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To: This Just In

I stand on my position. Maybe this will help you:

Every human being is called to receive a gift of divine sonship, to become a child of God by grace. However, to receive this gift, we must reject sin, including homosexual behavior—that is, acts intended to arouse or stimulate a sexual response regarding a person of the same sex. The Catholic Church teaches that such acts are always violations of divine and natural law.

Homosexual desires, however, are not in themselves sinful. People are subject to a wide variety of sinful desires over which they have little direct control, but these do not become sinful until a person acts upon them, either by acting out the desire or by encouraging the desire and deliberately engaging in fantasies about acting it out. People tempted by homosexual desires, like people tempted by improper heterosexual desires, are not sinning until they act upon those desires in some manner.

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The Call to Chastity

The modern arguments in favor of homosexuality have thus been insufficient to overcome the evidence that homosexual behavior is against divine and natural law, as the Bible and the Church, as well as the wider circle of Jewish and Christian (not to mention Muslim) writers, have always held.

The Catholic Church thus teaches: “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” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357).

However, the Church also acknowledges that “[homosexuality’s] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. . . . 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 that they may encounter from their condition.

“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” (CCC 2357– 2359).

Paul comfortingly reminds us, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Homosexuals who want to live chastely can contact Courage, a national, Church-approved support group for help in deliverance from the homosexual lifestyle.

Courage,
Church of St. John the Baptist
210 W. 31st St., New York, NY 10001

(212) 268–1010
Web: http://couragerc.net

Read more here:

http://www.catholic.com/library/Homosexuality.asp


158 posted on 08/12/2010 9:07:46 AM PDT by Ge0ffrey
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To: Ge0ffrey

I don’t rely on the Catholic church to interpret Biblical scripture. I examine what God’s Word says.

Ten Commandments

VII. Thou shall not commit adultery

X. Thou shall not covet

Leviticus 18: 22

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”

Luke 1:51

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in his thoughts of their hearts...

Romans 1: 24

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts.”

Romans 1: 26

“For this God gave them up to the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

The Scripture is quite clear on the subject of man’s heart and sin. You say that it is the action that is the sin. God says that the sin begins in the heart.

The Lord’s Word trumps man’s.


169 posted on 08/12/2010 10:02:10 AM PDT by This Just In
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To: Ge0ffrey

Great post!


179 posted on 08/12/2010 10:25:50 AM PDT by Boxsford
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