Courage to Love!

Courage, a Roman Catholic Apostolate, aimed at those with homosexual inclinations, and those that love them, can be summed up with these words:

"The Courage apostolate is that maternal solicitude on the part of the Church to people who have a unique struggle, an often difficult and vexing one, and who want to know that the grace of Christ and his Cross is available to them in concrete and practical ways. This is part of the charism of Courage and what was in the mind and heart of our founder, Cardinal Cooke. It is a desire to express the Church's care and affection for a group of people who often feel isolated. I don't just say lonely, but isolated. They're uncertain about where they can find assistance, who really takes an interest in them and who has a love for them. The Church does."

Courage can be found at: http://couragerc.net/index.html. I encourage you to do some reading for yourselves on the vexing and emotional issues related to homosexual inclinations by visiting this website.

In reading the following article on the subject, please keep in mind that while the Catholic Church condemns homosexual acts as theologically contrary to scripture and philosophically contrary to the natural law, judgment of those who consent to such acts is left to God alone. In light of an analogy, the Church is like a prosecuting attorney who charges someone with an illegal act. Whether that person is guilty, and to what degree, is the work of a higher authority, namely the judge and jury; not the prosecuting attorney. The Church being like that prosecuting attorney makes pronouncements or judgments on behavior but leaves it to a higher authority to determine guilt and whether a sentence is warranted. We proclaim this every Sunday when we say: “He (Jesus) will come again to judge the living and the dead.” We can and may say that someone acted in a way contrary to God's Law but their culpability is a judgment only God can make. God may punish them harshly or let them off with an admonishing. The Church has never said nor will it ever say that so and so was judged in a certain way because of their behavior, even for those who murdered innocents on a massive scale, such as Hitler. In light of the depth of evil attributed to Hitler alone, one can speculate about the consequences of his actions on himself, but in the end, how God judged him is known to God alone. We can only see to the horizon and are thus incapable of seeing the world in its fullness. When it comes to each other, we can only see to the horizon and are thus prevented from judging that person accurately due to this limited understanding.  God alone is the sole bearer of a person's truth.

Christ did give the "twelve and their successors" the right to make judgments on faith and morals (Jn 20:21) and along with this exists the notion of "intrinsic evil."  That is, some acts are in themselves contrary to Divine Law.  For example, the "choice" to intentionally kill an innocent person, be they born or unborn.  Intrinsically wrong and thus under no circumstance can the act ever be justified.  Another more specific example would the killing of Matthew Shepherd, a young man beaten and killed near Laramie, Wyoming, on October 12, 1998, for reasons of being gay.  He was 21 years of age.  It was an evil act in itself because he was an innocent person who was tortured and killed.  The fear and hatred that prompted it stands condemned as well.  

Even so, in Christ, God forbade us from judging or condemning.  Regardless of who it is, those who do judge and condemn in the sense that Christ forbade stand liable to judgment themselves.  In fact, Matthew 7: 1 forbids it directly.  Jesus taught us this clearly in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery (Jn 8:1). To breach this is predicated not on the moral judgment of an act but rather on the moral judgment of the person.  A person may disobey a divine law but Jesus is telling us here that we therefore do not have the right to exclude them from the human family (judge-condemn), let alone kill another person because of that disobedience.  Recall the relationship between Sr. Helen Prejean and Matthew Poncelet in the film Dead Man Walking.  This point is critical and one often overlooked, but it goes to the heart of the matter.  To judge in the sense Christ forbade is to exclude, be it turning one's back on another or be it murder.  To exclude, Jesus tells us, is to be excluded from the kingdom: Do not judge lest thou be judged (Mt 7:1).  For this reason, the person who excludes friendship and love from those who might be gay is an act that is just as detestable as the person who is gay and excludes friendship and love from those who do not embrace their views on homosexuality.

It is true that one's culpability depends on varying factors such as freedom, knowledge, and conscience formation.  Nevertheless, the point being: only God knows the fullness of a person's culpability; we do not and cannot know the fullness of that culpability and therefore must not exclude them from our love lest we be excluded from God's love on the day of judgment. 

It is tragic that some even predicate this love on agreement. That is, unless I agree with them, they claim the right to judge me an intolerant bigot. They judge my soul and my love to the degree I agree with their movements and ideas. I know from lived experience that I do not have to agree with someone's view in order to love them and treat them as a friend or family member. In fact, Jesus teaches us that our love is not to be predicated on any condition at all. Even our enemies are not excluded from this love. It may be easy to love those we like and those who love us, but the real test of the love Jesus speaks of is the love we impart toward those we do not like or who are different from us or who believe something different and live in ways we disagree with. It is tragic when someone reduces the spirit of love to like mindedness and even more so when they restrict their love only to those in their camp, only to those, who like themselves, are conservative, or liberal, or protestant, or catholic, or straight, or gay, OR whatever.

In short, we are called to love all even those with homosexual inclinations or anyone else for that matter. That Christians have not always done this does not therefore negate the truth behind the divine command. That Christians have not always done this does not therefore negate the quest to reach the goal. Feelings and thoughts of hatred are rooted in evil and must always be avoided lest they fester and overtake a person's soul. The scriptures teach us that "if we walk in light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another..." (1Jn 1:7). That spirit of evil must be challenged in a spirit of love whether it comes from a conservative Christian who spites and demonizes the person who is gay because of their beliefs or a gay person who spites and demonizing people for their views on homosexuality. Regardless of the color of their views and the nature of their politics, those who demonize whole classes of people because of their views or their failure to uphold certain ideals and whose lives may be marked by violent rhetoric are to be offered up to God's power and mercy and are to be treated with compassion, but we must never cease to challenge them and remind them of the power and peace that comes from this truth: Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten of God and has knowledge of God. The person without love has known nothing of God for God is love" (1Jn 4:7).

Yet what some of our priests did to our young is deplorable. Criminal acts toward any child by any person are ones that cry out for justice. Jesus himself said, whoever causes these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him or her to be thrown into the depths of the sea with a great millstone around their neck (Mt 18:6). These acts too can be considered intrinsic evils, ones that demand divine judgment.  But the tactic used is to discredit the church's moral authority because of these evil acts. Yet, as a corrupt politician fails to negate the power and credibility of the US Constitution and the structure on which it is built, so does a corrupt cleric fail to negate the power and credibility of God's Word and the structure on which it is built. Just as the sickness present in hospitals does not negate its mission to eradicate that sickness, nor does the sin within the Church negate its mission to redeem and heal it. Just as our failure to always live up to the ideals we may espouse does not negate our essential beauty and dignity; the same holds true for the Church which is defined ultimately not by its cathedrals and libraries but by the very people of God that is you and me.

Some used Einstein's theory of relativity to create a bomb that killed many innocents, yet that evil act does not negate the truth of that theory.  Some may use the cover of the Church to commit crimes, yet this does not mean that the truth of that Church is therefore negated, and, of course, it isn't. The Church like a person evolves and changes over time. I may be the same person I was when I was sixteen, but then again, I am not, for I have grown and evolved into someone else. The Church of today is the Church of the Inquisition, but then again, it is not, for it too has changed and evolved over time. Yet there remain those who judge the Church of today based on the Church it was in the midieval ages. This is equivalent to someone judging the you of today based on the person you were twenty years ago. Is this right? I think Not.

Regardless of the rhetoric of the radical left, I do not belong to a Church that is like the church of the inquisition or crusades nor do I belong to a Church that is defined by its illness but is rather defined by its ideals and the lived testimony of its Saints whose love overshadows the darkness of sin. Thank God for people like that whose stories have been given to us like diamonds glistining in a barren field. Thank God for people in our lives who bear witness to that love in the lives they lead.

Sadly, some Christian fundamentalists do damn all kinds of people to hell, but as Catholics, we reject that spirit of fundamentalism whether it comes from Christians or anyone else. What we like to hope and pray for is saving people for heaven. That’s the church’s ultimate goal for this sinner and all the sinners out there as well. God is a God of mercy and his mercies are not exhausterd (Psalm 107).

The following article by Courage sums up the church’s beliefs well, though in no way is it an exhaustive explanation on the subject. As you read, see how it judges acts, arguments, ideas, agendas, and not people.  For more detailed work on this issues discussed, see the website above.

Homosexuality

Every human being is called to receive a gift of divine sonship, to become a child of God by grace. However, to receive this gift, we must reject sin, including homosexual behavior—that is, acts intended to arouse or stimulate a sexual response regarding a person of the same sex. The Catholic Church teaches that such acts are always violations of divine and natural law.

Homosexual desires, however, are not in themselves sinful. People are subject to a wide variety of sinful desires over which they have little direct control, but these do not become sinful until a person acts upon them, either by acting out the desire or by encouraging the desire and deliberately engaging in fantasies about acting it out. People tempted by homosexual desires, like people tempted by improper heterosexual desires, are not sinning until they act upon those desires in some manner.

Divine Law

The rejection of homosexual behavior that is found in the Old Testament is well known. In Genesis 19, two angels in disguise visit the city of Sodom and are offered hospitality and shelter by Lot. During the night, the men of Sodom demand that Lot hand over his guests for homosexual intercourse. Lot refuses, and the angels blind the men of Sodom. Lot and his household escape, and the town is destroyed by fire "because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord" (Gen. 19:13).

Throughout history, Jewish and Christian scholars have recognized that one of the chief sins involved in God’s destruction of Sodom was its people’s homosexual behavior. But today, certain homosexual activists promote the idea that the sin of Sodom was merely a lack of hospitality. Although inhospitality is a sin, it is clearly the homosexual behavior of the Sodomites that is singled out for special criticism in the account of their city’s destruction. We must look to Scripture’s own interpretation of the sin of Sodom.

Jude 7 records that Sodom and Gomorrah "acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust." Ezekiel says that Sodom committed "abominable things" (Ezek. 16:50), which could refer to homosexual and heterosexual acts of sin. Lot even offered his two virgin daughters in place of his guests, but the men of Sodom rejected the offer, preferring homosexual sex over heterosexual sex (Gen. 19:8–9). Ezekiel does allude to a lack of hospitality in saying that Sodom "did not aid the poor and needy" (Ezek. 16:49). So homosexual acts and a lack of hospitality both contributed to the destruction of Sodom, with the former being the far greater sin, the "abominable thing" that set off God’s wrath.

But the Sodom incident is not the only time the Old Testament deals with homosexuality. An explicit condemnation is found in the book of Leviticus: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. . . . If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them" (Lev. 18:22, 20:13).

Reinterpreting Scripture

To discount this, some homosexual activists have argued that moral imperatives from the Old Testament can be dismissed since there were certain ceremonial requirements at the time—such as not eating pork,

or circumcising male babies—that are no longer binding.

While the Old Testament’s ceremonial requirements are no longer binding, its moral requirements are. God may issue different ceremonies for use in different times and cultures, but his moral requirements are eternal and are binding on all cultures.

Confirming this fact is the New Testament’s forceful rejection of homosexual behavior as well. In Romans 1, Paul attributes the homosexual desires of some to a refusal to acknowledge and worship God. He says, "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. . . . Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them" (Rom. 1:26–28, 32).

Elsewhere Paul again warns that homosexual behavior is one of the sins that will deprive one of heaven: "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9–10, NIV). All of Scripture teaches the unacceptability of homosexual behavior. But the rejection of this behavior is not an arbitrary prohibition. It, like other moral imperatives, is rooted in natural law—the design that God has built into human nature.

Natural Law

People have a basic, ethical intuition that certain behaviors are wrong because they are unnatural. We perceive intuitively that the natural sex partner of a human is another human, not an animal.

The same reasoning applies to the case of homosexual behavior. The natural sex partner for a man is a woman, and the natural sex partner for a woman is a man. Thus, people have the corresponding intuition concerning homosexuality that they do about bestiality—that it is wrong because it is unnatural.

Natural law reasoning is the basis for almost all standard moral intuitions. For example, it is the dignity and value that each human being naturally possesses that makes the needless destruction of human life or infliction of physical and emotional pain immoral. This gives rise to a host of specific moral principles, such as the unacceptability of murder, kidnapping, mutilation, physical and emotional abuse, and so forth.

"I Was Born This Way"

Many homosexuals argue that they have not chosen their condition, but that they were born that way, making homosexual behavior natural for them. But because something was not chosen does not mean it was inborn. Some desires are acquired or strengthened by habituation and conditioning instead of by conscious choice. For example, no one chooses to be an alcoholic, but one can become habituated to alcohol. Just as one can acquire alcoholic desires (by repeatedly becoming intoxicated) without consciously choosing them, so one may acquire homosexual desires (by engaging in homosexual fantasies or behavior) without consciously choosing them. Since sexual desire is subject to a high degree of cognitive conditioning in humans (there is no biological reason why we find certain scents, forms of dress, or forms of underwear sexually stimulating), it would be most unusual if homosexual desires were not subject to a similar degree of cognitive conditioning.

Even if there is a genetic predisposition toward homosexuality (and studies on this point are inconclusive), the behavior remains unnatural because homosexuality is still not part of the natural design of humanity. It does not make homosexual behavior acceptable; other behaviors are not rendered acceptable simply because there may be a genetic predisposition toward them.

For example, scientific studies suggest some people are born with a hereditary disposition to alcoholism, but no one would argue someone ought to fulfill these inborn urges by becoming an alcoholic. Alcoholism is not an acceptable "lifestyle" any more than homosexuality is.

The Ten Percent Argument

Homosexual activists often justify homosexuality by claiming that ten percent of the population is homosexual, meaning that it is a common and thus acceptable behavior. But not all common behaviors are acceptable, and even if ten percent of the population were born homosexual, this would prove nothing.

One hundred percent of the population is born with original sin and the desires flowing from it. If those desires manifest themselves in a homosexual fashion in ten percent of the population, all that does is give us information about the demographics of original sin.

But the fact is that the ten percent figure is false. It stems from the 1948 report by Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The study was profoundly flawed, as later psychologists studying sexual behavior have agreed. Kinsey’s subjects were drawn heavily from convicted criminals; 1,400 of his 5,300 final subjects (twenty-six percent) were convicted sex offenders—a group that by definition is not representative of normal sexual practices.

Furthermore, the ten percent figure includes people who are not exclusively homosexual but who only engaged in some homosexual behavior for a period of time and then stopped—people who had gone through a fully or partially homosexual "phase" but who were not long-term homosexuals. (For a critique of Kinsey’s research methods, see Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, by Dr. Judith Reisman and Edward Eichel [Lafayette, Louisiana: Lochinvar & Huntington House, 1990].)

Recent and more scientifically accurate studies have shown that only around one to two percent of the population is homosexual.

"You’re Just a Homophobe"

Those opposed to homosexual behavior are often charged with "homophobia"—that they hold the position they do because they are "afraid" of homosexuals. Sometimes the charge is even made that these same people are perhaps homosexuals themselves and are overcompensating to hide this fact, even from themselves, by condemning other homosexuals.

Both of these arguments attempt to stop rational discussion of an issue by shifting the focus to one of the

participants. In doing so, they dismiss another person’s arguments based on some real or supposed attribute of the person. In this case, the supposed attribute is a fear of homosexuals.

Like similar attempts to avoid rational discussion of an issue, the homophobia argument completely misses the point. Even if a person were afraid of homosexuals, that would not diminish his arguments against their behavior. The fact that a person is afraid of handguns would not nullify arguments against handguns, nor would the fact that a person might be afraid of handgun control diminish arguments against handgun control.

Furthermore, the homophobia charge rings false. The vast majority of those who oppose homosexual behavior are in no way "afraid" of homosexuals. A disagreement is not the same as a fear. One can disagree with something without fearing it, and the attempt to shut down rational discussion by crying "homophobe!" falls flat. It is an attempt to divert attention from the arguments against one’s position by focusing attention on the one who made the arguments, while trying to claim the moral high ground against him.

The Call to Chastity

The modern arguments in favor of homosexuality have thus been insufficient to overcome the evidence that homosexual behavior is against divine and natural law, as the Bible and the Church, as well as the wider circle of Jewish and Christian (not to mention Muslim) writers, have always held.

The Catholic Church thus teaches: "Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357).

However, the Church also acknowledges that "[homosexuality’s] psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. . . . 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 that they may encounter from their condition.

"Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection" (CCC 2357– 2359).

Paul comfortingly reminds us, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Cor. 10:13).

Homosexuals who want to live chastely can contact Courage, a national, Church-approved support group for help in deliverance from the homosexual lifestyle.

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