Michael Leach writes:
"...The average Catholic is proud of the Pope's affirmation of life wherever he goes. She wishes more leaders, in the church and in the world, would witness to the truth that all of life is sacred: from womb to tomb; in the unborn and the dying; the murderer on death row and the mother in a coma; the soldier in Afghanistan and the homeless family in Iraq; the child abused by a pedophile and the pensioner who can't afford a doctor; in the oil-poisoned Gulf and the coal mines of Pennsylvania; in the Arab and in the Israeli. The average Catholic has a high moral standard but is reluctant to chastise anyone, other than himself, who doesn't live up to it.
The average Catholic knows from experience that birth control is a blessing and that abortion is a tragedy. She values the virtues of fidelity and chastity but would never call sex outside of marriage or divorce and remarriage sins. To him that would mean calling a person he doesn't even know a sinner. The average Catholic is deathly afraid of throwing stones. The only sinner she's greatly familiar with is herself. When told that "God hates the sin but loves the sinner," the average Catholic voices confusion. How can anyone separate the two? And if God is Love, how can God hate? The average Catholic prefers to cultivate an attitude of unconditional love and forgiveness -- until somebody steps on his toes. The average Catholic is rarely interested in anyone's sexual orientation. He finds public or private talk about the sexual activities of homosexuals or heterosexuals tasteless and can't understand why anyone would want to flog or flaunt, persecute or parade sexuality of any kind...."
Homosexuality, as a sexual orientation, is accepted in Catholicism as being perfectly fine. Homosexuality is not something that we consider, as do many Christian denominations apart from ay ultra-liberal Protestants, to be "sinful" or in need of change in the individual.
Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible...They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. ……
The commentary on this part by Fr James Martin reads:
"...the Catechism reminds Catholics that being a homosexual in many modern cultures is still fraught with difficulty. It can be a painful struggle for a gay person to accept himself or herself as someone loved by God. As most of us know, bullying, beatings and, in rare cases, murder, is often part of being a gay or lesbian teen. As a result, the rate of suicides among gay teens is significantly higher than it is for straight teens in our country. In other parts of the world the situation is more dire: in some countries homosexual activity can bring imprisonment or execution..."
To this end the Church, to help and support homosexual Catholics in the face of abuse and prejudice directed against them, produced this official Vatican decree back in the 1980s:
"...It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law...What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well...The characteristic concern and good will exhibited by many clergy and religious in their pastoral care for homosexual persons is admirable, and, we hope, will not diminish. Such devoted ministers should have the confidence that they are faithfully following the will of the Lord by encouraging the homosexual person and by affirming that person's God-given dignity and worth...Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a "heterosexual" or a "homosexual" and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life..."
- CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH;
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE PASTORAL CARE
OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS, 1986
However, it is
homosexual sex which is a very debated topic within my religion as a whole.
Catholics are, for example, completely agreed on the fact that there is nothing immoral or wrong with being
homosexual. Indeed it is the natural state, subjectively, for great numbers of people around the world. It is not a choice, but rather a sexual disposition innate to them as people, and is their
natural way of expressing or manifesting themselves as sexual beings. One can only presume that God willed, that is intended, these people to experience attraction to the same sex.
However the debate within Catholicism centres not around homosexuality, which is completely acceptable and indeed natural to great numbers of people, but rather the morality of
same-sex intercourse.
You see, in Catholicism, we are taught that
sex must be open to life.
There is a strict interpretation of this, a more flexible interpretation and a liberal one:
1) Strict view - Every sexual act must be completely open to life, because this is how God naturally intended. This view means that there is no room for sex outside of a committed, marital relationship and no room for gay sex, which means that homosexual Catholics must not be sexually active with their partners. This means no contraception, or anything apart from Natural Family Planning.
2) Moderate view - Every sexual
relationship must be open to life but not every
sexual act. This means that couples can use contraception and perhaps have a more open relationship, however it still does not permit gay couples to have sex with each other because no homosexual relationship can be, naturally speaking, open to life at all. This view judges sex by the
ability of the couple to reproduce even if they choose not to on certain occassions.
3) Liberal view - sex is, as Catholicism teaches, both procreative and unititative. The liberal view says that both need not be necessary in the same act but rather some sexual acts can be purely unitative (ie homosexual) and this means that homosexual sex is perfectly acceptable within Catholic theology.
So our problems are not with homosexual people, as with other Christian denominations and religions, but rather with our view of when sex is appropriate.
Love between homosexual persons can be real and committed, the problem though is should they express that love through sexual intercourse?
The decree mentioned earlier took the strict/moderate view, and which in part reads:
"...The issue of homosexuality and the moral evaluation of homosexual acts have increasingly become a matter of public debate in Catholic circles...Naturally, an exhaustive treatment of this complex issue cannot be attempted here, but we will focus our reflection within the distinctive context of the Catholic moral perspective...the Catholic moral viewpoint is founded on human reason illumined by faith and is consciously motivated by the desire to do the will of God our Father. The Church is thus in a position to learn from scientific discovery...the Congregation took note of the distinction commonly drawn in Catholicism between the homosexual orientation and individual homosexual actions. These actions were described as deprived of their essential and indispensable finality...
The particular inclination of the homosexual person is thus not a sin...[However] to chose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves...What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross...As they dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God's personal call to them, they will be able to [...] convert their lives more fully to his Way...An authentic pastoral programme will assist homosexual persons at all levels of the spiritual life: through the sacraments [...] through prayer, witness, counsel and individual care. In such a way, the entire Christian community can come to recognize its own call to assist its homosexual brothers and sisters...In a particular way, we would ask the Bishops to support, with the means at their disposal, the development of appropriate forms of pastoral care for homosexual persons. These would include the assistance of the psychological, sociological and medical sciences, in full accord with the teaching of the Church..."
- CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH;
LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE PASTORAL CARE
OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS, 1986
There are gay Catholic websites such as:
http://queeringthechurch.com/ which endorse the liberal view and say that homosexual sex is fine.
On the other hand there are gay Catholic websites that endorse the strict/moderate view, and these Gay Catholics are all active and proud homosexuals but not sexually active in their relationships:
http://littlecatholicbubble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/gay-catholic-and-doing-fine.html
He calls himself, "Gay, Catholic and doing fine" but not sexual active.
So you see there is diversity of opinion on this. There have been gay Popes and saints but none of them were sexually active gays, apart from Pope Leo X who before he became Pope had an affair with another Cardinal in 1514 but then chose to lead a life of chastity thereafter, never having sexual intercourse with men again.
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 – 1167), seems to have been homosexual, but again not sexually active. Aelred himself speaks of losing his heart to one boy and then another during his school days.
Aelred writes of his school days as a time when he thought of nothing but loving and being loved by men, and of losing his heart to one boy and then another. He was a man of strong passions, who spoke openly of the men for whom he had deeply romantic attachments. After the death of one monk whom he clearly loved with real gay love, he wrote:
"...The only one who would not be astonished to see Aelred living without Simon would be someone who did not know how pleasant it was for us to spend our life on earth together; how great a joy it would have been for us to journey to heaven in each other’s company . . . .Weep, then, not because Simon has been taken up to heaven, but because Aelred has been left on earth, alone...."
He furthermore wrote of his chaste love for this man:
"...He was the refuge of my spirit, the sweet solace of my griefs, whose heart of love received me when fatigued by labors, whose counsel refreshed me when plunged in sadness and grief... What more is there, then, that I can say? Was it not a foretaste of blessedness thus to love and thus to be loved?"
-- Saint Aelred, from his eulogy on the death of his homosexual lover, Simon
Throughout the middle ages, not only did the open practice of homosexuality continue, but it flourished in the monasteries of the time. Many of the priests and abbots not only left us literature celebrating their gay loves, but some of the poetry they left us was beautiful and almost erotic but not sexual. Consider this poem from Marbod, Bishop of Rennes (d. 1123 C.E.)
- The Unyielding Youth
Horace composed an ode about a certain boy Whose face was so lovely he could easily have been a girl,
Whose hair fell in waves against his ivory neck,
Whose forehead was white as snow and his eyes black as pitch,
Whose soft cheeks were full of delicious sweetness
When they bloomed in the brightness of a blush of beauty,
His nose was perfect, his lips flame red, lovely his teeth--
An exterior formed in measure to match his mind.
This bishop was, of course, far from alone in his chaste, non-sexual, same-sex attractions. We have literally thousands of poems from this period, many of them from other monastics, who celebrated their love for their gay loves.
Among these monastics were St. Aelred and many others. Among these, the literature left us by St. Aelred offers the clearest and most detailed literature celebrating gay love in this period. There seems little doubt that he was gay by orientation and that he was also able to sustain chaste gay, loving relationships.
In his book, “On Spiritual Friendship”, he is clear in extolling the value of same-sex love. He does so on the basis of personal experience, and describes the impact that several of these loves have had on him, and the desolation he has felt when a lover has died.
“It is no small consolation in this life to have someone to whom you can be united in the intimate embrace of the most sacred love; in whom your spirit can rest; to whom you can pour out your soul; in whose delightful company, as in a sweet consoling song, you can take comfort in the midst of sadness; in whose most welcome, friendly bosom you can find peace in so many worldly setbacks; to whose loving heart you can open, as freely as you would to yourself, your innermost thoughts; through whose spiritual kisses – as by some medicine – you are cured of the sickness of care and worry; who weeps with you in sorrow, rejoices with you in joy, and wonders with you in doubt; whom you draw by the fetters of love into that inner room of your soul, so that though the body is absent, the spirit is there, and you can confer all alone, the two of you, in the sleep of peace away from the noise of the world, in the embrace of love, in the kiss of unity, with the Holy Spirit flowing over you; to whom you so join and unite yourself that you mix soul with soul, and two become one.”
It is important to keep clearly in mind that although there is clear reference to the “embrace of love”, and to “kisses”, Aelred is writing about spiritual, chaste, non-sexual love between two men, and that he stresses the spiritual riches it brings,
“with the Holy Spirit flowing over you.” The love is intimate, yes, touchy-feely, caressing, affectionate but never do they engage in anal sex.
Blessed Seraphim Rose had many sexual relationships with men but then stopped being sexually active when he converted to Christianity. He remained a non-sexually active homosexual for the rest of his life.
Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality in the Gospels, although it is mentioned in the Letters of Saint Paul and in other documents of Sacred Tradition. Jesus is one of the few religious leaders, I believe along with the Gurus, that never regard homosexuality as important enough to specifically mention either in a condemnatory way or in approval. He was utterly silent on the issue.
Currently the Catholic Church hierarchy endorses the strict/moderate view ie homosexuality is perfectly acceptable, all forms of homophobia are prohibited however gay Catholics must try not to have sex and if they do must try and limit their sex life to a culpable level.
What do you all think? kaurhug
