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Hi Jonathan,
For the single man or woman, you are giving them two false choices.
God made man's body physiologically for a woman; and He made woman's body physiologically for a man. If we think we are being called to a marital vocation, It is better to be married.
(Read 1 Corinthians 7)
My only advice based on 20 years of posting marital questions, is if you, as a couple, plan to get married, do it right the first time, talking about all the issues up front: e.g.:
- faith
- attending Church services regularly (therefore renewing your Christian covenant)
- children
- addressing previous marriages and ensuring your marriage is blessed by the Church.
It will likely save a lot of emotional pain down the road.
If we don't think we are being called to the married vocation, we should fight the same purity battle that married couples do but as one called to the single life.
Developing a gay life style is not good at all, because we are using God's body for
something that it was not meant for. Single men or women who struggle with purity should not just throw in the towel to a life style that will ultimately bring harm to their physical health.
Jesus, Our Blessed Lord, understands the fight and the struggle (Matthew 26:41) but doesn't expect a full surrender.
That said, there are some anomalies which the Vatican has addressed in the following statement.
From the: Declaration On Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics
from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Section VIII
[Vatican]|[EWTN]
At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations
in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even
to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This
they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and
to the moral sense of the Christian people.
A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals
whose tendency comes from:
- a false education,
- from a lack of normal sexual development,
- from habit,
- from bad example, or
- from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable;
and
homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate
instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude
that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual
relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage,
in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with
understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal
difficulties and their inability to fit into society.
Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral
method can be employed which would give moral justification
to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition
of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual
relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality.
In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even
presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment
of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those
who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it
does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered
and can in no case be approved of. |
Yes, there are scandals in Christendom, but the Church does not approve of
these bad examples. The priesthood is a calling — a calling
that takes a lot of discernment. More importantly, no man has a right to be a priest. It requires a discernment on his part and an acceptance of his choice by the Church.
We should all pray for the grace to follow the calling Our Blessed Lord has asked
of us, whether
as a:
- Husband
- Wife
- Bishop
- Priest
- Deacon
- Construction worker
- Network Engineer
- Small business owner
- Postal Worker
- Homemaker
- Teacher
- or whatever.
I hope this answers your question.
Mike
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