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The Strange Notion Of "gay Celibacy"


Nihil Obstat

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​Sorry, but unless you've been 16 years old and cried on your knees asking for God to make you "normal" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've gone to bed depressed thinking that you're destined to lay alone in bed every night for the rest of your life and there's nothing you can do to change that then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've sworn at your computer, cried, felt rejected, stigmatised, and alienated from an institution you love because some prominent clergyman has once again described you as "suffering from the disorder of the homosexual condition" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Catch my drift?

​You clearly have not read my post with proper care. Nowhere do I dismiss your experiences. My judgment pertains the Church's conduct and the Church's conduct only. 

 

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Nihil Obstat

​Sorry, but unless you've been 16 years old and cried on your knees asking for God to make you "normal" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've gone to bed depressed thinking that you're destined to lay alone in bed every night for the rest of your life and there's nothing you can do to change that then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've sworn at your computer, cried, felt rejected, stigmatised, and alienated from an institution you love because some prominent clergyman has once again described you as "suffering from the disorder of the homosexual condition" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Catch my drift?

​From 2 Corinthians 11:

16 Once more I appeal to you, let none of you think me vain; or, if it must be so, give me a hearing in spite of my vanity, and let me boast a little in my turn. 17 When I boast with such confidence, I am not delivering a message to you from God; it is part of my vanity if you will. 18 If so many others boast of their natural advantages, I must be allowed to boast too.19 You find it easy to be patient with the vanity of others, you who are so full of good sense. 20 Why, you let other people tyrannize over you, prey upon you, take advantage of you, vaunt their power over you, browbeat you![2] 21 I say this without taking credit to myself, I say it as if we had had no power to play such a part; yet in fact—here my vanity speaks—I can claim all that others claim. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descended from Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they Christ’s servants? These are wild words; I am something more. I have toiled harder, spent longer days in prison, been beaten so cruelly, so often looked death in the face. 24 Five times the Jews scourged me, and spared me but one lash in the forty; 25 three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned; I have been shipwrecked three times, I have spent a night and a day as a castaway at sea. 26 What journeys I have undertaken, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, in danger from my own people, in danger from the Gentiles; danger in cities; danger in the wilderness, danger in the sea, danger among false brethren! 27 I have met with toil and weariness, so often been sleepless, hungry and thirsty; so often denied myself food, gone cold and naked. 28 And all this, over and above something else which I do not count; I mean the burden I carry every day, my anxious care for all the churches; 29 does anyone feel a scruple? I share it; is anyone’s conscience hurt? I am ablaze with indignation. 30 If I must needs boast, I will boast of the things which humiliate me; 31 the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, blessed be his name for ever, knows that I am telling the truth.

 

So has Paul shared your suffering? Yes and no. He was not a homosexual, I would think. But of course he suffered. The point is not to compare how one suffers, nor even the extent of that suffering, but the extent to which he conformed his suffering to Christ. He suffered for the Church, and for his own sanctification. And in that sense, in the sense of Christ's suffering becoming our victory over evil and suffering itself, pain is transformed into an opportunity for our own sanctification. Our own ability to become like Christ.

Of course your experience is important. But it is not important in and of itself, or because it is yours, or because it is 'who you are'. It is important only because you can offer it to God, and by so doing conform yourself to His will. We must be prepared to give up everything for him. Every bit of ourselves, whether it is our talents or our temptations or our idiosyncrasies, our entire being. It exists and it matters only when we offer it to God.

So if you are affected by homosexuality, and if you are a faithful Catholic, yes you will suffer. Of course you will suffer. You will suffer with Christ and you can be sanctified for it.

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Not The Philosopher

Funny thing. The prof for my sexuality and marriage class gave the OP's article as a handout a few weeks ago. Eve Tushnet's book also wound up on the bibliography. Neither of these were required reading (which was mainly focused on theology of the body and magisterial documents), so they weren't discussed or anything. Just there for the curious.

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​Sorry, but unless you've been 16 years old and cried on your knees asking for God to make you "normal" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've gone to bed depressed thinking that you're destined to lay alone in bed every night for the rest of your life and there's nothing you can do to change that then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've sworn at your computer, cried, felt rejected, stigmatised, and alienated from an institution you love because some prominent clergyman has once again described you as "suffering from the disorder of the homosexual condition" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Catch my drift?

​Aragon - I get it. I think most people on the board get it.

The thing is everybody has had similar (but different) experiences. It's just that you can't always tell just from looking at or meeting another person what has driven her/him to her/his knees crying and begging God for something. You can't always tell from looking at or meeting another person what they've gone to bed depressed about. You can't always tell who has gotten a less-than-delicate response from some priest or pastor (or counselor, or life coach, or friend, or parent for that matter).

You've never miscarried a child - and you never will - so you can't imagine the suffering of the mother (and the father)? You've never lost a child to cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or suicide, or murder, or drug overdose - so you can't imagine the suffering of the parents, siblings, girl/boyfriends? Do you think they don't cry and scream at God over the fact that they'll never be able to hold their child again? You've never had your house repossessed and felt like a complete failure to your family. You've never been raped. You've never had your father beheaded on a beach in Libya. Do you think blind people haven't feel alienated from the sighted world? And Deaf people? And people with severe cerebral palsy? Do you think people in wheelchairs don't wish they could dance? And on and on.

Everybody wants to be normal. We all have conditions that we can't change. Everybody feels alienated to some degree or another, and rejected, and stigmatized, and beat up for no good reason, and abandoned by God, and alone in the universe.

Bob Dylan has a line in one his songs, "Idiot Wind:"  "You'll never know the I hurt I suffered, Nor the pain I've had to rise above, And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of live, and it makes me feel so sorry." It's just the human condition.

We all have crosses to bear. Whatever our crosses are, Church teaching still applies to all of us. The Church teaches us how to bear our crosses - whatever they are.

 

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​Sorry, but unless you've been 16 years old and cried on your knees asking for God to make you "normal" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've gone to bed depressed thinking that you're destined to lay alone in bed every night for the rest of your life and there's nothing you can do to change that then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Sorry, but unless you've sworn at your computer, cried, felt rejected, stigmatised, and alienated from an institution you love because some prominent clergyman has once again described you as "suffering from the disorder of the homosexual condition" then you really ought to listen to our experiences before dismissing them.

Catch my drift?

​And how do you think the straight people who do things the right and orderly way feel when they go to bed alone and don't see that changing, partialy because instead of getting backup from their fellow Catholics they get opposition and snark?  That's an even bigger injustice.  Yet they don't turn pagan.

Catch my drift?

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franciscanheart

A cold and condemnatory Church?

I have yet to hear a sermon even mentioning the sinfulness of sodomy. 

Fact is that for every condemnation of sodomy coming from a priest's mouth, there are ten statements from heterodox priests praising Sodom. 

There is the Church and there is the church. If you change the case of Aragon's "Church", you have a more accurate representation of what people like us deal with on a near-daily basis. That part you cannot argue away by saying you, a single (meaning "one") Catholic person, ​have not heard a homily on SODOMY. I don't think going into sodomy versus homosexuality is going to be very productive, but there's a difference there too.

Hahahaha! It's just occurred to me that you're actually a perfect example of what we deal with every single day in the church. You scream "sodomy" and we're just asking for a little compassion -- and maybe a little less ignorance. And definitely a whole lot less pride and assumption on the part of well-meaning straight Catholics.

 

​Aragon - I get it. I think most people on the board get it.

The thing is everybody has had similar (but different) experiences. It's just that you can't always tell just from looking at or meeting another person what has driven her/him to her/his knees crying and begging God for something. You can't always tell from looking at or meeting another person what they've gone to bed depressed about. You can't always tell who has gotten a less-than-delicate response from some priest or pastor (or counselor, or life coach, or friend, or parent for that matter).

You've never miscarried a child - and you never will - so you can't imagine the suffering of the mother (and the father)? You've never lost a child to cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or suicide, or murder, or drug overdose - so you can't imagine the suffering of the parents, siblings, girl/boyfriends? Do you think they don't cry and scream at God over the fact that they'll never be able to hold their child again? You've never had your house repossessed and felt like a complete failure to your family. You've never been raped. You've never had your father beheaded on a beach in Libya. Do you think blind people haven't feel alienated from the sighted world? And Deaf people? And people with severe cerebral palsy? Do you think people in wheelchairs don't wish they could dance? And on and on.

Everybody wants to be normal. We all have conditions that we can't change. Everybody feels alienated to some degree or another, and rejected, and stigmatized, and beat up for no good reason, and abandoned by God, and alone in the universe.

Bob Dylan has a line in one his songs, "Idiot Wind:"  "You'll never know the I hurt I suffered, Nor the pain I've had to rise above, And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of live, and it makes me feel so sorry." It's just the human condition.

We all have crosses to bear. Whatever our crosses are, Church teaching still applies to all of us. The Church teaches us how to bear our crosses - whatever they are.

 

Excuse my inserting myself but I think Aragon's point ​was not that our suffering is any different in its base nature than the suffering of anyone else. Suffering is suffering, right? And yet, I do believe there are different kinds of suffering and that they are experienced differently. That aside, the point is not that we suffer in a different or greater or lesser way than any other person. The point is that you wouldn't tell a mother who has lost a child how to grieve, how to feel, how to speak. You would listen to her and show her kindness and compassion and not assume to know any more than she does what it is like to lose a child. It's disrespectful, prideful, and ultimately extremely frustrating when (again) well-meaning straight Catholics try to tell us how we feel, how we exist, and what we experience. Instead of listening, we're told constantly that we need to hush up and move on. This gives the impression of a church who not only doesn't care to learn how to better imitate Christ to His suffering children, but also of a church who doesn't understand the Church. Make sense?

 

​And how do you think the straight people who do things the right and orderly way feel when they go to bed alone and don't see that changing, partialy because instead of getting backup from their fellow Catholics they get opposition and snark?  That's an even bigger injustice.  Yet they don't turn pagan.

Catch my drift?

WHOA. You can't be serious right now. I go to bed alone. Every night, I go to bed alone. I cannot help my sexual desires; they are what they are. As much as you cannot will yourself to desire a man (morals suspended for the sake of making my point about orientation), I cannot will myself to desire one either. I am faithful to the Church and to her teachings. I AM living rightly according to the law -- not that it's any of your business. And THIS is the kind of response I deal with. THIS is the kind of attitude I'm met with EVERY SINGLE DAY. How is your "injustice" any different than mine? Please, do explain.​

 

​From 2 Corinthians 11:

16 Once more I appeal to you, let none of you think me vain; or, if it must be so, give me a hearing in spite of my vanity, and let me boast a little in my turn. 17 When I boast with such confidence, I am not delivering a message to you from God; it is part of my vanity if you will. 18 If so many others boast of their natural advantages, I must be allowed to boast too.19 You find it easy to be patient with the vanity of others, you who are so full of good sense. 20 Why, you let other people tyrannize over you, prey upon you, take advantage of you, vaunt their power over you, browbeat you![2] 21 I say this without taking credit to myself, I say it as if we had had no power to play such a part; yet in fact—here my vanity speaks—I can claim all that others claim. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descended from Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they Christ’s servants? These are wild words; I am something more. I have toiled harder, spent longer days in prison, been beaten so cruelly, so often looked death in the face. 24 Five times the Jews scourged me, and spared me but one lash in the forty; 25 three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned; I have been shipwrecked three times, I have spent a night and a day as a castaway at sea. 26 What journeys I have undertaken, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, in danger from my own people, in danger from the Gentiles; danger in cities; danger in the wilderness, danger in the sea, danger among false brethren! 27 I have met with toil and weariness, so often been sleepless, hungry and thirsty; so often denied myself food, gone cold and naked. 28 And all this, over and above something else which I do not count; I mean the burden I carry every day, my anxious care for all the churches; 29 does anyone feel a scruple? I share it; is anyone’s conscience hurt? I am ablaze with indignation. 30 If I must needs boast, I will boast of the things which humiliate me; 31 the God who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, blessed be his name for ever, knows that I am telling the truth.

 

So has Paul shared your suffering? Yes and no. He was not a homosexual, I would think. But of course he suffered. The point is not to compare how one suffers, nor even the extent of that suffering, but the extent to which he conformed his suffering to Christ. He suffered for the Church, and for his own sanctification. And in that sense, in the sense of Christ's suffering becoming our victory over evil and suffering itself, pain is transformed into an opportunity for our own sanctification. Our own ability to become like Christ.

Of course your experience is important. But it is not important in and of itself, or because it is yours, or because it is 'who you are'. It is important only because you can offer it to God, and by so doing conform yourself to His will. We must be prepared to give up everything for him. Every bit of ourselves, whether it is our talents or our temptations or our idiosyncrasies, our entire being. It exists and it matters only when we offer it to God.

So if you are affected by homosexuality, and if you are a faithful Catholic, yes you will suffer. Of course you will suffer. You will suffer with Christ and you can be sanctified for it.

​I don't think anyone has denied, here or anyplace else we've discussed this on phatmass, that suffering is not redemptive. We get it. But suffering being redemptive has no bearing on how we treat each other. We shouldn't continue in ignorance and lacking compassion so that others can suffer more for the sake of their eternal souls. Christ commands us to be compassionate. I would doubt Christ would encourage anyone to remain ignorant. I doubt Christ would look at those (well-meaning, straight) people who tell me they know better than me about being gay and say, "Well done."

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PhuturePriest

WHOA. You can't be serious right now. I go to bed alone. Every night, I go to bed alone. I cannot help my sexual desires; they are what they are. As much as you cannot will yourself to desire a man (morals suspended for the sake of making my point about orientation), I cannot will myself to desire one either. I am faithful to the Church and to her teachings. I AM living rightly according to the law -- not that it's any of your business. And THIS is the kind of response I deal with. THIS is the kind of attitude I'm met with EVERY SINGLE DAY. How is your "injustice" any different than mine? Please, do explain.​

​I may be wrong, but I don't think Norseman meant that you don't live rightly according to the law, merely that he does too and it's hard for him as well. We'll have to wait for him to clarify on that, though.

As for the injustice, his point may have been that a single straight person who desires to get married but is single may feel despair and sadness, because even though they can get married in accordance with the Church, they can't find anyone willing to marry them.

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​And how do you think the straight people who do things the right and orderly way feel when they go to bed alone and don't see that changing, partialy because instead of getting backup from their fellow Catholics they get opposition and snark?  That's an even bigger injustice.  Yet they don't turn pagan.

Catch my drift?

Consider that you (that is, our hypothetical person doing everything right [let's just ignore the problems here]) still have the hope that someday, maybe, you will be able to fulfill that desire. How exactly is that harder than knowing you'll never have that sort of intimacy?  

​I may be wrong, but I don't think Norseman meant that you don't live rightly according to the law, merely that he does too and it's hard for him as well. We'll have to wait for him to clarify on that, though.

As for the injustice, his point may have been that a single straight person who desires to get married but is single may feel despair and sadness, because even though they can get married in accordance with the Church, they can't find anyone willing to marry them.

​Right, but again, see above. They still could. Which is very different than can't

Edited by Amppax
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franciscanheart

I'd also just like to go on the record and say that wanting to be married and not having the opportunity present itself is not an INJUSTICE. Let's get a grip, people.

(I should have put quotes around "injustice" in my post to Norseman. It was an afterthought and then I didn't bother. But the more I sit with it, the more ludicrous it becomes. I couldn't not say something. It's not an injustice.)

Considering such a state (wanting marriage but not getting it) an injustice is saying that you know better than God what is good for your life. 

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Not The Philosopher

I think it's fair to say that, given all the culture war fracas surrounding it, homosexuality is a cross that is sometimes ill understood. There are a lot of people who don't make the distinction between the individual who is grappling with these feelings (often in a vulnerable state) and the activists who make their sexuality into a political statement. Faithful Catholics can often be made to feel like the Church doesn't want them, or is holding them under especial scrutiny.

That doesn't mean that everything gay/ssa/whatever Catholics have to say about homosexuality is beyond criticism. We all need an outside perspective on our lives - and indeed, the fact that we're all Catholics here is a sign that we recognize that. But things can get a bit tone deaf in these discussions.
 

 

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