Disgraceful…and very racist like. Go read the [white] Citizens’ Council newsletters on line, if you don’t believe me.

There are, I should carefully note, those in the gay community who seek to live chastely and who desire to love and serve Christ. They bear a heavy cross, not only because of the malice they often receive from other homosexuals, but from the stupid rejection they often get from Christians who cannot tell the difference between temptation and act. They deserve nothing but love, prayer and support from us.

BINGO.  Spot on, and well said.

Wow.  Racist.  Right. Of course.

Lamest kneejerk Lefty response ever.

“our deeply libertarian culture…”

I shall have to tell all my colleagues that Libertopia has arrived. They don’t seem to have noticed.

Culture.  Not economy.

Great post Mark.  Would only add that I think that gay “marriage” is a culmination of a variety of bad ideas we hold, such as the ultra-feminist interchangability of the sexes, i.e. no distinction except inconvienent biological differences.

I currently have a running bet with several of my friends as to which of the following will be next to be given the status of celebrity and promoted by pop culture:

1. Bestiality
2. Incest
3. Pedophilia

All of us know that promoters for each will use the same template to gain popular support, just as the homosexual activists did.

My friend Mark was in the lead for a while, given the several glossy stories on invest in several major British publications, but considering the recent meeting of the mental health professionals where they attempted to redefine pedophiles as ‘minor attracted persons’, I think I’m in the lead to collect the winnings for now (if it can be called ‘winning’.)

In the end, it’s little more than a gamble on which deviancy’s ‘yuck’ factor runs out of power first.

I suspect it’s incest, particularly brother-sister. I ran across a number of comments on an article on incest that basically said: now that we have very effective birth control and therefore no three-eyed kids, who’s to judge?
 
*shudder*

I’d go with incest, Mike, but Jerry Sandusky sure hopes you are right.

@Mike: Do you really believe what you just posted, or are you having your wise-guy moment for the day? Most homosexuals, regardless of what heterosexuals think about them, or prefer to make up and then fob off as “likely truths” would have nothing to do with the little dirty laundry list of things you mentioned above. My wife of 28 years and our four adult children live in an area where there are many homosexuals living in the various communities, largely due to the high concentration of academic instutitions nearby. We never once felt threatened by their presence or interactions in our respective lives. I’ve worked under two gay bosses and each one of those women were as fair as the day is long (in July) and short (next month.) And they were a hell of a lot more honest than most straight bosses, male or female, I’ve worked under.
  Regardless of whether or not you approve of gay marriage, if it’s on the books in your respective state, you have to make your peace with it or object in ways that do not bring shame upon those who oppose it on what they believe to be valid religious and moral grounds. If you want respect, you have to show it first, no matter how loathsome you find another person’s personal life to be.
  As for all the gay marriages and weddings that were supposed to be flooding the area after it passed through the courts and the legislature, guess what ... you can pick up any local fishwrap and find that when it comes to wedding announcements, photos, engagement pictures, etc., those pages look almost as identically predominately heterosexual as they did prior to the state’s supreme court granting marriage rights to gay couples. Life went on and it continues to go on, notwithstanding the ever-convenient half-truths and outright lies told for the sole purpose of stirring up fears and hatreds.
  Who wins when bigotry and hatred become so cheaply and liberally spread for the sake of doing nothing more than keep society ever so neatly separated into more “thems” for all of us to suspect, judge, discriminate against, and of course, despise? The Church? Society? God?
  Who really benefits from the spreading deliberate half-truths and outright lies in the name of “doing God’s work” of keeping those “degenerates” apart from the more “righteous” who “live by God’s word found in the Bible” and our Church’s teachings about homosexuality?
  If any of you have guessed Satan, you’ve passed the test. Naming anybody else will flunk you.
  We don’t have to approve of what homosexuals do or don’t do. But if we’re so self-righteous enough to believe that if we stand on a stack of Bibles and Catechisms to raise us to the top of St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s spires, we had better also remember, too, that most homosexuals try very hard to live moral lives as well; and in fact, many of them succeed, in sharp contrast to the growing number of smug and ever so knee-jerkingly judgmental and finger-pointing Pharisees who’ve long forgotten to wipe the insides of their chalices before remembering to keep their yaps shut or fingers taped long enough to avoid spreading more dangerous nonsense like that of Mike’s posted above.

It is not happening soon, it is happening now. This week Canada will almost certainly be taking its first step toward legalizing polygamy and New Hampshire is in the process of including incestuous relationships in its civil union law.

The more we speak out, the more we will be persecuted and therefore (Mt 5:11) the more we will have to be thankful for. This is a very exciting time to be Catholic.

“At the times when the Church hits its low points God raises up tremendous saints to bring the Church back to its real mission.” We must pray constantly to become those tremendous saints, not soon but right now.

Mike, I was going to add polygamy to the list, but then remembered that we already have “Sister Wives.”

Mark,

I think you really hit the nail on the head regarding those of us who disagree with homosexual marriage and homosexual acts. We don’t have a vocabulary to even discuss it or maybe even think about it. Our thought is so much based on consent as the criteria of the good that we Americans have a really hard time even conceiving of it differently.

Something I found helpful recently was one of the feature articles in the November/December issue of Touchstone discussing the notion of the missing common good argument from American thought for some time now.
It’s Liberty, Conscience and Autonomy by Barry Hankins. It is available on line. I’ll try adding the link:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-06-042-f

Great points for us to ponder in order to build a vocabulary.

Thanks Mark.

“homosexual activity is the moral equivalent of race prejudice and that there is no good cause to oppose expanding the legal definition of marriage to include members of the same sex”.

blacks were persecuted because of their outward appearance and differences of culture, but inwardly their souls were no different from those who were white. they lived the fullness of god’s love in their lives and marriages in the same way as whites. and they bonded in the same way as whites out of mutual love, devotion, affection,respect, and trust for a shared committed life together.

the same is true of homosexuals compared to heterosexuals.

The forces of evil have always seemed to be better “pitchmen”. They realize the power of words. For this reason I have never used the term gay to refer to homosexuality. Once we are told what to call this sin, “gay”, we have lost the first battle without a fight. I tell the young people in my family that being gay is great, happy, joyous, and gleeful. Practising homosexuality, on the other hand, would be sad and sinful. Please, let’s call it what it is, homosexuality.

Remember they saying “the devil has the best songs”? Well, in this case he sings about love, equality and social justice.

Correction: “the”, not “they”.

Let’s combine Mike in KC’s comments and Steven’s comments. If you substitute Mike in KC’s list into Steven’s first paragraph (at least) - pedarast or animal “lover”, etc, for homosexual - you have the argument made 15 years ago about homosexual “tolerance” (which of course really meant tolerance of homosexual activity) and how gay marriage was outlandish. We’ve heard Mark say things like that before.

I think the thing that Steven misses is that most of us here would be willing to substitute fornicator in his comments as well. Or more appropriately SINNER.

The problem here is not us sinners. The problem is the attitude toward the sin.

I said “racist-like,” not racist. The stereotyping, the conspiracy theorizing. The lumping of everyone in the despised minority with various criminalities…with the tacit suggestion that “they” simply are incapable of being “good” people, even if they do good acts. The demands of exclusivity and privilege. Disrespecting “the other’s” loving relationships and families. The unseemly, almost pornographic fascination with the allegedly hypersexualized sex lives of “the other.” (I’ve long said that sin is the pornography of the religious right.)

There is that “narcissistic” group slander of which the writer offers nothing in the way of backing that up, except apparently to want whatever comes out of imaginative ill will to “the other” to be so. Narcissism is about abnormal levels of self absorption…which hardly describes members of a largish, world wide, very diverse and active community. Communities are not built by people who are abnormally narcissistic, I would think.

The writer comes up with the usual dubious and slanderous slippery slope” scenarios. He doesn’t recognize the contributions of “the others” to our societies. Like racists, he seems to be demanding that “the others” know their place, which is…invisibiblity…to know their place, which is not at his table, not at his cathedral…or in any position of power and leadership, period. 

People like the writer can’t even call the Gay community and Gay people their preferred community name and self-identity label…“Gay.” Talk about disrespect.

“Hi, I’m Greg…”

“No you aren’t. To remind you of your inferior place in society, I’ll call you by some creaky Victorianism, some long rejected, very obsolete, contaminated by clueless confirmation bias (for starters), old clinical diagnostic label instead. You aren’t a whole person to me, you’re a specimen.”

The demand that “homosexuals” be lifelong celibates is condescendingly arrogant in the extreme. Unlike with priests, Gay people didn’t choose or were called by God to “homosexualhood.” They don’t need to take vows to be GLBT. All you need to be Gay is that certain sort of integrity to self-identify as Gay…integrity and personal authority that the writer obviously can’t seem to understand, let alone respect and honor. GLBT outside the priesthood etc. need only follow the Golden Rule, and the Golden Rule seldom seems to demand that one be life long celibates. Gay people are not a menacing “perfect storm” cliche, they’re your neighbors who likely just want to be neighborly…as the Bible says to be.

Mark, do not forget that (many) heterosexuals want complete freedom for their sex lives with no criticism of, or standards for, their behavior, so they apply that to all situations.

And how many of today’s non-sinners willing to point their fingers at today’s sinners, even hetereosexual sinners, had more than just a little petting on their mind with some other guy’s daughter before they settled down, got married, maybe had a daughter or two and became such paragons of virtue?
  You just proved my point. It’s real easy to pontificate from a position of advanced years and acquired wisdom (LOL). I was far from a paragon of virtue in my younger years. And I knew then, as I reflect back on those days now, that I was a sinner. Big deal. We have to move on and stop playing the role of the local parish pharisee or pastor’s pet puritans.
  I left the Church for a while, came back because I couldn’t put up with the suffocating hypocrisy of the Bible thumpers demanding those whom they disagreed with about any spiritual matters to prove “where in the Bible does God approve of ... (such n’ such).” Now that I’ve returned, I can’t help feeling like the most holiest of all holier than thous who left their respective Protestant denominations have all of a sudden not only taken over parish life in the Church here in the US, they also want to start bullying around the clergy and bishops who won’t be as adamantly obnoxious as they want them to be.
  Remember the Wild Western joke about the saloon owner who converted and brought her “sisters” along. It wasn’t enough to be welcomed, or even invited to join the choir. Hell, they insisted on kicking the “old timers” out and taking it over kit n’ kaboodle. Was it a joke or a parable. Kinda the both.
  Lighten up ye fellow sinners. But when you do, remember that the judges finger you point at others might as well be pointed back at you.
  Of all the Churches in this country, dare I say it loud and clear ... the Catholic Church in the United States has to be one of the most unfriendly places on the planet. We don’t need to put on showy displays of Kumbayaesque hugging, etc., But do we have to behave like cold Yankee bankers when it comes to welcoming people and accepting them for what they are, SINNERS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE?
  Hell’s bells, we’ve become more like the cold as cod Yankees the Irish detested for their indifference, willing neglect and outright snobbery. Some distance we’ve come. Proud of that?

Mike—I need to speak up about the “minor-attracted persons” thing, because it’s an issue near to my heart. If I read the articles about that correctly, the original intent was NOT to soften people up for pedophilia. It was to make pedophiles more likely to seek help in controlling or curing their desires. I don’t know about you, but if I were a pedophile, I sure as heck wouldn’t seek help because I wouldn’t want to get labeled with that word. Getting labeled with the term “minor-attracted person” wouldn’t be nearly so bad. I have a friend who’s doing time for a sex crime and never sought psychological help, and I can’t help wondering if he would have been able to control those urges if he’d been able to talk to someone. Then, of course, people like NAMBLA got hold of it and thought it would be a great idea for all the wrong reasons . . .

@Steven
“Most homosexuals .. would have nothing to do with the little dirty laundry list of things you mentioned above.“
I have no doubt that you are correct in this. But then again, I’m sure the brother/sister pair that was demanding to be married in Britain 6 months ago would have just as much of a revulsion to bestiality as your average homosexual does. What is your point?

“We never once felt threatened by their presence or interactions in our respective lives.”
I never said I felt ‘threatened’ by any group.

“As for all the gay marriages and weddings that were supposed to be flooding the area after it passed through the courts and the legislature, guess what you can pick up any local fishwrap and find that when it comes to wedding announcements, photos, engagement pictures, etc., those pages look almost as identically predominately heterosexual as they did prior to the state’s supreme court granting marriage rights to gay couples. Life went on and it continues to go on, notwithstanding the ever-convenient half-truths and outright lies told for the sole purpose of stirring up fears and hatreds.”
And if incest is approved of eventually, or even incestuous marriage allowed, I’m sure VERY few will actually do it. Is that any reason to NOT be against it? Perhaps you can tell me what percentage of the people trying to get married need to be of the newly approved deviancy before it is ok to disagree. 10%? 50%? 51?

“Who wins when bigotry and hatred become so cheaply and liberally spread”
I fail to see how my wager counts as bigotry, unless it is bigotry to guess that incest will be approved of before bestiality. Your statement does not logically follow.

“that most homosexuals try very hard to live moral lives as well;”
ok, but I fail to see what this has to do with my post.

“avoid spreading more dangerous nonsense like that of Mike’s posted above.”
Considering that the ‘nonsense’ you mention has every bit a chance of coming to be as gay marriage has, and you would know that had you kept track of the news over the last year and a half, I think you need to let go of your persecution complex.

My point, and that of my friends, is that once marriage has been cut down from its original meaning (which, I should point out, happened in secular culture LONG before gay marriage was even an issue, so I’m not even faulting gay marriage at this point) and it merely becomes view as just another form of purely legal entity that can be molded based on the latest legal trend or fad (much like a C Corp or an LLC), once the question of moral absolute is removed, there is nothing to prevent it from changing in any way people want it.

Let’s look at my friend’s reason for choosing incest marriage as being the next big thing, at least in Europe. First there have been several popular stories about several ‘brother/sister’ pairs. They talk about how truly in love they are. Ok, fine. In the cases mentioned, one was sterile and the others had either hysterectomy or vasectomy. So really, aside from the yuck factor, there was no reason to deny them.

Given what I have just pointed out, what argument, excluding moral grounds, the purely emotion ‘yuck’ factor and what the secular law just happens to be at the moment, by what reason should we deny this brother/sister union?

There is only one answer: There is no reason.

@Steven
“Most homosexuals .. would have nothing to do with the little dirty laundry list of things you mentioned above.”
I have no doubt that you are correct in this. But then again, I’m sure the brother/sister pair that was demanding to be married in Britain 6 months ago would have just as much of a revulsion to bestiality as your average homosexual does. What is your point?

“We never once felt threatened by their presence or interactions in our respective lives.”
- I never said I felt ‘threatened’ by any group.

“As for all the gay marriages and weddings that were supposed to be flooding the area after it passed through the courts and the legislature, guess what you can pick up any local fishwrap and find that when it comes to wedding announcements, photos, engagement pictures, etc., those pages look almost as identically predominately heterosexual as they did prior to the state’s supreme court granting marriage rights to gay couples. Life went on and it continues to go on, notwithstanding the ever-convenient half-truths and outright lies told for the sole purpose of stirring up fears and hatreds.”
- And if incest is approved of eventually, or even incestuous marriage allowed, I’m sure VERY few will actually do it. Is that any reason to NOT be against it? Perhaps you can tell me what percentage of the people trying to get married need to be of the newly approved deviancy before it is ok to disagree. 10%? 50%? 51%?

“Who wins when bigotry and hatred become so cheaply and liberally spread”
- I fail to see how my wager counts as bigotry, unless it is bigotry to guess that incest will be approved of before bestiality. Your statement does not logically follow.

“that most homosexuals try very hard to live moral lives as well;”
- ok, but I fail to see what this has to do with my post.

“avoid spreading more dangerous nonsense like that of Mike’s posted above.”
Considering that the ‘nonsense’ you mention has every bit a chance of coming to be as gay marriage has, and you would know that had you kept track of the news over the last year and a half, I think you need to let go of your persecution complex.

My point, and that of my friends, is that once marriage has been cut down from its original meaning (which, I should point out, happened in secular culture LONG before gay marriage was even an issue, so I’m not even faulting gay marriage at this point) and it merely becomes view as just another form of purely legal entity that can be molded based on the latest legal trend or fad (much like a C Corp or an LLC), once the question of moral absolute is removed, there is nothing to prevent it from changing in any way people want it.

Let’s look at my friend’s reason for choosing incest marriage as being the next big thing, at least in Europe. First there have been several popular stories about several ‘brother/sister’ pairs. They talk about how truly in love they are. Ok, fine. In the cases mentioned, one was sterile and the others had either hysterectomy or vasectomy. So really, aside from the yuck factor, there was no reason to deny them.

Given what I have just pointed out, what argument, excluding moral grounds, the purely emotion ‘yuck’ factor and what the secular law just happens to be at the moment, by what reason should we deny this brother/sister union?

There is only one answer: There is no reason.

@Rachel K
“Then, of course, people like NAMBLA got hold of it and thought it would be a great idea for all the wrong reasons . . .”
- This is my main point.

@Steven
“Most homosexuals .. would have nothing to do with the little dirty laundry list of things you mentioned above.”
I have no doubt that you are correct in this. But then again, I’m sure the brother/sister pair that was demanding to be married in Britain 6 months ago would have just as much of a revulsion to bestiality as your average homosexual does. What is your point?

“We never once felt threatened by their presence or interactions in our respective lives.”
- I never said I felt ‘threatened’ by any group.

“As for all the gay marriages and weddings that were supposed to be flooding the area after it passed through the courts and the legislature, guess what you can pick up any local fishwrap and find that when it comes to wedding announcements, photos, engagement pictures, etc., those pages look almost as identically predominately heterosexual as they did prior to the state’s supreme court granting marriage rights to gay couples. Life went on and it continues to go on, notwithstanding the ever-convenient half-truths and outright lies told for the sole purpose of stirring up fears and hatreds.”
- And if incest is approved of eventually, or even incestuous marriage allowed, I’m sure VERY few will actually do it. Is that any reason to NOT be against it? Perhaps you can tell me what percentage of the people trying to get married need to be of the newly approved deviancy before it is ok to disagree. 10%? 50%? 51%?

“Who wins when bigotry and hatred become so cheaply and liberally spread”
- I fail to see how my wager counts as bigotry, unless it is bigotry to guess that incest will be approved of before bestiality. Your statement does not logically follow.

“that most homosexuals try very hard to live moral lives as well;”
- ok, but I fail to see what this has to do with my post.

“avoid spreading more dangerous nonsense like that of Mike’s posted above.”
Considering that the ‘nonsense’ you mention has every bit a chance of coming to be as gay marriage has, and you would know that had you kept track of the news over the last year and a half, I think you need to let go of your persecution complex.

My point, and that of my friends, is that once marriage has been cut down from its original meaning (which, I should point out, happened in secular culture LONG before gay marriage was even an issue, so I’m not even faulting gay marriage at this point) and it merely becomes view as just another form of purely legal entity that can be molded based on the latest legal trend or fad (much like a C Corp or an LLC), once the question of moral absolute is removed, there is nothing to prevent it from changing in any way people want it.

Let’s look at my friend’s reason for choosing incest marriage as being the next big thing, at least in Europe. First there have been several popular stories about several ‘brother/sister’ pairs. They talk about how truly in love they are. Ok, fine. In the cases mentioned, one was sterile and the others had either hysterectomy or vasectomy. So really, aside from the yuck factor, there was no reason to deny them.

Given what I have just pointed out, what argument, excluding moral grounds, the purely emotion ‘yuck’ factor and what the secular law just happens to be at the moment, by what reason should we deny this brother/sister union?

There is only one answer: There is no reason to deny them.

“Disordered”? You profess a fanatic devotion to an omnipotent being that you cannot prove exist and you have the nerve to call anyone else disordered? Is not your belief system delusional at best which would make you the disordered one. Of course while we are slinging about half-truths, why don’t we start with a cult that promotes celibacy yet looks the other way while priest rape little children and nuns live in harens where all manner of bizarre un-natural sexual perversions are allowed. See how easy it is to throw out the half-truth gauntlet. Why don’t you focus on the real facts. Prove how same-sex marriage will do anything that you speak of. Show how outlawing same-sex marriage strengthens opposite-sex marriage and finally answer the question that is being asked. Same-sex marriage is the cause celebre of western culture because we realize that all people are created equal. We have taught our children to grow up and find the person they love and then celebrate that love with marriage but if our child turns out to be gay than we say “no you cannot have what we raised you to want because close minded bigots don’t like you. That is just messed up!

@David

I looked into the future and found a similar post by you that will be around in a few years:

“Prove how incestuous marriage will do anything that you speak of. Show how outlawing incestuous marriage strengthens opposite-sex marriage and finally answer the question that is being asked. Incestuous marriage marriage is the cause celebre of western culture because we realize that all people are created equal. We have taught our children to grow up and find the person they love and then celebrate that love with marriage but if our child falls in love with his sister or her brother than we say “no you cannot have what we raised you to want because close minded bigots don’t like you. That is just messed up!”

I wonder if you will stay this consistent.

Yes we are all sinners and yes homosexuality is a sin ( and it does harm others in many ways). Should we accept all sin as harmless alternatives? Certainly we are to love the sinner hate the sin, but being bullied into accepting homosexuality as okeydokey is wrong.

Gregory,
Thank you for confirming the consistent observation I have made that those who propose your kind of arguments and objections have little or no idea of what the real Catholic Church teaches and instead attack their own faulty impressions of such teaching.  Granted there are, as Mark said, some Catholics who confuse the sinner with the sin and end up hating both.  They need to be educated for sure, but the Church, and what Mark said based on her teaching, does not despise homosexuals, nor think them incapable of good, nor requires any exclusivity and privilege.

Thanks for clarifying that you know not what you say.

Bravo! Another excellent analysis. However, I am no fan of “civil” marriages, and it seems to me that it’s just a matter of time before they are marrying dogs to cats.

“In addition, there is the fact that homosexuality is deeply narcissistic. It demands not merely tolerance, but approval. And in its increasingly militant form, it demands not merely approval, but the persecution, muzzling and smashing of those who disapprove, even when they pose no threat—out of pure spite.”

I would take this one step further.  Not only tolerance or approval, but celebration.  It is not enough to think that homosexuality is fine but that it is at least equivalent, if not superior, to heterosexuality.  At least that’s what Hollywood types would have us believe based on the portrayal of gay persons on TV and the movies.

@Steven.  Shut up.  Listen to what he is saying and READ the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It is people like you who seek to shove homosexuality down our throats.  You disgust me and because of your implicit, or in this case, explicit approval, of homosexual “marriage” you place your soul potentially into the state of mortal sin.  Do NOT go to receive the Eucharist unless you go to Confession and repent.  This is exactly what Mike said.  YOU are the narcissist.  READ Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans!!!!  OR are you just going to ignore what Jesus said to Peter regarding the Authority of the Church????  OR do I have to point that out to you as well?  Please, for your own sake, repent and examine your OWN conscience.  I “ENCOURAGE” you to read “Beyond Gay” by David Morrison AND a book by Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg,The Battle for Normality, A guide for (self-) therapy for homosexuality, San Francisco, Ignatius Press!  AND then read Fr. John Harvey on Homosexuality.  YOU WILL Learn a thing or two or three. THEN IF you have any brains, you will read “Love and Responsibility” by Karol Wojtyla IF you even know who he was.  I am sure you won’t but will just rather further respond with venomous hate.

Amazing this ? being asked as it has been on my mind since reading comments in a newspaper (local for me…) of someone I know of and who is Catholic.  She was denouncing all those who were supporting someone who would not do business-be a party to a lesbian wedding.  This person was equating being against the union to being racist. Declaring that especially in these times we had better “get with it.”. I just could not wrap my head around her extremism and also wanting to have her understand that times such as these have been before…going along w/sin and sooner or later man has had to answer for it or going along.  Thanking God for your faithfulness in standing for truth!!! ESPECIALLY in these times. ;)

Mike in KC—exactly my thoughts. I’m thinking pedophilia.

Mark, great article. Excellent even. Keep up the good work.

Greg:

Thanks for that self pitying and tendentious rant.  To clear the air: race is not a disordered orientation and interracial marriage is not not and never has been an immoral act. However, homosexual acts are immoral and disordered.  You wish to pretend otherwise, fine.  Do so on your own time.  I’m not interested in trying to tell you what to do in your privacy.  If you wish to sin, I hope you will reconsider but it’s not my business to try to enforce my morals on your private life.  If you ask me what I think I will tell you.  But you have to ask.  And if you are my co-worker or neighbor, if you persist on telling me about your sex life I will find other people to hang out with—whether you are straight or gay because (and most normal people) are not interested in narcissists who insist on shoving the details of their sex lives in our faces.

Gay “marriage” is not about equality.  It is about an attempt to use the law to *force* people who do not think your sex life is moral to celebrate and approve it, or be punished by the state.  You can sob and feel sorry for yourself all you like, but that’s what you are doing.  I. Don’t. Care. What you do in private.  Nobody’s coming with jackboots.  Nobody’s making you a second class citizen.  Nobody “hates” you.  And nobody is “racist like” for thinking that gay sex is unnatural.  Your lame attempt to appropriate the civil rights movement so that you can punish people for not cheering your perverted and unnatural acts is transparent falsehood.

Interesting and insightful comment about narcissism. 

Our generation is seeing the death of the concept of the common good.  Or more accurately, its (d)evolution into “What is good for me, should be made common”.

Patrick, no where did I ever condone homosexual marriage. No where. What I did say was that all the attendant evils another poster said would come in train have not resulted. No where did I condone sin. But I did challenge the holier than thous to do pull back. Congratulations, nevertheless, for demonstrating what I was particularly addressing in my second post on this subject. Notice I’m not saying you shouldn’t receive the Host without going to confession first for committing the sin of Pride (via your egregiously judgmental ranting screed in response to my previous two posts.) Whether you confess to a priest or silently to the Lord before you receive Communion, that’s your choice.
  I’m not going to judge you.

The clobber verses in St. Paul’s letters to the Romans have nothing to do with loving, consensual, non-related except in the heart, adult relationships. The context is in idolatry, not adult’s trying to have loving, mutually consenting, mutually responsible relationships.

None of the “homosexual” clobber verses do, when read with historical and intratextual context in mind. They are about ancient politics of identity, of idolatry. My Bible condemns idolatry, and my Bible, my Jesus, does not condemn loving relationships. “Born that way” is apparently fine by him. My reading of Jesus is that God wants us to think about the Golden Rule, about love, mercy, charity…justice…of neighborliness, of what hospitality to strangers might mean in the times we live in, not in the times that are long gone…to contemplate the real sin of Sodom…a gross, exploitative, violent lack of basic hospitality to the gentile strangers in their midst.

Why is the Church essentially using, arrogantly abusing, I say, Natural Law…pretty much 13th Century, neo-Aristotelian philosophy…in an attempt to completely devalue the personal integrity and the adult lives of “the other,” those “homosexuals?”

Why, instead of learning from the scientific method, modern sociology, biology, sexology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, literary, basic sex education, anatomy, statistical, economic and historical analysis…actual current genetic theory, basic standards of intellectual integrity…egalitarian political theory and moral philosophy of personal freedom, personal authority and personal integrity…the delicate dance between society and the individual… of hard won understandings of personal and institutional responsibilities…of equality under the law…

...attempting to deny Gay people to seek, to find, the loving kiss, the touch of a lover who adores you, and is adored by you. to realize the loving embrace of the soul of their soul? Demanding life long celibacy isn’t respecting and loving Gay people. That’s naked contempt in a condescending, expertly wrapped in sparkly tinsel, greed for Gay jobs, power, property etc. That is attempting to make Gay adults into sexless children.

That isn’t love and respect for Gay people. That is not encouraging GLBT people to reject nihilism, to instead, seek mutually responsible partners in life, in sickness and health, in poverty and wealth.

That is being condescendingly arrogant. That is crying crocodile tears for those poor “homosexual” sinnerss. That is being unreasonably autocratic in a democratic age.

The “love” of conservative monotheists, in general, for those “homosexuals,” is likely adding considerable minority stress to Catholic, and lapsed Catholic GLBT people (and Protestant, Jewish and Islamic GLBT peoples as well). When you order millions of Gay people to do as you say, when it’s not in their best interests as a fully human being, as a member of their society, of being a man or a woman who wants to love and be loved…you’re probably demanding too much.

Gay people are being targeted by “conservative” Christians, in general, to NOT publicly exercise their personal integrity and personal authority. The Church power hierarchy is patriarchal, and the radical equality of same-sex love is apparently felt as a threat to patriarchy.

In a patriarchy, one’s “legitimate” wives, and one’s lovers, cannot, must not, be one’s equal in any way. Everyone must know their place in the natural, divinely ordained (allegedly) hierarchy of the patriarchy, of male power and privilege…and must be silenced, to be made invisible, if they insist on the legitimacy and recognition of their personal integrity.

Conservative Christians arrogantly redefine Gay people as “homosexuals,” an obsolete, now downright immoral and pejorative, former clinical diagnosis of pathology. A diagnosis, really, of the bias of the therapist. Conservative Christians, in general, define Gay people as being unnatural, intrinsically disordered, intrinsically narcissistic… therefore naturally inferior and incompletely human-ized. Of not truly being on in Christ. Too many conservative Christians, deny what is obvious:

...that Gay people can have children, and often can and do raise children, as well, or as badly, as other adults. There is nothing group “intrinsically disordered” about Gay genitalia after all. As with other parents, Gay parents just have to play the odds of having a child who will be same-sex oriented in various degrees. Es la vida.

Those Gay people who don’t “reproduce,” nevertheless help others raise their children, and that’s what human society does. Even the childless responsible adult tries to be good societal ancestors…to help raise hospitable, responsible adults who will come to their aid when they’re elderly or ill.

The personal bonding of people together by sexual intimacy is obviously the primary purpose of sex, with reproduction being what happens when most people have that kind of sexual activity. Human sexual intimacy, other-sex and same-sex, is the bedrock, I think, of creating the need for human society, a society that is, if only in our hopes, fit to raise human children. If you devalue Gay relationships, you devalue, shortchange, unnecessarily divide society into Us and the inferior Them.

Gay people are not allowed to define themselves by conservative monotheists in general, to make their own communities, to use their preferred names for their communities, to exercise their personal authority and personal integrity, to publicly offer their gifts to their society as Gay people. When you label all Gay people as intrinsically disordered, then you are saying that their contributions to their society are automatically disordered, inferior…should be done by “us” and not by “them…and of course, if the contribution by “one of those people” is good stuff, it’s usually stolen and not attributed to a minority person or group. Their contributions to their societies become invisible, to keep them invisible…and exploitable.

Gay people with that certain sort of personal integrity (and women, apparently because they also usually sleep with men) are obviously excluded from the higher echelons of Catholic power structure (and that of many other patriarchal minded monotheistic organizations). Their integrity as Gay, fully human men is repressed, wrapped in a cloak of public invisibility… of either submitting to a forced, publicly childlike, picture book saint-like, eunuch who was born that way, or chose to make one’s self into a modern day eunuch. If that role is rejected, one is then publicly demonized not just as a sinner, but as an intrinsically disordered, narcissistic, inferior to even other sinners sinner…a “homosexual” instead of an adult.

Devaluing personal integrity is likely not the way to recruit people of integrity for your institution. That is pretty much, I think, just asking for a crisis of authority, of inadvertently encouraging the sexual perversion of authority, and of tacitly encouraging the abuse of authority by scapegoating the usual suspects.

That is not the way to treat people at all. Unless Gay people are taking vows of the priesthood or something, I would think that no institution would have the moral authority or the divine sanction to order some average people to be lifelong celibates instead of being…well…people;  of being adults; adults who make adult decisions, adult mistakes, have adult responsibilities, adults who want to know loving intimacy, to mutually, publicly rejoice in having a sexual bond that is more than sexual release or for making babies.  Adults who want to love, in a fully human way, the soul of their soul.

Gay people, as a group, are not intrinsically disordered, whatever that arrogant, racist-LIKE group stereotyping might mean. That’s now just a condescending, arrogant, deliberately stereotyping, froward mouthed slander. GLBT people are intrinsically human, period. To shamelessly indulge in a bit of a verbal threat, devalue Gay integrity at your soul’s peril.

Why do I get a span message?

The clobber verses in St. Paul’s letters to the Romans have nothing to do with loving, consensual, non-related except in the heart, adult relationships. The context is in idolatry, not adult’s trying to have loving, mutually consenting, mutually responsible relationships.

None of the “homosexual” clobber verses do, when read with historical and intratextual context in mind. They are about ancient politics of identity, of idolatry. My Bible condemns idolatry, and my Bible, my Jesus, does not condemn loving relationships. “Born that way” is apparently fine by him. My reading of Jesus is that God wants us to think about the Golden Rule, about love, mercy, charity…justice…of neighborliness, of what hospitality to strangers might mean in the times we live in, not in the times that are long gone…to contemplate the real sin of Sodom…a gross, exploitative, violent lack of basic hospitality to the gentile strangers in their midst.

Why is the Church essentially using, arrogantly abusing, I say, Natural Law…pretty much 13th Century, neo-Aristotelian philosophy…in an attempt to completely devalue the personal integrity and the adult lives of “the other,” those “homosexuals?”

Why, instead of learning from the scientific method, modern sociology, biology, sexology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, literary, basic sex education, anatomy, statistical, economic and historical analysis…actual current genetic theory, basic standards of intellectual integrity…egalitarian political theory and moral philosophy of personal freedom, personal authority and personal integrity…the delicate dance between society and the individual… of hard won understandings of personal and institutional responsibilities…of equality under the law…

...attempting to deny Gay people to seek, to find, the loving kiss, the touch of a lover who adores you, and is adored by you. to realize the loving embrace of the soul of their soul? Demanding life long celibacy isn’t respecting and loving Gay people. That’s naked contempt in a condescending, expertly wrapped in sparkly tinsel, greed for Gay jobs, power, property etc. That is attempting to make Gay adults into sexless children.

That isn’t love and respect for Gay people. That is not encouraging GLBT people to reject nihilism, to instead, seek mutually responsible partners in life, in sickness and health, in poverty and wealth.

That is being condescendingly arrogant. That is crying crocodile tears for those poor “homosexual” sinnerss. That is being unreasonably autocratic in a democratic age.

The “love” of conservative monotheists, in general, for those “homosexuals,” is likely adding considerable minority stress to Catholic, and lapsed Catholic GLBT people (and Protestant, Jewish and Islamic GLBT peoples as well). When you order millions of Gay people to do as you say, when it’s not in their best interests as a fully human being, as a member of their society, of being a man or a woman who wants to love and be loved…you’re probably demanding too much.

Gay people are being targeted by “conservative” Christians, in general, to NOT publicly exercise their personal integrity and personal authority. The Church power hierarchy is patriarchal, and the radical equality of same-sex love is apparently felt as a threat to patriarchy.

In a patriarchy, one’s “legitimate” wives, and one’s lovers, cannot, must not, be one’s equal in any way. Everyone must know their place in the natural, divinely ordained (allegedly) hierarchy of the patriarchy, of male power and privilege…and must be silenced, to be made invisible, if they insist on the legitimacy and recognition of their personal integrity.

Conservative Christians arrogantly redefine Gay people as “homosexuals,” an obsolete, now downright immoral and pejorative, former clinical diagnosis of pathology. A diagnosis, really, of the bias of the therapist. Conservative Christians, in general, define Gay people as being unnatural, intrinsically disordered, intrinsically narcissistic… therefore naturally inferior and incompletely human-ized. Of not truly being on in Christ. Too many conservative Christians, deny what is obvious:

...that Gay people can have children, and often can and do raise children, as well, or as badly, as other adults. There is nothing group “intrinsically disordered” about Gay genitalia after all. As with other parents, Gay parents just have to play the odds of having a child who will be same-sex oriented in various degrees. Es la vida.

Those Gay people who don’t “reproduce,” nevertheless help others raise their children, and that’s what human society does. Even the childless responsible adult tries to be good societal ancestors…to help raise hospitable, responsible adults who will come to their aid when they’re elderly or ill.

The personal bonding of people together by sexual intimacy is obviously the primary purpose of sex, with reproduction being what happens when most people have that kind of sexual activity. Human sexual intimacy, other-sex and same-sex, is the bedrock, I think, of creating the need for human society, a society that is, if only in our hopes, fit to raise human children. If you devalue Gay relationships, you devalue, shortchange, unnecessarily divide society into Us and the inferior Them.

Gay people are not allowed to define themselves by conservative monotheists in general, to make their own communities, to use their preferred names for their communities, to exercise their personal authority and personal integrity, to publicly offer their gifts to their society as Gay people. When you label all Gay people as intrinsically disordered, then you are saying that their contributions to their society are automatically disordered, inferior…should be done by “us” and not by “them…and of course, if the contribution by “one of those people” is good stuff, it’s usually stolen and not attributed to a minority person or group. Their contributions to their societies become invisible, to keep them invisible…and exploitable.

Gay people with that certain sort of personal integrity (and women, apparently because they also usually sleep with men) are obviously excluded from the higher echelons of Catholic power structure (and that of many other patriarchal minded monotheistic organizations). Their integrity as Gay, fully human men is repressed, wrapped in a cloak of public invisibility… of either submitting to a forced, publicly childlike, picture book saint-like, eunuch who was born that way, or chose to make one’s self into a modern day eunuch. If that role is rejected, one is then publicly demonized not just as a sinner, but as an intrinsically disordered, narcissistic, inferior to even other sinners sinner…a “homosexual” instead of an adult.

Devaluing personal integrity is likely not the way to recruit people of integrity for your institution. That is pretty much, I think, just asking for a crisis of authority, of inadvertently encouraging the sexual perversion of authority, and of tacitly encouraging the abuse of authority by scapegoating the usual suspects.

That is not the way to treat people at all. Unless Gay people are taking vows of the priesthood or something, I would think that no institution would have the moral authority or the divine sanction to order some average people to be lifelong celibates instead of being…well…people;  of being adults; adults who make adult decisions, adult mistakes, have adult responsibilities, adults who want to know loving intimacy, to mutually, publicly rejoice in having a sexual bond that is more than sexual release or for making babies.  Adults who want to love, in a fully human way, the soul of their soul.

Gay people, as a group, are not intrinsically disordered, whatever that arrogant, racist-LIKE group stereotyping might mean. That’s now just a condescending, arrogant, deliberately stereotyping, froward mouthed slander. GLBT people are intrinsically human, period. To shamelessly indulge in a bit of a verbal threat, devalue Gay integrity at your soul’s peril.

“Without God anything is permitted” -Dostoevsky

Without God, what is there to permit?  God “permits” everything that happens, otherwise it wouldn’t happen.  He permits even moral evil, “because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it.”  Furthermore, “God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.”  And Jesus said, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Mark,  I wonder why you get so worked up about homosexuality and say nothing about a perversion which denies human dignity, and which serves as justification for aberrations such as prostitution with the added scourge of sex slavery and trafficking that the institutionalization of violence about women.  I am talking about the double standard that treats sexual straying by males as mere peccadillos, while in women serves as justification for brutality, up to the point of murder (burning alive in some placed) or being sold to brothels by their families.

The misery that such belief has brought into the world, and continues to do so makes the damage of homosexual relationships very small change.

The sexual double standard demands prostitution. If men can have sex with all the women they want, but women must stay with only one, by reason of the 50/50 ration, this can only be possible by the existence of prostitutes.  Also, by making pariahs of women who are less than chaste, it makes it easy for them to end up in brothels.  The double standard seems to have been designed to make a pimp’s life as easy as possible.

Then the cult of female purity has a negative effect in social stratification.  Men who will respect the purity of those in their social strata will go to lower strata to satisfy their “needs”  Thus in the South, the paeans to pure Southern womanhood (white) meant that randy white males visited the black neighborhoods to find available females, willing or not.  Or in India, where an untouchable who finds shoes outside his home, knows not to enter, as a high caste male is using his wife, and he should feel honored for his presence.

Forgive me to say that I find this aberration far worse than homosexual activities, and it pains me to what point the Catholic Church has been complicit with it.  As it is, until I see that this is addressed seriously, I cannot care about what two men (or two women) do with each other.

Mark,
I was blissfully unconcerned with all things homosexual only a few short years ago, until someone that I loved came out and I could no longer afford to be.  Even as a new Catholic, I didn’t think that homosexuality was anything to get too worked up about and I wanted to understand and provide support for my loved one.  I went into this with a very open mindset hoping to help the person I loved come to grips with their new same sex attraction.  In retrospect, I think I was searching for information to convince me that homosexuality was normal and should be acceptable.  Now, with years of immersion in this subject and much personal experience with the homosexual community, I find myself at a slightly different point than I thought I would be at.  I have to say that I agree almost totally with everything you have said.  I would not have believed the narcissism, dysfunction and the downright dishonesty and bullying that comes from the homosexual community.  The negative responses I have seen on here are fairly tame compared to some I have seen when reasonable people want to discuss an opposing viewpoint.  I no longer see opposition to homosexual “marriage as minor issue, but one that goes to the very heart of the spiritual battle being fought in the world today.  It highlights all of our enemy’s strengths and most of our weaknesses.  Bless you for not giving into the forces of spiritual decay that want us to shut our eyes to the truth.

Adriana:

This blog is answer to a question, not a treatise on Everything.  If you can find one single solitary place where I speak with approval of fornication, adultery or brutality toward women, you’d have a real point.

thanks Mark for writing this.  As I say to ALL sinners, It is BECAUSE I LOVE YOU that I want you to stop sinning.  It is not good for your body or your soul to sin.  I fear now for our churches.  As Illinois Catholic Charities Adoption has now broken away from the church to enforce a “law” that is not healthy for the rights of children, we must stand firm.  Love the sinner, not the sin.  Tell people it is wrong, but show them love & compassion.  Courage is a great Catholic program.

The real damage - not what two men or two women choose to do in private; but the demand of their legal advocates that communities and churches not approving of this practice BE COMPELLED BY LAW to recognize these relationships and permit them to be celebrate as “marriage” in their churches and communities.  This is a byproduct of the idea that “gay rights” is the equivalent of the civil rights movement of the 1940s - 1950s - 1960s, etc.  But it is not. 
Incidentally, bestiality is not only condemned in the Pentateuch, but is also mentioned in literature from the Greek and Roman empires.  Nothing new under the sun.
TeaPot562

A certain someone wrote, “race is not a disordered orientation”, but the human race has a disordered orientation, “an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence”.  The same goes for Catholic persons, as they are no less “disordered” in their orientation and acts than the purported “homosexual community”, and they have just as much “persecuting fever”.  We don’t need to look at a purported “gay community” to find support for civil legal same-sex relationships.  There are far more supporters in the Catholic Church.

Quote from: LETTER OF ST. PAUL TO THE PHILIPPIANS

Philippians 4:8
King James Version (KJV)

4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. 4:9 The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Joce:

Yes.  Sin is a universal phenomenon.  And that means gay “marriage” is justified why?  Jumping from “sin is a universal phenomenon” to “gay ‘marriage’ is great because a lot of suburban Americans poll in favor of it” is not what I would call solid reasoning.  Appealing to the fact that 100% of those polled are sinners is not a wise way to establish that the poll results are going to be reliable.  The faith is not rooted in human poll results, but in the teaching handed down from Christ and the apostles.

Mark, “marriage” is an eight letter word with a variety of meanings, not just one.  Under a variety of those meanings, and under civil law, it does NOT require a sexual act, homosexual or heterosexual.  A Catholic can in good conscience both vote for Obama and oppose abortion, and so too a Catholic can in good conscience both vote for civil legal same-sex “marriage” and oppose homosexual acts.  Two persons of the same sex can have a civil legal “marriage” and be as chaste as anyone else.  They don’t even have to be same-sex attracted, whether to one another or to anyone.  One needn’t rely on poll data for this.  Instead, the truth will set you free.  If your bishop has told you otherwise, that’s between you and your bishop.

I guess I am confused.  I don’t see anything in Mark’s column that is not explicitly Catholic.  I don’t see anything that is not biblical.  However, I do read my catechism and my bible find numerous statements that define homosexuality as a sin and marriage defined as one man and one woman.  At that point it is not a Catholic or biblical debate. Mark’s view seems spot on with what the Church teaches.  So, if you disagree with what Mark wrote, how can you call yourself Catholic?

And that is my problem with much of the debate that goes on supposedly “within the Church” as regards social issues like homosexual marriage, female priests, abortion, etc. Once the Pope speaks on faith and morals, the issue is decided. If you are pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage, pro-female priests, etc—form your own schism.  Don’t call yourself Catholic.  Or am I wrong?

What I say is that you do not seem to have your priorites straight. Nor does the Church. Any paramedic knows that you do not worry about broken bones until you are sure that the patient is breathing and not bleeding to death.  With thousands and thousands of women being trafficked to satisfy the “needs” of men who would brutalize their women if they ever strayed from the path, all you can say is that you never approved it.  Where is the fire, the denounciation, the passion that you put in denouncing homosexuality?  Hell, they are only women, they are used to it.

Tom, you have some good points leading to “Don’t call yourself Catholic.” which is inline with Mark’s use of the term “enemy’s”.

Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters abroad.

@Adriana

Perhaps you have been sleeping through most of the last 10 years, but the Church has been speaking out against sex traficking for a long time.

Also, perhaps I have not been paying as close attention to the news as I should, but perhaps you could point out where and when people in this country have been pushing for state and federal laws legalizing the trafficking of women as sex slaves in the United States? There may be quite a vocal movement for this, complete with Hollywood backing and enormous financial and politically correct influence like the gay marriage movement has and I just haven’t seen it.

In case you miss what I meant in the above paragraph, I am saying you’re throwing up a false flag.

“I wonder why you get so worked up about homosexuality and say nothing about a perversion which denies human dignity…”
- Having read Mr. Shea’s works, he does speak out about that too. Unlike what you seem to demand, he is under no obligation to devote every column he writes to your favored cause.

Adriana:
“Where is the fire, the denounciation, the passion that you put in denouncing homosexuality?”

You ask a very interesting question. I think we can learn the answer by observing what happened with the issues of contraception and remarriage after divorce. Once upon a time Catholics were very excited, in an oppositional way, about divorce and remarriage. But they lost the political and cultural battles, and they adjusted to its social ubiquity by ramping up annulment services for Catholics, and becoming tolerant of non-Catholics who didn’t bother with that process. In theory a remarriage without an annulment isn’t a valid marriage, but as far as I know those Catholic adoption services who refused to serve same sex couples didn’t turn away Christian couples who had remarried after a divorce. Theoretically their marriages were no more valid in the eyes of God than those of same sex couples. 

Similarly, most Catholic families are no larger than those of non-Catholic families, and very few are using NFP. This attracts little remark from anybody, although it used to be a big deal in the confessional.

Gayness is shiny right now because the culture and the law are on the cusp of change, but eventually I think the issue will consume less of the Church’s attention. To be fair, official Church doctrine condemns extra-marital sex equally for men and women. But clearly it is so prevalent that frequent thundering denunciations from Church representatives would be more quaint than effective.

The gap between what the majority of Catholics believe is moral and what Church doctrine says is moral keeps widening. What I can’t explain is why people want to claim membership in an institution that they clearly do not believe offers the correct moral guidance. I suppose someday a “Reformed” Catholic Church will peel off, retaining the smells and bells for cultural Catholics, but relaxing the rules to accomodate what people really believe.

The Catechism teaches against homosexual acts but does not forbid civil same-sex relationships, not even if the English word “marriage” is used with them outside of the Catechism.  There are many things called a “marriage”, including the marriage of peanut butter and jelly, marriages in a game of pinochle, etc.  It is not immoral to refer to all these things with the English word “marriage”.  That the Catechism uses the word “marriage” in reference to a man and a woman does not make all other meanings and uses of the same English word immoral.  Rather, “the Church speaks all tongues, understands and accepts all tongues in her love, and so supersedes the divisiveness of Babel.”. In fact, the Catechism specifically instructs us to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another person’s words than to condemn it, and that applies to “same-sex marriage” as well.  The English word “marriage” is a man-made invention.  It is not a sacrament or something to be idolized.  It has many meanings that can be morally applied to same-sex civil relationships.  There is neither dogma nor any civil law that I’ve read that equates civil same-sex “marriage” with homosexual acts nor does dogma or civil law dictate that one must lead to the other.  Some people might opine that it does but opinions come in every flavor.  Charity calls me to accept the most charitable interpretation, and charity is as creatively inventive as God.

Adriana:

Once again, you seem to be accusing me of not writing a reply to something that I was not asked about.  Can’t please everyone, I guess.

FWIW, I will have a book coming out in January called The Work of Mercy (about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy) which deals, among other things, with “ransoming the captive” and which addresses, among other things sex trafficking.

Correction, Bomberdad use of the word “enemy’s”

Sorry Mark and Bomberdad

Mike in KC, in case you were unaware, homosexual acts are already legal in all 50 states.  No marriage license is required for it.  Likewise, fornication, lust, divorce and wIdely adultery too are legal across the U.S. and elsewhere, whether one is married or not.  What laws there may be against “sex trafficking” are themselves little enforced.  Reportedly, prostitution and pimping are widely practiced, even out in the open.  And there are people advocating everyday to decriminalize it. Some states even license it.

“in case you were unaware, homosexual acts are already legal in all 50 states.  No marriage license is required for it.”
- Yes, sin is practiced everywhere. However, in case YOU didn’t know, trying to use the coercive power of the state to FORCE people to celebrate sin is something else entirely.

“And there are people advocating everyday to decriminalize it. Some states even license it.”
- Yawn. Wake me when it even comes close to becoming the celebrity cause that homosexual marriage has become, when the politically correct forces are mobilized to shut down anyone who dares say that sex slavery is wrong.

You swung and missed.

Like I told her, this is not THE MAIN issue for the US. In the end, homosexual marriage isn’t either. But I’m not buying what she is implying above that prostitution is somehow the DEFINING ISSUE OF OUR TIME and that to talk of anything else is some how seen as avoidance, like writing about somalia and never mentioning the starvation and piracy.

If that is her obsession, fine. But it is unreasonable to expect everyone to share her obsession.

Like Steven, this post will be misunderstood, but here goes, anyway. Homosexuality is not a sin if one leads a chaste life. In fact, that is what the church teaches that homosexuals are called to do. Really. It’s in the catechism.
******
Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.“142 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.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
**********
Notice the consistent separation of homosexuality, which is not a sin, and homosexual acts, which are.

It is the same type of disorder as masturbation, which is far more prevalent, yet people don’t seem to even speak of that one. I mean, how often do you hear teenage boys, as a group, characterized as narcissistic. Thus, I believe it is a form of discrimination against homosexuals to classify them as “narcisstic, selfish, <insert your favorite invective here>”. It is a form of discrimination against them, which is forbidden under 2358.

One can only condemn the act. Going further, and characterizing the group, is uncharitable.

Correction:
Homosexuality, which refers to the act, is itself a sin. I meant the consistent distinction between homosexual and homosexual acts. Sorry.

Tom.

First, your distinction between those who suffer temptations and those who act on those temptation is not confusing. At least I didn’t think so.

I think by ‘narcisstic, selfish’ he is referring to the pro homosex marriage lobby and those who who, as he says, demand we not just tolerate but celebrate.

As far as masturbation goes, you are correct, it is also a purely narcisstic act. I have heard sermons on this topic as well, carefully worded of course as all sermons on such topics must be.

My question for those who separate the sin from the sinner in regards to marriage is this:  What purpose does marriage have to homosexuals?  If marriage is primarily for procreation and family and it is agreed by all good Christians that homosexual acts are sinful, then what is the purpose of sanctifying that sin with the sacrament of marriage?  Can such a family procreate naturally?

This is one issue where you cannot separate the sin from the sinners since the sin is implicit in the question of marriage and legitimization.  Afterall do not Homosexuals identify themselves by their sexuality and differentiate themselves by acknowledging unrepentant sin? One can argue for political legitimization and that is debatable but don’t do it on moral or Catholic teaching (it’s not supportable). And when one says that a Church must sanctify sin, the effect of the argument changes.  Mark rightly points out - that marriage is not the end game here and all of you word smiths and twisters know it.  This is an assault on the Church and our freedom to worship.

Stop muddying the water here with the sin and how we treat the sinner. Nobody is arguing that a masturbator should be allowed to marry his/her right hand?  Or that pimps and prostitutes should be allowed to marry.  And whether it is legal in all 50 states or not—does not make it right or true or moral.  After all, divorce is legal but immoral in most cases.  The question here is whether the Church should bw forced to sanctify such unions? That is where this is headed…

In response to Mike since incestous relationships have a biblical basis, I would say the exact same thing. Show me the damage to “marriage” by gays or siblings or multi and please refuse to go down the animal, children or inannimate object route that the other morons on this site want to go down. Contract law is very specific. Show me the damage and I might change my tune but until them you all are just a bunch of homophobic bigots.

****
“After all do not Homosexuals identify themselves by their sexuality and differentiate themselves by acknowledging unrepentant sin? One can argue for political legitimization and that is debatable but don’t do it on moral or Catholic teaching (it’s not supportable).”
****

That attitude is the problem. All homosexuals do not identify themselves by their sexuality, just as not all teenagers characterize themselves by some sin they commit. Some do lead chaste lives, and are no more sinners than the rest of us.

As to homosexual marriage, we’re in agreement. I’m not arguing that the Church should support it, and I also am not arguing that the State can be permitted to allow it. This we should fight, tooth and nail. However, we can’t judge a group by the actions of certain individuals.

Now, that’s hard to do when you feel that your very faith is under attack by the government. Yet sometimes, as Catholics, we are called to the higher and harder ground. The argument has to be that the act is intrinsically disordered, not that a group of people can be characterized by a pejorative trait. That is uncharitable, and not in accord with what the Catechism says.

@David

You are grasping at straws.

You say: “please refuse to go down the animal, children or inannimate object route that the other morons on this site want to go down.”
What you are to blind to is that it is all on the SAME ROAD, it’s just a couple of miles further on.

Contract Law? I respond: So? Contract law is just what everyone has agreed to for now. It can be changed. Or do you believe contract law to somehow be unchangeable? Given the constant pressure to lower the ‘age of consent’ it is just a matter of time, nothing more. Your beloved contract law has nothing to sit on but the fact that it is set by popular consensus NOW. Your assumption that it could never possibly change is what is moronic.

With regard to animals… I forget which country it is in Europe, but they have already granted human rights to apes (I believe it is either Sweden or Belgium). You seem to be an atheist, so I wonder at the fact that you seem to be clueless as to the fact that there is really no limit in the end to the depths that mankind can debase himself.

Never happen? Only a moron would think it would come to pass? They said that about gay marriage too. Those people probably talked about contract law as well.

Mike in KC, I do not “swing and miss”.  I speak truthfully and if you characterize it as something else, that is your doing.  So too, your characterization of “trying to use the coercive power of the state to FORCE people to celebrate sin” is also your doing.  Not everyone who supports “same-sex marriage” laws or.who does not support criminalizing this or that sexual sin wants to “force” anyone to “celebrate sin”.  I also do not believe that Adriana was saying that “talk of anything else” is “avoidance”..  However, I respect that people may have different opinions, to include that some people have a disproportionate or misprioritized avoidant “obsession” with same-sex marriage, whether for or against it.

Mike in KC =“I forget which country it is in Europe, but they have already granted human rights to apes”

Here is the US we recognize corporations as persons.

Tom, you premised, “If marriage is primarily for procreation and family”, but your premise is not true in regard to all that is called “marriage” in the English language and thus not true of all “marriages”.  Rather, your premise validly addresses only some marriages between persons of the opposite sex.  You asked, “do not Homosexuals identify themselves by their sexuality and differentiate themselves by acknowledging unrepentant sin?”.  Human persons made in the image and likeness of God can hardly be adequately described by the reductionist term “homosexuals” and thus your question does not adequately describe who exactly you mean.  But if by “homosexuals” you mean all or even most persons who experience same-sex attraction more so than opposite-sex attraction, then again there is no reliable evidence that all or most such persons “identify themselves by their sexuality and differentiate themselves by acknowledging unrepentant sin”.  Such persons can identify as creatures of God and be as repentant as anyone and yet continue to experience same-sex attraction, i.e. be “gay” / “homosexual”.  You say “the question here is whether the Church should be forced to sanctify such unions [of pimp and prostitute]”, but that is not the question as civil law which in fact legalizes such marriages does   not force the Church to sanctify them.  As to the “end game”, it can be mortally sinful to speak ill of people and their motives.  Instead, I respect and the Church teaches that “all is ordained for the salvation of man.”. That is quite an end game.

Regarding the legitimization of polyamory, this was linked on Andrew Sullivan’s blog this evening:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/wwjtd/2011/11/17/adventures-in-polyamory/

The author, a “high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance”
says that it is only our irrational emotions that keep us from seeing that “(i)f there are two friends who are bored and their options are playing checkers or going down on each other, I see nothing improper about opting for the latter choice.”

Coming to a high school near you?

BTW, the country in Europe that granted some human rights to apes is Spain, IIRC.  Bolivia’s new constitution, IIRC, allows lawsuits to be brought on behalf of “Mother Earth” or individual ecosystems—maybe even specific trees, although I’d have to double-check that.

Incest, bestiality or pedophilia? I have no idea which will come in first, but bestiality and incest seem particularly creepy because the beast cannot consent and the arguments for pedophilia will project onto children a “right” to sexual expression that is a delusional distortion of the pedophile’s desire. When a man projects consent onto a woman, it’s called “rape.”
No, I’m not saying “consent” is the sole legitimate criterion of morality, but I’m noting that those who currently claim that must either abandon it (in bestiality) or make of it a legal fiction (in pedophilia).

Mark, I went overboard on my comments, but I wanted you to see how much evil the belief in the double standard has wrought.  Now, I do not see that the Church acknowledges to what point it lived by it, defended it, and enforced it (the horror of the Magdalene Laundries, those gulags for “fallen women”, including rape victims, is still a fresh memory and a permanent reproach).

Has the Church admitted that all these centuries its advice in sexual matters was contaminated by this evil doctrine? Has it taken steps to rectify its teaching, and to provide some sort of restitution to the victims of is tainted teaching?  If not, then I do not trust that teaching, and I do not truts the teachers.  I do not take advice on sexual morality from people who would me lock up in a gulag for forced labor and constant abuse if I ever had the misfortune of being raped.

And since the teachings of homosexuality are part and parced of those tainted sexual teaching, and just as likely to have evil at the core of them, then I cannot accpet it, nor can I accept the authority of people who committed unspeakable crimes in the name of those teachings, and are not willing to admit their error.

@Adrianna
”  I do not take advice on sexual morality from people who would me lock up in a gulag for forced labor and constant abuse if I ever had the misfortune of being raped.”
- I must have missed the teaching in the catechism where it states that women who were raped must be locked in a gulag. I think you’re confusing abuses by individuals or groups of individuals with teaching. What you’re doing is like saying that since some climate scientists modified data to suit their politics at one point, then forever all climate science is to be thrown away and never believed in again.

“I do not take advice on sexual morality from people who would me lock up in a gulag…”
I get the very distinct impression that your obsession with this issue is actually a false flag for the real reason why you don’t want to follow church teaching with regards to sexual morality. In fact it reminds me very much of a story from Bishop Fulton Sheen where, after being yelled at for a while by an individual for how bad it was that the church had riches, struck him silent by simply asking ‘How much did you steal?’. You should look that story up.

I think you need to do a little looking into your own soul and quit trying to find reasons to disobey the Church’s moral teaching.

I find it very sad that people search for an individual or group that did something evil and then attempts to use that as a cop out to avoid a teaching they find burdensome.

Mike:  The Magdalen laundries WERE a gulag, where nuns and priests abused young women for the crime of having been seduce or raped (while their seducersr and rapists got scott free).  They were closed in the dark ages of 1990s.  That far away. 

If those were only individuals, why did the Church accept the money made there and does not seek restitution for those slaves?  Why doesn’t it acknowledge it? When the movie ccame out the answer was “This is anticatholic propaganda” and telling the faithful not to see it.

That is called covering up, and being an accessory after the fact.

Why doesn’t the Church make the orders that ran those establishments open their records so that the whole extent may be known, and many women who were buried nameless (and later burned in a crematory when they came out - because Christian burial is only good for cetain people) can be identified at last?  Why does it want to keep it secret, unless they are complicit?

There is a saying “consider the source” and the source of that teaching is tainted.  And as I pointed out, that teaching has not expurgated the elements that make prostution - no matter how they claim against it - inevitable.  And that element was the justification for the foul deeds I described.  A teaching that has been made to support evil needs to be reexamined and quickly.

Any food company knows that they must recall any batch that shows contamination, and quickly.  They are not so foolish as to point out that they produce more than taineted cans, and that there are plenty of good nutrients in there.  They recall, and try to track down the cause of the contamination.  And then produce a batch without the contamination. Is is so difficult to understand?

The teaching has been contaminated and needs to be recalled. The fact that the contamination produces great evil requires that it be withdrawn and fixed.  Until I see that there is a recall, I will refuse any teachings, because of the possibility of botulism.  And I refuse to let you browbeat me because I want to defend myself from a defective product.

T

Mike:  You and Bishop Sheen showedd poor debating skills and the same intellectual dishonesty that committed Sartre when writing about Camus “The Rebel”.  Someone answered him “When someone says that the French Revolution cut off King Louis’ head there are right answers 1) Answer and it did not, and prove it.  2) Answer that it did and that it was a good thing - and prove it.  3) Answer that it was an evil deed, but that the Revolution should not be condemned in toto because of it - and prove it.  What you cannot do is “you a are saying this because of your personal reasons, and I will not answer it because I know that you are not sincere and want to advance your agenda.:”  What is sauce for Sartre, is sauce for you and Bishop Sheen.

It is not a random evil deed - which would not be the first one - but one that bears a direct relationship to the teaching that I do not trust. I would like to know if there is more to chastity than an excuse to abuse women, and what kind of a virtue it is that it requires the terrorizing of women to be effective?  As it is, I JUST DO NOT TRUST THE TEACHERS.

And it might well be abuses by individuasl, but if it was so, the Church did all the wrong things.  It did not denounce the individuals, it did not offer any succor or validation to the victims, but kept on denying. It did not command the offending orders to open their files for public scrutiny and order to make whatever restitution could be made to those lives which were blighted.  What it did was the same you did.  Say that it was anti-Catholic propaganda, and tell the faithful not to see the movie that laid bare the abuse.

That, my dear sir is complicity, being an accessory after the fact.

And I am supposed to follow the dictates of people like that?

@Adriana

“You and Bishop Sheen showedd poor debating skills”
- Since you are not familiar with the story, I’ll tell you. When Bishop Sheen asked “how much did you steal?” the man was first indignant. But then he admitted: He had been stealing from the Church’s charity fund for years and had been justifying it to himself because ‘the Church is so rich’. I see the same pattern with your diatribes.

“I would like to know if there is more to chastity than an excuse to abuse women”
- Your statement here speaks of nothing but your own intellectual sloth. You have no idea, obviously, what the Church teaches in this regard and further, you quite obviously don’t even want to know, or else a simple search would have set you straight on this matter. Your rants on this topic bear all the reasoned knowledge of a Southern Baptist who declares that Catholics worship statues.

“As it is, I JUST DO NOT TRUST THE TEACHERS.”
- No, you don’t want the TEACHING. THAT is your real hang up. If every single bishop/priest/lay brother in the Church was a Mother Teresa clone, you would still attack it, or rather you would still attack the homemade straw man that you hold up as the Church’s teaching. It’s not because of the teachers, it’s because YOU DON’T WANT TO OBEY THE MORAL LAW IN THIS REGARD. And instead of simply, honestly, defying it as most of the New Atheist school does, you try to rationalize your disregard of it. You’re not fooling anyone.

And in the end, it doesn’t matter who the teacher is. As Scripture says in Matthew 23: “Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do not. For they say, and do not.” He is saying that yes, the Pharisees are hypocrites and you should NOT do as they do, BUT THEIR TEACHING IS THE LAW AND SHOULD BE OBEYED. But I guess you know better than Jesus.

I see nowhere where I said sins committed by Catholic lay and clergy were mere ‘propaganda’.

“And I am supposed to follow the dictates of people like that?”
- See my Scripture quote above.

Bishop Sheen got lucky, or he had inside info.  Still it is no argument. This is a trick defense lawyers use to discredit witnesses, and when used on credulous juries results in criminals getting free.  Either the facts denounced are true or they are not.  It is permissible to put them in context, but to wonder WHY the accusation is made is to admit that it is true, and that you have no counter argument.  You do not say that the Magdalene laundries “for wayward women” did not exist. You did not say tht the treatment of the inmates are humane.  You did not say that it was right to mistreat women systematically, witn unbelieavable cruelty.  You try to make me see that the Church in toto is not condemnable.  That I might grant, but the core belief that made such horrors possible is too tied up with the teaching about sexual morality. It needs to be cleaned up and scoured clean of any suggestion that abuse of women is OK if they are not chaste. 

So you say that in theory the teaching does not say that?  Well, do not tell that to me. Tell it to every priest and nun that believes it and encourages fellow Christians to punish women for unchastity and giving a free pass to unchaste men. They are the ones that need instruction, not me. 

The law of the Pharisees right? The one that commanded that women taken in adultery should be stoned to death? The one that allowed a man as many women as he could get?  The LAW that enshrises that evil double standard, which has been used to brutalize women and feel virtuous for doing it? 

Thanks me for telling me that.

“Bishop Sheen got lucky, or he had inside info.”
- No, he could just tell when someone was full of it. While I have none of the holy Bishop’s other excellent qualities, he and I at least share being able to read that in people.

“That I might grant, but the core belief that made such horrors possible is too tied up with the teaching about sexual morality.”
- No, it is only your misunderstanding of Church teaching brought about by your aforementioned intellectual sloth. You seriously couldn’t even state the Church’s actual teachings on this topic if you tried. You are too caught up on your anger and hurt.

“Tell it to every priest and nun that believes it and encourages fellow Christians to punish women for unchastity and giving a free pass to unchaste men.”
- Straw man. I’ve met plenty of priests in my day, and never met any one like what you describe. In fact, I’ve never met anyone who themselves met such a priest. Once again, you are merely trying to use a false flag in an attempt to discredit a teaching you find bothersome. The ‘horror show’ you like to imagine is out to get you is about as grounded in reality as Alberto Rivera’s version of the Jesuits.

“The law of the Pharisees right? The one that commanded that women taken in adultery should be stoned to death? The one that allowed a man as many women as he could get?”
- I take it back. What you are showing is not intellectual sloth, it is intellectual coma. In fact, the best way to discredit you at this point seems to be to simply get you to keep talking, as you are demonstrably becoming more and more unhinged with each post.

You quite obviously have been hurt at some point in your life. For that I am truly sorry, whatever it might have been. However, hurling dishonest insults and hatred at the Church is not going to make your pain go away. And I think you know that.

Sir, do you deny that the law from the Ancient Testament approved the killing of unchaste women? Do you deny that it gives the father the right to kill his errant daughter for “playing the harlot”?  That was part and parcel of the Law. Is this the Law that Jesus commanded be obeyed?  Are you aware than in the Middle East, people who live according to those old customs burn alive any daughter or sister who gets pregnant outside of marriage?  It this the Law Jesus came to fulfill? 

Well, no priest nor nun believees in punishing unchaste women?  Who staffed then the Magdalen laundries?  Buddhists?  Maybe you did not meet any in your limited experience, but if you step out of it, you can hear horror stories, like the incest victim who spoke bitterly about her violator to have the priest reprove her because she should honor her mother and father. Like those priests who told battered women that they would go to Hell if they left their abusive husbands.  Dig into it, and you will find them.  And how many of them were reproved and told to apologize for the lousy advice they gave?

The beautiful teachings remained in the books, and the reality was far uglier.

Tell me, why, in his fight to uphold teachings about sexuality, did the Vatican join forces with conservative Muslims, overlooking if those Muslims had ever denounced honor killings or believed them necessary to maintain chastity? 

So, the teachings are to be obeyed by women, and overlooked by the hyerarchy when it is convenient for them.

And I would appreciate it if you would stop making assumptins about me, or I might be forced to suspect you of being a wife beater or a child abuser that things that chastity is a good excuse to inflict pain on the females around you - or even a pimp who is afraid that if the double standerd goes away you may lose you source of revenue.

Mike:  You seem to confuse attacking personally and sneering for debate. I am getting tired of your making assumptins about me, and telling me how wrong I am without offering evidence.  Accoding to the Golden Rule, would it be OK if I assumed that you are someone with a vested interest in the double standard, such as a pimp or a wife beater?

Adriana

“You seem to confuse attacking personally and sneering for debate.”
- You have far to great an opinion of yourself. There is nothing of substance in your posts to debate. It would be like, to continue the reference, ‘debating’ Jack Chick. There’s nothing there but slander, false knowledge and malice. You have nothing worthy of any kind of debate as your statements about Church teaching don’t match with reality.

You also are clueless when it come to how to debate. You throw out obvious trash ‘knowledge’ of the Church teaching and get angry when I don’t provide proof it is wrong. You have it exactly backwards. You have to provide proof that your statements are in accord with reality. That’s how debate works. It’s not my job to show you how silly and juvenile your attack on the Church is. (Although, you’re actually doing a pretty good job of that yourself.)

“would it be OK if I assumed that you are someone with a vested interest”
- Ha! And you haven’t been already doing that?

When you decide to actually learn what the Church teaches, you can come back and talk about it. Until then, all I’m hearing from you sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

As I said before, I hope you eventually get over whatever hurt you’ve suffered that has filled you with such irrational malice for what, in your mind only, the Church teaches.

Mike:  What do you mean “trash” knowledge?  The Magdalen laundries are “trash knowlege”?  I mean, gulags as cruel as those of Communism, crimes against humanity that should drag its perpetrator to the court in La Hague, are to you just incidentals?

I guess I know where your heart lies.  As long as you keep the teaching and make no waves, you get patted in the head for being a good Catholic.  You tolerate corruption in grand scale and sigh, pointing out to the nice theory that the hyerarchy seems to have no time to enforce.

You remind me of the mathematics professor who woke up in the middle of the night and his house was no fire.  He went to the bathroom and opened a faucet and said.  Aha!  There is a solution!  And went back to bed.

When an organization one belongs to commits crimes against humanity you cannot take refuge in its bylaws, but demand a thorough investigation and house cleaning.  That’s what happens in any organization that is to survive.  But you care so much about your personal salvation that you overloook evil in grand scale, promising at most to pray for the victims.

@Psy: Mmmmm, have you got my thunker thinking! Imagine what would happen to our present level of civic activity and discourse if we combined the effects of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision and whatever law in whatever European nation that granted civil rights to apes?
  Never mind, we only have to read the fishwraps and turn on our computers and idiot boxes, not to mention some talk radio shows. We’ve seen this show, and it ain’t purty.

A little more representative history on the Laundries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum

Adriana seems to be characterizing what turned horrible as a purely Catholic effort, hoping some readers will walk away thinking the Vatican itself turned it horrible.

Adriana:
“What do you mean “trash” knowledge?”
- I mean is your false ‘knowledge’ on what the Church teaches. I will not deny that there have been some in the Church that have done terrible things. However, your entire argument is that it is the Teaching of the Church (which you pretend to understand) that causes these things. This is a point you have not proved. That is my point. You throw out this totally unfounded, unproven accusation and then demand that people try to prove you wrong. You quite obviously haven’t spent much time learning logic.

As I said above, PROVE it. You can’t prove it by simply regurgitating your fevered rant that the teaching chastity for all causes women abuse. There is no cause/effect and you haven’t shown that. You simply keep insisting that the connection is there without even attempting to show it.

And the reason you keep returning to passionate pleas on your favorite topic, instead of actually PROVING the connection with teaching, is simply that you CAN’T prove it.

“As long as you keep the teaching and make no waves, you get patted in the head for being a good Catholic.”
- Considering that I never said any such thing, this statement of yours not only shows your further intellectual sloth, but shows a rather startling lack of reading comprehension. Try reading the posts I wrote again.

“When an organization one belongs to commits crimes against humanity you cannot take refuge in its bylaws, but demand a thorough investigation and house cleaning.”
- But this is NOT what you want. You’re entire fevered rant is that the Church’s teaching of marriage fidelity, chastity, etc. CAUSES abuse of women. That’s been your entire point this whole time. You aren’t looking for justice. You’re looking for an EXCUSE to throw away a teaching you find bothersome. Your real point is that YOU SIMPLY DON’T LIKE THE CHURCH’S TEACHING OF CHASTITY.

“But you care so much about your personal salvation”
- Considering that my personal salvation is what I SHOULD be focusing on, according to Christ Himself, you’ll forgive me if I don’t throw out His word for yours.

Mike:

The main cause of abuse of women is insistence in their chastity.  Be it the honor killings, the beatings given because of jealousy, or the provision of prostitutes for the “needs” of men who want more than their chaste spouse, the lopsided requirement for chastity for women only is a the bottom of it.

Probably the teaching in theory says that both have to be chaste, but the implementation is a different matter.  You should know by now that it is not enough that the law be in the books, but that it should be carried out diligently.  The only Law that matters is the Law we live with, not pretty theories that no one takes seriously.

Unless the Church takes the bull by the horns, and blasts the double standard, both condemning more severely men who stray - and warning that because of trafficking, men who go to brothels are guilty of rape - and condemning honor killings or other form of violence, then the teachings of chastity are dead letter, and the Church becomes complicit in the abuse.

I do wish that one tenth of the energy that is spent on the theme of homosexuality should be given to the evils caused by the double standard, prostitution, honor kilings, wife beating, and that the faithful be warned aobut it as they are warned about homosexuality.  But I guess the Church does not care that much.

Unfortunately the Magdalene Laundries were not just a Catholic affair.  Protestants could be just as evil.

BUT

What was the official respose of the Vatican when the truth became known?

Horror that such evils should be done in Christ’s name?
Aid and support for the victims?
Calling in the superiors of the orders for a full explanation of their activities, and dissolution of those guilty of crimes against humanity?
Full apology for its lack of oversight?

We are not talking about minor matters, but crimes against humanity. We are talking about gulags.  Remember the existence of gulags was what finally convinced many that Communism was evil. ANY organization or belief that runs gulags cannot be good. 

At least the Communists had someone like Khruschev, who with his many, many faults, had the moral of courage of saying “this is wrong” exposing it to the world, and validate the victims.

I am waiting for a Catholic, or Protestant for that matter, to show moral courage in this.

Adriana, if you actually read the details and the referenced web links you’d find a far more complicated set of circumstances, intentions, guilt pathways, and history than you’re trying to portray.

It’s so obvious from your redundant writing on this topic that you’d love to pinpoint blame on to not just men but whatever convenient male hierarchy is within the fall line of this tragedy. 

The fact is that the laundries were started as an alternative to far harsher prison life.  It aimed at rehabilitation and retraining.  It went wrong.

It might have been better - or maybe not - to lock the women and their pimps up.  But these are just pesky odd-fitting thoughts to you.  Better to ignore what doesn’t fit your model..and write on.

Adriana, if you actually read the details and the referenced web links you’d find a far more complicated set of circumstances, intentions, guilt pathways, and history than you’re trying to portray.

It’s so obvious from your redundant writing on this topic that you’d love to pinpoint blame to not just men but whatever convenient male hierarchy is within the broad fall line of this tragedy. 

The fact is that the laundries were started as an alternative to far harsher prison life.  They aimed at rehabilitation and retraining.  It went wrong.

It might have been better - or maybe not - to lock the women and their pimps up.  But these are just pesky odd-fitting thoughts to you.  Better to ignore what doesn’t fit your model..and write on.

“The main cause of abuse of women is insistence in their chastity.”
- Patently absurd. The main cause of abuse of women is abusers. Spoons don’t cause weight gain either.

So you are angry at sin? Good for you! All of us are. You’re angry the Church doesn’t take up your particular, favored cause and make it Her top priority like you want it to be? Take a number and get in line. I think the Sudanese were in line first demanding a focus on the abduction of massive numbers of their children for child soldiers by their political enemies, so they may be a little irate that you’re trying to cut in line.

“Unless the Church takes the bull by the horns”
- Considering that the Church is really the only institution on Earth that does much in this regard at all, secular society for the most part simply reveling in it, I think perhaps attacking the one institution who DOES do something as evil is a bit misguided.

Also, you are not attacking sinful men for their sins, you are not even attacking an institution, your post at the start attacked TEACHING. I can tell from your last two posts that you are trying to distance yourself from that fact, but that’s what you did.

ONCE AGAIN: PROVE (don’t insinuate, don’t stammer, don’t dodge like you’re trying to do now) PROVE that the teaching of chastity in Catholic Church was the cause. PROVE it. You’re the one, after all, who earlier in this thread demanded facts and only arguments based on facts. PROVE that the Church’s teaching on sexual intimacy is responsible for this. Anything else and you are simply being dishonest.

“I do wish that one tenth of the energy that is spent on the theme of homosexuality”
- You are misguided. Gay marriage, the original point of Mark’s post, is big in the news because that is what is being pressured against the Church RIGHT NOW. Also, your idea that the Church is entirely focused on this is merely a problem of perception: it’s in the news constantly. The rest of the thigns that the Church works on never make the news. For example, every time the Holy Father gives a talk, what does the media do? Scan through it for any talk of sex and focus ONLY ON THAT. This causes a perception problem.

Well said Mike

Personally, I think gay marriage is a target because it is an easy one. The Church would be much harder pressed to campaign against pre-marital sex or birth control, both of which it views as “disordered” in the same way that homosexual acts are “disordered”.

But if bloggers start writing vehement arguments against pre-marital sex or birth control, grocery cart Catholics (like myself, admittedly) will feel alienated from a Church that is already losing so many. It’s easier to judge someone * other * than you, rather than look at your own heart and judge yourself. Love and peace!

“both of which it views as ‘disordered’ in the same way that homosexual acts are ‘disordered’.”
- Not sure why you used scare quotes, but whatever…

Actually no, the Church does not view them both as “disordered in the same way”. However, homosexual acts and premarital sex and birth control are all three sinful.

“But if bloggers start writing vehement arguments against pre-marital sex or birth control”
- As they say out in the country, you’re not from around here, are you? Those other topics actually come up all the time, and the teaching of the Church is proclaimed on them as well.

“grocery cart Catholics”
- What exactly does that term mean? That you are a infallible magisterium of one, creating and uncreating truth by your own act of pure will (picking and choosing those parts of the Faith that flatter you), exercising a power not even the pope himself can do, aka cafeteria Catholic?

“will feel alienated from a Church that is already losing so many.”
- Yes, God in heaven forbid you hear something that may not mesh with your sensibilities. Because if there is one thing we know about Jesus, it’s that He never said or did ANYTHING that EVER alienated anybody. As it says in Scripture: Truth must take second place to the emotions and feelings of people who don’t like hearing hard things.

Quick question: in your opinion when it comes to those of the very rich upper class, should we make sure not to harp about loving and caring for the poor and calling them to take a more active roll in using their wealth for the less fortunate? I mean, that sort of talk might make them “feel alienated from a Church that is already losing so many.” Or is it only pelvic issues we can’t offend people on?

Yes, Mary, they go after gays because they are a minority easy to attack. It is safe to go after them.  Let them see go after men who patronize prostitutes with the same fervor…. There might not be that much in the collection plate if they did.

Nice you came back Adriana. You may have missed the last post I had for you, so I’ll repeat it here to make it easy:

You are not attacking sinful men for their sins, you are not even attacking an institution, your post at the start attacked TEACHING. I can tell from your last two posts that you are trying to distance yourself from that fact, but that’s what you did.

ONCE AGAIN: PROVE (don’t insinuate, don’t stammer, don’t dodge like you’re trying to do now) PROVE that the teaching of chastity in Catholic Church was the cause of abuse of women. PROVE it. You’re the one, after all, who earlier in this thread demanded facts and only arguments based on facts. PROVE that the Church’s teaching on sexual intimacy is responsible for this. Anything else and you are simply being dishonest.

I’ll be watching for your response, Adriana.

Mike,

#1 - You seem really angry. I didn’t mean to attack, but rather to provide a different perspective on the original post.

#2 - Grocery cart Catholics and cafeteria Catholics are the same thing. We have a lot of them up here, because…

#3 - I’m from Ontario, Canada where we have many publicly-funded Catholic schools (due to our French heritage), one of which I went to. Many people who don’t traditionally attend mass regularly send their kids to these schools. We have a lot of grocery cart Catholics up here who certainly pay more attention to homosexuality and abortion than they do to contraception and premarital sex. I am speaking of the climate in which I live. Additionally, my Parish itself spends most of its extra-mass energy on pro-life and poverty causes. But the media up here, because same-sex marriage is legal in our province, understandably pays more attention to the “hot button issues”. this is that

(The up-side of this is I suppose there are more Catholics in general. Don’t have any stats on that though)

#4 - I agree that the Church would also alienate people by focusing on equal distributions of wealth, visiting those who are imprisoned, etc.

@Mary and @Adriana—the problem with your analysis is that is based on a fundamental untruth or outright lie.  The Catholic Church DOES speak just as strongly against premarital sex, masturbation, adultery, and any other sin as much as it does against homosexuality.  What people post here is irrelevant in that respect.  This forum is not “the Church” and does not represent it.  Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you are confused about its stance on immorality of any kind.  Besides…This particular thread is about homosexuality and gay marriage—a limited focus.  Even if it were true that hypocrisy exists among Church laity that still doesn’t excuse homosexuality or justify gay marriage.  The truth is still the truth—and sin is sin—even if you don’t want to accept it.  And no amount of misdirection, outright lie or balderdash can change it.

Tom,

I completely agree! My point exactly! I am suggesting that the Catholic and mainstream media perhaps pay more attention to homosexuality than they do to other sins. However, we need to not confuse what the Church teaches with what we talk about on a day-to-day basis. So perhaps I would revise my above post to, at times, instead of the Church, say “the Catholic news media”.

Cheers,
Mary

Mary, I don’t blame the Catholic News Media here, Mark or any other blogger of conscience.  The key difference is that people don’t proudly identify themselves as adulterers, push a pro-adultery agenda for our children, or rally in Adultery Pride parades.  And right thinking people consider it a shameful act.  There is no shame in the Pro-Gay movement at all (at least in their own eyes).  In fact, they want everyone to stand up and applaud their sinful behavior.  It’s a key difference.  It’s not about “easy targets” here, at all.  I am willing to bet if a political movement of masturbating enthusiasts rose up in attempt to redefine Church teaching, Christian tradition and the Bible to reflect their beliefs—the Catholic News Media and bloggers would comment just as frequently with the same intensity.

“You seem really angry. I didn’t mean to attack, but rather to provide a different perspective on the original post.
- No, I’m not angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t be responding to internet posts after a 20 hours straight shift at work, though.

“I agree that the Church would also alienate people by focusing on equal distributions of wealth, visiting those who are imprisoned, etc.”
- I did not ask you if it WOULD. I know that it DOES (just read the comments on other topics that Mark addresses.) I asked you if we SHOULD focus on the other, seeing as how it would alienate people. My point is that EVERY, SINGLE, POINT of Church teaching will alienate at least one group of people, because the Church goes against what is the trend in the world. If we are to only preach, as you SEEM (and I stress SEEM) to be advocating, ie only preaching what everyone finds comfortable and what will never stress or potentially alienate anybody, we should burn down every Church in the country and simply embrace psychotherapy, as the Faith would be nothing but a dead husk at that point.

“because same-sex marriage is legal in our province, understandably pays more attention to the ‘hot button issues’”
- I think when it comes to what is trumpeted most loudly, one has to look at what form of deviancy is the most favored at the moment by the culture at large. Think of the papal encyclicals for a moment. Why did Humane Vitae come out when it did? Was contraception, abortion et al not discovered until the 1960s? No. Why didn’t, say, Pope Leo XIII write it? The answer is that people wanting to engage in sexual license have ALWAYS been around. However in the time of Leo, it was not actively promoted, constantly in all media and culture as a glorious good like it is now. If Mr. Shea were somehow transported back through time to ancient Sparta, I doubt he would be writing articles on gay marriage (an idea that would seem incomprehensible even to pagan Spartans) but would probably focus more on the evils of slavery (Spartans kept entire city states as slaves so they could devote themselves to soldiering) and the horrors of killing newborns that didn’t fit some arbitrary physical rule of ‘good enough’.

“Grocery cart Catholics and cafeteria Catholics are the same thing.”
- And THIS, is what it comes down to in the end. This is the point that irritates me, mainly because the concept of “cafeteria Catholicism” is inherently dishonest. It is not ‘Catholic’ at all.

The image I grant you, is an enticing one. One goes into ‘Catholic-Mart’, gets his shopping cart and starts going down the rows:
“Oh look! Doctrine of a ‘God who is Love’! I think i’ll take a large box of that. And lets see, I need a few bottles of ‘feed the poor’... What’s this? A carton of ‘honor thy father and thy mother’? Hmmm, well, my dad was absent from my childhood a lot, so I think I’ll just skip all that. Oops! Almost forgot to get a box of the ‘Real Presence’. What’s that on the top shelf? Bottles of ‘Torture is always sinful’? Meh, I don’t know why anyone buys that. Well, looks like I’ve got my complete Catholic Faith picked out, guess I better go check out!”

Of course, in the checkout line, this person fails to notice that the guy in front of him, putting stacks of shrink-wrapped Bibles on the conveyer belt is Martin Luther, and the guy who just got into line behind him and is rolling his eyes at the rack of magazines of ‘pray for the dead’ is John Calvin.

Simply put, ‘cafeteria Catholicism’ is in my opinion, Protestantism for people who don’t have the guts to call themselves Protestant.

It explains why most all the conversations I have with actual protestants and even atheists go better, because they usually know where the boundaries are. My Baptist friends may not believe in the Eucharist, but they know that to be Catholic you have to accept It, as do atheists. Some cafeteria Catholics I have met don’t even think THAT. For them, the Eucharist seems to be just as optional as the Church’s teaching on chastity or care for the poor.

Mike in KC—- very well said!!

Mike,

Thanks for your measured and thoughtful response! I agree Cafeteria Catholicism is a major problem. I would probably have converted to another denomination long ago were it not for the awe-inspiring love I feel for the Eucharist.

Cheers,
Mary

Tom, you wrote, “The key difference is that people don’t proudly identify themselves as adulterers, push a pro-adultery agenda for our children, or rally in Adultery Pride parades.”

But they do.  They just don’t use the word “adultery”.  Instead, for example, they might identify (i.e. describe) themselves as “remarried”.  They even celebrate it with weddings.  And they needn’t “push a pro-adultery agenda” because it’s already seemingly accepted by the majority without people even recognizing it for what it is.  They may even be the majority.  Remember, “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  People tell me that adultery is on parade daily, but who am I to say.  Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a parade with floats, there is Mardi Gras where women showing their breasts has reportedly been a documented tradition since 1889, not to mention the other forms of heterosexual debauchery and lewd displays that present with the occasion.

Anyway, comparing adultery to gay is apples and oranges.  Adultery is a sin.  Being homosexual / gay (i.e. having a homosexual orientation) is not a sin.  You wrote that “right thinking people consider it a shameful act”, but being gay is not an act.  Many people (whether they’re “gay” or not) participate in “not ashamed to be gay” parades, aka “gay pride parades”, to remind that right thinking people do not consider being gay to be shameful, and to show love and support to gay people, to include that one opposes unjust discrimination toward gay people.  Of course, like at any parade, different people can attend for different reasons.

If you’re interested in pride parades, there is also the Disability Pride Parade, held each year in a number of locations around the world.  Like being gay, having a disability is not a sin nor something to be ashamed of.  Indeed, many people consider being gay to be a disability.  One might even attend the parade with a sign that says, “It is/was good for me that I was afflicted (Psalm 119:71)”.  Or in the words of the pope, “They reveal the mysterious beauty of the One who emptied himself for our sake and made himself obedient unto death.”

@Joce…very interesting non argument…almost expected you to also suggest that I take the mote out of my eye, etc.  However, you missed the point entirely or perhaps even purposely.  As far as I know there is no committed group of adulterers (or any other self identified sinners proud of their specific sinful act) who are attempting from both inside and outside the Church to force a change in Church teaching at the threat of penalties and fines, imprisonment, or other legal action. 

To argue that “all are sinners” is also not the issue here.  The issue is the very definition of the sin. Is there anyone who doesn’t see the Mardi Gras debauchery for what it is? Sinful behavior? I certainly have not found a Mardi Gras exception to moral teaching in the catechism that permits it, so why try to make that the issue?  You could list a million other sins and that would not change the fact that homosexual acts are sinful.

Being gay is not a sin, you argue.  And I grant that.  But, that is not the aim and objective of this particular movement either, which makes your argument at the very least disingenuous.  If the goal of Gay Agenda was to live a chaste life and urge others similarly afflicted to do likewise, there would be no issue.  However, the goal of this group is the forced acceptance of the act(s) of sin that define who and what they are and believe.  At the base of the issue, the only thing that makes them Gay, per se—is the act or the sin. 

The Gay marriage issue is a trojan horse that will enable the government to bludgeon anyone who refuses to change their moral codes, teaching, and religious beliefs.  And who is to say it won’t stop there?

Tom - Why do you have to change your beliefs based on the legalization of same-sex marriage? How is the government forcing you to change? I don’t understand.

Does it impact me directly?  No. My marriage is not devalued nor is the sacrament diminished in any way. But, the church will be forced into a position of either performing gay marriage ceremonies or facing civil or legal penalties.  It may even lead to assaults on the non-profit tax status of the Church.  There may even be legal and criminal persecution of those who refuse to accept the married status in either discussions of Church teaching or in Church activities and lead to all sorts of “discrimination” lawsuits and division….  All designed to destroy the Church or at the very least distract it from its mission to save souls.

That, and its just wrong and sinful and should be opposed.

Tom, you wrote, “As far as I know there is no committed group of adulterers (or any other self identified sinners proud of their specific sinful act) who are attempting from both inside and outside the Church to force a change in Church teaching at the threat of penalties and fines, imprisonment, or other legal action.”

First of all, gay people are not a group of “self-identified sinners proud of their specific sinful act.”  Some may be, and some are not.  Second, the vast majority of people who support same-sex marriage are not gay.  Third, whatever legal action anyone takes is just that: legal action.

You wrote, “the goal of this group is the forced acceptance of the act(s) of sin that define who and what they are and believe.”  That’s what you say, but gay people (and people who support same-sex marriage) have not anointed you to speak for them.  They are a diverse group of people.  They do not all have the same goals and often disagree.

A gay person is not a gay person because of a sex act and not because of anything he or she believes.  A gay person is gay because he/she is primarily attracted to persons of the same sex, and that attraction may be emotional, romantic and/or sexual.  It is his/her unchosen attractions that make him/her a gay person.  It is not a sex act or the person’s beliefs that make him a gay person.  There are gay persons who are morally opposed to homosexual acts.  There are gay persons who have never engaged in any homosexual acts.  There are gay persons who are repulsed by homosexual acts.  There are gay persons who support same-sex marriage and gay persons who don’t.  Some are married to the opposite sex.  Some have children.  They are a diverse group.

Of course, you can believe that “the only thing that makes them Gay, per se—is the act or the sin”, just like you can believe in the tooth fairy if you want.  But it doesn’t make it true.

Tom you said: “But, the church will be forced into a position of either performing gay marriage ceremonies or facing civil or legal penalties.”

I seriously doubt any US supreme court judge could possibly interpret the constitution in such a way to force gay marriage ceremonies on any church or religion. Unlike religion own hospitals and adoption agencies the church is not considered a business subject to non-discrimination laws.

Tom also said “It may even lead to assaults on the non-profit tax status of the Church.”
That “assault” is already underway mostly due to religion’s political involvement in things like opposing gay marriage. 

Tom also said: “There may even be legal and criminal persecution of those who refuse to accept the married status in either discussions of Church teaching or in Church activities and lead to all sorts of “discrimination” lawsuits and division….”

This is already taking place to varying degrees mostly to protect the rights of those who do not follow or agree your beliefs. 

Tom also said: “All designed to destroy the Church or at the very least distract it from its mission to save souls.”

That may be a side affect but its really about rights under a secular constitution in the US.

Tom said: “That, and its just wrong and sinful and should be opposed.”
This opinion is irrelevant in a court of law.

As to that Church teaching is, let me tell you what I learned in Argentina.

It was an old custom to bring in a live in maid, then either the father or the son seduced or raped her, as was their right as males, and when she got pregnant fired her por inmorality.  No priests thundered about those males, only about inmorality in females.

Women were told to dress modeslty and not arouse men, but men were not told that it was wrong to harass women in the street with lascivious comments. I got to hear quite a bit when I returned home from high school dressed in a grey jumper and long sleeved white shirt - standard school uniform.

Inmorality was always a problem caused by women, according the the Church there.  As for illegitimate children, they were scandalized with the Peron government when he removed the legal disabilities those children were under.  It was a grave affront to Christian morals to treat those children as those born in marriages.

This was what the Church taught there, what the Argentinian people had drilled into their heads.  So do not tell me what the beautiful theory is, just explain to me why no one bothered to teach it where it mattered.

“As to that Church teaching is, let me tell you what I learned in Argentina.”
- I didn’t think you would honestly answer the question, but I thought I’d give you the chance.

Let’s say that You lived in east St. Louis. I ask you, in response to a blanket statement made by you, how the law’s prohibition on murder causes murder in east St. Louis. You respond with a long, impassioned diatribe about how people are killing each other all the time over there. This is true. However, your implication, that the law approves of murder, is false, and you didn’t answer the question. You simply avoided it.

The same is true here. It sounds like you had a very bad situation down there and have been hurt by them (and it seems that my guesses about you were right all along), HOWEVER… Church teaching does NOT condone what you talk about here. You gave a personal, subjective example of a situation as a response. This is totally invalid. I didn’t ask what experience you had in Argentina. I asked you to prove how the Catholic Church’s teaching on chastity (which applies equally to men and women, BTW) CAUSES abuse of women. You have NOT demonstrated that.

All you have done is to point out an abuse at one place during a certain time. I for one have even heard of a few Catholic priests who have declared to their followers that the Eucharist is just a symbol. In NO WAY is their statement a reflection of Church teaching on the Eucharist. It is an abuse. If your example really demonstrated cause/effect it would be universal, and it is not.

Now, please answer the question like I asked: PROVE HOW THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE SACRED NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY (which applies to both men and women) IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN.

I’m still waiting.

The Church teaching that priests in Argentina chose not to teach, and that no one reproved them for it.  A law that is not enforced is dead letter, and only a curiosity in the books.  So you have a beautiful church teaching for the elect, and another for the great unwashed?

Once again:

Now, please answer the question like I asked: PROVE HOW THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE SACRED NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY (which applies to both men and women) IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN.

Either do that, or admit that your main point is false. Those are the only two honest choices left to you.

I can give personal experience in matters too: Back in the little town where I grew up, the house owned by the county sheriff exploded one day. Not burned down, exploded. Why? Because he was cooking meth in his basement. One of his deputies conveniently lost all the evidence for a drug charge against a local individual while transporting it to the capital. Why? Well, because it turned out that the individual in question was the sheriff’s brother in law. There were also two cases of people being shot in the back of the head and left in the woods that were found later by locals. They were ruled by local law enforcement to have been ‘obvious suicides’. The FBI, or any federal agency has yet to get involved.

Now, with these items I’ve just stated, I hereby declare that every member of law enforcement in the entire United States are nothing but utterly corrupt drug dealers.

This statement conforms to your method of arguing the universal state from an isolated aberration. It is also totally illogical and patently absurd, as your method is.

Now, once again, for the… I’ve forgotten how many times… PROVE HOW THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE SACRED NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY (which applies to both men and women) IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN. If you do that, I will begin to think that you are trying to be honest.

Mike,

You’re angry again. I think this person is trying to argue that there is a difference between the Catechism and what local churches actually teach. I think you can agree with that.

Mary

Actually, Mary, no I’m not.

I keep pressing this point because, no, what you are saying (while it can be shown to be very true, tragically, in too many places) IS NOT what Adriana was saying.

Read further up in the comment stream. Her basic point there was that it was PRECISELY the Church’s teaching that people should be chaste until marriage and faithful to their husband/wife and open to life THAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN.

It’s sometimes confusing due to how syntax is used on the internet, but here, my use of all capitals is not meant to show yelling. I’m simply trying to draw attention to the point.

She speaks of the Church’s teaching as a mere ‘cult of female purity’, that basically causes prostitution. I am simply demanding that she prove it or retract it. She has done neither.

What she claimed, irrationally, was the it was the teaching of the Church, itself, that was the CAUSE of it all, not an abuse of this teaching. She has since her original post that I took her to task for attempted to change her words to mean something else, but her original statement needs to be corrected, withdrawn or proven.

Had she simply pointed out at the start some people twist what the Church teaches sometimes, or that sinful men claiming to follow the teaching of the Church DO abuse, she would not have had any disagreement from me at all (as I have pointed out several times above). I have seen such abuses myself first hand.

I don’t see how demanding proof for a charge against the Church can be considered as proof that someone is angry.

I’m not gonna lie, Mike. It was the all-caps and the repetition. I use them for one or two or maybe three small words AT A TIME for emphasis <== see. ANY MORE THAN THAT AND IT FEELS LIKE YELLING.

But now we’re getting into semantics which is just silly and I apologize for dragging it there. I’m out!

Mike what I object and will always object is the lopsided way the teaching works in the real world: slaps on the wrists for men, tons of bricks on women.

As long as the same sins get different penalties (never mind what the theory says, as people do not live with then theory but with the practice) then the teaching of chastity will be hateful to women, as they easily become justification for abuse.

Redress that inequality. Demand the same treatment for the same sin, and then I will believe the teaching. But do not tell me what the teaching says and then deliver me to the ministrations of someone who only reads and cares for half of it.

Mike, you forget that with crookedn cops they are supposed to be turned in to internal affairs, the FBI or whoever. If they are not, you are free to suppose that the ones above them are corrupt too, and need to be changed.

Well, when you get priests who misbehaave the way I described, how many were reproved, enlightened, asked by the bishop to mend their ways, or just put on notice that such behavior is contrary to what they are supposed to do?

Hell, even running concentration camps for rape victims, and single mothers - as cruel as the ones that Stalin ran - did not get them notice that they were perverting Church teaching and that they should do penance quickly and mnake restitution to the victims.

So, I am free to assume that those above are corrupt too, and so I get to suspect that their teachings are corrupted when they think it to their advantage, because a man who is capable of evil deeds is equally capable of lying about them.

Once again:

Now, please answer the question like I asked: PROVE HOW THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE SACRED NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY (which applies to both men and women) IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN.

Either do that or retract your original point. anything else and you are simply showing yourself to be intellectually cowardly.

“you are free to suppose that the ones above them are corrupt too,”
- Does this mean you are morally free to break the law? Taken with your primary point this is what you have advocated. So because some country cop covered for his in-law I now have the moral green light to commit Grand Theft Auto? Because some have violated the moral law that means it’s ok to throw away the moral law?

And Jesus says we ARE to obey what is taught, just not follow evil example. You are still bound to follow teaching. You have a problem with that take it up with God.

Prove you main point like I asked. Or withdraw it. Anything else and you are making yourself look just as dishonest as those you pontificate against and are simply proving what I said about you several posts above.

Why are you refusing to prove with facts you main point like I asked? When you have the moral courage to answer simply that question I’ll start thinking about taking you seriously. Until then your attack on Church teaching shows nothing but your personal dislike for the teaching itself.

I need only to prove that the Church engages in bait and switch techniques. It offers a teaching in which chastity is important and valuable for both men and women.  And when you accept it, it switches and enforces the double standard of punishing severely only the women and winking at the men.

The fact that it switches it may be due that they themselves beleive it not to work, and that they only show it to bring in fools.

“I need only to prove that the Church engages in bait and switch techniques.”
- ‘the Church’ does not. And you have not proven that she does. The only thing you have proven in your rants is that you have a strong personal dislike for the teaching of chastity, which is obvious.

Now, please answer the question like I asked: PROVE HOW THE TEACHING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE AND THE SACRED NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY (which applies to both men and women) IS THE DIRECT CAUSE OF THE ABUSE OF WOMEN.

Your point had nothing to do with ‘bait and switch’. You directly attacked teaching as the cause. You are now trying to dishonestly act as though you didn’t, but you did.

Now, either prove it or muster up enough moral fiber to admit you can’t prove it. One or the other. Stop your cowardly attempt to hide behind rants of how ‘outraged’ you are.

You are the one who demanded factual argument. Why don’t you try it for once?

Your attempt to avoid facts in favor of merely emoting is a tactic worthy of NARAL, not a rational discussion on Church teaching. You’re not fooling anyone, not even yourself.

Sir, if you a) promise something to get someone in and
        b) deliver something else once it, that is bait and switch.

Since women are promised
        a) equal treatment for adulterers of both sexes to make them follow the rules of chastiy and
        b) once inside they dird that they are treated unequally, one unduly tolerant and one unduly harsh, then a bait and switch has been performed.  And someone(s) must have peformed it.

I kept insisting that the teaching -when not free from the double standard - causes abuse of women, and you only read half of it. Since I do not see any effort to denounce the double standerd, then the teaching is dangerous.  Get rid of the double standard and I will follow it.  But until then I am not interested.

By the way, a lot of places do perform bait and switch.
When caught, they act properly contrite, reprimand the resposible ones (even if only for getting caught) and try to offer some sort of recompense to the complainer.  They do not urge them to be patient, or imply they are bad people for complaining. They do not try intimidating those who have a legitimate cause for complaint, as you are doing. Do not accuse me of being wicked for having been a victim of a bait and switch carried out by Catholic priests on my youth, but ask what can make me change my opinion about the whole breed.  Humility is avirtue that is not to be applied only to others, you know.

Adriana, I am really sorry that you had some type of bad experience with adultery and whatever local church you may have been involved in, but when you hold out the Church as having a double standard on chastity and adultery, you are very sadly mistaken. If you choose to reject the faith because of that, that is your free will choice.  I myself can’t imagine anything that could happen to me that would keep me from the Eucharist. I will pray that you will find healing and find a parish with a priest that preaches chastity for all in accordance with their vocation. May God bless you with his love.

“Do not accuse me of being wicked for having been a victim of a bait and switch carried out by Catholic priests on my youth”
- I don not accuse you of wickedness. I accuse you of quite obvious dishonesty.

You still refuse to recant your original position: that the teaching of the Church CAUSES abuse of women. You have tried to modify your statement without anyone noticing from your earlier posts, but I did notice, and I’m not buying it.

You say you will follow it when everyone else follows it to your satisfaction. (I didn’t know Our Lord placed that kind of condition on His teachings. Perhaps that was a special revelation He made just to you.) That is a cop out and you know it. You are lying to yourself in order to silence your own conscience.

To go by your standard, since I know a lot of Catholics that don’t do much of anything help to poor, I should feel justified in not lifting a finger to help anyone in need until those OTHER people begin to preform that Catholic teaching to my personal satisfaction. You would recognize that as a cop out from someone who was simply greedy and didn’t want to be bothered with the poor. And you’d be right. The same applies to your ‘argument’.

And you are not following what Christ said either. The pharisees were very bad people. However, Jesus instructs others to follow what they say, just not what they do. Perhaps you should have been there to correct Jesus and tell Him He was being foolish for telling people to obey sinful men. If only you had been there, I’m sure He would have benefited from your deep wisdom.

You entire rational from throwing away the Church’s teaching on the sacredness of sex is a charade. No one here believes you. YOU DON’T EVEN BELIEVE IT, that much is obvious. If I were to use your rational, that I will only accept teaching if everyone else follows it with total perfection, with no exceptions, then no one would follow any teaching whatsoever. But somehow, you only apply this teaching to sex.

You should be honest and simply admit that you just don’t like the Church’s teaching and don’t want to follow it. Atheists like Dawkins and Harris say this. At least THEY are being honest.

You are nothing but a relativist who wants to pretend that she isn’t a relativist.

I know I said I was out, but I really want to thank Deb for her thoughtful and compassionate response.

Deb, I appreciate your concern, but the misbehavior of the Catholic Churh in Argentina - not just over sexual matters but on political crines and crimes against humanity has disgusted me to the point that I cannot look upon a bishop without wanting to vomit.  It is that bad.

And Mike from the beginning I have been complained about the double standard.  The double standard coupled with teachings of chastity is like glycerin mixed with nitric acid.  And after I have pointed it out, you get mad at me because I do not say that glycerin is good.  Find me some glyrecin without nitric acid attached to it - in the real world, where I have to live and I will concede your point.  Glycerin with nitric acid causeds explosions, and teachings of chastity with the double standard causes abuse of women.

Can you find a way to separate them?

There ought to be a psychological term for obsessive thinking and paranoia about perverted sex. Once it is recognized as a medical problem, it will be legal to prescribe drugs and therapy so that Catholics can go back to praying and worshiping God and Jesus instead of involving themselves in the private lives of everyone else.