Homosexuality

[Cam42]

So.....you never back up anything I ask of you......

But that isn't the point. The post speaks for itself. I don't need to back it up....I repsonded to Todd.

And if it is wrong, how is it wrong.....? I can't respond until you state clearly, which you don't know how to do, just what it is I should be responding to.

As it is, Zach, you need to seriously stay out of this conversation, you don't even understand the concept of the positioning.....

[Jaime]

[quote name='Era Might' post='991823' date='May 28 2006, 10:20 AM']
I don't think the analogy quite works, because there is an important difference between a physical disorder and a moral disorder. Even though your heart is flipped around, it does not incline you toward a moral evil. The flow of our blood is not a moral subject. Homosexuality, on the other hand, does incline us toward a moral evil, so in that sense it is something which must be "fixed"; not homosexuality alone, certainly, but all moral disorders.

But I think there is some validity to say that homosexuality is not necessarily a psychological disorder. I think it often is, but the Church leaves the question to the competence of other qualified men. I think it would suffice to say that homosexuality is a disorder of the human person. Whether it is a "psychological" disorder would depend on factors such as how you view and define psychology; I suppose a "spiritual" disorder does not have to necessarily be a "psychological" disorder. A person who likes to steal jewelery, for example, is not necessarily a clinical kleptomaniac, although he does have a spiritual problem.
[/quote]

Era Might you must not have seen the Star Trek episode where Kirk and his crew got caught up in the parallel dimension and they saw their opposites. Aside from all of them wearing goatees, I'm quite certain that their hearts were pumping backwards as well !

EVIL!!!


Here's where you're missing my analogy. My disordered heart does not incline me towards evil, but it can incline towards other heart defects. (Hence the analogy physical to physical moral to moral.) In my case (Thank God) it does not. the ticker is completely fine. But the problems could arise. Compare that now to a person who has deep seated homosexual desires. These objectively disordered desires are unnatural and can lead to intrinsically disordered actions (hence the parallel of the analogy)

Oh and Zach if you think that lust is only willed, I have but one question for you. How were you able to skip being a 16 year old boy? Because there was nothing willful about those years.


[quote name='Apotheoun' post='991847' date='May 28 2006, 12:30 PM']
hot stuff,

Throughout this discussion you have continued to muddy the waters, because you fail to distinguish between natural desires, which can be misused (i.e., the desire of a man for physical intimacy with a woman), and unnatural desires, which have no proper use at all, and which indicate that a man is suffering from an objective disorder of the mind (i.e., homosexual desires that purdure over time).

That being said, the desire of a man for a woman is natural and good, because it is a part of God's plan for the sanctification of the human race. The physical union established by the conjugal act between a man and a woman living in a marriage covenant that is indissoluble is a good of nature, and a true sacramental grace in the New Covenant at the same time, with the goal of uniting the spouses in a life-long gift of self through the power of love with openness to the procreation of children. Thus, this natural desire (i.e., of a man for a woman, and of a woman for a man) manifests the complimentarity of the sexes, and reveals the spousal significance of the human body (male and female), which has the added grace of signifying the union of Christ and the Church.


[/quote]


I am not muddying the waters. However you demonstrate perfectly how you and others are. This is a critical point and one that should not be overlooked. Whenever I speak of lust, you in turn talk about natural desires. They are not the same thing. They are not even in the same category.

Natural desires are natural
Lust is a disordered desire therefore unnatural


I have to say that it causes me great concern that you would use lust and natural desire synonomously. Your position mirrors that of Hugh Hefner in many ways.

[qfnol31]

[quote]I have to say that it causes me great concern that you would use lust and natural desire synonomously. Your position mirrors that of Hugh Hefner in many ways.[/quote]

Umm, it's a disordering of a natural desire.

It is quite simply a disordering of the due order of a good.

[quote]At this point you detract from accepted Catholic thought. The reason being is that you are obfuscating the action with the person. The Church quite clearly teaches that the homosexual act is intrinsically disordered, NOT the homosexual person.[/quote]

He is not...Todd has made clear here that there is a difference between the person and actions.

[quote]This is the crux of our disagreement, because I do hold -- in agreement with Catholic tradition -- that the homosexual act needs to be cured primarily by the power of God's grace.[/quote]

The act is both not the only thing disordered, and cannot itself be cured--Acts themselves are incurable. The homosexual condition of a person is unnatural (if it's natural, it's given by God, and therefore there is nothing disordered about it) and therefore does not have a place. That condition, the inclination towards homosexuality, must be controlled.

[quote]2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is 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.[/quote]

This is something you say later on. However, it looks like the condition is something achieveable based on the Catechism.

[quote]That would be acceptable. As it is, the position that you take is inconsistent with Catholic thought. It is not the person which the Church disagrees with, but the action of the person. [b]You are equating the sin of the homosexual act AS the homosexual person. That is improper theology and incorrect.[/b][/quote]

You are absolutely wrong.

[quote name=''Todd'']Of course no one is a homosexual, because you cannot reduce a person to disordered inclinations and desires. That being said, heterosexual desires are perfectly natural, while homosexual desires are not, and this necessary distinction is a truth which the Church holds to be absolute and unchangeable.

Finally, if you read the posts that I have written over the last two years on this difficult moral and theological issue, you will see immediately that I have always refused to reduce a man to the disordered inclinations that afflict his mind.[/quote]

Todd also does not reduce the person to acts, but purposefully makes that distinction.

[quote name=''ibid'']The same of course would hold in connection with desires related to oral sex (i.e., if these disordered desires replaced the natural desire of a man to have sexual intercourse with a woman), because an exclusive fixation on these desires would show that the man in question was suffering from an affliction of the mind that is contrary to nature. Such a man would be experiencing a form of sexual development that is objectively retarded.[/quote]

Here is that same distinction drawn. The man suffers, but is not equated with that evil with which he suffers.

[quote]We are called to be chaste, heterosexual and homosexual. For the homosexual there is an inclination which is objectively disordered, but this inclination is the act, in and of itself. It is not the mind of the person.[/quote]

The inclination itself is disordered. If it weren't, then homosexual couples would be able to be chaste as a couple, which implicitely includes things such as holding hands, perhaps kissing.

The inclination must be in the mind. Otherwise you slip into materialism and the inclination comes from the brain, or perhaps some other organ...maybe even a foot? Lust itself comes from the mind. It is a disordered, evil, desire for something that is good. It is our desire, not my body's, although the body desires something of the body.

[quote]Oh and Zach if you think that lust is only willed, I have but one question for you. How were you able to skip being a 16 year old boy? Because there was nothing willful about those years.[/quote]

I spent my 16-year-old life learning how not to will those lustful thoughts by frequent Confession and a continual retreat. It worked well. By working towards mastering the thoughts, I completely mastered my actions.

[quote]As it is, Zach, you need to seriously stay out of this conversation, you don't even understand the concept of the positioning.....[/quote]

You don't understand Todd.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Cam42' post='991922' date='May 28 2006, 01:59 PM']
This is at odds with the catechetical position:
At this point you detract from accepted Catholic thought. The reason being is that you are obfuscating the action with the person. The Church quite clearly teaches that the [i]homosexual act[/i] is intrinsically disordered, NOT the homosexual person.

Had you said:

[i]This is the crux of our disagreement, because I do hold -- in agreement with Catholic tradition -- that the homosexual [u]act[/u] needs to be cured primarily by the power of God's grace.[/i]

That would be acceptable. As it is, the position that you take is inconsistent with Catholic thought. It is not the person which the Church disagrees with, but the action of the person. You are equating the sin of the homosexual act AS the homosexual person. That is improper theology and incorrect.
[/quote]
You are twisting what Todd is saying here and putting words in his mouth which he never said. Read his post - he said the homosexual [b]condition[/b] (which means the condition of being sexually attracted to the same sex) is disordered and needs to be cured.

The only one obfuscating the action with the person here is you, Cam. Neither Todd nor me, nor anyone on our side of this debate has made the ludicrous claim that a person is to be identified as or equated with his homosexual inclination.
You are not debating, but are "playing semantics" and attacking a straw man.

I suggest everybody carefully read Todd's last post. It pretty much clinches this argument.

A sexual desire for the same sex is in itself intrinsically disordered.
A sexual desire for the opposite sex is in itself good. (Though of course, it can be corrupted, as all good things can.)

That is the difference.

[Tarcisius]

I have nothing to add to the conversation Socrates, though I do want to say I think I am with you on this one. I just wanted let you know that I got a wholesome chuckle out of the irony of your username and probability that he had pedophillic sex with Plato.

[Socrates]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='992013' date='May 28 2006, 05:37 PM']
Natural desires are natural
Lust is a disordered desire therefore unnatural
[/quote]
If all lust is unnatural, why did St. Thomas Aquinas clearly distinguish unnatural lust from other kinds of lust, and say it is the worst kind?
If all lust is equally unnatural, wouldn't talking about unnatural lust be redundant?

But I suppose the Angelic Doctor was just a medieval primitive who didn't know what he was talking about, being unaware of the latest enlightened positions of the APA.

It seems you simply ignore anything in Catholic theology which conflicts with your politically correct positions.

[CrossCuT]

[size=1][color="330000"]You dont even have to look at it from a religous view to know it is wrong.

In nature there is a order that keeps everything in check.
We as humans are a part of that interconnectiong bond of life, and we need to follow the order just as everything else does.

We cant just decide for ourselves we are going to have sex with the same gender....what would happen then?
None of the animals do it...they follow nature, but then they also are limited in the sense that they do not have a free will.

And this is where our challenge is, we DO have a free will. A will in which to choose a path to follow, but no matter how many opinions we may have, there still is and ALWAYS will be ONE path we are meant to follow. If you stray from that, then you will end up in the weeds somewhere lost.


If we go against nature, nature will become agnry with us. For suffering came into the world BECAUSE of sin. And therefore the more and greater amounts of sin we commit, the greater our sufferings will be.




You cant cheat on nature. Have you heard the saying:

God always forgives
Man sometimes forgives
Nature never forgives
[/color][/size]

Edited May 29, 2006 by CrossCuT

[Jaime]

[quote name='Socrates' post='992106' date='May 28 2006, 08:57 PM']
If all lust is unnatural, why did St. Thomas Aquinas clearly distinguish unnatural lust from other kinds of lust, and say it is the worst kind?
If all lust is equally unnatural, wouldn't talking about unnatural lust be redundant?

But I suppose the Angelic Doctor was just a medieval primitive who didn't know what he was talking about, being unaware of the latest enlightened positions of the APA.

It seems you simply ignore anything in Catholic theology which conflicts with your politically correct positions.
[/quote]


I ignore nothing. And we could launch into areas where the Church's understanding has grown since Aquinas's time but that would be a distraction.

What the Church declares is key. Lust is objectively disordered. What is disordered? Is it natural? No it is not (then it would be ordered)

[qfnol31]

Lust is the disordering of something natural.

[Jaime]

[quote name='qfnol31' post='992133' date='May 28 2006, 09:22 PM']
Lust is the disordering of something natural.
[/quote]

You keep saying that like it means something.

[CrossCuT]

[size=1][color="330000"]Homosexuals = unatural.

Unatural = goes against order.




Wait...whats english?
Oh right...it has no meaning.
[/color][/size]

[qfnol31]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='992146' date='May 28 2006, 09:30 PM']You keep saying that like it means something. [/quote]

[quote name='hot stuff' date='sometime earlier today']Whenever I speak of lust, you in turn talk about natural desires. They are not the same thing. They are not even in the same category.

Natural desires are natural
Lust is a disordered desire therefore unnatural[/quote]

[quote]What the Church declares is key. Lust is objectively disordered. What is disordered? Is it natural? No it is not (then it would be ordered)[/quote]

It is the disordering of something that is natural.

You've drawn a false dichotomy there. That's why it means something. It's also why your analogy between those two is not a valid one.

[Cam42]

[quote name='Socrates' post='992095' date='May 28 2006, 09:48 PM']
You are twisting what Todd is saying here and putting words in his mouth which he never said. Read his post - he said the homosexual [b]condition[/b] (which means the condition of being sexually attracted to the same sex) is disordered and needs to be cured.

The only one obfuscating the action with the person here is you, Cam. Neither Todd nor me, nor anyone on our side of this debate has made the ludicrous claim that a person is to be identified as or equated with his homosexual inclination.
You are not debating, but are "playing semantics" and attacking a straw man.

I suggest everybody carefully read Todd's last post. It pretty much clinches this argument.

A sexual desire for the same sex is in itself intrinsically disordered.
A sexual desire for the opposite sex is in itself good. (Though of course, it can be corrupted, as all good things can.)

That is the difference.
[/quote]

Todd's argument clinches nothing, because it is at odds with the catechetical position. CCC #2357 says that the psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. What does that mean? It means that there is no psychological basis. The Church teaches through her silence that psychology is not the answer. The answer is clearly stated through the last statement in CCC #2358 which states that the homosexual person is called to fulfill God's will in his life and, if he is a Christian, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties he may encounter from his condition. Nowhere in any of the Church's teaching does she say that one should seek out secular psychological means.

Todd, et al. are trying to equate the mind as the condition. And to subsitute one word for another doesn't somehow solve the problem, but rather it masks it. And through this masking the homosexual person has been compromised.

Simply follow what the Church teaches. The argument is not clinched. The reason is that this statement is at odds with this statement:

[quote name='CCC #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, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." 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.[/quote]

and

[quote name='CCC #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.[/quote]

and

[quote name='CCC #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.[/quote]

Show me where the Church says that one is psychologically unstable because he is homosexual. You cannot, because the Church does not teach that. You assume it, because that is what YOU want it to be. That is taking something which is objective and making it subjective. And that has NEVER been the way that the Church taught.

[qfnol31]

It says it is largely unexplained, not totally unexplained.

Also, the way that is put forward, it seems that there is some explanation already present.

Also, I believe at one point Todd did put forward his private opinion about how it should be handled, and you just ran with it. He was responding to something of hot stuff and you took it completely out of context. However, at that time, he said the main source for the cure would be for the person to emerse himself in God's grace.

[quote]Show me where the Church says that one is psychologically unstable because he is homosexual. You cannot, because the Church does not teach that. You assume it, because that is what YOU want it to be. That is taking something which is objective and making it subjective. And that has NEVER been the way that the Church taught.[/quote]

I don't think that anyone has said the person who has homosexual tendencies is unstable...just not healthy in sexual development.

By the way, if the answer for homosexuality does not lie in the mind, where is it? In man's nature? In man's body? Elsewhere?

By the way Cam, Todd would be less at odds, in your mind, with the Catechetical position if you took time to understand it better than you have.

Be it not in the Catechism, we know by good Catholic theology that homosexuality is not in man's nature and is not a problem of the flesh alone. Therefore, the problem rests in man's mind.

[quote]Todd, et al. are trying to equate the mind as the condition. And to subsitute one word for another doesn't somehow solve the problem, but rather it masks it. And through this masking the homosexual person has been compromised.[/quote]

How can that possibly be the case? The mind must be the condition for this unless you're a modernist, a heretic, or something else I haven't thought of...

[Jaime]

[quote name='qfnol31' post='992311' date='May 29 2006, 09:19 AM']
It says it is largely unexplained, not totally unexplained.

Also, the way that is put forward, it seems that there is some explanation already present.

Also, I believe at one point Todd did put forward his private opinion about how it should be handled, and you just ran with it. He was responding to something of hot stuff and you took it completely out of context. However, at that time, he said the main source for the cure would be for the person to emerse himself in God's grace.
I don't think that anyone has said the person who has homosexual tendencies is unstable...just not healthy in sexual development.

By the way, if the answer for homosexuality does not lie in the mind, where is it? In man's nature? In man's body? Elsewhere?

[/quote]

Wrong. Todd, Socrates and others have argued that homosexuality is a mental disorder. I'm simply refuting it. And while it is your opinion, (and theirs) that the issue of homosexuality lies within the mind and others may have the opinion that it is biological, it is simply that.

Opinion

[quote]

Be it not in the Catechism, we know by good Catholic theology that homosexuality is not in man's nature and is not a problem of the flesh alone. Therefore, the problem rests in man's mind.
How can that possibly be the case? The mind must be the condition for this unless you're a modernist, a heretic, or something else I haven't thought of...
[/quote]

We also know by good Catholic Theology that lust is a perversion and it is unnatural. There is no false dichotomy at all. Both lust and homosexual desire directly contradict the purpose for sexuality.

[quote]
It is the disordering of something that is natural.[/quote]

[b]NO [/b]


It is not. It is a travesty to see Catholics argue that it is. Lust has nothing to do with the natural. The natural inclination is towards the sacred, unitive and procreative. Lust has no connection to any of these. That is why it comparable to homosexual desire. Because it does not desire to be sacred unitive or procreative. That is why it is considered to be objectively disordered!


Lust is objectively disordered. Homosexual attraction is objectively disordered. To argue that they aren't in the same category is ludicrous. While St Thomas would argue degrees, he would not argue that they are in separate categories.

Yet you, Todd and others argue that homosexual tendencies MUST be a mental disorder but leave other objectively disordered inclinations alone. You've provided nothing but opinion as to why.