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"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge them?"
"The problem is not having this orientation," he said. "We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation,..."
BBC News - Pope Francis: Who am I to judge gay people?
This is a position similar to the one I have held for many years.
The Church doesn't hate gays. The Church doesn't find having homosexual orientation in and of itself to be a sin. The Church finds acting on that orientation to be sinful. Just as acting on heterosexual impulses it views to be sinful when engaged outside the sacrament of marriage. The Church sees marriage as child centered, the act of sex to be the joining of two into one through the sexual act with the openness to God-giving life,(the "two into one" being the act in creating the child, it isn't some snazzy metaphor for doing the hoocheecoochee). This doesn't mean the Church can or will endorse gay marriage as an alternative which then allows homosexual acts to commence. No, it is expressly because homosexual acts do not allow for the openness to God-giving life which is the stumbling block of homosexuality. It is the unique and specific ability that 1 man and 1 woman have in creating this opportunity which is the foundation upon which everything else lays.
Now, the problem is in the lobbying, the actions of interested and not always genuine parties who put forth an agenda which seeks to destroy this foundation. THAT the Church will never allow and that is what is the sin.
Is this not a position of tolerance? Of good will? Of inclusiveness?
I've written this with no ill will and in good spirit. I'd ask anyone who would respond to this post and take part in this discussion to do so in the same spirit and intention. This is in part the teaching of the Church as it regards homosexuality and marriage as I have learned and understand it. Any incorrect information given is of my own ignorance and not a willful omission. If I have omitted anything pertinent to the conversation , mea culpa...