Dear friend,

One of my very close friends is gay, albeit he is chaste and he has never been rejected by any Catholics, myself included. Rejection may happen by bigots but is not the policy or dogma of the Church.

• Have you read the encyclical on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual persons?
  

There is no rejection of persons, only sexual activities that violate the natural law. Surely you must agree that there are sexual boundaries:

• Would you condone bestiality, sex with children, and orgies?
  
• Where and how do you draw the line?
  
• How does God inform your judgement and reasoning in this?
  

We live in a world with a disordered view of sex all around. All these things and more abound including auto-eroticism. Homosexual persons are not singled out for unfair treatment. We all must order ourselves toward the perfect will of God, who is pure love and has given us a context for the expression of that love in our sexuality.

We are given this gift that has an objective context, just as our alimentary system has an objective context. Just as we shouldn't bully someone who has an eating disorder, but love them, we must love those who struggle with their sexuality in any shape or form, even if we don't condone illicit activity.

You can have gay friends and be fully Catholic and witness how we are all called to chastity, whatever our sexual attraction may be.

Think on these things from an analogical point of view with respect to natural objects and appetites, and you may come to see the coherence of the Catholic position.

God bless you.

Bob Kirby

Dear IsThereNoHope?

Thank you for what seems like a genuine and sincere response to Bob's response. Let me add my two cents to four points and presumptions that you have just made:

1. You presume the Church's teaching on homosexual acts is a human and changeable one. Like all the Church's teachings on sexuality (adultery, fornication, masturbation, pedophilia, bestiality, sodomy, etc.) both of these presumptions are false.
   
   On matters of faith and morals the Magisterium of the Church has the gift of infallibly of which the Holy Spirit ensures the Word of God be taught by the successors of the Apostles to be pure and without error for the sake of our salvation. Also, matters of natural law literally cannot be changed. You could make the argument that desire for all of the acts above might be the result of evolution (I would say the result of original sin), but that says nothing about whether individuals having these desires have a moral right to act upon them.
   
   
2. You have adopted the modern secular humanist ethic that all is okay as long as there is adult consent. This foundational ethic is not Christian or even theist. Adults can consent to wrong things of which they have no moral right to do. For example:

• Is mutually agreed upon severe beatings to each other morally justifiable?
• How about incestuous relationships of consenting adults?

Adult humans make many decisions for both children and animals such as immunizations, taking animals as pets, etc. without their consent.

• What rational argument is there against human adults also taking them on as sex partners once you throw out the premise that sex has a natural purpose which is unitive and procreative?
  

The adult consent ethic ultimately is an attempt to make ourselves our own gods. We get to decide what is right and wrong, not God — see Genesis 3:5.

3. You seem to have also adopted a second popular contemporary error which holds that all acts attempting to express feelings of tenderness should be considered love. This does not take into consideration that feelings and desires can be disordered and it would also justify all the disordered acts mentioned above. There must be something objective and independent of our feelings and desires to indicate whether acts in themselves are loving and if it is moral to act upon particular desires.
   
   That objective criteria is human nature or natural law and it is additionally underscored in the Word of God and teaching of the Church for the faithful. Both recognize homosexual acts as being intrinsically disordered and never good for those that would indulge. Hence they could never be considered acts of love because they are objectively abusive — despite any feelings of tenderness that may accompany them.
   
   
4. The bottom line question for anyone who loves God is this:

• Am I willing to die to self for the love of God and His Truth?, or
• Will I go through the typical, selfish, psychological defense mechanisms of denial, rationalization, seeking popular consensus, [and/or] creating my own image of God in order to justify myself, etc. etc.

That is the ultimate question for all of us when it comes to the strong disordered inclinations and desires we all have in some form or another due to original sin and related influences on our nature.

Peace and Happy Advent,

Paul

Dear friend,

I just wanted to add to my previous response with points that may be clarifying.

I used the alimentary analogy to show the objectivity of the system. We eat to fulfill something objective, hunger is an appetite meant to stimulate consumption of something to nourish the body. If the appetite was for something that could not nourish intrinsically, such as talcum powder or anti-freeze, we would recognize that as disordered.

Likewise we may see an excessive appetite with subsequent bingeing and then rejection if the consumption via vomiting as disordered, along with other numerous variations. We can measure what is ordered and disordered by the purpose of the system and behaviors and actions that are in harmony with its nature: the object of the system. If you divorce the action of eating from the ingestion of the food you are disordered (vomiting/bulimia). If your appetite cannot be regulated you have a disorder which leads to either anorexia or obesity. Almost all disorders fundamentally lead to death unchecked.

Sex is intrinsically ordered toward reproduction. We understand that we have a biological system ordered to making new people. Our system relies on the intercourse of a male and female, who are complimentary to one another in this. The object of ejaculation is to release sperm toward an egg for which it may copulate and become one with it's Genetic material and create a new person, whom God infuses a soul therein. Our appetite for sex is naturally ordered to this end, and any attempt to do otherwise is disordered, because there is simply no other possible object for the sperm. It has one purpose by its own nature.

• Now if the object of sex is procreation, does that mean it is merely utilitarian?
• When God devised eating did he deprive us of the pleasure of food and it's many flavors?

No, on the contrary, eating is a pleasure and was intended to be. Disordered eating may still be pleasurable but violates the order God intended and leads, not to life, but death. So it is with sex.

We know that sex is intended for procreation by its design. We also know that procreation involves new people that must be cared for and developed into persons capable of sustaining life independently. This is where:

• common sense
• science, and
• faith meet harmoniously.

God gave us a context for this called marriage.

Let the two become one flesh, he said, and children were conceived and lovingly raised in the context of the family, which mirrors Gods own divine family: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This was His plan — to have us share in His divine life in a tangible reified way.

So, the Catholic view is that when it comes to our appetites we must keep them in order, recognizing the harmony of nature as God made it.

Homosexual persons have the same burden that heterosexual persons do: regulate your appetite to its natural order. Eat what is consumable and not to an unhealthy excess, nor deprive yourself of what is required for sustenance. Likewise, regulate your sexual appetite to avoid activity which violates its natural order and object. Have sex with a spouse so you can lovingly conceive a new person to mirror Gods divine love and raise them to love, know God, and make it on their own.

In this way we can see the boundaries naturally imposed by natural law:

• don't have sex with someone you are not married to
• don't thwart the natural end of the act (contraception — akin to vomiting food consumed).

These fundamentals connect the procreative and unitive (bonding power in the context of marriage). When both sides of the equation are intact, we have loving harmony as God intended.

You may be thinking:

• Does that mean we are suggesting that in every act we must be trying to get pregnant? <No.>

Just as when you eat sometimes you do it for the pleasure, you can still keep it in context (you don't vomit what you consume). You simply remain open to life by not thwarting the act in a disordered way.

Unmarried heterosexual people have the same urges that gay people do, but the Lord and His Church call them to chastity. Sex is reserved for a spouse, who must be complimentary sexually.

This is how:

• reason
• the science of biology
• faith, and
• morals align.

All Catholic teaching emanates from this coherence.

Lastly, there is nothing in Revelation that indicates God changed His original plan and made same-sex sex His intention so until He gives us further notice, we must obey.

Peace,

Bob Kirby

Dear IsThereNoHope?,

In your last reply to Paul you quoted from Wikipedia as follows:
American Catholic bishops have stated that, though theological opinion was not intended to be a part of (CCC) Catechism of the Catholic Church, [18] it in fact "does not distinguish between matters of faith and theological opinion." [19]

and

• So what is the status of the Catechism?
  

Your quote from Wikipedia is an error. Thank goodness Wikipedia is not infallible as I would question the source or context of this quote. In the official, Vatican-approved, Catechism of the Catholic Church in the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, the introduction, that is in the front of every Catechism of the Catholic Church you read, it states, Pope John Paul II speaking:

3. The Doctrinal Value of the Text

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved 25 June last and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church's faith and of Catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium. I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion. May it serve the renewal to which the Holy Spirit ceaselessly calls the Church of God, the Body of Christ, on her pilgrimage to the undiminished light of the Kingdom!

The approval and publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church represent a service which the Successor of Peter wishes to offer to the Holy Catholic Church, to all the particular Churches in peace and communion with the Apostolic See: the service, that is, of supporting and confirming the faith of all the Lord Jesus' disciples (cf. Luke 22:32 as well as of strengthening the bonds of unity in the same apostolic faith. Therefore, I ask all the Church's Pastors and the Christian faithful to receive this catechism in a spirit of communion and to use it assiduously in fulfilling their mission of proclaiming the faith and calling people to the Gospel life. This catechism is given to them that it may be a sure and authentic reference text for teaching Catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms. It is also offered to all the faithful who wish to deepen their knowledge of the unfathomable riches of salvation (cf. Ephesians 3:8). It is meant to support ecumenical efforts that are moved by the holy desire for the unity of all Christians, showing carefully the content and wondrous harmony of the catholic faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, lastly, is offered to every individual who asks us to give an account of the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Peter 3:15) and who wants to know what the Catholic Church believes.

You said:
The key point I am asking is:

• What do I have to believe in to be a part of the Church?

In the Catholic Church, you have to be in a Common Union with Her Teachings and Her Teachings on sexuality are one of Her core teachings.

Based on what you have said with Paul and Bob, I would suggest that you ask the Lord to show you the truthfulness of His Teaching in this area and even though you are not a Catholic, stop by an Adoration Chapel to pray and contemplate on the issue. As you do, strive to separate official, logical, common sense teaching, from bad, scandalous behavior within the Church from the past. (i.e. the Inquisition)

Though it's not taught from the pulpit as much as it should, when Catholics receive the Blessed Sacrament every Sunday, whether they know it or not, they are saying they are in a Common Union with the Teachings of the Church.

We'll keep you in our prayers.

Hope this helps,

Mike