Tuesday, January 27, 2015

"The Strange Notion of 'Gay Celibacy'”

Daniel Mattson, "The Strange Notion of 'Gay Celibacy'” (Crisis, January 26, 2015). For the record.

[Hat tip to JM]

6 comments:

Son of Ya'Kov said...

Wither a Faithful believing Catholic struggling with same sex attraction wishes to call him or herself "gay" or SSA or whatever is a matter of personal preference.

What is important is they believe in the Moral Law and by Grace try to live it.

But I appreciate the author making a correct distinction between Chastity vs Celibacy. Popular culture often uses those terms equivocally.

JFM said...

Of course it is a matter of personal preference. It is also a bad idea. This essay makes that pretty clear. For the 100th time, "gay" suggests identity, and our sexual preferences should not be our identity. What is important is that we live moral lives and that we speak the truth in a way that helps others do so. I get Lesbians and people who naively equate male and female sex drives as the same when the muddle this subject, but straight Catholic men ought to know better. "Gay Catholic" as a phrase does not help a confused world get the picture. Its advocates, and soundbites like the one from our imprudent Pope Francis, do not help, aside form winning applause from Rolling Stone and CNN. They hurt. They hurt people trying to live moral lives by making a damnable lifestyle appear like it is no big deal or something that can be flirted with like heterosexual promiscuity. . What a scam. As someone who has lost friends to the gay scene, I find it a very big deal. Austin Ruse is 100 percent right here, since he is concerned about moral clarity, not moral coddling. Gay is not good. That is the bottom line. Even if people searching for identity and affirmation chafe at the fact. No, we should not harp on negatives, but our leaders should strikes notes that don't push us in that direction. Right now, a bunch of prolix god talk is forcing lay Catholics to have to revisit themes leaders seem to throw into question, making them seem like meanies. Good times!

Son of Ya'Kov said...

@jFM

You are giving me an argument here?

Thank you & God bless you. I am very grateful.


>Of course it is a matter of personal preference. It is also a bad idea. This essay makes that pretty clear. For the 100th time, "gay" suggests identity, and our sexual preferences should not be our identity.

It is more accurate to say it's not one's identity in essence. It does describe an accident of their being. That is they have an inverted sexual orientation that compels them to be attracted to the wrong sex.


I have brown hair with some gray. My children have autism. These are accidents of our being but it is not what we are. These identify accidents we have not who we are as persons in essence.

Thus I don't see what is wrong with a Catholic identifying as Gay in that manner. SSA or Gay. There really is no difference.

The Problem is anti-Catholic gays if you tell them a homosexual disposition is an objective disorder this almost always provokes the response "So I am a disorder?".

They do see themselves as Gay in essence as part of their essential human nature. That is wrong.

>What is important is that we live moral lives and that we speak the truth in a way that helps others do so.

I agree but I must insist Ruse did a bad job of it. Others who come after him might be able to pick up the slack.

>Gay Catholic" as a phrase does not help a confused world get the picture. Its advocates, and soundbites like the one from our imprudent Pope Francis, do not help, aside form winning applause from Rolling Stone and CNN. They hurt.

I don't agree on practical grounds. Pretty much the whole media is sound bite driven and you can't really convey a deep understanding of truth in a sound bite.

Francis was talking about a hypothetical SSA priest who was trying to live the Gospel. Pope Benedict once spoke of a Male Prostitute using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS as someone showing the beginnings of a conscience and concern for others. But the sound bite media claimed he "gave the Green light for condom use".

If you are hoping for this Pope or the next to anticipate when the media is going to lie like Satan and refrain from talking then the Popes are just going to have to hide in the Vatican and never go out. It's not worth it.

>Austin Ruse is 100 percent right here, since he is concerned about moral clarity,

He failed. All he did was convince non-believers he had it in for even faithful gay Catholics who followed Church teaching.

Ask Damon Linker. Ruse was obviously not clear enough for him. Maggie Gallagher a faithful Catholic didn't think so either.

> not moral coddling.

I don't know what that is? If it is described by the adjective "moral" then it must be good.

>Gay is not good.

That is true and false. "O Happy Fall or necessary sin of Adam that occasioned so great a Redemption".

In essence a homosexual orientation is not good anymore than a genetic disposition to drink. But it is part of the goodness of God to allow evil to bring good out of it. So it can be good in another sense.

Ruse is just waring against the Synod midterm report and using these two innocent Catholics as proxy punching bags because of superficial similarirty. That is not helpful nor does it teach any truth. It's just odious.

Of course the Problem with the Synod's midterm report wasn't so much it calling a gay sexual orientation a "gift'. It was the fact it didn't explain what it meant by that.

Cheers.

Anon. II said...

BenYeeehaw,

And you have the nerve to suggest that others here have been influenced by media sound bites?

I can't believe what you're saying here. You must have been sipping that media poison in the kool aid for some time.

What? You put identifying oneself as a "Gay Catholic" on the same level as someone identifying themselves as an "autistic Catholic"? What??? So should others take up the pattern, who struggle with sundry other disordered inclinations and begin calling themselves, say, "masterbating Catholics" or, better, "jack-off Catholics", or "pedophile Catholics" or "pederast Catholics"? All of them, of course, crowned with the glory of entitlement to our affirmative-action sympathies?

Just because your hair color is an "accident" and not your essence, or whatever the hell you want to call it, doesn't mean you go around identifying yourself by that accident. "Hi, my name is Ben Yeeehaw, and I'm a graying brown haired OCD blog troll who can't resist pouring out my entrails every chance I get." Please, just keep it to yourself. TMI. TMI. And most people would just rather not know about it. Just identify yourself as a man or woman like every one else, because hopefully that's what you are.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>What? You put identifying oneself as a "Gay Catholic" on the same level as someone identifying themselves as an "autistic Catholic"? What??? So should others take up the pattern, who struggle with sundry other disordered inclinations and begin calling themselves, say, "masterbating Catholics" or, better, "jack-off Catholics", or "pedophile Catholics" or "pederast Catholics"? All of them, of course, crowned with the glory of entitlement to our affirmative-action sympathies?


I take it you never been to or heard ofany meetings in your life where people stand up and say "Hi I am Joe and I am an Alcoholic"?

It is a bit disturbing & strange you
are equating homosexuals with Pedophiles and people who commit self abuse. There is no moral comparison.
A person who commits self abuse can seek marriage if straight. He or she have a lawful outlet to act out sexually. The gay person does not since it is prohibited by the Divine and Natural Law.

A Pedophile & Pederast are a danger to children like a psychopath.
A person with a mere inverted sexuality is neither of these things.

> All of them, of course, crowned with the glory of entitlement to our affirmative-action sympathies?

Might I suggest too you what they are really entitled to is mere Christian charity?

Why is that wrong?

Btw I meant it when I said I won't attack others here personally.

Why the hostility?

JM said...

Of course a gay who practices sex IS a threat to his partner, consensual though the partner is. In spiritual as well as physical terms. Which is what makes it a less than neutral thing. Sin is social in this case.