Aquinas was a very large man, but not obese. People would stop and stare as he walked by because he was tall and big.
Apparently, this province has some flakey friars. But a basic principle of Thomistic thought is that things have “ends.” So to use genitals in a way which precludes there natural end ... generation, and for sexual pleasure alone is perverse, unnatural, disordered.
But normally stimulation of the genitals is pleasurable. It's “natural” to seek pleasure. So, I can see an arguments which says homosexual acts are natural in a particular way, while viewed more holistically they are still unnatural, disordered, etc.
It's natural to want a second bowl of ice cream, but unnatural to eat in a way which does not build up the body and maintain one’s health.
The only reason I think he must be saying more is that anyone who spent a week on the high points of the Summa would know tnat. So why would he take the trouble.
But I don't expect reporters to care about this or even to understand it. So, I'm hanging back until I can see the text.
So that precludes married couples having sex just for the fun of it.
Yes, God did command them to be fruitful and multiply, but sex was GOD'S idea, not man's. And claiming that sex was just for procreation also denigrates that gift of intimacy God gave married couples.
By that thinking, then any couple not capable of having children should not be having sex because sex for sexual pleasure alone is perverse and unnatural. Right?
Lots of couples past menopause will not be happy to hear that.
Nor couples who are sterile.
Maybe he means that desires to do wrong things are possible in the current fallen natural state of mankind. This is not anything that is theologically disputable anywhere in serious Christendom.
Apply a selective mask to that, and you can make the observation look like doing wrong things is natural without any of the other context.
Nobody asked whether the natural is what we ought to be focusing on, and quite frankly that does seem to be the bent of some Christian followings. Natural law! Well the problem is, we can’t take that, whatever it does mean, as meaning the natural is our law.
Neither is normal our goal. Normal is too little. If achieved it would only glorify our fallenness. We are desired by God to be on a journey to heaven, and any lesser view is bound to disappoint.