I wonder if the reason for this decline is that once homosexual marriage is made available, it becomes clear to everyone, homosexuals and heterosexuals, that the point everyone was aiming at, but no one--for strategic reasons--wanted to admit, was the weakening if not the annihilation of marriage, not the strengthening of it by making it more "inclusive." What a strange time we live in. At least the free love radicals and socialists of the late 19th and early 20th century were honest in their desired goal: the elimination of marriage as an oppressive structure and a limitation on both the individual and the power of the state.
This is the sophism trotted out by Dreadnought (John Heard) at nauseam.
Most of us know gay couples who are living together fruitfully and happily, and some of us have attended their civil weddings. They may be only a minority of gays, but their rights are precious nonetheless. Even if most gays do not think of marrying (the idea after all is a novel one, and entails the assumption of heavy responsibilities which no one has been telling gays they should assume) I think most people recognize that the "natural right to marry" cannot be refused to them without just cause. The idea that gay marriage is destroying marriage is nonsense; on the contrary it is strengthening it. A world in which many gays live in secure stable partnerships would certainly be better than a world in which gays are condemned to involuntary celibacy or a commercial culture of promiscuity.
little gidding, your reasoning is odd. Why would gays want to abolish marriage? People who want to abolish marriage in the name of free love are people who want to make love with the other sex unconstrained by legal bonds. Gays are attracted to the same sex, so heterosexual marriage in no way impedes their desire. On the contrary, they want to imitate it, and possibly tend to idealize marriage in a way that jaded heterosexuals do not.
And how odd also to ascribe to gays a nihilistic unspoken agenda, while ignoring completely what the many gay couples say about their relationships. This is paranoid conspiracy-theory thinking. It sounds as if you are really rattled by the small successes of gays in getting the general public to open their minds.
But never fear, there will always be a home for you on Philip Blosser's blog!
I forgot one area where there is conflict between marriage and samesex attraction -- namely the position of the married gay or bisexual man or woman. I suspect that many of the contibutor to this blog know about this in their personal life -- and it would be very interesting if they would communicate their experiences. But I suppose this is not possible in the hostile shouting-match atmosphers of blosserland.
This is [a] sophism ...
"Spirit,"
What's the difference between a "sophism" and a "statistic"?
Most of us know gay couples who are living together fruitfully and happily, and some of us have attended their civil weddings.
And what was that proverb about the exception proving the rule? But what was that you said? Fruitfully? How curiously tragic that sin must cannibalize conscience even in the parasitic use of its metaphors.
Sorry, Dr. Blosser -- me first. I want to know how a homosexual couple can be "fruitful" -- and don't make the joke I know you are dying to make. I'm serious.
... their rights are precious nonetheless
"Spirit,"
I didn't know that you, ostensibly a Catholic priest in good standing with your bishop, publicly promoted the 'right' of 'gays' to 'same sex marriage.' If my memory serves, I thought it was only 'partnerships' you wanted to go on record as promoting. But here you seem to be flinging wide open the doors of your bountiful 'graces' to the 'precious' rights of puppy dogs to have five legs if they wish to call their tails a leg.
'And how odd also to ascribe to gays a nihilistic unspoken agenda ...'
The nihilistic agenda of the militant gay activists who paraded their perversion in the streets of Paris was far from unspoken.
'I think most people recognize that the "natural right to marry" cannot be refused to them without just cause.'
It IS refused to them with just cause. The problem is that we disagree on what constitutes justice.
"Spirit", you have failed to demonstrate the objective good of homosexuality. Still less have you shown that the traditional Catholic teaching concerning homosexuality is wrong by any objective standard. All that you have done is to invoke (ad nauseum) the modernist philosophy of subjectivism and relativism: "If it feels good, and everyone seems to be all happy and loving, then it must be right."
And when people express strong disagreement with your views, you get into a snit and call them hateful homophobes.
The truly conservative position on homosexuality is that it should only be expressed within marriage open to homosexuals or in a civil union.
As to whether homosexuals have a natural right to marry I doubt it but then I would say that heterosexuals have no such natural right either.
The only natural right in this regard is the right to life and liberty which includes being true to one’s sexuality.
So what is the actual harm caused by formal legal recognition of homosexual unions and heterosexual marriage? Seems an odd claim to make.
Dr. Blosser & Fr. O'Leary:
Marriage as a commitment between a man and a woman and a spiritual locus for the conception and raising of children makes perfect sense. It's a particular thing, it's not anything.
But it's also harrowing and difficult and requires sacrifice and commitment and stregthening by social support.
If you redefine it to mean, possibly, a relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman, there's no reason in principle why it can't be any kind of relationship between any kind or number of persons--or even other beings.
There's no reason to restrict it in any way. There's no reason why the state should discriminate against virtually anything anyone wants to call marriage.
But there's also no reason why the state should recognize or support any of it. All you need is contractual divvying up of designated responsibilities or rights: "Mother and brother get to visit me at the hospital if I'm dying; pets get the money unless I provide otherwise..."
Marriage is trivialized and ultimately destroyed by this treatment. It's a pointless smily-face scrawled by the government: "Awwww!" The 'nihilism' is inherent in the homosexual act and the philosophy that accompanies it. The 'expansion' of marriage to include its opposites is just the coup de grace.
So, there are homosexual couples that are happy and fruitful, eh? Maybe. But that's an argument like, "Hitler loved children and was nice to his secretaries." Women in polygamous marriages are sometimes good friends. Slaves and masters sometimes love each other. So what? Few people, even habitual and contumacious sinners, are wholly demonic. There is an element of friendship that perdures, often enough, in a homosexual liaison. It's one of God's mercies.
But again, the person who can't even see the argument for this doesn't want dialog. He doesn't want tolerance. He doesn't want traditional teaching to 'entertain' the possibility that it might be wrong. He wants to destroy it and chase it off the stage with sneers and insults and stupid cant words like "homophobe!"
Homosexuality as a social phenomenon and a political movement IS something to be afraid of. It's destructive and hideously wicked.
In addition, revulsion against the homosexual act is normal, like the revulsion against drinking urine. Some people DO drink urine. Perhaps they are nice people. But drinking urine is disgusting and the people who do it are perverse and thus a bit less nice for it.
Homosexuality should inspire fear and disgust. Most of us could, given the right set of circumstances, develop a taste for all kinds of depravity. Sometimes, with some of us, there might be the fear that we might end up liking and participating in such things, though not nearly as often as the common taunts suggest. We are right to fear and loathe this stuff, indeed to hate it. Towards its missi
(continued)
Towards its missionaries and apologists, we should preserve love and respect in the same degree as we should preserve them towards any other workers of iniquity. How would you feel toward someone who seduced your children into this poison? Sweet tolerance and understanding? I hope not. I wouldn't. You needn't apologize, then, for the same feeling toward those who wish to seduce our society and even our Church (for sweet Christ's sake!) into blessing and embracing this viciousness. To the silly accusation, "You are a homophobe!", the reply should be, "Of course, aren't you?"
One's natural instinct is turn from the contemplation of the homosexual act in horror and disgust. That's what is embraced by the terms "unnatural" or "perverse". The fact that it is a perversion of sex, an act with a moral meaning and implications for the whole reality of human beings, unites a strong moral disgust with the disgust proper to a simple uncomplicated perversion like urine drinking.
The anus, let us remember, is not designed to accomodate a penis. Habitual misuse of it in this fashion destroys its muscles and injures it. Let's always remember--strive to remember against the constant iterations of moral inanity--the physical nature of what is being proposed as "normal."
People must strive to preserve their natural sense of the twistedness and depravity of this act and not allow themselves to be chivvied and hounded into half-hearted acquiescence as poor Dave did in the last thread. There's nothing uncharitable about telling people engaged in habitual, unapologetic, missonary perversity that they are disgusting and offensive and dangerous and treating them that way. Even if they take turns washing the dishes at night.
Homosexuality is something to be attacked and defeated without apology and without any quarter. Otherwise, it will destroy us. We are far too cowardly and fearful and defensive about combatting it. That must change. This isn't an open question. It's just naked and ugly evil.
Now watch. There will be no argument against any of this. Just scorn, mockery, puffed up outrage, the reiteration of fashionable social dogams as if they were self-evident moral truths, the animadversion to highly questionable and junky social "science." There never is any argument from the homosexualists. Because they are spouting obvious nonsense.
Hi "Spirit,"
>>Most of us know gay couples who are living together fruitfully and happily, and some of us have attended their civil weddings.>>
As I've shared with you in the past, I've spent well over a decade around the homosexual community as a operatic singer making his living in the performing arts. I have dozens of homosexual friends. I spent over two years living in San Francisco as I worked for the San Francisco Opera. Hence, I'm familiar with the homosexual community.
What you suggest as normative among homosexuals is anything but true. I've witnessed virtually no happy "gay" couples. Of all my homosexual friends, three are in long-lasting relationships. That number has now dwindled to two given that one of the couples just split up since my friend's partner broke his nose and gave him a black eye while quarrelling just this last week.
Sure, this is anecdotal and of course there are parallels in the heterosexual community. But it abounds in the former way more than the latter.
I've actually lived around these people and know that your glossy presentation of the homosexual world is bilge. Perversion abounds among these men as does addiction and great depression.
Once while working for Philadelphia Opera, there was a very disoriented young boy who was giving oral sex to any male chorister who desired it. He couldn't have been more than thirteen years of age. The men in the chorus had no problem profiting from this poor kid's disorientation. His mom was a simple Italian lady who spoke very little English. I immediately informed her of the atrocity when I caught wind of it.
Are all homosexuals pederasts? Of course not! But could you imagine a random group of men concealing the systematic sexual abuse of a young thirteen year-old girl? It would be very unlikely.
After two years in San Francisco I was completely disgusted with the homosexual culture. I love my homosexual friends, Father. Many of them are dear people with good hearts. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that all things are equal. They are not even close. The homosexual world is sad and cold.
Personally, I think you speak more from the armchair of theory than a lived experience in terms of the realities of the homosexual world.
James P. Caputo
'People must strive to preserve their natural sense of the twistedness and depravity of this act and not allow themselves to be chivvied and hounded into half-hearted acquiescence as poor Dave did in the last thread.'
Point well taken, Jeff. 
I'm at my weakest late at night responding to Fr. O'Leary's subtle, pseudo-theological enticements.
God bless you for your comments. They are right on the mark. They express the truth of things; they do not express any hatred of persons. Of course they will be labeled as hatred (a tactic that we have come to expect), yet that does not make them any less true.
'Personally, I think [Fr. O'Leary] speak[s] more from the armchair of theory than a lived experience in terms of the realities of the homosexual world.'
Actually, I get the sense that Padre Joe does speak from experience. He tells us that he hangs around in gay bars. Doing what, he hasn't disclosed. We can only guess. Converting gays to a chaste life in Christ? Yeah, right. No, I think that Padre Joe has experienced the realities of the homosexual world ... and he has embraced that world, much to the harm of his moral judgment and his eternal soul.
Homosexuality is characteristic of the advanced stages of Evolution, Fr. O'Leary told me once.
No offspring, but poised to enter the Pure Realm of the Spirit, I guess...
And Fr. O'Leary accuses Christians of infantile beliefs!
Some very thoughtful and carefully reasoned comments in this combox, for which I'm grateful.
Atiyah, Pius XI spoke of the natural right to marry. It is Catholic doctrine!
This is [a] sophism ...
"Spirit,"
What's the difference between a "sophism" and a "statistic"?
Sorry, pb, but your logic is at fault. The STATISTIC is that only a minority of gays have plans to marry. The SOPHISM is to build on this the idea that gays do not support the right to gay marriage.
"I didn't know that you, ostensibly [THIS IS A TYPICAL LIBELOUS INSINUATION] a Catholic priest in good standing with your bishop, publicly promoted the 'right' of 'gays' to same-sex marriage"
True, I have promoted rather the idea of stable unions participating analogically in the goods of marriage. See my 1984 piece, "The Flesh and the Spirit" http://josephsoleary.typepad.com...esh_and_t.html:
see also http://
josephsoleary.typepad.com...r_church_a.html
However, I am being pushed in the direction of embracing gay marriage fully, at least on the civil plane, but the rapid development of legislation in Europe, the overwhelming call of gays for marriage rather than civil unions, and above all the utterly negative and hate-filled nature of the propaganda against gay marriage put forward by people like Bush and Blosser and the Nigerian churchmen I quoted.
Jeff, what is your basis for saying that it is an "infantile belief" that homosexuality is more common in the upper stages of the evolutionary ladder? It is either a fact or not a fact. If you can show that it is not a fact I am happy to correct my mistake. You have no need to use the language of a schoolyard bully.
James Caputo, what do you hold out as a concrete goal for gay men and women? Hi "Spirit,"
"What you suggest as normative among homosexuals is anything but true." Of course it is not normative -- but it is becoming more normative. Recall that there was NO possibility of gay couples being open until a few years ago. In Ireland they would have been imprisoned up to 1993. Philip Blosser would have them imprisoned still, as a lover of sodomy laws and an apologist for the Inquisition (with a special devotion to Torquemada whom he considers worthy of canonization!)
But now gay marriage is at last becoming a possibility, and may soon be as accepted as inter-racial marriage.
"Once while working for Philadelphia Opera, there was a very disoriented young boy who was giving oral sex to any male chorister who desired it. He couldn't have been more than thirteen years of age. The men in the chorus had no problem profiting from this poor kid's disorientation. His mom was a simple Italian lady who spoke very little English. I immediately informed her of the atrocity when I caught wind of it."
So? I am backing the constructive ideas emerging from gays who think of building community and faithful relationships. It is you and Philip Blosser who want to put gays back in the closet where this kind of disgusting thing goes on.
"The homosexual world is sad and cold. Personally, I think you speak more from the armchair of theory than a lived experience in terms of the realities of the homosexual world." No, from my own experience, the "homosexual world" is not sad and cold, and is getting better all the time as gays think more constructively about possibilities of affirming their humanity.
Have you anything positive to suggest at all?
Should gay me live a pseudo-heterosexual life? Should they then rant from their closet in tones of effeminate hysteria against the horrors of the existence from which they have been "saved"?
Have you NOTHING positive to suggest?
"How would you feel toward someone who seduced your children into this poison?" How would you feel about someone who encouraged the homophobic bullying that drive thousands of gay adolescents to suicide?
"One's natural instinct is turn from the contemplation of the homosexual act in horror and disgust." Many people say that people have the same natural instinct to turn from the contemplation of inter-racial sex with horror and disgust. In both cases this instinct is at best a holdover from earlier stages of animal evolution.
" That's what is embraced by the terms "unnatural" or "perverse". The fact that it is a perversion of sex, an act with a moral meaning and implications for the whole reality of human beings, unites a strong moral disgust with the disgust proper to a simple uncomplicated perversion like urine drinking.
The anus, let us remember, is not designed to accomodate a penis. Habitual misuse of it in this fashion destroys its muscles and injures it. Let's always remember--strive to remember against the constant iterations of moral inanity--the physical nature of what is being proposed as "normal." People must strive to preserve their natural sense of the twistedness and depravity of this act and not allow themselves to be chivvied and hounded into half-hearted acquiescence as poor Dave did in the last thread. There's nothing uncharitable about telling people engaged in habitual, unapologetic, missonary perversity that they are disgusting and offensive and dangerous and treating them that way. Even if they take turns washing the dishes at night. Homosexuality is something to be attacked and defeated without apology and without any quarter. Otherwise, it will destroy us. We are far too cowardly and fearful and defensive about combatting it. That must change. This isn't an open question. It's just naked and ugly evil."
Where is you argument here? Two women fall in love, kiss, hug, and you go about "naked and ugly evil". Would you agree with the Taliban who execute teenage boys for the offense of being in love with each other?
"Now watch. There will be no argument against any of this. Just scorn, mockery, puffed up outrage, the reiteration of fashionable social dogams as if they were self-evident moral truths, the animadversion to highly questionable and junky social "science." There never is any argument from the homosexualists. Because they are spouting obvious nonsense."
Well, I put forward my arguments quite liberally. You can disagree with them, but you should at least try to reason with me rather than vamp up the "instinctive" disgust your imagination of anal sex arouses in you.
"If you redefine it to mean, possibly, a relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman, there's no reason in principle why it can't be any kind of relationship between any kind or number of persons--or even other beings."
Marriage has often been redefined, notably by the Catholic church in her divorce and annulment practices over the centuries. In the Bible itself polygamy seems the norm at the time the ten commandments were written, and thy neighbor's wife is somewhere in the region of thy neighbor's cattle. Interracial marriage was forbidden in the USA until recently. But the great argument for extending marriage to gays is "the natural right to marriage" that is recognized by the Church, a right that cannot be restricted without just cause. You have failed to make a rational argument for that restriction.
Dave, you are beginning to worry me. This effeminate snooping about and sniffing of other people's underpants is the obsession of a lonely man.
'Dave, you are beginning to worry me. This effeminate snooping about and sniffing of other people's underpants is the obsession of a lonely man.'
That's rich, Padre. How very pastoral of you. Don't worry about me, I'm just fine. It is your standing as a Roman Catholic priest that should be cause for worry. Keep snooping about and sniffing in those gay bars, it will take you far in life.
Dave, if you go for below the belt innuendo, sauced up in Uriah Heep style unctuousness, be prepared to take what you dish out to others. It may make you think twice before you mint insults. Since you obviously enjoy mud-throwing more than rational discussion you must be in your element! I appeal to you to refrain from any allusion to what your neurotic imagination prompts you to postulate about the sexuality of other people, at least in public discussion with persons you know nothing about (and under the shelter of anonymity). Then you will not join Philip Blosser in dragging this forum down to the stinky gutter. If you keep on tossing out your suppositions about my personal life, be prepared to read screeds from me about your repressed incestous tendencies or whatever. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Fr. O'Leary,
When you confess on weblogs that you hang about in gay bars, when you sing the praises of homosexual love, when you offer dainty little waves to Gay Pride parades (in front of all of us, knowing that it will add fuel to the fire), when you do all of this and more as a Roman Catholic priest no less, then do not be surprised when suspicions are aroused.
My "supposition" about your private life is not a judgment. That's between you and God. Nevertheless, I think it is legitimate to wonder aloud what exactly is your stake in this debate, especially when in the view of many of us you are advancing a damnable heresy and subverting the Catholic Church from within.
As many have pointed out, you turn every topic on this blog to the subject of homosexuality and gay rights. It is your grand obsession. Are we so wrong to draw certain inferences from your intense passion concerning this issue? Besides, if you ARE gay, why not be PROUD of it? Isn't that your theme? If you are not gay, you really cannot blame people for thinking that you might be, again based on your obsession with this issue. I am certainly not the first to think it aloud.
If it were true and you frankly admitted it, I think that you would find that no one (or very few) here would hate you. I wouldn't hate you. I'm sure that Dr. Blosser wouldn't hate you. We would keep debating you on the issues and accept you for who you are.
Your reaction to me is human and understandable. I don't hold it against you. But if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Dave, you should know that to quiz a priest, or anyone else, about their sexuality in this way is considered extreme bad manners. In any case priests have been warned by the head of the CDF that they must never declare themselves to be gay. It's called "don't ask, don't tell". If you dislike Catholic policy on this, write to the CDF about it.
Your attempt to reduce my reasoned case about gay rights to a merely personal desire is itself a nasty put-down, one you trot out only when you have found that you have no rational arguments in your quiver.
"As many have pointed out, you turn every topic on this blog to the subject of homosexuality and gay rights." "Many" includes many who themselves have dragged this topic in to posts having nothing to do with it. I have no interest whatever in hearing more of your homophobic rants, but you just need to check the archives of this to see how often Philip Blosser has posted some shoddy anti-gay diatribe with the same enthusiasm as a neocon having discovered WMDs in Iraq!
" It is your grand obsession. Are we so wrong to draw certain inferences from your intense passion concerning this issue?"
Yes, you are wrong. But I am not interested in discussing myself on these threads and I think it is disgusting that you throw out nasty accusations and insinuations to reduce the debate to an ad hom level.
" Besides, if you ARE gay, why not be PROUD of it? Isn't that your theme? If you are not gay, you really cannot blame people for thinking that you might be, again based on your obsession with this issue. I am certainly not the first to think it aloud." I have no objection to your forming suppositions about my sexual orientation, as long as you take responsibility for them yourself. I, for example, take you to be bisexual in some sense, but I am not interested in pursuing that matter, not in the least. But you have written many things that go far beyond such relatively benign supposition, and that would in fact be actionable in many jurisdictions. For instance, if I said that you hang out in singles bars with a view to picking up women, you could well sue me. So you should watch your mouth.
"If it were true and you frankly admitted it, I think that you would find that no one (or very few) here would hate you. I wouldn't hate you. I'm sure that Dr. Blosser wouldn't hate you. We would keep debating you on the issues and accept you for who you are."
This girly "tell us all" pseudo-intimacy would be more believable if you signed your real name and offered some juicy insights into your own sexual life, which is surely more interesting than mine!
"Your reaction to me is human and understandable. I don't hold it against you." Well you could have avoided it by not making provocative insinuations to which you know that my reaction is understandable. And is it not embarrassing to admit that your remarks make it "human and understandable" that one would think of you as a creepy snoop out of Henry James, or worse?
" But if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." So you are quite happy, as I thought, to turn this into a mudslinging show? I advise you strongly to turn the heat down -- the smell of sweat can be unpleasant.
Dear Fr. O'Leary,
I am not going to bother replying to your hysterical comments. Quite frankly, I don't give a damn whether you are gay or not. I do give a damn that a Roman Catholic priest would devote his considerable intellectual energies to the glorification of homosexuality. It makes me sick.
I along with others on this blog have offered a reasoned defense of traditional Catholic doctrine concerning homosexuality. Yet what we are dealing with here is truly, in Dr. Blosser's apt words, a "nasty little hell of a pit", into which no light can shine.
This is too much. Life is too short to waste on this madness. To what I am sure will be Fr. Joseph O'Leary's great delight, I am withdrawing my voice from the present discussion thread. Perhaps I will return if the conversation turns to Christology, liturgy, or some other suitable theological topic.
The Vatican citing Stanley Kurtz (who Gallagher distances herself from). This is the fellow who claims that gay marriage in The Netherlands leads to an increase in out-of-wedlock births. Post hoc proper hoc.
A very good podcast on gay marriage in Europe at Cato where Both Eskridge and Gallagher are presenting.
http://www.cato.org/podcasts/
Just look at the position of that longhaired hippy type David Brooks who outlines a conservative position that Fr. O’Leary would approve of.
http://www.aclu.org/getequal/ffm...2/
2g7brooks.pdf
Test
Hi Father,
>> James Caputo, what do you hold out as a concrete goal for gay men and women?>>
Chastity. "And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God." (Romans 6:13)
Why is that an impossibility, Father? I'm a divorced man who is presently discerning his vocation. Before I married, I was celibate for ten years. The last some seven years I've had to "put to death" the deeds of the body that I might live. That is, I've had to walk by the spirit and deny my sexual desires, reorient them toward service to others and live a celibate life.
Sex is not an entitlement, Father. It's a beautiful privilege given to men and women who wish to have children and rear them in the love and admonition of the Lord, to make citizens of the New Jerusalem. All other benefits to the sex act flow from that fundamental telos.
The churches of the world are full of faithful 'spinsters' who have made peace with their sex-less and even (romantically speaking) loveless lives. This life is but a mist on the grass. It's the next life - the Beatific Vision - wherein we shall truly see to what the sex act was pointing, to what marriage was pointing. A sexless life can be a beautiful and happy life fully consecrated to the Lord. St. Paul said that much. My life is a testimony to it.
>>Of course it is not normative -- but it is becoming more normative. Recall that there was NO possibility of gay couples being open until a few years ago.>>
The folks I made mention of lived in San Francisco just ten or so years ago. They were part of a totally open community wherein homosexuality was celebrated. They outnumbered heterosexuals in their chosen field of work. (i.e. the performing arts). Hence, I don't see this abuse and sexual fixation as a result of prohibition. Rather, it's the natural outworking of an unrestrained perversion. Like all disordered behaviors, there is something wholly fetishistic and addictive about it. Again, I'm not making this stuff up. I've witnessed it for years. Even my homosexual friends overtly admit to it.
Continued....
>>But now gay marriage is at last becoming a possibility, and may soon be as accepted as inter-racial marriage.>>
It's legalization will never quell the immorality, however. The "gay" culture is about experiencing multiple men, open-relationships, promiscuity. Turn on MTV and watch their various dating games wherein they set-up homosexual men. The banter and actions between the men are wholly pornographic. True, their heterosexual counterparts are not reflections of the Blessed Mother. But the women counterbalance the innate lust of the men in almost every case. Therein lies the impossibility of the homosexual community ever lifting itself out of the dung. The general disposition of women, their need for love and affection before they give their bodies to a man is the general restraint to man's fallen sexual nature. Such a restraint is lacking among homosexual men. Making same-sex "marriage" legal will never alter that reality. I cannot walk down the street and pick a woman up and take her to my apartment. Not even the best-looking and most successful men can pull that off in broad sober daylight. But I most certainly can do that in any "gay" community in the United States. Any good-looking man can. That's a reality. To what do you attribute such a phenomenon?
>>So? I am backing the constructive ideas emerging from gays who think of building community and faithful relationships.>>
The constructive ideas are a front and impossibility given what I've written above. The truth about the homosexual community is much darker and much more carnal. Those happy homosexual couples trotted out on Oprah Winfrey are a ploy for an agenda that is not of whole cloth. The "Will And Grace" world is a manifest facade to those of us who have actually lived among the homosexual community.
>>It is you and Philip Blosser who want to put gays back in the closet where this kind of disgusting thing goes on.>>
Philip Blosser and I wish for "gays" to repent, to put on Christ, to pursue chastity, to no longer present the members of their body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Philip Blosser and I wish for homosexuals to break the chains of sin by purifying their hearts and entering the great battle between good and evil. That's what Jesus asks of all of us.
As beautiful as this life can be, it is essentially a war for the committed Christian. I enter that war every day of my life. The man struggling with same sex attraction should unite his pains, his temptations, his weaknesses to the cross of our Lord. He should run the race of his life in such a way so as to attain the crown. I do this every day in relation to my own heterosexual desires. Should I choose to become a priest, I'll do it for the rest of my life. Why shouldn't the homosexual do likewise? Even if I were called to the sacrament of marriage and never quite found the right woman, I'd still have to pummel my body and lead it as a slave.
>>No, from my own experience
>>Have you anything positive to suggest at all?>>
See above.
>>Should gay me live a pseudo-heterosexual life?>>
No. Some of my homosexual friends, however, have dated women in the past and have had very enjoyable relationships and sex with women. Hence, marriage is not out of the question for *some* men who struggle with same sex attraction.
>>Should they then rant from their closet in tones of effeminate hysteria against the horrors of the existence from which they have been "saved"?>>
People who formerly suffered (or continue to battle against) same sex attraction do, in fact, feel as if they have been saved from an horrific cold and carnal culture. The war, no doubt, is not perfectly won. Battles will be lost. But that's the way to go about conquering our weaknesses, no? We should never capitulate. We're Christians who mount up on Eagle's wings no matter how fatigued and discouraged we become by our own woundedness. But as soon as you throw the fight, Father, then the false justification starts - a justification that never quite gives peace to the soul.
>>Have you NOTHING positive to suggest?>>
See above.
James
James Caputo, that is a fine witness.
But you must respect the freedom of conscience of those who find that celibacy is not the path for them. And many of them seem to be flourishing as steadfast couples.
In common Catholic pastoral practice such couples are widely tolerated, despite the "objective immorality" that the Church sees in non-procreational,non-marital sexual acts.
More inductive Escherisms from Fr Joe:
"In common Catholic pastoral practice such couples are widely tolerated, despite the 'objective immorality' that the Church sees in non-procreational,non-marital sexual acts."
What he calls "toleration" is really love of the sinner, not tacit approval of the sin. This is a distinction held by the Church of which Fr Joe is a putative member, and yet he has an inability to recognize it is that is virtually dyslexic.
"But you must respect the freedom of conscience of those who find that celibacy is not the path for them."
Does that include priests, Fr Joe? If Benedict were to take up with, say, Anna Nicole Smith, would we all be required to goggle at the luminescent goodness of his conscience? If you were to doff your priestly duds (assuming you wear any) for diapers and Cupid's bow, and waft by in some Gay Lib parade, would I be bound to affirm your radiant goodness?
The dichotomy whereby we may privately believe in anything, but must act in public as though we believe in nothing, is lunacy.
Those who prattle on about "freedom of conscience" recognize the possibility of sin only with the greatest difficulty. According to them, if one man chooses to satisfy his craving for "love" by poking his penis into the rectum of another, one ought not to recognize base appetites and lusts as possibly playing a role in this vaunted exercise of greater moral insight. Ejaculations into the excretory channel become the bold expressions of a higher spirituality. It all happens on a philosophical field of dreams -- that's not an anus, dunderhead, it's an eidolon! A pity (or is it?) that real people don't live there. A greater pity that propagandists -- Apologists For a Higher Concupiscence -- like Fr Joe strive to assure them that they do.
Freedom of conscience refers to freedom to follow one's conscience. It is inherent to human dignity.
You may consider a person practicing contraception or homosexual sex to be doing something objectively wrong, but you cannot ultimately judge their inner forum. As Paul VI, who was trained as a moral theologians, insisted: "objectively immoral acts may be diminished in guilt, inculpable or subjectively defensible".
Pastoral toleration of gay couples is indeed not "tacit approval of the sin" -- just as in the case of pastoral toleration of couples practicing artificial contraception.
The inappropriateness of "judg[ing] their inner forum" ought not to be used as a pretext for mitigation or tacit denial of the objective immorality of a given act. There are too many priests today who answer evil with silence. Their obsession with the mere theoretical POSSIBILITY of mitigating circumstances (as opposed to the concrete reality of the sinful act) makes pastoral eunuchs of them, and plays right into the trap of relativistic approval (that is, lack of disapproval) promulgated by the false prophets of our time. For some of them, I suspect the issue of conscience becomes a fig leaf for preaching heresy without losing the benefits of the collar.
In any event, "if it feels good, do it", and "if it feels good, say that your conscience made you do it" seems to me a distinction without a difference.
Roister, you have a point. The fact that contraception was deemed objectively immoral but in practice a matter of conscience -- even the Pope and the Episcopal Conferences stressed the latter point ad nauseam -- became a passport to moral indifferentism for all sorts of abusers.
That is why I suspect that the judgment that contraception is objectively immoral or intrinsically evil cannot be sustained. At most one can speak of a premoral evil, a certain falling-short of the ideal of sexuality open to transmission of life. As you know, this would be carried over to other non-procreative sexual acts as well (which is where the objective immorality of homosexual acts in all circumstances might come under fire).
It is pretty clear that the vast majority of Catholics have rejected Humanae Vitae, so it is not surprising to find an ever-increasing number of Catholics backing gay couples as well.
In other words, this whole notion of "objective immorality" is painfully out of step with the world we live in, and badly needs to be reworked. Otherwise, the whole enterprise of turning Catholicism into a social club may be in jeopardy.
Just as in the 16th century people continued to practice "usury" despite the papal condemnations, now they continue to practice contraception -- in an even more sweeping rejection of the papal condemnations.
"Objective immorality" and "subjective culpability" is an ok distinction, but one that has been frenetically overworked in the sphere of artificial contraception -- by Paul VI and others -- chiefly in order to prop up the credibility of the Church after the rejection of Humanae Vitae.
I'm sure we have all relished Dr Blosser's awful disclosures about the horrors of sodomy.
But what about that other plague -- EFFEMINACY?
A troubled seminarian wrote to Dreadnought (John Heard) on this subject:
"Within these 5 years he had "come out of the closet" and had also become much more effeminate. I have had similar experiences when speaking with friends who have "announced their true sexual identity." What are your thoughts on these sort of personality changes?"
Consider the awful implications -- a man begins to act as a WOMAN!!!
"His seminary sees effeminism as a challenge to the priesthood, and works with guys who are effeminate to act more masculine. He says that many guys actually do change their effeminate mannerisms. My seminary views effeminate seminarians as being, "just the way they are." They don't view effeminism as being a challenge to the priesthood."
Join the priesthood and shed the curse of effeminacy! But avoid those liberal seminaries that will not cure you by football and cold showers.
Dreadnought replied: "I don't know if effeminacy is a bar to priesthood in a theological sense, although if it were pronounced and similar to some sort of nervous tic I'd imagine it would mean the candidate would fall short of 'affective maturity'. Yes, I do think effeminacy is chosen. No, I don't think it is found only - although it is found most often - in SSA men. It is, however, an understandable example of gender-role confusion."
Smack your effeminate little boy -- it is CHOSEN, you see. He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.
"Often young SSA boys cannot/will not identify with their women-loving fathers and so instead, they model their man-loving mothers/sisters/aunts, etc."
Dr Dreadful's Diagnosis! Fifty years out of date!
" Sometimes parents - usually the vulgar - encourage such affectations in their children out of some misguided sense that effete children are clever/well-bred or entertaining."
The vulgar! The hoi polloi! The great unwashed!
Who would have thought that Crocodile Dundee came from such a genteel background.
"A seminary that encouraged robust masculine behaviour in a general sense (i.e. football, Hemmingway, honest man to man bonding) would have greater success forming solid men than a place that obsessively watched for limp-wrists and tongue-curls."
HEMMINGWAY, or rather Hemingway, a pathological macho-man who ended up shooting himself, is the model for you effeminates!
MAN TO MAN BONDING -- hmm.
"Let's face it, there's room in Catholicism for spice girls and Christo-jug heads. A guy so worried about lisping that he fluffs the Gospel or hesitates at a crucial time in the confessional is hardly going to manifest spiritual fatherhood either."
Space for spice girls in the priesthood? How about Sinead O'Connor?
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