We Catholics have a tough job ahead of us. As we’ve mentioned before, the task of loving homosexuals in a total and authentic way falls squarely on our shoulders.

We may be the only ones capable of it.

Why? Because the Catholic Church is the only place to find a balanced view of homosexuality.

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’” says the Catechism in No. 2357-8. “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 circumstance can they be approved.”

Yet, it continues: “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.”

The Catechism acknowledges the sinfulness of homosexual acts. But then it spends just as much time explaining that homosexually inclined persons are not to be discriminated against, and that they that they often struggle with the condition as a cross.

This means that we are to love those with same-sex attraction as brothers and sisters, never reduce them to enemies or objects of scorn. We are to do nothing to unfairly exclude them; we are to show them by our attitude and demeanor that we want the best for them.

But to truly love them, we especially have to want what’s best for their souls. To revile them as sinners or to merely try to make them ashamed would be counterproductive. If we do so, we risk hardening them in their sin rather than helping them out of it. We risk their souls.

At the same time, modern “tolerance” is just as risky. According to modern social norms, those who call homosexual acts immoral or refer to their disastrous consequences are the real sinners.

But it must be said, whether the culture is disposed to hear it or not: Homosexuals who act on their disposition risk early death from AIDS. Their behavior is a gateway to other sexual perversions, usually including promiscuity and disproportionately including predatory behaviors. High suicide rates suggest that many homosexuals lead unhappy lives beneath a surface of gaiety.

Words that whitewash the homosexual lifestyle and treat it as something just as normal as heterosexual marriage are untrue and unkind. They further enslave homosexuals to behavior that harms them. The more common such sentiments become, the easier it is for homosexuals to seduce young men and women into a lifestyle characterized by depression, disease and early death.

So, how do you tell the truth about homosexuality without being reviled by the culture and turned out by the people who most need your help?

Melinda Selmys has one answer on the next page. If we approach homosexuals with an attitude of disgust and hatred, we will drive them far away from the faith that can save them. If we approach them with caring and concern — enough care and concern to take their feelings into account — we can model what Christ did with sinners, even those guilty of sexual sins, throughout his life.

We can take a cue from the Missionaries of Charity.

Blessed Mother Teresa’s congregation of religious sisters, in houses like its Gift of Love home in San Francisco, deal with homosexuals at a tragic point in their lives: when they are dying, often from AIDS. They serve them meals. They launder their clothes. They clean their bedpans.

It isn’t part of the nuns’ charism to preach — rather, they spend their time serving these men, and teach them that way: through their actions, not their words. Nonetheless, it is impossible to spend time with the Missionaries of Charity and not be aware that they are 100% committed to Catholic teaching. And their patients know that they subscribe to the Church’s teachings about homosexuality without qualification.

And what is the result? Nearly all of those who die at the Gift of Love home convert to the Catholic faith, or return to the sacraments, before they die.

What are laypeople to learn from this? We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the fullness of the truth of the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality. But what is necessary to reach the souls who are in most need of that teaching is to offer the testimony of love first and, just as powerfully, as the testimony of truth.

If we want to help them, we have to prove we’re worth listening to. And to do that, we have to love them. Not pretend to love them — actually look on them as brothers and sisters in need rather than as pariahs who need to be ostracized.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way to do that. After all, we are sinners, too.

The bishops’ excellent document, “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care,” is available at usccb.org.