Last week, a man smashed a bottle on a gay persons head at a bar in Georgetown. Recently, I heard kids tease each other as "you homo". Perhaps, it will help to articulate the Church's teaching on the matter so that we can teach our children by word and example how the Lord Jesus would treat these people.
In fact, Jesus might have enlisted the assistance of a homosexual for his last supper. In Mark 14: 13, Jesus asked his followers to meet & follow "...a man carrying a jar of water..." Back then, women carried the jars of water, so this guy might have been gay or an Essene monk.
Regardless, the Church today teaches that homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity." Here's the official text from the Vatican:http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
For clarity, I am not a proponent of same sex marriage nor do I tacitly condone sinful unions nor support anyones right for a same sex union. And I am straight.
4 comments:
I do believe that all people should be treated with respect, but unfortunately, I have found that far too many people,especially those who call themselves "Christian" or "Catholic", have grown to believe that by respecting sinners of all stripes, means to accept and tolerate their sins as well. Today, how often do you hear people say, I am personally opposed to same-sex marriages or unions, but I support a persons right to do it? One cannot be personally against something while at the same time supporting it. The same goes for abortion.
I do not accept & tolerate any homosexual sins. I do not support a persons right to same-sex marriage. When I was single, a rented a room out. So, the tenant lived where I lived but that's it. I needed his share of the rent.
I hope that you did not feel that I was saying that you tolerate homosexual sins or supported a person's right to same-sex marriage, as I was not speaking of you personally. What I was trying to say, is that a lot of churches today, that call themselves Christian, and even some Catholic (both Roman and Orthodox)seem to have been overly influenced by political correctness, acceptance and toleration, to the point that "loving the sinner" also means accepting their sins.
Catholic moral tradition elaborates four basic principles that help us navigate a morally complex world. Each of these principles involves varying degrees of cooperation with evil. The principles are (1) double effect, in which a single action has two foreseen effects—one “good” and intended, the other “evil” and tolerated, such as the removal of the fetus in an ectopic pregnancy to save the life of the mother; (2) tolerance, in which we judge, following the Gospel principle of the wheat and the tares, that certain evils must be endured for the time being lest a greater evil ensue from our efforts to weed out the malefactors, such as tolerating legal abortion even if we disagree that this should be the case; (3) compromise, in which we in some way actively participate in actions or sinful social structures that have a clear morally evil component, such as purchasing goods made under exploitative labor conditions in foreign sweatshops; and (4) the lesser of two evils, such as counseling the use of clean needles among drug addicts. from http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=5371
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