Homosexuality disordered/if you speak a foreign language please read this

[The camel]

​Sexuality, I would agree, is an integral part of our identity. But IMO it does not follow that homosexuality is a valid expression of our core sexuality. At least, it does not necessarily follow. Do you disagree?

​Thank you to all those who made constructive and helpful comments. I guess the issue is Nihil Obstat's question above. To deal briefly with a couple of other points first (i) I agree what you are is more important than what you do. The point is sexuality seems to be integral to who one is. (ii) If God really does want me, or anyone else, to be miserable, then I don't really want anything to do with him. The religion that preaches that seems a oddly inhumane one for a God who became human.

To the issue though. I agree that it does not necessarily follow that homosexuality is a valid expression of core sexuality. But in practice, I think it probably must be. It is, after all, the only one many people have. That, really, is what I have come to (maybe) believe. Homosexuality is as valid as heterosexuality. I can see no other way out, apart from a denial of my humanity.

I fully accept that I may be wrong. But I do my best to inform my conscience. What else, in the end, can one do?

[Gabriela]

Uhhh... I think that Lilllabettt is not wrong, but it's coming out kind of "tough love"-ish. Camel, I don't believe that God wants you to be miserable or to have conflicting feelings. Certainly your unhappiness does not make Him happy. God is not a sadist. That being said, God does grow us in love and faith and trust in Him by allowing us to suffer. We cannot really call ourselves Christians unless we agree to take up the cross of Christ and carry it unto death. All of us carry a different cross. It sounds like yours is SSA—and that is a very heavy one, indeed.

It also sounds to me like you have suffered so much at this point that you have become focused solely on your own happiness. You just want the suffering to end. Unfortunately, the Christian message is that seeking only your own happiness, though it may create the illusion of happiness for a while, will not ultimately bring you true fulfillment. To experience deep, genuine peace, you must embrace your suffering, hand it over to God, and trust that His love will make it bearable, even worthwhile.

I say these things to you as someone who once was in your position, not bearing the cross of SSA, but that of a different struggle so thorough that I threw off God just so that I could find temporary relief. Ultimately, I only hurt myself more. Not until I was utterly broken and exhausted did I realize that I could not provide relief to myself by my own actions. Only then did I throw up my hands in total desperation, fall onto my knees, and beg God to help me. My relief did not come immediately, but it did come. Praise Jesus.

If you can do the same, and persist in it, I have no doubt whatsoever that God will help you to carry your cross as well. First, though, you must acknowledge that you are not in control of your happiness. Your Maker is. Are you able to accept that?

[Luigi]

To the point about happiness:

Thomas Aquinas says something to the effect that, "God is love. Love wants what is best for the other person. God wants what is best for us." I think he also said that the point of life is to be happy.

The question, then, is to understand happiness as God understands it.

[Gabriela]

​Thank you to all those who made constructive and helpful comments. I guess the issue is Nihil Obstat's question above. To deal briefly with a couple of other points first (i) I agree what you are is more important than what you do. The point is sexuality seems to be integral to who one is. (ii) If God really does want me, or anyone else, to be miserable, then I don't really want anything to do with him. The religion that preaches that seems a oddly inhumane one for a God who became human.

To the issue though. I agree that it does not necessarily follow that homosexuality is a valid expression of core sexuality. But in practice, I think it probably must be. It is, after all, the only one many people have. That, really, is what I have come to (maybe) believe. Homosexuality is as valid as heterosexuality. I can see no other way out, apart from a denial of my humanity.

I fully accept that I may be wrong. But I do my best to inform my conscience. What else, in the end, can one do?

​I agree 100% that a God who wishes us to suffer is not a God I would want anything to do with. There's a difference between a God who wants us to suffer and a God who permits us to suffer because He knows that we have gotten ourselves into such a state as to require suffering for our own good. Our God is the latter, not the former, and it is our fault that we are in this state, not His. He is trying (has succeeded, really) to get us out of it.

Why do you think that sexuality is core to identity? How do you explain the tens of thousands of religious and other people in this world who live perfectly happy lives without engaging in sexual acts? They find their identity elsewhere, suggesting that our identity is what we choose it to be. You are a child of God. Why not make that the core of your identity?

[The camel]

​I agree 100% that a God who wishes us to suffer is not a God I would want anything to do with. There's a difference between a God who wants us to suffer and a God who permits us to suffer because He knows that we have gotten ourselves into such a state as to require suffering for our own good. Our God is the latter, not the former, and it is our fault that we are in this state, not His. He is trying (has succeeded, really) to get us out of it.

Why do you think that sexuality is core to identity? How do you explain the tens of thousands of religious and other people in this world who live perfectly happy lives without engaging in sexual acts? They find their identity elsewhere, suggesting that our identity is what we choose it to be. You are a child of God. Why not make that the core of your identity?

​How have I got myself into a state? I have got myself into a state by trying to sublimate my sexual identity in obedience to the Church's teaching. So, by your argument, God wants me to suffer for keeping the Church's teaching?

As to your second paragraph, I thought I made it clear that I do not intend to live a life of debauchery. I will not be checking Grindr every hour! I fully expect to continue a sexless life. It is not, as I said above, about sex, it is about sexuality. It is not about acts, it is about identity.

[Not The Philosopher]

Sexuality is important to our identity - in the sense that we are embodied sexual beings as male and female, categories which only make sense in relation to the other term. Being a man implies that there is woman, and vice versa. So the opposite sex forms our natural complement. Sometimes our subjective experiences are ambiguous and don't represent that reality; but that's to be expected after the Fall. Categories like "heterosexual" and "homosexual" or whatever, while perhaps useful in a descriptive sense, are social constructs that do not represent our sexual nature, ontologically speaking, because they base themselves on desire rather than being.

Speaking from an SSA perspective, I don't tend to puzzle so much over what I am - I tend to just think of myself as a dude.

[Gabriela]

​How have I got myself into a state? I have got myself into a state by trying to sublimate my sexual identity in obedience to the Church's teaching. So, by your argument, God wants me to suffer for keeping the Church's teaching?

As to your second paragraph, I thought I made it clear that I do not intend to live a life of debauchery. I will not be checking Grindr every hour! I fully expect to continue a sexless life. It is not, as I said above, about sex, it is about sexuality. It is not about acts, it is about identity.

​We are all in a state of sin, caused by the Fall. We are born into it. It's not just you. It's all of us. If you've ever found it difficult to do something you knew was the right thing—like, say, help a person you really, really dislike—then you know exactly what I mean when I say that we are all in a state of "fallenness". It takes suffering to get us out of it. (It also takes Christ!)

You did make clear that you don't intend to live a life of debauchery. I think you misunderstood my second paragraph. Catholic religious and Buddhist monks and many, many others do not define themselves either by their sexual acts or by their sexuality. How is that possible, if sexuality is indeed so very central to our identities? Or is it possible that Westerners have simply made sexuality central to their identities as the most recent development of 20th-century individualism?

[The camel]

Categories like "heterosexual" and "homosexual" or whatever, while perhaps useful in a descriptive sense, are social constructs that do not represent our sexual nature, ontologically speaking, because they base themselves on desire rather than being.

​Is that so? I tend to the view that they are essential, not simply social constructs. True, sexuality is performative and situational, maybe even dynamic, but I am not at all sure that it can be reduced to a mere social construct. Desire seems part of being. I am not a philosopher, I am happy to say, so I am open to correction, but to make sexuality a sort of dialectic, which can only exist in conversation with the culture, seems to reduce a core aspect to what it is to be human.

[Lilllabettt]

. (ii) If God really does want me, or anyone else, to be miserable, then I don't really want anything to do with him. The religion that preaches that seems a oddly inhumane one for a God who became human.

​Reality is totally indifferent to your feelings. God goes on being God whether or not you, a speck in the vastness of the universe, want anything to do with Him.

Honorable people live with the consequences of what they think is true because they think it is true - not because they expect they will gain something for their loyalty.   Many, many people who embrace Christianity experience nothing but abject misery and suffering as a result of their choice. They receive no peace, no relief, no sense of physical, emotional, or spiritual satisfaction as long as they live.  The privilege of knowing the truth is their only reward. 

You do not "get" anything for knowing and living in accordance with your conscience. Anyone who says differently is selling something. If someone sold Christianity to you on that basis, I'm sorry. That idea is the antithesis of authentic religion in general and Christianity in particular.

True, some people may experience peace, happiness, spiritual consolation ,etc.  But we can say with 100% certainty, some people will not. You may be one of those. If so, rejoice. Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed.

[veritasluxmea]

Somewhat OT, but whenever I feel like I'm not accepted by God where I am- or that i need to "fix" this or that before I can approach God, I always remember this quote: 

How many times while here on earth could He be heard pleading, “Come to me, come to me, all of you. Do not be afraid, it is I. Why are you afraid? I am just like you; I love you. Are you afraid because you are sinners? But they are the very ones I am looking for; I am the friend of sinners. If it is because you have strayed from the fold through your own fault, then I am the good shepherd. If it is because you are weighted down with sin, covered with grime and utterly dejected, then that is just why you should come to me for I will unburden you, purify you and console you.”

-St. Louis Marie de Montfort

 

[Maggyie]

OP, the writer C.S. Lewis wrote a book called "The Problem of Pain." He stated, "I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine that being made perfect through suffering is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design."

unfortunately this is the reality of the situation. Orthodox Christianity has answers to your questions, but they very well may be incendiary to the one who is suffering, and ultimately at the visceral level, unsatisfactory. Because all these cute intellectual explanations won't stop the pain.

And that's ultimately what the cry of the hurt one is; what is the point of worshipping the truth, when it doesn't stop my hurt? What if, hypothetically, the true God was one of hate who liked to torture his followers, would it still be right and just to worship him, since he truly was the creator? Wouldn't it be equally proper to worship the periodic table since it is also truth and also doesn't intervene in my suffering? In fact it would be a superior object of worship, since its indifference is not its choice. With a living God, one is confronted with the reality that the divine one chooses to permit your misery.

(This is where many atheists wind up, worshipping science and "reality" they have merely found a god who does not offend them by claiming to love them)  

These are the thoughts of those who suffer, and people who try to comfort them that "it's a mystery" do no good, since while God hides his face the pain is not mysterious at all.

Unorthodox Christianity attempts to address your particular pain by removing the tension you are currently experiencing. Poof in a puff of smoke or stroke of the pen explaining away tradition and scripture, supposedly your problem is over. This provides only fleeting and illusory relief. Suffering always comes round again, if only in a different form. 

What I am saying is, are you looking for an intellectually satisfactory answer or a solution to your pain. You can have the former but not the latter. 

[Aragon]

Can anyone please actually answer my question?Thanks.

[Aragon]

​Reality is totally indifferent to your feelings. God goes on being God whether or not you, a speck in the vastness of the universe, want anything to do with Him.

 

​Wow, some people are horrible evangelists. This is not how you speak to someone struggling with the faith. 

He is not a "speck in the vastness of the universe". He is a child of God, a child for whom Christ shed every last drop of His precious blood, he is deeply loved and valued by God and the Church and is called to attain Christian perfection.

[Maggyie]

Can anyone please actually answer my question?Thanks.

 

Unfortunately from my familiarity with the Romance language versions you showed, the word disorder (which they all use) is susceptible to the same misuse as in English. In common usage it makes reference to illness instead of the theological/philosophical meaning we all know to be correct.

I would appreciate if someone could look at the German version. The German language in my experience allows for a lot of precision. 

[Maggyie]

Although you know what, desordonee in French also has the connotation of being messy. I don't think a Frenchman reading the catechism would come away with the idea the Church is saying gay inclinations are untidy.