Saturday, June 04, 2011

God created them, male and female.



After the fall.
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It cannot be said God created a person to be homosexual - in other words, God did not make you gay.  The natural sexual identity of the human person is male or female.
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The genesis of homosexuality is mysterious and difficult to understand, nevertheless it cannot be said God created the homosexual.  Natural law and scripture defy such an assertion.  As the Catechism teaches: "Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" - Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357
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Even if it could be proven there was a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, it would not make the behavior natural.  A person may be genetically inclined to alcoholism, but it doesn't change the disordered nature of the behavior - it doesn't make alcoholism good. 
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Statements from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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Providing a basic plan for understanding this entire discussion of homosexuality is the theology of creation we find in Genesis. God, in his infinite wisdom and love, brings into existence all of reality as a reflection of his goodness. He fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator. They do this in a striking way in their cooperation with him in the transmission of life by a mutual donation of the self to the other.
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In Genesis 3, we find that this truth about persons being an image of God has been obscured by original sin. There inevitably follows a loss of awareness of the covenantal character of the union these persons had with God and with each other. The human body retains its "spousal significance" but this is now clouded by sin. Thus, in Genesis 19:1-11, the deterioration due to sin continues in the story of the men of Sodom. There can be no doubt of the moral judgement made there against homosexual relations. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, in the course of describing the conditions necessary for belonging to the Chosen People, the author excludes from the People of God those who behave in a homosexual fashion. - On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons

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The 1975 Statement.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.[18] 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. - DECLARATION ON CERTAIN QUESTIONS CONCERNING SEXUAL ETHICS, 1975
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Art: Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel.  "Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside." (Genesis 9:20-22)

11 comments:

  1. Keeping it controversial....This respected Catholic priest speaks very well on another aspect of the subject at hand, I think. Hope i'ts appropriate.

    http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/662

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  2. Anonymous4:42 AM

    Mainstream Catholics in the UK refer to The Tablet as "The Bitter Pill" because of its support for artificial contraception (and because it's become increasingly shrill and marginal over the years). It's still very much supported by the non-Catholic Establishment though.

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  3. Ecce

    I was referring people to the article contained therein, not looking for new subscribers to the magazine, which the rad trad bloggers are always attacking. I haven't read the thing myself, other than this article. I consider myself 'main stream' and my parish sells it.

    Fr Timothy's extremely insightful piece is from 2005, perhaps they weren't as shrill then?

    Nevertheless, you are correct in warning people, we must all seek to be responsible for the links we place before people, whether on our own or other people's blogs, that they don't become a cause for sin.

    I trust Terry to advise me, if he has a problem with the one I have suggested. (And ofcourse remove the link, if he thinks it innappropriate).

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  4. "Even if it could be proven there was a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, it would not make the behavior natural. A person may be genetically inclined to alcoholism, but it doesn't change the disordered nature of the behavior - it doesn't make alcoholism good."

    Excellent argument that I will use in my future dealings with folks on this subject.

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  5. Terry - you have said this so well and presented it beautifully with the choice of quotations.

    It drives me crazy when I hear the "this is the way God made me" a la Lady Gaga argument for sexual sin from those who wouldn't dream of advocating pedophilia, necrophilia, beastiality, kleptomania, alcoholism, violent behavior, or overeating!

    I've yet to hear someone defiantly state while torturing an animal or other human, "This is the way God made me, so it must be okay". Mind you, the way society is devolving, this may yet happen!

    It has always been an attempt to redefine sin as desirable behavior!

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  6. +JMJ+

    I keep forgetting the novel Erewhon by Simon Butler, which I read in a class on Dystopian Fiction in uni. The narrator stumbles upon a seemingly utopian society, the most notable mark of which is that illness is seen as a crime to be corrected, while sin is seen as a disease to be carefully treated.

    At the time, I knew a girl who was majoring in Psychology and I told her about Butler's satire. She said the idea of sin-as-illness and vice-versa is already pretty much a dogma in the medical world.

    What we're fighting here is bigger than we think.

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  7. "What we're fighting here is bigger than we think."

    That is so very true.

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  8. You chose a representation of Noah's sons finding their father drunk and seeing him "uncovered" they sought to protect their father's honour and cover him up, being careful not to look at their father.

    Though Ham and Ham's son are cursed by Noah, because, Ham saw him, and told his brothers. The brothers, having been "warned" that their father was naked, walked in backward and covered their father, and were blessed by their father.

    I've never understood Ham being cursed and Shem and Japheth being blessed.

    There was no way of Ham knowing before he walked into the tent that Noah was naked and although there is the suggestion that maybe Ham tried something sexual with his father, that is conjecture; that argument only comes up to try and explain the curse Ham and his son receive when Noah wakes up and finds out that Ham saw him.

    Really, I think it is unfair to blame Ham for something he couldn't help seeing. It would never have occurred to Ham to walk in backwards before he knew his father was naked.

    I have only 1 possible reason for Noah being angry enough to curse his son and grandson.

    Noah is embarrassed at his son seeing him, and blabbing it to his brothers. More a punishment against making fun of Noah, his father when Noah was unable to defend himself. In short it was more a sin against honouring your mother and father.

    But good post otherwise

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  9. "...I've never understood Ham being cursed and Shem and Japheth being blessed..."

    My mommy had fifteen children.

    There was no way I was ever going to enter my parent's bedroom.

    I was pretty stupid as a kid, and improved on it as an adult, but I knew beforehand I did not want to see anything in my mommy's bedroom.

    Ham knew better.

    *

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  10. "In short it was more a sin against honouring your mother and father."

    Puff - that is pretty much the sin of Ham. I was taking artistic license here.

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