marriage (from a socially-oriented institution to a couple-oriented institution) began centuries ago. I’d locate the start of it with the birth of the troubador tradition in Europe and the various romances (of which the story of Tristan and Isolde is the best example) in which marriage as a social duty leads to an understanding of marriage as loveless and the idea that one can really only find love outside the marriage. Dante takes this idea in a more Platonic direction with the figure of Beatrice–nonetheless, Beatrice, the love of his life, was not his wife. You can see in literature a theme develop gradually in which marriage, if it is to be a good marriage, must first be predicated on love, not social responsibility, familial obligations, legacy/inheritance creation etc. A growing sense that women are not merely property to be sold by one family to another in marriage to strengthen political, commercial or social ties–which is to say, the realization that women are not cattle, have minds of their own, and should be able to choose what they do, who they marry, etc.–further erodes the social aspects of marriage, particularly with the advent of the various movements for women’s equality and more and more women appearing in the male-dominated workforce during and after WWII. By the time we reach the mid-20th century, the beginning of the end of the"traditional housewife" and the birth of the “career woman,” there’s very little hope left for an idea of marriage which is about anything other than two equals who are in love and who choose each other in order to pursue a life together which may include children if their careers and collective desires allow for it. Add birth control, no-fault divorce and abortion into the loop, and the death of “traditional” marriage is a done deal. The decline of the couple-oriented marriage (ostensibly about love) is just around the corner, too, to be replaced by the marriage of mutual convenience. You can see it coming.

Same-sex attracted folks would never have been so interested in marriage if marriage were popularly understood to be about social/familial obligation (including children)rather than about the couple. Same-sex marriage, therefore, is a sign of something much larger which has been developing over the last few centuries and will, no doubt, continue to develop for centuries to come. I would argue that that something larger is related to the question: what does a man mean, what does a woman mean, and what do they both mean to each other? Contrary to what seems to be the more conservative religious opinion, I would argue that marriage is no longer on the frontlines of the evolution of this question because it has, in fact, been discarded as largely irrelevant to it (I think it was discarded sometime in the late 60’s). Yes, marriage still says something very particular about the relationship between the sexes, but it clearly doesn’t say as much to as many as it used to.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!

 

[markeverett49]

This shift in the popular understanding of marriage (from a socially-oriented institution to a couple-oriented institution) began centuries ago. I’d locate the start of it with the birth of the troubador tradition in Europe and the various romances (of which the story of Tristan and Isolde is the best example) in which marriage as a social duty leads to an understanding of marriage as loveless and the idea that one can really only find love outside the marriage.

I agree with this. C. S. Lewis once went so far as to say that the notion of ‘romantic love’ did not occur in the ancient world. But the double-whammy of readily available (and fairly reliable) contraception with abortion as a back-up took accelerated matters like nothing else.

 

[Armor_of_Light]

I have some thoughts on this topic.

Gays may turn away from church because they seem to want everything to revolve around gay. Religion (church) requires us to revolve around something greater than ourselves.

God bless all gay people and strength to all the gay people who live chastely.

 

[John_of_Woking]

Except no one wants to hear your opinions on what will send them to hell. Because that is all it is, an opinion. How would you feel if someone came up to you and said “you know, I think you are going to hell for going to Catholic Church…I don’t hate you, I just hate the sin of you going to Catholic Church. I am worried for your soul.” How would you view that person?

I’d respect them. I’d know their motive was good. Even though their opinion was objectively wrong.

 

[markeverett49]

Is there any research showing that a significant percentage of gays have turned away from the Church? Further, how would it compare to the percentage of, say, divorced men, or libertines?

 

[Bill_7154]

You bring up good points, however, I don’t know if I or you or anyone else has the right to redefine marriage and that is what we are talking about as well.

Okay, you have some people who want “Gay Marriage Banned.”

At the same time though, you have many people who merely want to retain the definition of Marriage. Some people say no matter what you do, there really is only one marriage, that between a man and a woman.

IMO, and I’ve said it before, it’s none of the STATE’S business when it comes to marriage. For Catholics, we can and do support men and woman being married in a Catholic Church, by a priest, under God, as part of practicing our religion.

For gays, they will not be married in a Catholic Church, regardless of whether or not they say they are Catholic. Maybe they can (and do) get married in some other church. Maybe they can (and do) simply state among friends in some sort of formal way (or have some friend conduct some sort of cerimony) where the result is they say they are married. This marriage is not recognized by the Catholic Church. All Catholics can be against these people doing these things.

As far as I"m concerned, marriage, be it between a man and a woman who are both Catholic in a Catholic Church, or among a man and woman in a Jewish Synagogue, or between a man and woman married in any other church is none of the state’s business and I do not think they should be involved in such affairs.

I realize there are tax codes, etc that essentially ‘put’ the state in the middle of marriage. But I do not believe they belong there. Just like they put themselves in the middle of tons of different issues where I believe they have no business. Essentially the state put’s themselves in the middle of people’s lives so much, people seem to have become condtioned to accept that whenever the state puts themselves in the middle of an issue between 2 people , regardless of the issue, people simply accept it without questioning the legitimacy of whether or not the state should be involved in the issue, whatever it is.

I think marriage is one of hundreds, or thousands of issues that the state has no business butting its nose in. So the way I see it, as Catholics, we can believe and support marriage between a man and a woman as the only aceptable form of marriage and only recognize those as legitimate, or as Catholics we could believe and support that marriage is only between a man and woman who are both Catholic and both practice their religion.

My objection is that the state is constantly butting into our (my) life in ways that it does not belong. I object to that. If other people want the state butting into every aspect of their life I do not want to stand in the way of their relationship to the state, to whatever extent they want that relationship to be (so long as that relationship does not interfere with me living my life as a Catholic doing my best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ in ME living MY life). And as an extention, me and my family living out lives.

I think the state should remove itself from having anything to do with marriage alltogether. My marriage is between me and my wife and God and the Catholic Church. I do my best as one partner in my marriage to assist myself, my wife, and my son to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I do not need, nor want, the state to ‘raise’ itself to the standard or position as to think and act as if they have the power or authority to interfere with my marriage.

If you, as a Catholic, or as a member of any other religion, feel comfortable having the state involved in your marriage then that is OK with me. But it is NOT OK with me for the state to involve inself in my marriage. My marriage is sacred and IMO it is cheapened and made less sacred by having the state but its nose into it. I object to that. I would prefer if they backed off out of my marriage and had nothing to do with it. I do not need, nor want, the state’s stamp of approval on my marriage. It is between me, my wife, God, and my Church. That is the way I want it to be and that is the way I want it to stay.

I am fairly certain I would be more happy, and my marriage would be of more value and more sacred if the state minded its own business and backed off with respect to my marriage. I feel that the sanctity of marriage is cheapened when the state puts its nose in the middle of it. I do not need that and I do not want that. If others want that, more power to you. But to have the state to have some say, or especially some ‘authority’ over my marriage is offensive to me.

I’m also curious to know the history of marriage, particularly Catholic marriages, and when and how the state got involved in these marraiges historically. Does anyone have information pertaining to this? Did the state ‘sanction’ marriages before Jesus Christ walked this earth? If so, was it obligitory for ‘the state’ to do so or was it optional? I’m curious to know about this both officially and ‘in practice’. Since the time that Jesus walked this earth were marriages always sanctioned by the state out of necessity as claimed by the state?

I’m really curious to know the history around this if anyone happens to know the history and is willing to share.

God Bless,
Bill

 

[Bill_7154]

Once again (with deja vu): The Catholic Church accepts those with a homosexual orientation who practice chastity. Those who continue to engage in homosexual acts are in a state of mortal sin. We Catholics believe that the devil tempts us to commit mortal sins, including sexual sins, and it is our Christian duty to confess our sins, to do penance, and to amend our lives. You can disagree all you want, but these are the teachings of the Catholic Church. You can try to convince others that homosexual activity is not evil, but you won’t have much luck with well-formed Roman Catholics.

As someone who was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but who drifted away from the Church (very much so) and my faith (ot a lesser extent but have had periods of doubt over the years) and has recently returned to the Church, where I believe I was guided to do so by the workings of the Holy Spirit I have a question(s) about this.

I have sinned of a sexual nature during my time away from the Church, engaging in premarital sex acts and also engaging in sex with other men’s wives. I knew it was wrong and against the teachings of my faith, but I did do so. About 5 months ago I had what I can only characterize as a sort of ‘calling’, a renewed awakening of my faith. I attended Church when one of my nephew’s was being baptized (one of the few times I had attended Church up until 5 months ago). A week or 2 thereafter I atteneded Church as this ‘calling’ sort of started to happen within me. A week later I went to confession and confessed my sins of a sexual nature in addtion to the many other sins I had committed since the 17 years since my last confession.

My question(s): Were my sins of engaging in premarital sex of a more grave nature than homosexuals engaging in sex?

Were my sins of engaging in sex with other men’s wives of a more grave nature than my sins of having pre-marital sex?

Were my sins of enaging in sex with other mens wives of a more grave nature than homosexuals engaging in sex?

I have no political agenda asking these questions, I simply am seeking answers as I have been away from my religion for many, many years (although I always ‘believed’- albeit had moments of doubt, and prayed off and on, as well as read the bible off and on during this time I was away from the church) and am in the process of re-connecting to the Catholic Church. I still have a lot to learn. The bible has been, and remains my main tool to learn and understand how I should behave insofar as the Bible contains the teachings of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I do not know the answers to the above questions and this thread has spurred me to wonder about this. Can someone provide these answers to me please?

Thanks and God Bless,
Bill