Why is the US Catholic church so obsessed with the gay issue?

[MarkInOregon]

Some thoughts from Peter Kreeft on Jesus and Sex from the Philosophy of Jesus as I think they are relevant to how we got here. I apologize that there will be several posts, but I think it is worth the time and the thought.

"When we hear the word “morality” today we auto* matically think of sexual morality. This is because we know that sex is by far the biggest moral battle* field in the world. Everyone speaks of the “sexual revolution.” No one speaks of a corresponding moral revolution in any other area. In fact, the rest of the moral law is still pretty much in place in people’s minds and hearts…
Moral relativism is the new orthodoxy among our mind-molders in media and education. And almost all the justifications for the new moral relativism are sexual. No one wants a morality of “any* thing goes” or “different strokes for different folks” or “live and let live” or "don’t be judgmental “when it comes to ecology, or economics, or penology, or terrorism, or even smoking. Only sex.
We do not justify murdering helpless innocents, except in the name of sex. If storks brought babies, there would be no abortions. Abortion is backup birth control, and birth control is the demand to have sex without having babies. The motor driving the abortion holocaust is sexual.
We do not justify any other practice whose clear results are (1) betraying your life’s most intimate friend and your most solemn promise, (2) harming your children’s happiness very deeply for the rest of their lives, and (3) destroying the most fundamental building block of human society. But we justify divorce, even though it has these three results, because it is in the name of sex. We are not allowed to steal another man’s money without being put into jail, but we can steal another man’s wife. You cannot betray your lawyer without being penalized, but you can betray your wife, and she is penalized. You cannot kill unborn bald eagles or blue whales without breaking the law, but you can kill your own unborn children without breaking the law.
Obviously, this society is not overstocked with philosophical wisdom or logical consistency…”

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

Yet, though thinking is not sufficient, it is necessary.Thinking unconfuses things. We must find the essence of our confusion and then find the golden key to the way out of that confusion.
The essence of the confusion is that we con* fuse sex with love. And Christ is the way out. Now watch how this works.
Here is the confusion: the Beatles sang:“All you need is love.” But it isn’t. Someone wrote a romantic novel with the title "Love Is Enough."But it isn’t. Not the kind of love they mean. On the other hand, it is true that “all you need is love” and that “love is enough,” for “God is love” and God is enough.
And here is the clearing-up of the confusion, the apparent contradiction: What kind of love is God? The answer is Christ. Do you want to know what love ultimately is? Look there. Look at Christ. There is love. The definition is not abstract but as concrete as a crucifix.
No one in Western civilization can ignore the wisdom we received from Christ, that the greatest value is love. What we can and do ignore is how different that love is from all natural human loves, how challenging it is, how radical a change it requires. To explain it by an analogy, He called this change a “new birth,” deliberately using as its image the single most radical change we have ever experienced in our natural lives. We confuse the love He was talking about (agape) either with sexual love (eros) or with subjective compassion and kindness, or with philanthropy, the objective deeds these feelings motivate us to perform. The confusion with sexual love is not rationally defensible, so it is unconscious; the confusion with inner feelings of compassion, or with external deeds of philanthropy, seems defensible, so it is usually conscious. But I Corinthians 13 explicitly refutes both.

 

[Bradski]

The PEW poll and the Washington Post article have been debunked and refuted here on the forum.

You didn’t read the link. I actually posted the article that debunked the original quote and used their quote instead. It doesn’t say that that percentage use contraception on a regular basis but it STILL says that 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time.

The PEW poll did not ask Catholic women if they used artificial birth control. Yet you claimed “Maybe because a huge majority of Catholics use contraception it’s a harder argument for you.”

Well, let’s be practical here. If 75% of Catholic women have no problem with contraception, I think it quite likely that they would use it. Are you saying it’s not a problem?

Oh yeah – it can’t be. It hasn’t been on CNN. I forgot.

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

Unlike all other forms of love, Christ’s love is not easy, natural, or emotional; it is hard, supernatural, and an act of will, sometimes in the teeth of feelings. Was Mother Teresa’s work of picking up the fly-infested, dying derelicts from the streets of Calcutta based on some sweet, cuddly feeling she had for them?..Did Jesus have the same feelings toward Judas that He had toward John? When His feelings changed, did His love change?
We do not usually ignore Christ’s demand for love, but we do usually ignore how different that love is from all merely human loves. Differences are revealed by thought. We do not think about His saying “By this all men will know that you are my disciples: by the love you have for each other.” (John 13:35) If that love had been a natural, generic, universal love already present in man, the saying would contradict itself It would mean: “The world will see the difference between you and them by the fact that you all share the same kind of love.” It meant, of course, exactly the opposite.
Now what difference does Christ and His love ( agape) make to sex (eros) ? What light does the Light of the World shed on the god of our world, sex, and on our Sexual Revolution?
Sex is the god of our world, our culture. It is our most non-negotiable demand. The teaching of Christ’s faithful Church about sex is the main reason the world hates and fears the Church, for the Church is “judgmental” about our society’s addic* tion and its real religion.
Christ revolutionizes the Sexual Revolution. How does He do that? Not by opposing religion to sex but by opposing real religion to false religion.
From Freud’s point of view, religion is a substi*tute for sex; from Christ’s point of view, sex is a substitute for religion. It’s a pretty good substitute. Of all the things God created, it is one of the very best, and a natural icon of supernatural love and our supernatural destiny. Only very good things can be worshipped. You can’t make a religion out of plumbing or insurance.

 

[Ignatius]

Why is the US Catholic church so obsessed with the gay issue?

It is not. The issues of immoral behavior of all kinds have been around since the beginning. It is those who are opposed to the constant teaching of The Catholic Church who are obsessed with the issue.

 

[Julianna]

A Pew Research poll conducted in March, just after Francis’ election, found that three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (76%) say the church should permit birth control. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/19/majority-of-u-s-catholics-opinions-run-counter-to-church-on-contraception-homosexuality/

“Data shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced women of child-bearing age and who identify themselves as Catholic have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning at some point in their lives.” washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-claim-that-98-percent-of-catholic-women-use-contraception-a-media-foul/2012/02/16/gIQAkPeqIR_blog.html

Much time? No, you spend no time at all. Which is fine if you consider homosexuality to be a greater evil. And I guess no-one is interested in contraception. That’s a done deal. No-one is going to file any reports on something that hardly anyone considers a problem. So is that how you see it? It’s not on the TV, so it’s not a problem?

I take it that as matters regarding SSM are reported less and less (as they certainly will be as these things have a certain shelf life as far as the media goes – there is always another topic de jour) we shall see less and less posts from you on it.

Your understanding is pretty much correct.

Bradski…here is your martini…shaken not stirred. Great post.

 

[Michael19682]

Peter Kreeft continued:

Yet, though thinking is not sufficient, it is necessary.Thinking unconfuses things. We must find the essence of our confusion and then find the golden key to the way out of that confusion.

You use the magic word. “Silence is golden”.
Because of the Church’s effort to see elected good God fearing Christians (and hopefully Catholic ones), they need to break silence when the institution they are attempting to “steer” goes awry in their opinion? The reasons for the objection to the proposed changes themselves never change. Also, I might add, in this nation, thanks be to God, we encourage (name removed by moderator)ut in the democratic process. So the response is literally giving [him] what he wants, more attention and public debate to feed on.

 

[Julianna]

You didn’t read the link. I actually posted the article that debunked the original quote and used their quote instead. It doesn’t say that that percentage use contraception on a regular basis but it STILL says that 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time.

Well, let’s be practical here. If 75% of Catholic women have no problem with contraception, I think it quite likely that they would use it. Are you saying it’s not a problem?

Oh yeah – it can’t be. It hasn’t been on CNN. I forgot.

All on has to do 8s look around pews during Mass and count the number of children per family…hang out 10 yrs…and count again. You readily see probably no more than three. Interesting. The reason is clear…it’s the economy. …so whether it’s contraception or NFP…families are having less children.

And yes I have read the 98% also. And have asked…yeah…contraception in some form is being used.

 

[ctb95]

You didn’t read the link. I actually posted the article that debunked the original quote and used their quote instead. It doesn’t say that that percentage use contraception on a regular basis but it STILL says that 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time.

Well, let’s be practical here. If 75% of Catholic women have no problem with contraception, I think it quite likely that they would use it. Are you saying it’s not a problem?

Oh yeah – it can’t be. It hasn’t been on CNN. I forgot.

98% of Catholic women have used contraception at some point. I believe I saw that 86% of Catholic women find it morally acceptable.

Now, I believe this is a survey of women who identify as Catholic (even if they don’t practice). If the survey only includes women who attend mass every week, I would conjecture that the percentage of women who find contraception morally acceptable would go down to 50-60% - far less than than the 98% number.

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

 Let's explore how close sex is to religion. The center of religion, the ultimate end of religion, the "holy of holies" of religion, is spiritual marriage to God. The last event in human history, according to the Bible, at the end of the Apocalypse, is a wed*ding between the Lamb and His  Bride,  His Church. And the center of sex, and its  greatest thrill, is the intimacy of intercourse, the almost* mystical overcoming of separateness and egotism, the identification with the other, in body and mind, the fact that the beloved allows you into his or  her  "holy  of  holies." This  is  a  natural  icon, image, shadow, prophecy, appetizer, and  foretaste of that infinite and unimaginable  ecstasy  of Heaven that we were all made for. We are hard* wired for becoming one with God; that's why we are so thrilled at becoming one with each other. That's why self-forgetfulness, the transcendence of egotism, and the loss of control, in sexual orgasm is so mysteriously fulfilling. It's not just the purely physical sensation; it's the mystical meaning. The higher animals experience the same physical pleasure (watch dogs!), but they  don't write mystical, romantic love poems about it, and they wouldn't write them even if they could write.
 Animal sex is only a remote image of human romance, and human romance is a remote image of Heavenly ecstasy. The earthly intimacy with the beloved is a tiny, distant spark of the bonfire that is the Heavenly intimacy with God. Sex is a faint image of the Beatific Vision.
 The Age of Faith invested its faith, its hope, and its love in that Heavenly ecstasy. Our Age of Apostasy has lost it, and therefore has  become quite naturally attached to its image, human sex. The Sexual Revolution could not have happened without two causes, or conditions: (1) religious passion  declined,  and  (2)  the  Pill  enabled  us  to separate sex from procreation and lifelong responsibility.
Religion is not a pale substitute for sex but sex a pale substitute for real religion; because, as Aquinas says, "No man can live without joy; that is why a man deprived of spiritual joy goes over to carnal pleasures." (STII-II, 35, 4 ad 2) The origin of the Sexual Revolution is religious. That's why its demands are so non-negotiable.
 But when you have the real thing you are freed from addiction to its image. When you have a love (agape) relationship with God you are freed from addiction to love ( eros) relationships to creatures. And only then, only when we do not so desperately need them, we can enjoy and appreciate creatures freely. The alcoholic is not free to appreciate

alcohol, and the sexaholic is not free to appreciate sex.
What does Christ have to do with this? Everything. For Christ alone gives us intimacy with God. Therefore Christ alone is the answer to the Sexual Revolution.
To many people, this connection will seem bizarre. The question “What does Christ have to do with sex?” will sound suspiciously similar to the one the demons asked Christ when He was about to exorcise them from a man possessed: “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34) How dare we bring these two things together? We must, because they are the two most passionate things in our lives.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

You didn’t read the link. I actually posted the article that debunked the original quote and used their quote instead. It doesn’t say that that percentage use contraception on a regular basis but it STILL says that 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time. But, judging from the examples above, the media has gotten it wrong. The journalistic shorthand has been that “98 percent of American Catholic women have used contraception in their lifetimes.” But that is incorrect, according to the research.

From your link…titled:

The claim that 98 percent of Catholic women use contraception: a media foul

" But, judging from the examples above, the media has gotten it wrong. The journalistic shorthand has been that “98 percent of American Catholic women have used contraception in their lifetimes.” But that is incorrect, according to the research."

Anti-Catholic journalists will gleefully use “journalistic shorthand” to confuse data and make Catholics look bad. Idiots like Nancy Pilosi (and others who fall for this tripe) love to repeat this stuff without a simple fact check. Thereby making fools of themselves.

But why am I wasting time with a non-issue?? I must get back to defending my Church from the latest onslaught of homosexual activism. :slapfight:

 

[Thorolfr]

98% of Catholic women have used contraception at some point. I believe I saw that 86% of Catholic women find it morally acceptable.

Now, I believe this is a survey of women who identify as Catholic (even if they don’t practice). If the survey only includes women who attend mass every week, I would conjecture that the percentage of women who find contraception morally acceptable would go down to 50-60% - far less than than the 98% number.

The fact that most American Catholics don’t even attend Mass every week is itself a serious problem for the Catholic Church in the US. According to a Pew Research Center survey from 2013:

The percentage of U.S. Catholics who consider themselves “strong” members of the Roman Catholic Church has never been lower than it was in 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the General Social Survey (GSS). About a quarter (27%) of American Catholics called themselves “strong” Catholics last year, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s and among the lowest levels seen in the 38 years since strength of religious identity was first measured in the GSS, a long-running national survey carried out by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.

However, over the past four decades, self-reported church attendance has declined among “strong” Catholics as well as among Catholics overall. The share of all Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week has dropped from 47% in 1974 to 24% in 2012; among “strong” Catholics, it has fallen more than 30 points, from 85% in 1974 to 53% last year.

pewforum.org/2013/03/13/strong-catholic-identity-at-a-four-decade-low-in-us/

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

 Go over this again more deeply......the Sexual Revolution is surely the most radical revolution of our time.  For "radical" means "about roots" (radix), and sex is the root of human life itself.
 The most radical fruit of the Sexual Revolution is not in action but in thought.....the most radical fruit of the Sexual Revolution is ignorance: ignorance of the most basic truth of all about sex, about its basic significance, that is, what it most basically means, or signifies, "what it's all about." Sex is about babies. Sex is the origin of new human life. That's why it's so ecstatic! Sex is for procreation, the closest approximation we can ever come to the divine ecstasy of creation. And that is what the Sexual Revolution forgets, denies, covers up, or forbids.
 The most radical change of the Revolution was not in behavior. There have been all sorts of wild explosions of sexual behavior before in history, notably in dying Rome. The real revolution has been in thought. "All that we do is made from our thoughts," says Buddha, at the beginning of the Dhammapada. What Pope Paul VI prophetically called "the contraceptive mentality"was a more rad*ical change than anyone foresaw, except Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Contraception separates sex from babies. That is like separating food from nutrition, or eyes from seeing, or ice makers from ice, or churches from saints......

.

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

Both the Revolution’s friends and its enemies usually say that the revolution consisted in the removal of restraint and censorship of sexual behavior. Its friends say this was good, and its ene* mies say it was not. But they are both wrong. Much more radical was the imposition of a new censorship, a censoring of the essence of sex, the meaning of sex. They were so fixated on the fact that people make sex that they forgot that sex makes people. They were so engrossed in psychology that they forgot biology.
The lies of the Revolution must be exposed. Divorce and abortion are two of them. The Revolution justifies divorce by an appeal to “compassion,” but in fact divorce is terribly lacking in compassion to its innocent victims, children. It is like abortion that way. In fact it is an abortion: of the "one flesh’’ new person created by marriage. And that is the second lie: abortion, the primary sacrament of the Sexual Revolution and its most astonishing fruit.
Since the Sexual Revolution is based on a lie, it can be defeated only by telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about sex. This means not just No’s but a Yes: dispelling fantasy by displaying reality, exposing the whole truth, the Big Picture.

 

[Lucretius]

Following Mark of Oregan’s humble yet fantastic reply , I wish to post Dr. Kreeft’s fanstastic article conveniently named “Love”: peterkreeft.com/topics/love.htm

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Lucretius]

…Idiots like Nancy Pilosi (and others who fall for this tripe)

Please don’t talk that way

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[MarkInOregon]

Peter Kreeft continued:

God is a Trinity because He is love, complete love, therefore Lover, Beloved, and Loving. He is not just a lover, but “God is love.” (I John 4:8) And that is why human love, especially human sexual love, is Godlike: because God is love.
And the Trinity is the ultimate meaning of sex. For we are made in God’s image, and that means sex. The very first time scripture uses the phrase “the image of God” (Genesis 1:27), it identifies it as “male and female.”
How important is the theology of the body? That depends on how important the Sexual Revolution is. The importance of St. George depends on the importance of the dragon. The importance of Dr. Van Helsing depends on the importance of Dracula.
And how important is the Sexual Revolution? That depends on how important the family is-for exactly the same reason.
And how important is the family? It is only the basis for all human society, in fact for human existence.
Four of the most stable, successful, internally peaceful, and long-lived societies in history were the Jewish (Mosaic), the Confucian, the Islamic, and the Roman. They lasted, respectively, about 35, 21, 14, and 7 centuries, for one overriding reason: because they all greatly respected the family.
I think the family is even more important to God than doctrinal orthodoxy, because the family is about the very image of God in man. Islam and Mormonism are theological heresies, but God is blessing them and they are expanding faster than Christianity today because Muslims and Mormons are much more faithful than Christians to the family, marriage, sexual morality, and procreation. They are resisting the Sexual Revolution. We are succumbing to it.
This is outrageous, because the definitive answer to the Sexual Revolution is not Muhammad or Joseph Smith but Jesus, who not only reveals but incarnates the mystery of the holiness of sex, marriage, and the family as a sacred sign of our ultimate destiny, spiritual marriage to God. Jesus does not just tell us the Big Picture; He is the Big Picture. He does not just teach us the Word of God about sex. He is the Word of God about sex. He does not merely reveal the spiritual marriage; He is the spiritual marriage. In Christ we have more than the Big Picture; we have the Big Person.

 

[estesbob]

All on has to do 8s look around pews during Mass and count the number of children per family…hang out 10 yrs…and count again. You readily see probably no more than three. Interesting. The reason is clear…it’s the economy. …so whether it’s contraception or NFP…families are having less children.

And yes I have read the 98% also. And have asked…yeah…contraception in some form is being used.

It’s worse than that! 100% of Catholics are sinners!

 

[Julianna]

It’s worse than that! 100% of Catholics are sinners!

I know Bob…can you imagine?

 

[Bradski]

From your link…titled:

" But, judging from the examples above, the media has gotten it wrong. The journalistic shorthand has been that “98 percent of American Catholic women have used contraception in their lifetimes.” But that is incorrect, according to the research."

From the same link:

”…it was based on a question that asked self-identified Catholic women who have had sex if they have ever used one of 12 methods of birth control. Jones, in an interview, said the women were asked to answer “yes” or “no” whether they had used each of the different forms; only two percent had said they had used only natural family planning.
In other words, a woman may have sex only once, or she may have had a partner who only used a condom once, and then she would be placed in the 98 percent category.”

Whichever way you want to look at this, however you want to present the results of the survey, whatever type of spin you want to put on this, the answer is there in black and white. To repeat:

Ninety eight percent of all self-identified Catholic women surveyed said that they had used artificial contraception at some time. The survey doesn’t say that 98% of Catholic women use contraception on a regular basis. It doesn’t say that 98% of Catholic women agree that it is morally acceptable. It doesn’t say anything other than 98% of Catholic women have used artificial contraception at some time.

This statement is correct:

“98 percent of American Catholic women have used contraception in their lifetimes.”

If it incorrect, then please point out what part of that statement is wrong.