This is a question that was put to me recently which I include here because there is the suggestion in it of a deliberate misunderstanding that many people who try to point out the flaws in the liberal agenda will have encountered from time to time.
Q. You lived with a homosexual but have written
anti-gay posts. What would your friend think of that?
A. The posts are not anti-gay. They just seek to put things in the right way. The modern acceptance of homosexuality as part of the human condition is a good thing but that acceptance needs to come with the proviso that its physical expression is not in line with God's will for his creation. Consequently, if you are born homosexual, you should try to see this as something to be dealt with as part of the difficulty of living in this world and not celebrated or justified as healthy and positive.
My position with regard to homosexual acts is similar to that of St Thomas Aquinas who
wrote that "a sin against nature in which the natural order is violated is a
sin against God who is the creator of that order." This seems
uncontroversial to me if one accepts the reality of God. To those who say that these
acts are not against nature because they occur in nature, I would ask if you
would make the same point about infanticide or murder or cannibalism or many other things not normally regarded as acceptable. All of these occur in nature. From a spiritual perspective, homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, as the
Catholic Church correctly teaches, and a consequence of the Fall and rebellion
against God just as sickness and disease are. If you deny the spiritual then, of course, anything goes. Literally anything if you take that denial to its logical conclusion.
I am genuinely sorry if some people find this attitude offensive but if they do I would ask them why they do. If the truth offends you, and it really should be clear that homosexuality completely contradicts the reality and purpose of two sexes which is fundamental to life and existence, you must look within yourself to see why this is so. Obviously I would never argue for a return to old-fashioned attitudes of hard-hearted condemnation which were a sin against charity. But Jesus gave a teaching on this subject when confronted with the mob chasing the adulterous woman. This teaching applies equally to homosexuality and it points to the difference between a sinner (such as we all are) and an unrepentant sinner. Modern attitudes to homosexuality which normalise it are spiritually dangerous because they encourage pride in sin which is worse than the sin itself. To be clear, I am not saying that homosexuality itself is a sin but its practice is spiritually wrong and the justification of its practice compounds that error.
I lived with a homosexual for 21 years. He was not in denial about his nature and in his younger days had lived it out though to what extent I don't know as we did not discuss it much. But he sought resolution to the conflicts it caused him through religion as is the intelligent thing to do, and when I knew him he was celibate and had been so for a while. He was of an older generation and did not try to rationalise his condition as normal or natural. He accepted it but tried to go beyond it or the need to express it physically. I think that is the right approach. It's not easy but we all have to overcome the earthly self and that, by definition, is a hard thing to do.
There are many clever but ultimately spurious arguments used to justify homosexuality. However it can only really be justified by bending reality to suit wishful thinking. In this case, as in any for that matter, what you must ask yourself is what do you really want? Do you want your desires to be fulfilled in this world or do you want to overcome the world so that you are worthy to enter the next? The choice is yours. No one will make you do what you don't want to do.
I lived with a homosexual for 21 years. He was not in denial about his nature and in his younger days had lived it out though to what extent I don't know as we did not discuss it much. But he sought resolution to the conflicts it caused him through religion as is the intelligent thing to do, and when I knew him he was celibate and had been so for a while. He was of an older generation and did not try to rationalise his condition as normal or natural. He accepted it but tried to go beyond it or the need to express it physically. I think that is the right approach. It's not easy but we all have to overcome the earthly self and that, by definition, is a hard thing to do.
There are many clever but ultimately spurious arguments used to justify homosexuality. However it can only really be justified by bending reality to suit wishful thinking. In this case, as in any for that matter, what you must ask yourself is what do you really want? Do you want your desires to be fulfilled in this world or do you want to overcome the world so that you are worthy to enter the next? The choice is yours. No one will make you do what you don't want to do.
I think that, in ancient times, men might not have realized why prohibition of homosexuality (or more specifically sodomy, whether homosexual or not) was included as part of the law, just the same way they didn't realize why it was forbidden to eat pork or live in a house with a flourishing gangrene infestation.
ReplyDeleteThe Roman legions would have entire centuries of soldiers share sponges (kept in a bucket of water) to wipe the remaining feces from their ass after using the latrine. The law, properly read, should have had something to say about that as well. But the medical knowledge of the day said nothing against it, nor against other ways of passing infection through feces because their science wasn't advanced enough.
They knew the particular methods of sexual intercourse that were effective in men getting women pregnant, and they understood that to get a women pregnant and make no provision for caring for her child was a serious wrong. And they knew that men couldn't get other men pregnant, and ways to avoid getting women pregnant.
So to them, whether to follow the law with regards to sodomy was a matter of faith in the law itself.
But to the modern age, the wrongness of sodomy is a matter of medical fact. We know quite plainly by scientific reason both that and why it's unhealthy and poses a danger to the entire community and especially to children.
Not that the modern medical science is the only reason the law was given. There is also a spiritual function to sexuality that is not fulfilled except by seeking to have children. But the ancient knowledge that it took a man and women to conceive a child was adequate to understand that what made sex loving was precisely that it could create a family, and that sex outside of that intention tended to feed evil motives.
A man who engages in 'casual' sex with the intention of abandoning the woman the moment she seems to be pregnant (i.e. gains weight or becomes 'clingy') is basically committing the same sin as those who engage in sodomy, but the ancient world consciously understood the mechanism of only one of these evils. But humans must be aware at a deeply instinctive level of the fundamental similarity between them. That both were ways of having sex without having to put up with children.
There are variations of degree involved, no doubt. It's one thing to engage in sodomy, and another thing to dump a living baby, your own child, in the garbage. But the difference is less fundamental than people generally admit. The Greeks and Romans did both, of course.
And so do we.
Interesting points. I still think the selfish use of the creative energy is not as wrong from the spiritual perspective as its misuse.
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