I read on another blog this:
The president stated last night, Super Bowl Sunday, the following: “My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does, in every institution and walk of life.”
In this declaration, I suspect he also means religious institutions, such as the Christian Church, like Lutherans and Roman Catholics. As you will recall his administration sought to force a Lutheran School to hire back an actively gay person who taught in one of their schools. The Supreme Court, fortunately, sided with the Lutherans not the president.
Well of course people with same sex attractions are in every institution, Catholic and otherwise. In religious institutions whether Christian or otherwise, where there is a prohibition against same sex activity or sexual expression, this could exclude them from some institutional functions, such as ministry, leadership and participation in specific religious organizations and ministries.
Heterosexual fornicators are excluded from some institutional access in the Catholic Church as are adulterers.
When the president says gays and lesbians should have equal access and opportunity in every institution and frames in "ex cathedra" does he mean those who are actively engaged in homosexual activity and publicly so?
The Church teaches that homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. [...] Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. 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. (CCC #2357)
Continuing on, the Church teaches that 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. (CCC #2358)
And finally, the Church says that 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 #2359)
There are a couple of key points that Obama either distorts or ignores. First, discrimination. Not all discrimination is bad. He just thinks it is. If discrimination is just, it is a good thing. And just discrimination against a homosexual is a good thing...just as it is against a heterosexual.
Second, under no circumstances can it be tolerated. You will never hear me tolerate an evil action. The homosexual action is evil. It is deliberately NOT ordered to God. Therefore it cannot be condoned.
Third, we should be willing to help the homosexual person through disinterested friendship. We must help them overcome the trial they are faced with, just as we should help anyone overcome any trial with which they are faced.
Finally, the homosexual person must realize that it is not the person we are intolerant of, no...it. is. the. action. The key concepts that Obama misses are these, right thinking regarding justice. Right thinking regarding tolerance. Right thinking regarding charity. And finally, right thinking regarding discrimination. When one turns his back on the truth, he is left to his own devices. Protestantism turned it's back on the truth. Islam turned it's back on the truth. What was and is left is simply this, error. Mr. Obama is wrong.
We don't think ill of the homosexual person, but until such time as the homosexual person has overcome the trial to which he has embattled himself, he cannot be free. And if he is Catholic, he must not focus on anything else. That is his cross. The Church does not condemn him for being homosexual, but the Church will condemn him for his actions.
We should add to our prayers, every day that that blight of the homosexual action is obliterated from society and that all God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Free from the homosexual action. Dr. King was right in this one instance. Even when he didn't mean it that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment