Historical Christian Support Of Homosexuality?

[Amppax]

In the massive amount of time that I have wasted today, I ran across an article published online that claims that there is evidence of same-sex marriage by the Church: [url="http://anthropologist.livejournal.com/1314574.html"]http://anthropologist.livejournal.com/1314574.html[/url] The article is based off the work of Professor John Boswell at Yale. Here's a quick piece of it:

[quote]Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual. Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).[/quote]

I later ran across this article [url="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/in-the-case-of-john-boswell-4"]http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/in-the-case-of-john-boswell-4[/url] This article is an argument against Boswell's work, accusing it of being revisionist (which I've learned, is just about the worst name you can call a historian). Anyway, just thought I'd share this with everyone, in case they ran across this argument. I'm sticking this in debate table just in case.

[Annie12]

I don't really understand your question but I would say the Pope it guided by the Holy Spirit on these matters. So, I wouldn't put too much thought into this unless you are just trying to learn about factual history.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Annie12

[arfink]

[quote name='Annie12' timestamp='1336787808' post='2429939']
I don't really understand your question but I would say the Pope it guided by the Holy Spirit on these matters. So, I wouldn't put too much thought into this unless you are just trying to learn about factual history.
[/quote]

I'd put some thought into it because if we don't refute these large mouth bass (tards) they'll trample all over us.

Edited May 12, 2012 by arfink

[4588686]

[quote name='Amppax' timestamp='1336777203' post='2429913']
In the massive amount of time that I have wasted today, I ran across an article published online that claims that there is evidence of same-sex marriage by the Church: [url="http://anthropologist.livejournal.com/1314574.html"]http://anthropologis...om/1314574.html[/url] The article is based off the work of Professor John Boswell at Yale. Here's a quick piece of it:



I later ran across this article [url="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/in-the-case-of-john-boswell-4"]http://www.firstthin...-john-boswell-4[/url] This article is an argument against Boswell's work, accusing it of being revisionist (which I've learned, is just about the worst name you can call a historian). Anyway, just thought I'd share this with everyone, in case they ran across this argument. I'm sticking this in debate table just in case.
[/quote]

It doesn't seem like the historian in question ever really established that carnal relationships were permitted. It's really hard to say since so much of theology is post hoc systemic justification for discrete beliefs already in place.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Hasan

[arfink]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1336790524' post='2429950']
It doesn't seem like the historian in question ever really established that carnal relationships were permitted. It's really hard to say since so much of theology is post hoc systemic justification for discrete beliefs already in place.
[/quote]

Your post definitely smacks of "I'm using big words because BIG WORDS!" but I kinda see your point. Assuming I understood you correctly, you are meaning that theology as a whole (or perhaps just this particular guy?) is just looking back at the past to find justifications for what we already want to believe?

[SaintOlaf]

I find it interesting that there is this need for the homosexual groups to try to revise their own way into acceptance b the Church. Is it so important for them to appear to have the approval of the Catholic church? I just wish I had the courage to speak up a little more, and worry less about what a friend thinks of me when I defend my Church.

[cappie]

I have no doubt that gay relationships go back to long before there was a Judeo-Christian faith, but I have a hard time believing that the medieval Christian Church openly accepted and celebrated such relationships.

John Boswell's work is thoughtfully reviewed by Richard Cooper:

[url="http://www.ualberta.ca/~di/csh/csh12/Boswell.html"]http://www.ualberta.ca/~di/csh/csh12/Boswell.html[/url]

[arfink]

I can understand is why people want to have their favorite sin validated by the Church. Yet, I find it amusing that people with SSA are way more vehement about it than, say, people who like watching porn. Or really any other kind of sinful action.

We can prove that people have been making and using porn since practically the dawn of time, or at least as far back as our archeology can take us. And yet we don't assume that makes porn OK. Well, maybe some people do.

Or for a more obvious take: We know people have been murdering each other forever too. In fact, we know of some clergy who either murdered people or requested hits to be done by someone else. That doesn't mean the Church is somehow crazy for rejecting murder nowadays. It just means some clergyman was off his rocker back in the 10th century or whatever.

Or we could look at any of the innumerable heresies supported by Catholic priests over the years.

I suspect that, if there is documented proof of a "rite of same-sex marriage," that it was probably some off-the-rocker clergyman in the 10th century. Lol.

[Winchester]

Historicial revision really only upsets the people who got history wrong in the first place. The official narrative should not be challenged, citizen!


Nonetheless, I'd have to see substantial proof, and having read long treatises about a particular stained glass window with the Sun in it in a cathedral as proof that Catholics are pagan sun worshippers (It's an old photo with the Holy Spirit surrounded by a sunbursty-type thingy), I will need more than an icon showing saints as presumption of a wedding to do it.

I would not be surprised to see some churches performing such rites--dissent is a common enough occurrence.

If it were approved of by the Magistereum, we'd still have it around as a Sacrament.

[cappie]

Hostiensis, Henricus de Segusio (or Segusia) was the most important and brilliant canonist of the thirteenth century. His work had great influence on the development of canonical jurisprudence and was used extensively by later jurists.

in a medieval canonical treatise, the Summa Aurea by Hostiensis (d. 1270), wherein the great lawyer paused, as it happens, to point out (at the risk of preaching to an audience who took such a truth for granted) that marriage can only exist between a man and woman, and one of each at that. How ironic that words penned by a canonist 750 years ago are more helpful to us today than they were to their original audience! Of course, Hostiensis went on to discuss other canonical aspects of marriage, but his brief observations that marriage is possible only between one man and one woman are, I think, useful to us who, many centuries later, are defending marriage against an appalling redefinition.

Preserving the clipped prose typical of medieval canonistics and omitting citations, Here is offered a rough rendering of Hostiensis' thirteenth century text on marriage.

"What marriage is. The conjoining of a man and a woman holding to an individual manner of life; a mutual sharing with divine and human aspects. Marriage is between a man and a woman; two of the same sex cannot be married. For, in the beginning they were not created two men nor two women, but first a man and then a woman. A wedding therefore that is not a commingling of the sexes would not have within itself a sacrament of Christ and the Church. Marriage is also spoken of as being between a man and a woman in the singular, and not of men and women in the plural, for no one man can wed several women, nor can one woman wed several men."

Henricus de Segusio (Cdl. Hostiensis, c. 1200-1270), Summa Aurae [1253] una cum summariis et adnotationibus Nicolai Superantii (Neudruck der Ausgabe Lyon, 1537 / Scientia Aalen, 1962) 194 bis (b).

[Amppax]

More on this [url="http://jimmyakin.com/2012/05/was-same-sex-marriage-a-christian-rite.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jimmyakin%2FHPRf+%28JIMMY+AKIN.ORG%29"]http://jimmyakin.com/2012/05/was-same-sex-marriage-a-christian-rite.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jimmyakin%2FHPRf+%28JIMMY+AKIN.ORG%29[/url]

[Skinzo]

This has been kicked around before. All Boswell found was certain ceremonies which blessed "brotherhoods".
There is no evidence whatever that these ceremonies were same sex marriages in any sense. Boswell was himself homosexual so let's realize he had a bias. He once argued that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not for immorality but for being inhospitable to strangers!
What he found and tries to push as "gay marriage" pertains to certain ceremonies in the Eastern churches. This article is a pretty good discussion I think:

[url="http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1294-viscuso"]http://www.newoxford...id=1294-viscuso[/url]

S.

Edited May 13, 2012 by Skinzo

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

[quote name='SaintOlaf' timestamp='1336796547' post='2429987']
I find it interesting that there is this need for the homosexual groups to try to revise their own way into acceptance b the Church. Is it so important for them to appear to have the approval of the Catholic church? I just wish I had the courage to speak up a little more, and worry less about what a friend thinks of me when I defend my Church.
[/quote]

Pray often even daily for that courage Olaf and it shall be granted. Courage @ the gates of hell iz impossible without staying close to Jesus. I just fled from the ghetto where i lived and faught for for 6 years. Unsure why, but probably coz i didn't ask for miraculous courage, which i had once before and confronted a gang of late teens bashing somone out the front of the flats without violence.

Edited May 13, 2012 by Tab'le Du'Bah-Rye

[4588686]

[quote name='arfink' timestamp='1336791858' post='2429961']
Your post definitely smacks of "I'm using big words because BIG WORDS!" [/QUOTE]

The biggest word in that post was 'justification' There were really no words there that should not have been covered in middle or high school. The one exception could be 'ad hoc' which is Latin but it's in such common usage that I thought it was fair game. I'm really not sure what exactly you're point here is except attempting to score a jab against me.

[QUOTE] but I kinda see your point. Assuming I understood you correctly, you are meaning that theology as a whole (or perhaps just this particular guy?) is just looking back at the past to find justifications for what we already want to believe?
[/quote]

I'm saying that theology, generally speaking, is the process of providing system level justifications or explanations of particular beliefs that are already in place. The belief that Christ was God made man preceded any of the particular councils. But the councils and various theologians provided a system level justification for how Jesus could be God and man and how this all fits into the Christian metaphysics.

[fides' Jack]

[quote name='Skinzo' timestamp='1336894084' post='2430178']
This has been kicked around before. All Boswell found was certain ceremonies which blessed "brotherhoods".
There is no evidence whatever that these ceremonies were same sex marriages in any sense. Boswell was himself homosexual so let's realize he had a bias. He once argued that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not for immorality but for being inhospitable to strangers!
What he found and tries to push as "gay marriage" pertains to certain ceremonies in the Eastern churches. This article is a pretty good discussion I think:

[url="http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1294-viscuso"]http://www.newoxford...id=1294-viscuso[/url]

S.
[/quote]

Yeah, I was wondering after reading some of the text if the supposed "marriage rite" was really more of a blessing rite that blessed what we would now think of as Mormon missionaries - 2 at a time to every door.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='fides' Jack' timestamp='1337026594' post='2430574']
Yeah, I was wondering after reading some of the text if the supposed "marriage rite" was really more of a blessing rite that blessed what we would now think of as Mormon missionaries - 2 at a time to every door.
[/quote]

What makes it more clear is a medieval text on the subject from a 13th century canon lawyer named Hostiensis which was cited earlier in this thread by Cappie. That removes all doubts.

S.

[Socrates]

From my readings on the subject, the ceremony in question was essentially a "blood brother" type thing to cement peace between warring nobles. There is zero evidence that it had anything to do with homosexuality, or was considered equivalent to marriage.

This is just desperate modern "gay rights" propaganda, rather than real scholarship.

[4588686]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1337048395' post='2430712']
From my readings on the subject, the ceremony in question was essentially a "blood brother" type thing to cement peace between warring nobles. There is zero evidence that it had anything to do with homosexuality, or was considered equivalent to marriage.

This is just desperate modern "gay rights" propaganda, rather than real scholarship.
[/quote]

Just because it's wrong doesn't make it propaganda.

[Skinzo]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1337056924' post='2430782']
Just because it's wrong doesn't make it propaganda.
[/quote]

Well, just because it's propaganda doesn't make it right either.
Propaganda defined: "[b]Propaganda[/b] is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position"
Sounds like it fits to me.
S.

Edited May 15, 2012 by Skinzo

[4588686]

[quote name='Skinzo' timestamp='1337079805' post='2430823']
Well, just because it's propaganda doesn't make it right either.
Propaganda defined: "[b]Propaganda[/b] is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position"
Sounds like it fits to me.
S.
[/quote]

Ok. Then everything is propaganda. Including your post. The literal definition of propaganda is very broad. The term is commonly used with a more narrow definition and Socrates' contrast makes clear that he was using the more narrow meaning. That is that it is a pure contrivance aimed at influencing others.