On the one hand, many moderns have embraced an autonomous view of reality: “I can do what I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” According to such relativism, homosexual acts are perfectly legitimate so long as they are between two consenting adults. In stark reaction to such subjectivism, many others embrace a moralism that easily turns venomous when it vilifies and demonizes: “Homosexuality is wrong because God said so” (and nothing more). The distinction between the homosexual condition and homosexual acts, if added at all, is added as an afterthought. This view, opposite that of autonomy, could be termed heteronomy, because God’s law is understood to be extrinsically and somewhat arbitrarily placed upon man with a seeming lack of concern for actual experience of the persons involved.
Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (art. 41), distinguishes the Catholic moral outlook from these two erroneous positions. He labels the Catholic view a “participated theonomy.” If for autonomy there is no law, and if for heteronomy the law is to be followed because God said so, for participated theonomy the moral law is something friendly to our being, something built for our genuine fulfillment and for our authentic freedom. The law is not true because God commanded it; rather, God commands it because it is true. When we use our free will to align our lives with this truth, we possess authentic freedom.
What does this mean for the debate on homosexuality? It means that the truth about human sexuality is something that ultimately offers genuine freedom to the homosexual person, helping him to escape the slavery to his passions that resulted from the misuse of his free will. This is a truth that, with true compassion, reaches out to the homosexual person in his desperation. Although that person may not be aware of it, he is crying out for the truth. When the response from our culture is heteronomous and mean-spirited, he recoils, and takes false comfort in a worldview that espouses autonomy. The Church and society must offer the truth, and offer it in the right way, the way of participatory theonomy.
A Pastoral Context: Participatory Theonomy
It won’t do to start with a good logical argument, using the data of reason and revelation. Such arguments will occupy a central position in the overall Catholic approach, this article included, but only after a compassionate pastoral approach has laid the proper foundation. As Frank Sheed said somewhere, “Win an argument, lose a convert.” We must start with the human person in his existential experience. [1] The first way to do that is to be very careful with our terminology. Let us never use the word “homosexual” as if it defines a person. Let us use either that phrase “person with a homosexual orientation,” or “the homosexual person.” [2] To always use the word “person” emphasizes that we are speaking about someone who possesses an inviolable dignity. Even more importantly, let us never use the word “gay” in reference to a homosexual person. No one is gay. “Gay” is the (unfortunate) word foisted upon us for those who have chosen a particular lifestyle. Such a choice entails a misuse of one’s freedom, a misuse that puts the person in a desperate situation. There are ways out of this desperation—no one is constituted as “gay.”
A pastoral approach recognizes that “desperation” is precisely at the heart of the homosexual person’s experience. Often that desperation is hidden behind the cries of liberation of those who, misled by the gay rights movement, have “come out.” Often it is hidden by the false claims of that movement that “gay is normal” and by political activism. [3] We could respond to that boldness in kind, but far better to take the high road and see it instead as a cry for help.
Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg has shown how homosexual attraction is not just a variant on heterosexual attraction. It is something of a different kind, accompanied by symptoms of depression, jealousy and restlessness. [4] There is no evidence whatsoever that homosexuality is caused genetically, though there could be a genetic predisposition toward homosexuality. As Christopher Wolfe has noted, “. . . if [homosexuality] really were genetic, it would have almost certainly died out, or at least be continually declining. Homosexuals reproduce at much lower levels than the general population . . . . So if homosexuality were a genetic trait . . . it would be found in a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.” And, “. . . if homosexuality were genetic, then in all sets of identical twins where one was homosexual, the other would be, too.” [5] On the other hand, one cannot prove that the orientation is caused environmentally, but all the evidence points in that direction. [6]
That evidence turns out to be good news, freeing news. For with the right help, many people can repair their orientation, fully or to some degree. A fine book from Ignatius Press—The Battle for Normality by van den Aardweg—offers a “self-help” method, and an organization called NARTH (National Association for Reparative Therapy for Homosexual Persons) is committed to helping individuals find competent professional help.
There are a good number of theories about environmental causes, theories that have tested positively in clinical practice. These myriad theories all have a slightly different slant to them, but they also hold much in common and are in many ways compatible with one another. [7] At bottom, homosexuality seems to result from fragmentation within the child/father/mother relationship, and the deepest need of the homosexual person is to repair that fragmentation. As Joseph Nicolosi notes: “Realizing the true needs that lie behind our unwanted behaviors, we gain a new understanding . . . the reparative drive—the unconscious attempt to ‘repair’ masculine incompleteness—is the deepest transformative shift . . . [T]he client realizes: ‘I do not really want to have sex with a man. Rather, what I really desire is to heal my masculine identity.'” [8] I want to participate more fully in the meaning-laden nature that has been given to me, and which has sadly been distorted. Participatory theonomy, in other words.
Reparative therapy, however, should in no way be presented as a requirement for the homosexual person. It is an option. What is required is a noble effort to live chastely. Fr. John Harvey founded Courage, a vast network of support groups, precisely to help people in this task. It is important to realize that everyone has difficult struggles in life, and that we need one another to help handle them. We can make a basic distinction between the raw material each of us brings to the moral life, and the moral life itself in which we make good or bad choices. All of us are disordered in some way and to some degree in our “raw material”—sometimes psychologically, sometimes physically, sometimes spiritually. [9] These constitute objective disorders, one of which is the homosexual inclination. [10]
We are welcome to make prudent decisions about repairing our damaged raw materials, whether through therapy or medical intervention. But we all are aware that we cannot, this side of the Eschaton, somehow psychotherapeutically and medically engineer perfect raw material. That is a utopian illusion. We do well to mediate on St. Paul’s thankfulness to God for giving him a “thorn in his flesh” that made him constantly aware of his utter dependence on God. Then, we can take our damaged raw materials, make prudent decisions about which ones to repair, and live with the others.
In a certain sense, this perspective puts everyone on an even playing field. The homosexual person does not have a disorder that puts him in a separate category from other fragile and finite human beings. [11] We all have our respective crosses to bear—we all suffer from the primal disorder of concupiscence—and we all have the capacity to do as we ought, particularly with the grace of Christ. [12] “What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behavior of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable.” [13]
Put another way, we really are free. This is not a “pretend” freedom or a “toy” freedom but the genuine article. A “let’s pretend” freedom would give us the nice feeling that we really do make some free choices, about what to eat and what to wear, for instance, but that when something really challenging is at stake we’re not really free. We could not be truly responsible for our actions, since the complexity of life renders such responsibility impossible.
From the opposite angle, when a large-scale challenge comes our way, the great gift of freedom cries out to be used, and used properly. Our human dignity comes from the proper use of our freedom (authentic freedom), especially in the midst of the more staggering challenges of our lives. These challenges must be faced with the damaged raw materials of our lives—homosexuality being one such instance. But regardless of the challenge, we find our true dignity in the midst of meeting it, right in the midst of that noble effort in aligning our lives with the natural law and with God’s revelation.
The next part of this article deals respectively with those two sources of truth. Both are eminently reasonable and sensible—friendly to our being—in the personalist perspective of participatory theonomy outlined here. Apart from that perspective, the arguments that follow will appear as extrinsic, heteronomous impositions that destroy the uniqueness of the individual person. Within that personalist perspective, these arguments can play an integral role in both reparative therapy and living chastely.
The Natural Law
In the contemporary debates on homosexuality, many are tempted to start with an appeal to divine revelation, whether understood from a Catholic or a Protestant perspective. But if you start there, you will rightly be criticized for “pushing your religion down someone’s throat,” which is disallowed in a political order like ours that prizes religious liberty. We are free to practice any religion or no religion, but we cannot violate the natural law, that moral law to which we are co-natured and which is accessible to reason. That is, we participate in this natural truth intuitively, and it makes eminent sense.
One hallmark of the Catholic tradition is that it prizes such arguments that take place on the level of reason alone. The important principle at work here, enunciated best by St. Thomas Aquinas, is that grace does not cancel out nature, but presupposes and perfects it. The data of revelation then both reaffirms the natural argument and adds additional data to it. That additional data, derived from the twin sources of revelation (Tradition and Scripture), is impressive and enriching, and fills in for Christians the full rationale for the teaching against homosexual acts. But even without that data, a good argument can be made based on the natural law.
Many people claim that “you can’t legislate morality.” A bumper sticker says, “Get your laws off my body.” However, our nation’s founding documents appeal to the natural law as the cornerstone of our political order (“nature and nature’s God”; “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .”). We want lots of diversity in the U.S., but a fundamental unity on the principles of the natural law. “In God We Trust” is not foisting a religion on anyone, but rather reminding us that God has given us natures and the natural law for their flourishing. All good civil laws are based on the natural law. Bad laws are based on a different moral system, like relativism or utilitarianism. Either way, we legislate morality; the only question is which morality ought to be legislated. The new law allowing “civil unions” in Vermont is not neutral. It amounts to legislating a very specific moral code—sheer relativism.
What exactly is the natural law argument against homosexual behavior? A number of points must be kept in mind. First, we must emphasize that the natural law is, in a sense, within us. It is not an extrinsic imposition. Rather, it is a truth placed in our being by the Creator, allowing us to participate in the wise plan of the Creator—hence, “participatory theonomy.” Second, we shouldn’t think of the natural law as first and foremost identical to our biological laws. The “nature” in natural law is our human nature. The laws of our biological nature turn out to be very significant in grasping the natural law, but they are not the sum total of the natural law. If they were, we would be reduced to animals who must follow their biological instincts. Instead, the natural law makes use of biological laws, but it personalizes them, in that it sees the deep personal meaning that is hidden in our biology. The encyclical Veritatis Splendor speaks of anticipatory signs and rational indications inhering in our biology. [14] As persons, we are capable of “mining” this deep personal meaning that inheres in the body. Animals can’t do this, which is one reason we can euthanize animals—they can’t discover and freely align themselves with the deep personal meaning that lies within their “biological clock.” Human persons can. We discover our dignity in so doing. That is why the slogan “death with dignity” is so inappropriate.
It is just as inappropriate for the homosexual person to “do what he wants with his body.” The body speaks a language that we must listen to; we either live the truth or live a lie. The human generative faculties are not built for homosexual types of acts, and such acts cause serious disease. This gives us a big hint, [15] written on our biological nature, that there is a profound meaning to our biological heterosexuality. Personal meaning is bound up with biological facticity—an integralist view of the person as opposed to a separatist view. The integralist view sees the person as a unity of body and spirit, whereas the separatist view sees the person as standing over and against the body, the body representing raw material that can be manipulated according to the individual dictate. According to the separatist view, I can treat the body just as I see fit—no transcendent meaning inheres in it.
Our generative faculties carry twin personal and transcendent meanings within them. The language they speak to us is that, if we are to live in accord with our dignity, we must use these faculties to express permanent love (the unitive meaning) and to create children (the procreative meaning)—in short, bonding and babies. Homosexual acts sever this all-important link between the unitive and the procreative meanings. Precisely because of this connection, contraception, adultery and fornication, as well as new birth technologies like surrogate motherhood and artificial insemination, also violate the natural law.
Consider the unitive meaning. When we rule out permanence, we are treating the other as disposable rather than non-substitutable. Only a permanent (as well as exclusive) union befits or is commensurate with the dignity of each spouse. A permanent and exclusive union states boldly that the other is not an object that can be replaced or substituted, but a person of inviolable worth. When a couple makes the commitment of marriage, they say to one another, and their conjugal acts say to each other, “You are irreplaceable to me” and “Only to you will I give my whole self.” Divorce or adultery or serial polygamy, then, stand as statements that the partner isn’t irreplaceable after all. And in so saying, the inviolable dignity of the other is violated.
Why can’t two committed homosexual persons have this permanence? Consider: why is it that in heterosexual marriage, violations of permanence are the exception rather than the rule, while in homosexual partnerships, violations are the rule rather than the exception? This is not to say that heterosexual relationships are immune from such fragmentation; numerous heterosexual persons lead lives just as promiscuous as many homosexual persons. But when heterosexual persons fragment the unitive aspect, they are simultaneously arbitrating against the procreative element, using contraception, or at least acting with a contraceptive mentality, or resorting to abortion. Better for them to say, “We shouldn’t be having babies together, so we shouldn’t be uniting sexually with each other.” Permanence and procreativity go together, heterosexually.
Homosexual acts by their nature arbitrate against the procreative dimension. (Note the natural law argument presented here is just as critical of contraception as it is of homosexuality.) In both cases, the conjugal act is turned into a different kind of act; the generative faculties are used in a way contrary to their natural inextricably connected ends of unity/procreativity. In short, permanence is driven by procreativity. When children are ruled out, the unity of the two turns inward upon itself instead of opening outward. Homosexual relationships do not have the character of permanence because this particular reason or end for permanence is missing. It is true that permanence is a value in and of itself, but it is a value connected to procreativity.
Couples who struggle with infertility are poignantly aware of how intrinsic the procreative dimension is for their own commitment. They are profoundly honest in listening to and responding to the language of the body, and hence are courageous witnesses of that language. Listen to them: they tell us that profound permanent unity, valuable in itself, is connected to children. Some factor from the outside, beyond their control, prevents them from having children. But their permanent unity is a procreative kind of unity, their conjugal acts are procreative kinds of acts. (In this sense, their progeny is procreativity itself.) They could turn to the new birth technologies, but here too they listen to and affirm the language of the body. The conjugal act, profoundly unitive, is a procreative kind of act, and the gift of the child is to be profoundly linked to the spouses’ incarnate gift of self in that conjugal, not merely copulatory, act. Infertile couples can shock us out of our complacency, our tendency to think of the child as a right. They know supremely what we tend to see dimly, that the child is a gift. That’s how God works through human nature, and that nature itself is a gift of the Creator—hence, we say that bodily nature speaks a transcendent language to us. The infertile couple sees this giftedness all the more poignantly through the lens of their pain, and hence more boldly than others they proclaim the truth of participatory theonomy. The homosexual person likewise can profoundly proclaim participatory theonomy: marital friendship is itself a great gift, not a right. The fallen condition—which is the root of all disorders—is said to be somewhat of a felix culpa, a happy fault; the distortions that result from it make us more aware than ever of the giftedness of nature. Our fallenness alerts us to and orients us toward participatory theonomy, the voice of God speaking through nature, a voice deeply respective of our personal dignity.
Data from Divine Revelation
Thus far we have focused on the natural transcendent meanings that inhere in the body, particularly in the generative faculties. Revelation—Scripture and Tradition as interpreted by the Magisterium—takes us a step further by placing the male/female relationship in a liturgical context. A properly ordered heterosexual relationship is a liturgical event because it is a mirror image—a sacrament—of the covenant between God and mankind, between Christ and the Church. Many biblical texts point to this imaging (Hosea; Isaiah 62:4-5; Jeremiah 7:34, 31:31; Psalm 88:26; Mt 9:15; John 3; Ephesians 5:32; Revelation 21:2) The unity of the spouses images God’s permanent and exclusive unity with his people, and the procreativity of the spouses images God’s generosity, particularly the outpouring of his own Trinitarian life into our being (grace). In short, the body speaks the language of the covenant. Since the covenant between God and man culminates in the redemptive work of Christ, sacramentally re-presented in the Eucharist, there is a close reciprocity between marriage and the Eucharist. The Eucharist is marital (God marries his people) and marriage is Eucharistic (a sacrament of the covenant). The language of the body is not only natural, it is also sacramental.
It is due to this profoundly personal sacramental meaning of the body that we find a consistent teaching about homosexuality in the Bible (Gen 3; Gen 19:1-11; Lev 18:22 and 20:13; 1 Cor 6:9; Rm 1:18-32; 1 Tim 1:10) and throughout the Catholic tradition, wherein this teaching is infallibly taught by the ordinary universal episcopal magisterium. But again, homosexual acts are not wrong because of this consistent pattern of teaching; rather, this pattern is consistent precisely because homosexual acts are not friendly to our nature. Our very being partakes in God’s loving plan, and his law, rather than being capricious and heteronomous, reflects that plan. The Judeo-Christian tradition must be articulated through the lens of participatory theonomy.
It is in this context that the arguments of John Boswell and others are best met. They argue that there is no ethical condemnation of homosexual acts in the Bible. Rather, the condemnations must be seen in the light of ritual impurity—homosexuality is condemned because of its use in cultic worship practices, as found in Canaanite religions and then imitated in ancient Israel. The best way to meet Boswell’s argument is to grant for a moment that the Old Testament prohibitions refer to idolatrous worship practices, that homosexual acts are wrong because they are used liturgically in false worship of false gods and goddesses. That’s just the point—homosexual acts are, in a sense, in and of themselves “liturgical” acts, inextricably reflective of idolatry. These acts are wrong precisely because they are “inverted sacraments.” Just as the ethical conduct in an ordered marriage images the covenant, so too the unethical conduct of homosexuality is a false image for the covenant, or images a skewed understanding of man’s relation to God. The reason why sexual practices are used culticly (sacramentally) is precisely because that ordered or disordered ethical activity itself is an image of the true or false relationship between man and God. In response to Boswell, then, we can say that the Old Testament does not condemn ritual usage of homosexuality, leaving other uses to the side. Sexuality speaks a “liturgical” language, and thus to condemn the ritual usage of homosexual acts is to condemn homosexual acts in themselves. Most importantly, the condemnation is not a heteronomous end in itself; it points us, along the route of participatory theonomy, to the full sacramental/liturgical outgrowth of respecting the natural language of the body.
The Societal/Legal Dimension
The homosexual rights movement asks, “Why can’t you just let us do what we—consenting adults—want to do? How does that harm you?” Any criticism of homosexuality is presented as tantamount to unjust discrimination. You are suddenly committing a crime as heinous as racism or sexism. The answer to this objection must be made from within the framework of participatory theonomy.
Although it looks like we are speaking of freely chosen activity between consenting adults, that is only half the picture. Anyone who succumbs to activity contrary to the natural law does not, in a certain sense, really want to do so, and hence he does so “involuntarily,” using that word in the deepest sense. Of course the person has free will, and his act will be voluntary in the sense that it stems from that will. But he is using his free will wrongly, not in accord with his nature. This wrong use is in the context of his disorder—hence, the sense of desperation. He feels he wants to act contrary to nature, but he doesn’t need to; it is not in his best interest as a person; it can’t make him authentically free. That is why we say to our friends, “You don’t really want to do that” right at the moment they are “voluntarily” doing something contrary to their nature as persons. Participatory theonomy shatters the illusion by which we tell ourselves, “Consenting adults can do what they want, as long as its voluntary and as long as they don’t hurt anyone else.” It isn’t authentically free, and it is profoundly harmful.
The rewards society offers to married couples must be seen in this light. As Michael Pakaluk notes: “Because the friendship of marriage results in children, and it is a burden of sorts to raise children, and because society benefits greatly if this is done well, it is usual for society to separate out the friendship of marriage from other friendships, to give it special recognition, and to award it distinctive benefits.” [16] If society were to give similar benefits to homosexual persons, then it would have to give the same benefits to any sets of friends that so desired them! Instead, society tries to protect what is in everyone’s realbest interests.
To grant a special set of rights to homosexual persons would work against those real interests. Crimes violating the legitimate rights of homosexual persons are intolerable. “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 eruptions increase.” [17]
As the saying goes, no one has a right to do what is wrong. “What is wrong” is that which is unfriendly to our nature, that which short-circuits our full participation in the meaning-laden nature given to us as embodied human persons. The homosexual person may initially recoil at the perspective presented here, but that is because he easily confuses human nature with what “feels natural” or what “comes naturally”—in his case, the powerful desire to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same sex. He is only following the cue given by secular culture, which has bombarded him since adolescence with the view that human fulfillment is tied to whatever form of sexual “satisfaction” “comes naturally.” By habitually following what “comes naturally” he has used his free will wrongly, and has become enslaved. The path out of this desperation, toward authentic freedom, comes in participating in the caring plan that God has built into his nature, and participation made possible by the shining grace of Christ who has “set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence.” [18]
[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Catholic Dossier (March/April 2001) and was first posted at CWR on September 22, 2017.]
ENDNOTES:
[1] The strategy is analogous to that of the pro-life organization CareNet. Their research found that the excellent arguments offered by the pro-life cause for the personhood of the human fetus did not meet the existential situation of many women considering abortion, who perceived the unborn child, despite his personhood, to be a threat to their lives.
[2] This is the suggestion of Fr. John Harvey, a genuine modern-day hero when it comes to genuine care for homosexual persons. His most recent book is The Truth About Homosexuality: The Cry of the Faithful (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996).
[3] In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association reversed its designation of homosexuality as a disorder, under pressure from the National Gay Task Force. See Elizabeth Moberly, “Homosexuality and Hope,” First Things 71 (March 1997), 30-33, at 30.
[4] William Main, “Gay But Unhappy,” Crisis (March 1990), 32-37, at 36. This is an excellent summary of van den Aardweg’s insights. His most accessible book for the laymen is Homosexuality and Hope (Ann Arbor: Servant Books).
[5] World, May 20, 2000, 51-54. See the work of Jeffrey Satinover,Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), especially chapter 5 on twins.
[6] Jeffrey Satinover, “The Biology of Homosexuality: Science or Politics?” in Christopher Wolfe, ed., Homosexuality and American Public Life (Dallas: Spence, 1999), 3-61.
[7] See Fr. John Harvey, The Truth About Homosexuality, chapter 4, for an excellent overview of the many practitioners.
[8] “The Cause and Treatment of Homosexuality,” Catholic World Report (July, 1997), 51-52.
[9] See the excellent chapter in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity called “Morality and Psychoanalysis.”
[10] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, no. 11. Hereafter PC.
[11] This realization might play an important role in reparative therapy itself, as a central antidote to the sense of “self-pity-become-neurotically habitual” that some theorize is one of the central causes of the disorder. See Main, “Gay But Unhappy.”
[12] PC, no. 11.
[13] PC, no. 11.
[14] See Veritatis Splendor, nos. 47-53, the pope’s response to those theologians who claim that Catholic teaching regarding sexual morality succumbs to a brute biologism whereby moral laws are automatically spun out of mere biological laws. The heart of Catholic moral teaching does not fallaciously deduce a moral “ought” from only a biological “is.”
[15] As Richard John Neuhaus notes (“Love, No Matter What,” in Wolfe,Homosexuality, p. 245), most people are disgusted, in an intuitive and pre-articulate way, by “what active homosexuals do.” So too are many among the 2 percent of the population that is homosexually oriented. (The 10 percent figure from the earlier Kinsey Report was fallacious.)
[16] “The Price of Same-Sex Union,” Catholic World Report (July, 1997), 49. Also see Family, Marriage and “De Facto” Unions, Pontifical Council for the Family (2000).
[17] PC, no. 10.
[18] VS, no. 103.
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The author adeptly knowledgeable of Aquinas on the intuitive understanding of natural law, the dynamic of free will and sexual predilection offers a completely honest, compassionate response to the divisive damaging phenomenon of homosexuality within the Church and without. An essay well worth studying.
What a wonderful essay. I am going to keep it and study it over and over, so that the reasoning sinks in. Thank you Professor Lowery.
Mark Lowery: “If for autonomy there is no law, and if for heteronomy the law is to be followed because God said so, for participated theonomy the moral law is something friendly to our being, something built for our genuine fulfillment and for our authentic freedom.”
I think you make a false dichotomy between heteronomy and participated theonomy.
It is correct that we must follow the law because God said so. This a perfectly true and to imply that this is somehow false or short of the truth is wrong.
Following the law because God said so does not preclude the truth that God said so because it is good, true and beautiful. If we are unable to ascertain the “why” of God’s decree, it is sufficient that we do so simply because God said so if we truly believe that God is true, good and beautiful for it then follows that what ever God says so must be true, good and beautiful.
It’s the very same distinction between heteronomy and participated theonomy made by JPII in Veritatis Splendor: “Hence obedience to God is not, as some would believe, a heteronomy, as if the moral life were subject to the will of something all-powerful, absolute, ex- traneous to man and intolerant of his freedom. If in fact a heteronomy of morality were to mean a denial of man’s self-determination or the imposition of norms unrelated to his good, this would be in contradiction to the Revelation of the Covenant and of the redemptive Incarnation. Such a heteronomy would be nothing but a form of alienation, contrary to divine wisdom and to the dignity of the human person.” (41)
And then: “Others speak, and rightly so, of theonomy, or participated theonomy, since man’s free obedience to God’s law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God’s wisdom and providence. By forbidding man to “eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, God makes it clear that man does not originally possess such “knowledge” as something properly his own, but only participates in it by the light of natural reason and of Divine Revelation, which manifest to him the requirements and the promptings of eternal wisdom. Law must therefore be considered an expression of divine wisdom: by submitting to the law, freedom submits to the truth of creation.”
To put it other (my) terms: it’s the difference between Allah and the Triune God.
I think the point in VS that you included is important. IF in fact a heteronomy of morality were to mean ……
But I don’t think heteronomy is such. Which is why JPII starts with IF.
Doing the will of God because God says so is an acknowledgement of His Omniscience and Omnibenevolence.
We may not understand to the full extend the meaning of God’s command, we do it anyway. Even were we never to understand God’s command, we do it if we accept His Self-revelation in Scripture and in the Church.
It’s like Jesus’ command to be like little children – trusting and obeying always.
Does God give us the why? Yes, but not always fully.
Think of Job. God answered his whys not with an explanation but by calling to mind the splendour of creation.
God does say do this and gives the why. But even when we can’t understand the why, we do.
Otherwise we end up like Father Martin who claims that non-reception of the law permits disobedience.
The truth does not require exhaustive explanation in order to be believed. When God says so, we believe first then seek to apply the truth through understanding, which should then be our lifelong pursuit.
And could we reduce the whole discussion to the realization that, “The parts don’t fit”?
Judy,
Yes, farmers, electricians, plumbers & mechanics understand the concept of parts not fitting together.
🙂
Yes, and physiologists understand that the distal bowel has an excretory function,
not a receptive function.
MarcAlan, it might be that the point is not that heteronomy precludes, but that it does not ‘include’….and that is what participated theonomy does, it includes, both the Law Itself and the Purpose of the Law. So It is done because Love has Said to Love (do/keep the Law) for the purpose of being authentic and free – “If you love Me, Keep My Law…if you would be My friend, Keep/do My Law”. It is not either/or but both/and – one must love/obey what Love Commands FOR the reason/s Love Commands. It is not enough to simply obey, obeying is more than doing, it is being; being Triune Love.
Maybe ‘if autonomy has no Law; “if” heteronomy has only the Lawgiver and His Law, the participated theonomy must needs have the Lawgiver with His Law in Trinitarian Communio with the person’???
Love says, ‘do as they say, for when you hear them, you hear Me, and not only Me, but the Father who sent Me and the Holy Spirit whom the Father and I send, if you refuse to hear them, you refuse to hear Us’…[cf Mt 23:1ff; Lk 10:16; Jn 15-17]
Read this essay in its original publication (Catholic Dossier, 2001). A getting-on-the-right-track read then, remains so.
NOTE: The journal, C.D., was well thought-out,designed. Sad to have seen its cessation.
No one like a war, but you might be stating one. If God created “natural order” designated for one man and one woman, then why did he create homosexuals? You have a concern with the use of the word Gay. As I was growing up I did not encounter the word homosexual until they stopped referring to them as queers. You say “Homosexuality is wrong because God said so”. Stop putting words in God’s mouth.
The president recently blind sided the DOD by issuing an executive order instructing the Pentagon Generals to “immediately” remove transsexuals from the military. When I worked in the Naval Bureau of Personnel in the 1960s I was responsible for processing departing sailors with less than desirable discharges. One day I took note of a batch of discharge “500” cards that contained the word “undesirable” as reason for discharge. I asked my commanding officer what the term referred to? He said queers! I asked how they would find that status when applying for a job? He said very difficult. I said we are going backwards! He walked away without another word.
My wife asked are we really going backwards? I told her she only had to look at two people… President Trump and Judge Roy Moore.
Did you read the essay? Because it states:
Moving on…
I cannot imagine “choosing” homosexuality for myself. The homosexuals I know, not queers, insist they are part of our dogma. They dismiss any argument in opposition. The acts of homosexuals is repulsively and repugnant. I would not expose my children to that life style. Homosexual discussion must not be part of school children’s curriculum. I struggle that the life style is inherent. God said “Man will not have relations with a man as one does with a woman”. I ask what happened to instructions for lesbian women? That being said, Michelle and Marcus have Bachmann have begun a homosexual “clinic” in hopes of making then “straight”. Their slogan is “Pray the Gay away”. I cannot find their success rate. There is documentation showing they have had run ins with the law for “destroying” men’s lives. My conflation is: why would a person “choose” a lifestyle where they are threatened and scorned by society. “Coming out of the closet”. Why would a transgender individual submit to major surgery, subject to failure, if they had chosen to assume that lifestyle?
“Moving on”
For the very same reason that you freely choose to demonstrate to the entire world manifested in the nonsense you post that you aren’t very bright: mental illness.
Your terse ignorance is blatantly void of specifics.
God bless
Ouch! Harsh, but sadly true.
“I ask what happened to instructions for lesbian women?”
Romans 1: 26For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. 27And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.
The specifics are evident in the blather you post on a regular basis. It’s intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that you yourself don’t even bother to read what you write. Amend your life and repent before it’s too late.
Sinful human beings engage in all manner of beliefs and behavior potentially scorned by society for a variety of reasons. There is often much satisfaction to be gained in making oneself into a type of martyr. This can easily be collectivized and formed into ideologies. Do you think it is purely accidental that close to 99 percent of homosexuals are pro-abortion? Did God make them think that way? And you are wrong about conversion therapy. It is successful, which is precisely why it tends to be destroyed by legal authorities every time it gets organized.
“If God created “natural order” designated for one man and one woman, then why did he create homosexuals?”
If God doesn’t want people to commit murder, then why did He create people who are tempted to commit murder?
If God doesn’t want people to oppress the poor, then why did He create people who are tempted to oppress the poor?
If God doesn’t want people to (name any sin), then why did He create people who are tempted to commit that sin?
It is a sad and cruel thing to label people with the name of the sin they are tempted to commit and act as if they are brute beasts incapable of overcoming temptation, with God’s help.
It is even more cruel to pretend that the very fact that someone is tempted to commit a sin means that the sin isn’t a sin and should be celebrated as something acceptable or even good.
You conflate persons tempted to commit homosexual acts with those who have a different mental illness in which they mistakenly believe that they are of the sex opposite to the one they really are, and choose to have themselves maimed in a vain effort to make it true. It is folly to have persons suffering from serious mental illnesses in the military, especially since even on a practical level it involves a great deal of disruption and expense.
Homosexuality is a mental disorder and was recognized as such before violent activists bullied the psychologists’ association into changing that. In addition, it is folly to introduce such a disruptive element into a military unit and especially into the navy.
Using unkind names is unkind, but utter revulsion at disease and depravity is normal.
Amen!
Somebody is using my ID in multiple blogs. I did not write this. Scammer?
Excellent analysis. Ironically published on the day Drudge headlines — “Pope Shock: OK to be Gay: “God made you like this.”
Purposefully (re)published today. Dr. Lowery was my professor for several classes, including moral theology. He is as brilliant as he is humble, which is rare these days.
Excellent!
At first a double take on an old essay now advertised among the brand new. Read thru article and responses. Whether by accident or purpose this subject and the acumen of the author is well worth revisiting. Let’s face it. Homosexual behavior the most vile human behavior men penetrating other men which Bishop Athanasius Schneider says “Cries out to heaven” is literally killing the Church and society. Catholicism is pushed into a corner by a world culture arguing its benevolence in the name of love and freedom in opposition to God’s creation and Natural Law, in this specific instance a reflection of Eternal Law. And nevertheless the Church and Mankind is suffering during a Pontificate in which homosexuality is given a second look and much it it favorably. For priests who believe in Christ from the heart it is a call to arms.
A REALIST VIEW OF HOW THIS WILL ALL PLAY OUT
Any position on a subject that requires such a long, complex philosophical explanation (as this article presents) is a position that will, I think, have no effect on the public or political debate.
Even members of Congress, with their law degrees and other advanced degrees, will never read articles like this, and certainly will never attempt to explain to voters the complex, nuanced perspective in this article.
The simple reality is that in Conservative circles an angry rebellion is boiling against Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage legal in all 50 states. I’d describe this rebellion as similar to how Conservatives in Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s were seething about the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and put Germany in such a weak position, and helped keep Conservatives out of power in the German government.
When Conservatives in the U.S. finally overthrow Obergefell v. Hodges, and Roe vs. Wade, all the nuance and complexity of this article will be, I think, utterly swept away.
Afer this Conservative counter-revolution, the U.S. will return to its past state of affairs, when anyone identified as a homosexual will be unable to get any legal form of employment, and may find it hard to avoid being beaten up in the streets. This is how things have been for most of the long history of Christendom.
This new, complex, nuanced view (as laid out in this article) that has held sway among academics, popes, and bishops in the Catholic Church for the last 40 years is an anomaly, and is, I think, impractical for national policy development, and unsustainable.
I am just suggesting that we be realistic about human nature and the nature of politics. The great mass of voters need things to be expressed at a very simple level.
The Catholic Church has always regarded sodomy as among the worst sins, right up there with murder and rape.
Eventually, things will get back to “normal,” meaning that tolerance for homosexuals will be the same as tolerance for murders and rapists: zero tolerance.
Or, perhaps the new “normal” will persist henceforth in all advanced societies, the new normal being that homosexuality and homosexual acts between consenting adults are just as legitimate, normal, and acceptable as heterosexuality and heterosexual acts.
So, I’m arguing that there really are just two possibilities:
(1) A return to the old “normal” (zero tolerance for homosexuals)
(2) A persistence of the new “normal (almost complete acceptance of homosexuals)
The complex, nuanced approach of this article has no chance of being the new normal, in my opinion. I think this is just common sense, and really should be obvious to all (except for academics, who sometimes seem unable to understand how things work in practical politics–I mean no disrespect to the excellent scholar who wrote this article).
The whole idea that there are only two possible positions is remarkably wrong. According to you, the only two options are beating up homosexuals whenever we see them in the streets, or treating homosexuality as perfectly acceptable in all respects, and giving in to them in all respects. The Catechism, of course gives the common sense answer, the answer that most normal people intuitively arrive at – homosexuals are human beings and need to be treated with dignity and respect. Anything less is impermissible. However, this does not mean we need to agree with every strange demand they make. Live and let Live. Don’t tell me that I have to bake you a cake for your gay wedding. I will allow you to live your life with no interference, but I will also speak my mind as to what I think about homosexuality.
A good analysis, De las Casas. I suspect a society that adheres to the ‘old normal’ will be more successful than a society that adheres to the ‘new normal’. Thus the eventual triumph of the ‘old normal’is to be expected. We should therefore prepare for accommodation with the ‘old normal’, and for the sake of our homosexually-inclined brothers and sisters try to push the Overton window back towards acceptance of the conversion therapy that will be so urgently needed.
Very very good piece. Thank you!
“IT IS A CALL TO ARMS’
I recommend that everyone read the comment above from Fr. Peter Morello. Here are the key statements that got my attention:
–“it is a call to arms.”
–“Let’s face it. Homosexual behavior is the most vile human behavior”
–“Cries out to heaven”
–“literally killing the Church and society”
–“Catholicism is pushed into a corner”
–“opposition to God’s creation and Natural Law”
I believe Fr Peter Morello’s comment indicates very well what is going to happen to homosexual persons when/if there is finally a Conservative reversal of the present-day society-wide norm regarding homosexuality and homosexual behavior.
We are not going to see the institution of the modern, complex, nuanced, deeply human-person-respecting view of Pope John Paul II (as written about by Dr. Mark Lowery).
When/if the Conservative reversal comes, we are going to see the old-time view of Pope Piux V and Pope Pius X, and strict government policies that go hand-in-hand with that old-time view.
The day of the “out” homosexual (living out in the open and known as a homosexual) will be 100% over. Men and women who are caught engaging in homosexual acts with each other will be arrested and imprisoned. In some cases, mobs and self-appointed enforcers of morality will give known or suspected homosexuals a good beating. Some will die of their beatings.
Well, would such a return to the traditional ways of Christendom regarding homosexuals be a good thing or a bad thing? That’s the question.
But make no mistake. If/when the new norm is overturned, it is this ancient norm that will take its place.
So we should all be honest about this, I propose, so that we all understand what future we are arguing for when we criticize and condemn the present-day norm regarding homosexuals in society.
Don’t you agree?
Here is the present Bartolome:
I have a dear friend who is suffering the ravages of living out the “G” portion of the LBGT life for 20 years. He has escaped the nightmare of disintegrating abuse, but now suffers with AIDS and STDs. He has turned back to his Catholic faith in search of a safe pasture to live in.
He says this – his words – reflecting about Church and academic and political leaders and parents who promote and condone the propaganda of the LGBT agenda:
“It is insanity for adults to teach children that it is normal and healthy behavior for people to inseminate their intestines.”
Actually Bartolomé clarity of moral truth doesn’t necessitate the effects you predict as inevitable. Imprisonments. Beatings. Nazi Germany perhaps, certainly strident Islam and beheadings. What Pope Francis encourages insofar as embracing homosexuals–as I embraced a lesbian nurse who embraced me whenever I appeared on her unit who loved me because I never condemned her as you presume I and others will–is a refreshing better approach. That does not mean embracing their behavior. As the lesbian nurse understood. Nuance Bartolomé nuance!
IT’S GERMANY, 1929, ALL OVER AGAIN
Fr Peter Morello: What you describe as “Nazi” or “strident Islam” policies towards homosexuals is simply the norm during the vast, great, majority stretch of the history of Christendom.
That’s the problem. The traditional approach to homosexuals, of all Catholic nations, was essentially the same as the Nazi or Sharia Law approach.
These recent forty years of this new Personalist Theology can’t change that.
We can’t unwrite History. Anyone can go back to Church texts from Medieval times and see Church theologians and philosophers describing sodomy as an evil as great as premeditated murder. There is a great weight in Tradition.
I don’t know the future. I am quite surprised at where we are now. I never saw this coming.
But I do perceive a fearful, angry, seething, ever-more-radical (radical as in radically traditional) “counter-revolution” growing among many in the Conservative Movement (which contains Evangelicals, Mormons, agnostics, atheists, not just Catholics).
The Obergefell v. Hodges decision was the last straw for many.
Surely you perceive this too?
Many Conservatives are really to wipe completely away, by whatever means is necessary, every last bit of the “cultural revolution” for the last 50 years (abortion, feminism, gay rights, multiculturism).
Catholics and Christians of the Conservative stripe feel under siege, under attack. They feel that the Lord God Himself is under attack. They feel that Western Civilization may be soon vanquished from the earth and that all nonconformists will be imprisoned or killed. Their mindset is like that of a wild animal cornered by a predator: there’s nothing left to do but fight to the end, whatever it takes, just to survive.
Surely you too have felt and noticed this growing strain in present-day Conservatism.
“Babylon Berlin” is a German-produced TV series that I watched on Netflix recently. It shows how many Conservatives in Germany in the spring of 1929 were planning a counter-revolution to overthrow the Treaty of Versailles and the Social Democrats (liberals) who were at that time consistently winning in the democratic elections.
You may think I’m talking about the Nazis, but no. This TV series hasn’t even shown a single Nazi. There were many other Conservative parties, movements, and associations in Germany at this time.
This TV series shows a conspiracy of non-Nazi German Conservatives (Army generals; police officials; industrialists) who were planning to overthrow the liberal democracy, re-install Wilhelm II as Kaiser, end all the liberal laws concerning prostitution, homosexuality, etc., withdraw from the Treaty of Versailles, rebuild the military forces, and just generally return to the traditions of the glorious and great German past.
At the very end of the first “Terminator” movie, a character says: “There’s a storm coming in.” That’s what I see for our time.
[Warning: I actually do not recommend this “Babylon Berlin” TV series, because it has gratuitous, explicit nudity, and depicts casual sex and homosexuality as good and normal–i.e., the liberals in this TV series are the good guys and the Conservatives are main the conspirators and murderers; it also has some good anti-Stalinist Communists and some bad Russian Stalinist Communists. All in all, though, I thought this TV series helped me understand how conflicts between Left and Right, religious and anti-religious, can, in a time of economic hardship, lead to catastrophe, brutality, mercilessness, and lawlessness. The Catholic-supported brutal Franco regime (1936-1975) in Spain is in some ways a better example of a regime that carried out lawless, ruthless political executions on a mass scale that were justified by some by the need to preserve the Church and good social order and morals.)
Bartolomé the history of cultural response to homosexual behavior varies from intermittent acceptance and rejection mostly the latter. Romans considered it unmanly and degenerate and an Eastern phenomena more common in Greece and elsewhere. In most cultures it was considered unnatural. Christians consider it an abomination because it is against God’s order of nature and the eternal law. Aquinas in support taught our natural appetites [the initial sensual attraction toward some object] are all good and ordained by God. Natural appetites are subject to reason in Man and as such are called inclinations. It is at this stage that due to our fallen nature natural appetites are sometimes perverted. Therefore Aquinas defines evil as a willed privation of direction to a due end. Homosexual tendency except for rare instances when nature fails due to some defect is itself evil. So Christianity must consider same sex behavior sinful and unlike most sins contrary to the Law of Nature. An abomination. And it’s behavior that can be either imposed on others and taught as a good which is the among the major errors of this current era. There are degrees of culpability and not all predilection for same sex behavior is entirely a free act meaning there are sociological, psychological, parental other influences that compromise an entirely free act of the will. Catholicism today takes these factors into consideration. A return to previous harsh treatment of homosexuals is unlikely. We can never compromise truth.
For sake of clarity while culpability for the inclination toward same sex activity may be mitigated the willful act is always a serious sin.
Everyone must take personal responsibility for what they say and what they support.
If, in a few years from now, homosexuals in the USA are being arrested and imprisoned on a wide scale for homosexual acts, and are being subjected to beatings and killings that the police refuse to stop, no one who is now opposing the “gay agenda” will be able to say, “Well, I never endorsed that.”
Ideas have consequences. Action B follows logically from Idea A. In the law courts, people are held responsible for what is “reasonably foreseeable.”
The moral teachings of the Catholic Faith cannot change.
But it is not a teaching of the Catholic Faith that civil governments must enforce the moral teachings of the Catholic Faith.
During the first 300 years of the Church, the Church has no association with any civil government. During that time the Church practiced internal discipline for known moral offenders (as we see in St. Paul’s letters in the New Testament).
And since the Vatican II Council’s teachings on human dignity and religious liberty, the Church has rejected the old idea that God and the Church require the civil governments to enforce the moral doctrine of the Church on matters like birth control used by consenting adults and homosexual acts between consenting adults.
The Church in the USA remains COMPLETELY FREE to preach the Gospel of Christ and to warn people not to engage in homosexual acts. People in the USA are completely free to repent and obey God and the Church. Why isn’t that enough, if it was enough for St. Peter and St. Paul?
Why must the heavy (and often corrupt) hand of Big Government force also be brought to bear on these matters?
Why must we hurl blindly down the path of Senator Joe McCarthy once again?
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has a homosexual daughter. Must she be arrested, harassed, threatened, driven from her job and home?
Ideas have foreseeable consequences. We all need to take personal responsibility for what we say and what and who we support.
We can’t bury our heads in some theological sand.
We don’t need Catholics once again supporting anything like the bloody Francisco Franco.
Romans did not consider homosexuality “unmanly.” Roman centurions had male concubines covered under the Lex Juliana for benefits in the case a Roman centurion to whom the concubine was committed dies. So much for the comment it was “unmanly” if that is meant to be perjorative.
I have written a book length exegesis published by Rowman and Littlefield entitled SAME-SEX IN SCRIPTURE. Homosexuality, if universally practiced, would result in the end of the human species. What is remarkable is that not one word of lesbianism appears in the Old Testament, though we know it was a practice in Jewish tribes.
My book, in university libraries worldwide, is a scriptural exegesis, showing that much of what has come down through the centuries on same-sex behavior is loose talk and inaccurate. Aquinas’ doctrine on natural law I address quite specifically– and it is clear that his natural law notion has no probity in the issue of homosexuality. Just read the chaper in my book on it.
In His comment on “the eunuch born so from the womb” in Matthew, 19:12 Christ is acknowledging that some men are born indisposed towards aex with a woman. I.e., the Creator made them so. It is indisputable that this is His teaching there (confirmed by Clement of Alexandria’s MISCELLANIES), but I know no one who has mined this text with the exegeis required till I addressed it.
One has to ask why would the Creator allow certain individuals to be born with a same-sex disposition especially since it is incontrovertible in Scripture that only a man and woman may participate in the covenant/sarament of marriage and that the universal pratice of same-sex behavior would end the human species. I fully accept the teaching that marriage is a sacred covenant proffered by the Divine for a man and woman. To deny it is to deny Scripture, the revealed word of God.
No one has ever addressed this question, save me. I would welcome anyone disproving that comment. Saint Paul’s railing against male-male behavior uses the word “arsenokoitai.” He used it once, and no one knows exactly what it means. One cannot exegete a text without deep knowledge of the words used in that text.
I do not know what the answer is to the Matthew 19:12 teaching. I do know, however, that the Roman Catholic Church has a serious scriptural exegesis deficit regarding this question.
Matthew 19:12– we have an issue where Chrst acknowledges that the Creator has given existence through the male-female procreative act to humans not disposed towards that act. It is almost ironic that those not desirous of male-female intercourse are nevertheless brought into the world through that intercourse. That is the long and short of it and pastoral counseling avoding that question is a serious failure of the Priest.
It is clear to me that same-sex behavior has too many variables still to be addressed. The notion that its practice is immediately a moral sentence to eternal damnation is far too facile. And non-pastoral. We Priests are out to save souls. We should start studying the Sacred Scriptures in ways that show we know exactly what the text says.
“If, in a few years from now, homosexuals in the USA are being arrested and imprisoned on a wide scale for homosexual acts, and are being subjected to beatings and killings that the police refuse to stop, no one who is now opposing the “gay agenda” will be able to say, “Well, I never endorsed that.” ”
And when did this ever happen before?
Substitute those who practice pedophilia, incest, or any number of other perversions for homosexuality, and you have left yourself not a leg on which to stand to argue against those things if those who advocate for forcing others to accept them manage to follow in the tracks of those who push for the homosexual agenda. And before you say, “Oh, nobody will ever try to legalize and force the acceptance of *those*” – they already are.
What about the difference between a temptation to sin – remnants of the Fall – and indulging that temptation?
‘Born that way’, regardless of the degree that may be true, does not born a false compassion that grants a permission to walk the wide road of disorder.
Not quite.You present one side and not the other.
What exactly was Franco fighting?
Why do you, by implication, forget the thousands of religious executed by your exalted Left in those years?
And years after the McCarthy censure, there were many Communist sympathizers and outright members found in the Federal government.
No one, except your fevered imagination, is advocating harassment of homosexuals. But it has never been the idea of the homosexual movement to be just ‘left alone.’
“I believe Fr Peter Morello’s comment indicates very well what is going to happen to homosexual persons when/if there is finally a Conservative reversal of the present-day society-wide norm regarding homosexuality and homosexual behavior.”
Do you know what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah and His reason for it?
Here is what Pope Francis (along with his army of electors and promoters) believes:
“Salvation” means that “here and now” a “Kingdom of God” is established where “each individual can feel himself accepted and approved without reserve, (and) he becomes free to live with others.” Salvation means “the salvation of the world as a whole and the salvation of every individual…. After all, we are not doing justice to another person when we merely give him whatever he has a right to, we have to accept him as a person and approve of him….” (Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 1976, pp 85 and 87, re-issued in 2011 for “Catholic” colleges and seminaries worldwide.)
This is why orders like the Jesuits and the Marianists and their polity projects and colleges promote LGBT ideology worldwide.
And this is the “new cult” of Francis and Kasper and Schonborn and Tobin of Newark and Cupich and Danneels et al. Their cult is about approving devastating sexual behavior.
Which is what explains the homo-erotic Nativity scene at St. Peter’s, and the homo-erotic Synod of 2014, and the forthcoming homo-erotic “World Meeting of Families 2018.”
That is why the Jesuit
” Salvation” means that “here and now” a “Kingdom of God” is established where “each individual can feel himself accepted and approved without reserve, (and) he becomes free to live with others.”
Oh? Is that the reason why he is so easy on pederasts and paedophiles – that they can live freely with others? Now I get it.
You keep bringing up this anti-Pope Francis rant just to bolster your belief that our Catholic Church and its Pope are evil, but all your lies will not change a thing. Pope Francis has always denounced homosexuality and the rest. He is, after all, a faithful disciple of Jesus whose Vicar he is.
You say… “the homosexual person in his desperation”. I know several “Gays” who profess to be very happy. They do not display “desperation”. This very long article presents yet another dilemma… Gays insist they have not chosen that difficult and scorned upon lifestyle. They were born homosexual. Yet, we insist on conversion. Michelle and Marcus Bachmann operate a “clinic” with the slogan “pray the Gay away”. I tried to get the statistics on their successes and failures. Zip.
If homosexuals and transsexuals are truly born that way using psychoanalysis and conversion techniques may be harmful.
morganB: “If homosexuals and transsexuals are truly born that way using psychoanalysis and conversion techniques may be harmful.”
Me: Well, they are not. There is no gene that makes one transsexual or homosexual.
morganB:I know several “Gays” who profess to be very happy. They do not display “desperation”
Me: To want to (as Chris said) inseminate the intestine is desperation.
MarcAlcan, his argument become even more ridiculous when one considers that other mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, may have a genetic component. Also diseases like diabetes are inherited. By his reasoning, one shouldn’t treat schizophrenia or diabetes because they are “born that way.”
Your verbiage is striking… bordering on vitriol. Must study your subjects more carefully.
“Homosexuality is wrong because God said so” (and nothing more).” I agree.
God created the (potential)Gay and transgender persons. Just like the need to baptize, for original sin based on a “forbidden fruit tree”, why, with all his supreme omniscience would “he” condemn or isolate most, if not all, his children through the end of time? When it comes to evangelizing, the jury is still out, aka. the Michelle Bachmann “clinic”. Can anyone shed some light on her success or failure?
God save us all.
It is overall simple. Homosexuality is a perversion and as such is not to be practiced. It is worthy to note a survey taken of professional therapists between 67% to 85% successes in making the homosexual NORMAL. Today we have laws, passed by homosexual legislators, preventing such treatment
Dear Dr. Lowery, This is the best and most complete and clearest and truest article on the truth of God’s creation of human sexuality that I have ever been blessed to read. Thank you so very much!! I am sending it on to several people who can definitely relate to all that you have written. God bless you dearly, C-Marie
Bartolomé de las Casas if you have a vested interest in the civil welfare of practicing homosexuals Look first to their spiritual welfare. Salvation. Your presumed inevitable logic is rhetorical argument for cultural acceptance of the sin of homosexuality whether intended or not. Your reference to the “bloody Francisco Franco” is added prejudicial rhetoric. Throughout your series of long comments the common theme is the rights of homosexuals v the hostility of the Church. If you agree with Pope Francis’ policy of embrace then say so since it’s the obvious solution to your concern. We can and must show compassion but not, never under any perceived good acknowledge homosexual behavior as a conscientious good to be respected by culture and Church. Judgment will await all of us Bartolomé.
Reviewing the comments and replies, it would seem the subject of homosexuality is still divisive within the Church. Much of this division, it would seem, largely stems from rightly (supported by Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium) viewing the homosexual act (and willful homosexual thoughts and fantasies) as sin versus rightly viewing the homosexual person as a sinner in need of the healing and saving grace of Jesus Christ (a person for whom Christ died). But these views are both right, and we need to make sure we maintain the balance of hating the sin but loving the sinner.
As someone who used to practice homosexual behavior and live the “gay” lifestyle, but who is happily converted (in heart, mind, and body), and someone who has an MS in Psychology, that there is more to the homosexual desire and behavior than just the theory of environment or any unscientific theory that someone is “born that way.” At the root of all sinful behavior, as we know from the teachings of the Church, is original sin, which, at its root, is pride and rebellion against God and all that God is and all that God created as it was intended to be (e.g. male and female, husband and wife, father and mother, etc.). Original sin distorts, twists, deceives good desires (sexual desire is a good desire God created) resulting in evil passions, passions of the flesh that war against the soul. Even after baptism we are still inclined to sin, to give in to the old nature with its fleshly (anti-spiritual) lusts. Even after baptism we must “not let sin rule in our bodies,” meaning we are part of the process of not letting it rule. Even after baptism we are called to not be conformed to the world (that which is separated from God and at odds with God and His law, including natural law), but rather to be transformed to the image of Christ by the renewing of the mind. And here lies the solution to homosexual behavior.
Homosexual behavior starts early in life, so early that one eventually begins to believe he or she was born that way, that it was natural, that there is nothing he or she could do about it. But that’s the lie. Any sexual behavior can become sin if not confined to God’s purpose for sexual behavior. And the sex drive is one of the strongest – if not the strongest – among natural processes within the human body, a drive that triggers the release of strong positive reward chemicals in the brain, almost like that produced in response to drugs like cocaine. When, early on in life, one performs certain sexual acts (with self or with others) that are same sex in nature, the brain releases positive reward chemicals that basically say: “That feels good, let’s do that again.” And the brain associates that “feel good” with the behavior and its associations (e.g. same sex fantasies, porn, partner). It’s tricky. That’s how sin works. That’s how concupiscence works. St. Paul talks about the deceitfulness of sin. So, repeated homosexual acts (whether with self stimulated by fantasy or porn, or with another person of the same sex) cause a powerful release of positive chemicals in the brain’s reward center, and now you have a habit. Much like gambling. The answer, then, is to renew the mind…to renew the way one thinks about things, behaviors, others, the body, etc. This renewal is not easy (just ask someone getting treatment for gambling addiction). Think about how many years and how much time the mind was devoted to the sinful behavior. Changing the mind, unless some miraculous act of Christ is in play (which is possible), takes time, effort, commitment. But isn’t that true of all of us? Sure, it doesn’t mean you keep doing the act. No, the act must stop, and it must stop in participation with God’s grace and a commitment to obey God and His law and the natural law. Of course that’s part of the renewal process – one must be educated about God’s law and natural law, and must believe it. One must understand that this renewal process is in obedience to God – to love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and body…and to love others with that same love, and with that same love, love oneself.
Okay…my fingers are tired of typing, so I’ll stop here. But maybe this is enough to start a conversation.
God Bless!
Dear Todd C,
Very well said. Very simply said. And truthfully said with Heaven’s light in all you have said. Thank you.
Getting the body to obey these rationalizations is the actual struggle. Everyone can agree that natural and moral law, church paradigms/baselines of physical, psychological and spiritual health are above critique, eternal. The sexually misconfigured person is trying to figure out how to get his body to obey all this abstraction. All these souls need the how. Where is the how?
We know the how, it’s Jesus, which the piece sparsely even mentions.
If the Angelic Warfare Confraternity, which prays everyday for lay and religious folks to gain/preserve chastity and purity, explicitly admitting to Heaven, that “a mere creature can do nothing…” to become an angel in the flesh, how on earth do disordered souls get there?
By praying without ceasing to Jesus which is difficult to do with relentless 24/7 consistency. The victory of the spiritual over flesh hinges on faith and prayer, grace and vigilance, all in and from the power of Jesus. It also asks an ark of patience. God knows weak creatures can and will fall and provides the means to restore the grace of chastity, purity: sacramental confession.
The Church has said that such souls, so misconfigured, (which is what they are; see Fr/Dr Chad Ripperger’s section on involuntary vice just like Paul admits, in Introduction to the Science of Mental Health) can carry their condition as a cross, which implies full admittance of weakness, falls, need for deep healing and mercy, fellowship and assistance. If anyone conquers the weakness of physical disorder it can take a long time, if it was deeply ingrained, the body faculty set up wrong from early on. This tests everyone in the Church’s patience, to forgive souls not 7 times but 777 times, because they are likely to struggle that many moments and not prevail.
The flesh! Overcoming the flesh which is weak! Rationalizations help, they build up a sort of mental defense, but the flesh always remains weak (we are flesh). Becoming angels while on earth is hard, and underscores constant essential dependence on Divine help.
St Maximinus the Confessor charges that perfect spiritual mastery requires custody of every thought. We all need to put that on and realize how enormous that task is and be humbled in ourselves and for others. We must pray! and cling to Jesus ferociously, converting disorder into order one virtuous act at a time. By grace, the saints tell us!
Grace reigns over all, for if even St Joseph said “What have I that I have given myself?”, what poor sinner can give himself perfect mastery over his poor misconfigured body?
Only Jesus the Doctor can give this. What is needed then is gigantic faith in Him, that never gives up. Ever. To the end. Amen.
Why is homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia and transgenderism being so pushed forward now? Could it be because the United Nations and many world governments want to decrease world populations. Abortion and euthanasia kill people directly and homosexuality and transgenderism result in sterility. Now you have homosexuals and transgendered people insisting on adoption in order to prove their “normality” and to further their recruitment. Until more people under what is driving acceptance of those 4 things we will not be able to stop it. I have read in several places that many of the affluent and elite support those 4 things. Of course they do. With a reduced population there are more resources for them and there descendent to have. Too many of the affluent are willing to kill and mutilate others. Greed and entitlement take over.
Thank you for the good scholarly article , its truth to help bring the light for those who go about in misguided ways to offer help for the afflicted , yet , often end up in pushing them deeper , into the filthy stream . Despair and jealousy as underlying themes – ? that point to its origin in The Garden ; would the enemy have despaired that it cannot have children , that all of humanity is to belong to The Lord ..yet , if it had trusted in the goodness of The Father , would have had the joy of Oneness in the Divine Will , with The Lord and all in Him ..
The Lord , in The Passion , taking upon self the effects of the ‘children’ from the enemy , in evil thoughts and its fruits – as the foul waters of the Kedron stream .. yet , His Love and holiness capable of purifying all filth –
http://www.passioiesus.org/en/
the meditation on the 1 A.M hour of the Passion that shares the occasion , of The Lord being pushed into the filthy stream , an example of one good means for those who worry about the many porn like ads that pop up on road drives and such too , to train the kids too , to immediately see persons related to such ads , as the ones who push The Lord into the foul waters , themselves being in such too , asking for mercy that they repent , trusting in His healing Love and Blood , to thank Him for same , to be thus set free from excess guilt and related despair .
The devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows is said to be what brought healing to Rwanda after the genocide …the compassion the Holy Father extends to the weak and the little , as an example for our times that too is flooded with filthy waters , to invite all for the cleansing waters of good confession and all that comes with it as the Papal intention for this month as well .
Blessings !
Thanks to Carl Olson for bringing Dr. Lowery’s deep analysis and such an effective apologetics on this topic.
Definitely a keeper of a column that needs to be read repeatedly.
The Pope has for far too long made ambiguous statements about homosexuality. He must have finally realized he could not go on in that confusing manner forever. His “clarification” that homosexuals cannot be married and that such sexual actions are in fact a sin was the right thing to do. However I hope the church in the US at least is prepared for the major governmental blow-back which is sure to be on the way.Gay lobbyists will be all over this. Will they name the church a “hate group” and attempt to inflict financial penalties, or simply close down our churches and our Catholic schools? I hope someone in the ranks of the Bishops is preparing NOW for a response. Its likely churches will now be attacked and vandalized outright. As in a recent case in Texas,where a statue of Mary was knocked down and it’s hands cut off, the police will blandly assert that they have no reason to imagine such action is a hate crime!! Pastors should invest the money in cameras and security and alarm systems. In point of fact we must all be prepared to defend the church in whatever way we can. They can’t arrest all of us. I do hope the church hierarchy is prepared to fight for what they believe in as opposed to walking meekly up to the guillotine as they did in Revolutionary France. The church has already been badly damaged by the church sex scandal and the shutdown which deprived the faithful of Easter celebrations last year.We must save what is left.
I do not agree with those who believe that homosexuals will now be physically attacked on the streets. I believe many of us CAN and have made the distinction between the sinner and the sin. I am sure many of us in this day and age have Gay friends ( I do!) , and would correct any use of pejorative language blurted out by our minor children.No one has taken away our ability to teach kindness and tolerance by example. I think many of us have a “dont ask , dont tell” philosophy regarding the sexuality of others. And we don’t like others pushing their sexual behaviors in our face. A lot of us are not so thrilled with younger people engaging in ” one night stands”, adultery, etc. Homosexuals are not alone in their guilt. The church needs to make clear that NONE of these transgressions are acceptable, and stop worrying about the collection plate or people “leaving” the church when they hear a teaching they dont like. Our Bishops have for some time now decided that they will teach of God’s mercy but not his justice . In so doing they abdicate the trust which has been placed in them.
Thank you for an excellent article illuminating an issue which is so often deliberately obfuscated.
A few further notes:
1. It’s actually very rare for anyone to go around aggressively telling people with SSA “God says don’t commit sodomy”.
2. 99% of those who fail to differentiate between the sin and those who tend to be tempted to it, are those PROMOTING sodomy (most of them not themselves subject to SSA), not those opposing it.
3. If someone publicly claims to be a Christian (or Jew) and simultaneously proclaims that he is practising sodomy, it is perfectly apposite to remind him that God says sodomy is a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance and that he is contradicting himself.
4. No matter how lovingly and gently one expresses the truth about sodomy and SSA, governments and corporations increasingly “cancel”,ostracise, sack, doxx, and otherwise punish anyone who dares to question any aspect of the irrational LBGQWERTY… ideology. For example it is now law in Victoria that you go to GAOL for supposed “hate crime” merely for saying that people with SSA are, like everyone else, broken in some way and in need of conversion. A direct attack on the very basis of Christianity by a premier who proclaims himself Catholic! Even PRAYER for people with SSA is specifically outlawed.
There are several fatal flaws with this article, not the least of which is that it is entirely based on a view of “natural law” that is by no means shared universally – not even by Catholic scholars. The article solely reflects a particular view of morality and makes no effort to incorporate the kinds of research and observations mandated the mainstream medical and psychiatric/psychological associations. The issue of whether there is a “gay gene” is, of course, irrelevant. No “left-handed gene” has ever been discovered and yet we know, historically, a small percentage of people have always been predisposed to being left handed. Forcing left handed people to use their right hand (a common practice of schools up through the 50s) did not make them right handed. It made them left handed people trying to function as if they were right handed. The same paradigm exists for LGBTQ people trying to fit a mold that does not correspond to their natural inclinations. NARTH (and, of course, it’s notorious founder caught with his young male “luggage lifter” en route back from vacation) has been completely discredited for its lack of any relevant peer reviewed studies showing any level of success in its vastly repudiated “therapies.” Finally, it is telling that the author resorts to the tired, old and incendiary association of LGBTQ sexual acts with “diseases” and the body not somehow being “made for” such acts. Our mouths were made to eat and speak. That doesn’t make kissing unnatural, sinful or “disordered.” Likewise, there are no sexual acts performed by LGBTQ people that are not also engaged in by heterosexual couples. LGBTQ people are no more, or less, prone to catch a sexually transmitted disease from a specific act than are heterosexual people. In short, any kind of attempts to “nicely tell them they are disordered rather than using a mean voice” are doomed to failure.
“Likewise, there are no sexual acts performed by LGBTQ people that are not also engaged in by heterosexual couples.
Goodness. But, of course, the reproductive sexual act performed by heterosexual couples cannot be engaged in by heterosexual couples. Call it natural law, biology, whatever. Regardless, yes, the article “reflects a particular view of morality”–and that is the view held by the Catholic Church:
“The same paradigm exists for LGBTQ people trying to fit a mold that does not correspond to their natural inclinations.”
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But john, isn’t the whole point that those inclinations are not natural or healthy?
There are no sexual subgroupings of human beings. We all suffer from psychological ills & trauma but can later express that damage in different ways. Damages need healing & restoration. It’s a condition, not an identity.
A commendable essay, flowing from ‘Veritatis splendor’ (1993), drafted by the Swiss prelate, Georges Cottier, an encyclical of the late pontiff John Paul II, and from the ‘Theology of the Body’ a series of papal lectures given between 1979-84. Authored by Dr. Mark Lowery, the derivative, reasoned article that concerns us, ‘Homosexuality and Authentic Freedom’, may be persuasive, if one acquiesces to the Thomist penchant for illation throughout, passing from nature talk to ‘personhood’ talk, to spirituality and theology as if all were a ‘seamless garment, including the notion ‘freedom’, a ‘sine qua non’ concept since the late eighteenth century. In all, the Catholic Weltanschauung lightly revised. For those who cannot suffer Catholic discourse on the naturalist spring of spiritual inference, there still is Spinoza’s discourse on ‘deus sive natura’ at the core of an ironic philosophy that may be read as a naturalist tract, or as a theology of sorts.
Translated: “I don’t agree with Catholic teaching on this subject because I don’t like Catholic morality.” There: I saved other readers some time and energy.
Thank you for translating. I don’t read Pretentious, so I wasn’t sure what he was saying.
A commendable essay, flowing from ‘Veritatis splendor’ (1993), drafted by the Swiss prelate, Georges Cottier, an encyclical of the late pontiff John Paul II, and from the ‘Theology of the Body’ a series of papal lectures given between 1979-84. Authored by Dr. Mark Lowery, the derivative, reasoned article that concerns us, ‘Homosexuality and Authentic Freedom’, may be persuasive, if one acquiesces to Lowery’s neo-Thomist penchant for illation throughout, passing from nature talk to ‘personhood’ talk, back to nature reference, on to spirituality and theology as if all were a ‘seamless garment, including the notion ‘freedom’, a concept in itself formally empty -requiring ‘from’, or ‘to’- yet ‘sine qua non’ since the late eighteenth century. In all, the Catholic Weltanschauung lightly revised. For those who cannot suffer Catholic discourse on the naturalist spring of spiritual inference, there still is Spinoza’s discourse on ‘deus sive natura’ at the core of an ironic philosophy that may be read as a naturalist tract, or as a theology of sorts.
The freedom of sodomites and their friends directly impinges on the freedoms of Catholics and others who reject perverted behavior as an attack on the moral law and self-governance. Sodomites cannot succeed politically without harassment, intimidation, assault, battery, lies and censorship. They cannot succeed without insinuating themselves into positions of authority–government, schools, priesthood–and using their powers to force people to accomodate themselves to their behavior and ideology. For that reason, they should be suppressed in every area of life, forced into the closets where they belong.
It is not only natural law and Christian and Catholic moral teaching. Homosexuality has been condemned by GOD from the beginning of creation in the mission of male and female to go and multiply. “I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.” (Leviticus 19:22)
I have to amend my comment. God condemns all physical sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman. They become one flesh, become fathers and mothers and raise children. Christ incorporates us into His mystical body making us one in Himself. Christ is the Way; obedience makes us recipients of immortality in the glory of a magnificent merciful GOD.
I counsel readers here again to read my book SAME-SEX IN SCRIPTURE which I outlined in my post above. The phrase in Leviticus that you cite uses a Hebrew word that can mean either uncircumcized male or male. An uncircumcized male would either be one extraordinarily young or a male that was not a Jew. It may also mean what we in English would take it to mean– a male, period. If you knew ancient Hebrew you would not have used the Leviticus citation as the evidence for an anti-homosexual injunction. It does not gain you any leverage.
I have written that only a capacious command of Greek and Hebrew can lead one to understand the complexity of this problem of same-sex in scripture. There is strong cultural history to show that the Bible spoke against male sleeping wth male as a condemnation of the Ba’el Molok pagan ritutal that sought to mimic the act of implanting seed nto the ground much in the way the Nile overflowed evey Spring for the crops. It was condemned because it was not a Jewish rite, but a a pagan one. The act of male sleeping with make in the Hebrew is called an abomination. But so was eating shell fish called an abomination in that Bible.
Just read my book and the exegitical evidence presented, exegetical evidence that almost no Catholic or Protestant is capable of identifying because of their profound lack of knowledge of the original languages of the Bible.
Read my post above for further understanding. It is high time the Scriptural text itself and its langauge were studies and perpended. I find it lazy, quite frankly, that individuals read a translation and consider that the final word. It is not.