Posted on 04/07/2005 6:20:40 AM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Peter Novak has practiced Catholicism his whole life, starting as an altar boy and then studying for seven years toward becoming a priest.
Yet in recent months, the 39-year-old gay man, who did not complete his seminary studies, has been thinking about leaving the church because of the legacy of Pope John Paul's stance on homosexuality.
"It's not an easy life to do that, to want to maintain your identity as Catholic and gay," said Novak, who married his partner in San Francisco last year.
"The church came out very much opposed to gay marriage and I would say that was part of it," he said, explaining why he stopped going to Mass regularly more than a year ago. "It has challenged my ability to feel comfortable in the church."
Under Pope John Paul, the Vatican preached that gays should be treated with compassion but made clear it absolutely opposed gay sex and called homosexuality a disorder. The Pope referred to gay marriage as an "ideology of evil."
The Pope "would be very compassionate to the gay person," said Fr. Donald Cozzens, former president-rector of Saint Mary Catholic Seminary in Cleveland. Yet he would "require of them what he feels the Gospel requires of all of God's people, which is if you are not married, you do not have an active sexual life, whether within a committed relationship or not."
Many gay American Catholics ignore such teachings, as do heterosexuals who skirt church rules against birth control.
In areas such as San Francisco's Castro Street, a center of gay life, Catholic churches perform a delicate balancing act.
In front of the Most Holy Redeemer Church two blocks away, a billboard shows well-built male models urging gay men to telephone.
"We provide the teachings of the church with the understanding that people will make their own choices," said Michael Greenwell, a priest from the Carmelite Order.
GAY CATHOLICS AT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
DignityUSA, a group of gay Catholics, conducts its own services, often with former priests. After a 1986 Vatican letter denounced homosexuality as "an objective disorder," U.S. Catholic churches barred group meetings on their property.
So in San Francisco, Dignity meets weekly at a Presbyterian church.
Catholic teachings on homosexuality may not have changed much under John Paul, but his papacy coincided with the gay rights movements, AIDS and priest sex scandals highlighting issues related to homosexual clergymen.
The Pope also strongly opposed gay marriage, discussing it in his last annual address in January and calling it in his last book published in February "a new ideology of evil," which incensed many gays.
"The clock has been turned back during this papacy for gay people," said Jeff Stone, a DignityUSA member in New York.
In San Francisco, Catholics played key roles during last year's marriage of more than 4,000 same sex couples.
Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Catholic, ignited the issue by allowing the weddings until they were barred by the California Supreme Court. Then, just last month, a Catholic judge ruled California's ban on homosexual marriage unconstitutional.
Both traditionalists and reformers seem to agree the Vatican is unlikely to make changes toward gays under the next Pope.
"I don't think the teaching can or will change," said Mark Brumley, president of St. Ignatius Press, the largest U.S. Catholic publisher.
"Thanks to the legacy of John Paul II, we are going to see a much more energetic and persuasive presentation of the truth of that teaching about human sexuality," he said. "I think the next Pope will build on what John Paul II has done."
It isn't hard to think that even in those days, sexual diseases were well known, so the virgin bride wasn't just for ego and jealosy reasons, it was to protect from getting them and it's spread.
Woman diseases therefore would be thought spread woman to woman, or from whoredom. Also, the topic around Deut 22 is about chasity and faithfullness to the spouse. It stands to reason that this cross dressing verse also refers to homosexual behavior, rather than something off topic.
1) Why should chastity be more difficult for homos than for heteros? I was chaste for many years. Granted I would have preferred otherwise. But my world did not revolve around the chastity, nor around the lack of it when that occurred. Apart from gay-straight, Why do some think that the world should revolve around that single chastity aspect when life could be very complex with hundreds of other reference points?
2) AIDS just as easily Studies have consistently shown that heterosexuals, and especially heterosexual female prostitutes, who engage in anal sex have a much higher incidence of HIV and AIDS than others with the same promiscuity limited to oral sex and normal sex.
Yes, HIV/AIDS can be transmitted by the exchange of any body fluid. But the odds are astronomically higher with one particular means that nature considers unsanitary.
Catholic documents and teaching on subject of homosexuality:
- The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education within the Family
104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "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". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes 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 fulfil 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". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
- Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics
VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
- Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
- Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on Non-discrimination of Homosexual Persons
II. Applications10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
- Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “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”.7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
- Religiosorum Institutio
30. Those To Be Excluded; Practical DirectivesAdvantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.
Actually, God didn't 'make AIDS' what he warns is that when man ignores his will, bad things will happen, because these evil things are of this earth, which is corrupted with evil things.
When the Jews ignored Him, they became blind to Him, and no longer under his protection.
Jesus Came and offered Salvation, The world will continue on it's self destructive course, because that is Gods will that this world be destroyed, as it cannot be saved from the evil that corrupts it. "Death was not my creation" he says.
Lol!
My point is that an all-powerful being looking to punish gay men could easily just kill them in one swift stroke rather than expose non-gays to the behavior. Or do you think a wife who gets infected with AIDs as a result of her husband's indiscretions or a kid who gets AIDs from a blood transfusion are legitimate targets of "god's wrath."
That's what I meant by "doesn't discriminate."
You didn't mention the odds of a woman getting HIV from a woman, which I believe are far lower still.
Ah, so because the Jews don't embrace Jesus, it was cool for millions of them to get shipped to death camps?
As for the "evil that corrupts" the world. God made it. He's responsible for it. If he wanted to, he could have made human beings with a much stronger drive towards love, compassion and non-violence.
Since we are related to other animals, we have baser desires and instincts and expressions of the primal. Thus, we get our "corrupted world."
I mentioned it. I said it's very unlikely for a man to get AIDS from a woman, but that doesn't stop the woman from getting it from a man.
But my point was just that AIDS isn't some form of 'punishment' for gays. Because if that's the case, God punishes the innocent with the guilty and allows much greater evil than sexual sin to exist and continue unabated.
The trick is not to take the statement literally. God does not act through lightning bolts striking offenders. He has set the world in motion; He has determined the way things work. He has given us His laws to guide us for our own prosperity; and He has left it up to us to choose to follow or not to follow these laws.
But the laws are not arbitrary; they are there for specific purposes. He loves us, and thus has told us how to act to achieve happiness and fulfillment. Thus He has told us not to do the things that will harm us. If we choose to ignore His admonitions, we accept the consequences of the world simply being the way it is. The world itself enforces God's laws, by simply being what it is.
Sure it was his creation, The perfect part of it was. The corruption came from another force. As did the evil that killed millions of Jews, and millions of Christians and just keeps on killing. We were perfect, but temptation and sin took care of that too.
And no, we aren't animals. But maybe you should be a god since you have all the easy remedies.
He is going to "fix it". First He's going to save as many souls as he can, you know. the part He created in his own image.
At most, about five percent of Aids patients are heterosexuals who likely got the disease from someone who was not at high risk, says Dr Monina Klevens, co-author of a study by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But heterosexuals who suspected or even knew their partners were infected, overwhelmingly ignored their risk, the study found. This could explain the very high levels of heterosexual infection in countries such as South Africa.
US statistics show that no more than five percent of all Aids cases involve heterosexual sex among people who weren't in high-risk groups, Klevens says.
"And we know that's an overestimate," Klevens says. "Most cases are still because someone had sex with someone who had a primary risk factor."
In the United States, high-risk groups for Aids include gay men (currently 42 percent of Aids patients), IV-drug users (25 percent) and people who have had transfusions.
As for Ryan White, tragic as it was, some of us are put here on Earth for a higher purpose. His life story significantly changed the way we look at AIDS and control it (blood screening and education), which has kept heterosexual HIV under control in the US with the exception of intravenous drug users and those who engage in risky sex practices or have unprotected sex with partners who do so. Those in underdeveloped countries have not had the education nor do they have controls in place and children born of infected adults who contracted the disease because of risky behavior are clearly the victims of that and my heart goes out to them.
God comes up with AIDS but let's His Chosen People be sent to death camps, let's Communism slaughter millions
God did not "let" these things happen...man did, you forgot he gave us free will, we ultimately choose whether to use it for right or wrong.
Uh, do you grasp the concept of getting one someone else's level and using their 'idiom' in order to communicate basic concepts?
You spoke of AIDS being the punishment for gay and other sexual sin. This sin is a CHOICE. Free will, right?
Well, so are the murderous actions of tyrants and ideologues throughout history but especially the 20th.
So why not punish them similarly?
That's my point--NO ONE is really punished for their evil by the divine.
I only take issue with the idea that somehow AIDS or other aspects of living in a world with viruses, bacteria, accidents, natural disasters and the actions of human beings are a result of retribution divine rather than life just sucking eggs in many respects.
The one instruction in Lev. 18 that does specifically refer to women is a prohibition of bestiality.
Yet you speak as if YOU have the answers, but your answers sound like something I'd expect any barbarian circa 4th century to say.
It makes no logical or moral sense to create a world of imperfect beings with strong drives in opposition to your commandments and then condemn a good portion of them to the void or to punishment because some of them don't or can't control their impulses. God created it, by your account, and if he knew what was going to happen he is fully responsible for all evil in the world. Even if you believe in Satan's effect, you are essentially setting up a duality and not a truly monotheistic cosmology.
Psychopaths are beyond redemption. And often they develop at an extremely young age--who is responsible for that and shouldn't, if there were a God who was active, ALL humans have equal chance at redemption and atonement?
That all said, it sounds like a big play for someone's amusement. Why create souls merely to try to 'save' them when you could have made a paradise and enjoyed ALL of them?
Why don't they just take matters into their own hands?
"It's not an easy life to do that, to want to maintain your identity as Catholic and gay," said Novak.
I guess we could just ask the Catholic church to condone all sin. /sarcasm.
Perhaps gay Catholics should consider going the episcopal route, and establish their own "catholic" church, but supporting the gay lifestyle. They could let in ALL the pedophile priests, too, and, if others are offended by their inability to avoid what the true Catholic church so "cavalierly" refers to as sin, what the hey, just remove those behaviors from the sin list. Problem solved, and they can still act like they are obeying God. Good luck in the afterlife, friends......
Corr: "sword" Duh.
I donut youse spellchok, as eye thunk I donut knead it moose of the thyme, er-ah!
ER-AH! (T.K. + J.fn'K. + Htlry.C. = B.S.!)
You can't make that point, because you don't know and neither do I. My faith, derived from the Bible, however, tells me that we are punished on Judgement Day, IOW, on the day we die, we face His grace or wrath and we are assured that there are some things He just won't forgive unless we repent prior to getting there. So I feel that those who have committed atrocities will ultimately suffer God's wrath. As for here on Earth, Romans 13 states that it is the Government’s responsibility to provide justice in order to protect the innocent. And yes, we have failed in many respects.
Yes, sin is a choice and life sucks eggs sometimes, especially when someone chooses to use the free will God gave them to directly or indirectly harm innocent people. I don't think anyone can really explain why God allows bad things happen to innocent people, but from my experiences, I feel God has a reason for everything and we may never know what that reason is no matter how much soul-searching we do. But sometimes, it is as simple as making us take a second look at our priorities in this life, bringing us together in our collective faith to serve Him better by helping the victims of tragedy, or showing us the way that we may prevent future tragedies.
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