Do you ever find yourself wondering how to reply to some comments you encounter? You know the answers, but for some reason when you are finally presented the chance to answer in a logical and charitable way, you find yourself stumbling. Fr. Timothy Henderson has short, simple and yet extremely helpful answers for those unexpectedly tough questions:
“If God is a loving God, why can’t gay people be married if they love each other? Doesn’t God want them to be happy?
Why does the church hate gay people?”
Part of the problem is that people put the onus on God instead of looking at the behaviors.
(1) Homosexuality is disordered. It has been believed/known to be so for 5,000 years. It is this world in its brokenness that suddenly wants to change this. Societies that have allowed this to be installed as an institution have not lasted, and it is a marked sign of its decline. See the Roman Empire. There are other symptoms as well… for example the use of mercenaries… which by the way, the U.S. now employs a lot of mercenaries…
(2) Look at our own bodies… you have remarked on the complementarity of the sexes physically, but also emotionally. But looking at the physicality itself, particularly among males, the body was never meant to do what some of these acts do, and the tearing of the flesh was responsible for the transmission of AIDS in the 1980s and why it became so widespread. AND it took several years before it began affecting the heterosexual population in a meaningful way.
Even without AIDS, the body is clearly NOT meant to act in this way, but is rather ordered to the coming together of male and female.
(3) As you already state, Marriage is for the procreation of children as much as it is the development of the spouses, and even a heterosexual couple, if they are perpetually incapable of performing those acts which can bring about children, are not allowed to marry. A soldier who has taken damage for example and is either without or has damage that prevents the body from acting in that capacity. A man or a woman who finds their spouse so physically repulsive that he or she cannot act physical (and it does happen). They are in effect impotent. Such people are not allowed to marry. If a person cannot perform the act with life giving effect, they are not allowed to marry whether heterosexual or homosexual. It is the performance of the act that is the key… not the fertility of the act… that is important to differentiate.
(4) God indeed does love everyone, but love does not allow someone to act in a disordered way, but rather always points to acting in a wholesome life-giving way.
The Church does not hate such people, on the contrary, it demands that people help people with same sex attraction to carry their heavy cross by real friendships and moral support… not for acting on their attraction but to act as Christians before God.
(5) There is a brand new study which shows same sex parents do have adverse effects on the rearing of children. The homosexual community has gone out of their way to attack that study, but the University of Texas and all reviews of the study show the methods used to come to this conclusion follows the norms for Behavior Science Studies…
“The Catholic Church just has too many rules..”
(1) Rules are the limit one may go without hurting another. A good question to lay on them is: name one thing that is a ‘rule’ of the Church that if you do not follow it, people will not be hurt.
(2) The Lord does not want rules, as much as He wants a converted heart. Those who just follow rules are at the lowest strata of following God. In other words, ‘what little must I do to get to heaven?’ Such people really set themselves up for disaster.
When God moves people along in morality, His first move is to lead a soul to see the ugliness of sin and its effects. The second move is show the beauty of TRUE Charity: acting for the good of the other for no other reason than the sake of the other; willing the good of the other for the sake of the other.
The third move of God is to fire one’s virtue into steel is to remove physical comforts.
The fourth move of God is to remove spiritual comforts… this proves one’s Faithfulness to both Charity and love of God for the sake of loving God and neighbor.
God moves people away from rules to True Charity… but True Charity NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER violates the moral rules…
“I don’t like the Homilies that my priest gives.”
Then tell him what you need to hear… so long as you are not doing this to AVOID hearing tough words… There is no recourse to someone who does not want to hear the TRUE Gospel.
I personally offer this option to work on subjects to my people AND very FEW take me up on it.
[...] “Doesn’t God Want Them to be Happy?” and Other Questions [...]
Great article.
This:
>>A soldier who has taken damage for example and is either without or has damage that prevents the body from acting in that capacity<>Such people are not allowed to marry. If a person cannot perform the act with life giving effect, they are not allowed to marry whether heterosexual or homosexual. It is the performance of the act that is the key… not the fertility of the act… that is important to differentiate.<<
Where in our catechism does it say this? Where in the Bible does it say this? I have never, ever heard this being the case before.
Please back these statements up with scripture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_impediment
Physical capacity for consummation lacking.[14] Per Canon 1084 §3 “Without prejudice to the provisions of Canon 1098, sterility neither forbids nor invalidates a marriage.” Both parties, however, must be physically capable of completed vaginal intercourse, wherein the man ejaculates “true semen” into the woman’s vagina. (See [2] for details.) To invalidate a marriage, the impotence must be perpetual (i.e., incurable) and antecedent to the marriage. The impotence can either be absolute or relative. This impediment is generally considered to derive from divine natural law, and so cannot be dispensed.[15] The reason behind this impediment is explained in the Summa Theologica:[16] “In marriage there is a contract whereby one is bound to pay the other the marital debt: wherefore just as in other contracts, the bond is unfitting if a person bind himself to what he cannot give or do, so the marriage contract is unfitting, if it be made by one who cannot pay the marital debt.”
Does anyone believe that God even remotely cares about this?
24 January 2013, date of email…….and delivered at the oratory of St. Francis de Sales in St. Louis, MO on Jan 21, 2013.
“As we are rational beings, as are we moral beings.”– In the Defense
of Marriage
This sermon on the sacrament of marriage– a stirring defense of this
Divine institution– was delivered by Canon William Avis of the
Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest on the Second Sunday
after Epiphany:
“And Jesus was also invited, and his disciples, to the marriage.”
In this time after Epiphany, the Church, in her liturgy, extends the
Manifestation of Christ by recounting his miracles. The first public
appearance and the first miracle of the Son of God occurred at a
marriage-feast. God had instituted marriage at the origin of the
human race as the exclusive and life-long association of husband and
wife for the reception and rearing of children; for the preservation
and moral order of society, and for the ultimate eternal happiness of
countless generations of mankind. Hence from the beginning marriage
possessed a sacredness, a unity and a binding force unlike and
superior to all other relationships; and the family, based on
marriage, was the indestructible basis and indivisible unit of human
society.
In the beginning God created them, male and female He created them.
And so God created marriage as the life-long commitment between one
man and one woman for the purpose of having a family and also for
their mutual love and support. Being an institution for the
safeguarding of the human race and the sanctity of its members, it is
continually assailed by the evil one and our own depravity. Owing to
human perversity, marriage was, at the advent of Christ, universally
desecrated by the prevalence of divorce; and the consequent moral
condition of the age merited from the Savior the title “an adulterous
generation.” Therefore the first social work of Jesus, was the
restoration of marriage to its original unity and indissolubility and
its elevation to the holiness of a Sacrament of the New Law, and He
said, “What therefore God has joined together let no man put asunder.”
To the scribes and pharisees who sought to justify divorce by the
authority of Moses, Jesus explained, “Moses by reason of the hardness
of your hearts’—to put a stop to wife-murdering—“permitted you to put
away your wives; but in the beginning it was not so. And I say to
you, whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth
adultery. And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married
to another, she committeth adultery.”
On this law of the Son of God the Catholic Church stands today, as in
the past, when she withstood the rage of the popular passions and the
tyrannical power of the crowned heads and mailed fists of history.
With Saint Paul she says, “to them that are married, not I, but the
Lord commandeth that the wife depart not from her husband; and, if she
depart, that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband….The
woman that hath a husband is bound to the law while her husband
liveth. Therefore while her husband liveth she shall be called an
adulteress if she be with another man. Let wives therefore be subject
to their husbands as the Church is subject to Christ; and let husbands
love their wives as Christ loved the Church and delivered Himself up
for it.”
Marriage is therefore something highly exalted and should not be
entered into lightly or from low motives of sensuality, ambition or
greed. It has, like anything of great importance, its rigorous divine
laws, its serious responsibilities and its challenging difficulties,
which only the grace and blessing of God and a high-minded devotion to
duty, honor and love can enable men to fulfill and sustain.
The general unspiritual concept of marriage and the low motives from
which it is entered upon; the immoral and criminal practices against
its essential laws such as contraception, with consequent mutual
disrespect and the loss of domestic love; the reliance on the easiness
of divorce, which induces hasty and ill-sorted marriages and as hasty
separations, –these are the unfortunate conditions which makes our
country the divorce-ridden nation that it is.
And while there is some hope for the future from the stand of the
Catholic Church against the many evils afflicting marriage, and from
the noble obedience of many good souls to the divine laws of marriage,
yet so very often our fellow Catholic is found transgressing the laws
of the Church, and the natural moral order, relating to
matrimony,–particularly the use of contraceptives, shacking up, or
getting married outside the Church. On this last transgression, the
Church since the council of Trent requires that all Catholics be
married in the presence of an authorized priest (that is, the pastor
of the parish or the rector of the church where the wedding takes
place) and two witnesses and this for good reasons, first to safeguard
the matrimonial union by the public knowledge thereof and second to
impart to the newly wedded the blessing of almighty God on their new
state in life, something that a judge, a mayor or a protestant
minister can never give.
Until society returns to the Christian ideal of marriage as a holy and
indissoluble contract, sacramentally binding husband and wife to
life-long commitment to each other under the sanction of God, it will
be impossible to turn back the adulterous flood that is sapping the
moral character and the physical energy of the nation.
Let us beware of the moral pestilence in the standards and the
behavior of an apostate society amid which our lot is cast. The media
frequently reeks with it. In stories which go unchallenged the
foulest attacks are made upon the divine constitution and laws of
marriage; the tearing apart of families is applauded, and the sensual
escapades of celebrities are excused under the notion that animal
passions cannot be tamed. In the media’s imaginary world, even unions
which could never be marriages are portrayed as equaling, or even
surpassing the real thing.
As we are rational beings, as are we moral beings; and it is our
Christian duty to watch over and control the emotions of our hearts as
well as the movements of our minds. We are responsible before God for
the character and course of our affections as we are for the trend and
extent of our judgments; and we can control and overcome our
evil-inclined passions by the faith and the grace of our Divine
religion and the prudent flight of the occasions of sin.
If we do not see any problems with the many attacks on marriage, then
we need to reconsider our view of the value and sacredness of this
Divine institution. Our Lord chose it as the occasion for his first
public miracle to show the importance of marriage and his own
solicitude for its well-being. It is also the first time recorded
that Our Lady intercedes on the behalf of another, which shows her
great concern for interests of the married couple. The example of
both of them reveals to us the profound meaning of marriage and we
should therefore discover more its significance for our lives and for
the good of society and defend it against all that wars against it.
Amen.