"The abuse scandal just drives me mad, because I felt that I could really relate. I was one of the many repressed seminarians and priests headed toward acting out."
I really appreciate the self-knowledge and insight, the honesty, the transparency, and the fact that your experiences and views were so well-articulated. This was helpful to my understanding of gay Catholics.
It seems to me at this point that this "orientation" or "preference" that so many people experience is an essentially permanent and unchangeable biological part of their personality.
I guess that leaves me with 2 questions.
1. Are you ok with certain homosexuals doing their best in living out God's will as they understand it by marrying someone of the opposite sex with whom they share a strong bond of loving friendship? Assume arguendo that the person is not in denial about the strength of his own homosexual desires. Perhaps not all people experience those desires with the same intensity, such that the option of marrying someone of the opposite sex, while not emotionally optimal in every way, may nevertheless be a largely satsifying experience, and therefore undertaken in good faith.
2. Forgive what may be my naivete - but, if the desire that you experience must be or can only be satisfied, at least for the majority of homosexuals, by an intimate relationship with someone of the same sex, is it wrong or impossible to consider the possibility that this relationship may be loving, committed, exclusive, yet abjuring of sexual acts with that person? I do not see why any Catholic individual would oppose, on grounds of Catholic teaching, such a relationship, if such a relationship is possible.
I ask these questions because I am wondering if there is any theoretical possibility, in your view, for a person to continue to make the moral judgment that a homosexual act, regardless of desire, is still unnatural and morally illicit. And I wonder this because it is clear to me that each of you still wants to be Catholic, and are concerned with morality generally and with Catholic morality specifically. But--and I may have missed it--I don't believe either of you clearly stated what your own views are regarding the morality of the homosexual act. So I guess that leads me to a third and final question.
3. Is it your view that the act is morally illicit, but you nevertheless permit yourself to engage in it sort of as a matter of indulgence in light of the practical near-impossibility of resistance to it? Or is it rather that you believe the act to be morally licit and/or morally neutral, either in general or in certain contexts? Or are you unsure?
I really appreciate the self-knowledge and insight, the honesty, the transparency, and the fact that your experiences and views were so well-articulated. This was helpful to my understanding of gay Catholics.
It seems to me at this point that this "orientation" or "preference" that so many people experience is an essentially permanent and unchangeable biological part of their personality.
I guess that leaves me with 2 questions.
1. Are you ok with certain homosexuals doing their best in living out God's will as they understand it by marrying someone of the opposite sex with whom they share a strong bond of loving friendship? Assume arguendo that the person is not in denial about the strength of his own homosexual desires. Perhaps not all people experience those desires with the same intensity, such that the option of marrying someone of the opposite sex, while not emotionally optimal in every way, may nevertheless be a largely satsifying experience, and therefore undertaken in good faith.
2. Forgive what may be my naivete - but, if the desire that you experience must be or can only be satisfied, at least for the majority of homosexuals, by an intimate relationship with someone of the same sex, is it wrong or impossible to consider the possibility that this relationship may be loving, committed, exclusive, yet abjuring of sexual acts with that person? I do not see why any Catholic individual would oppose, on grounds of Catholic teaching, such a relationship, if such a relationship is possible.
I ask these questions because I am wondering if there is any theoretical possibility, in your view, for a person to continue to make the moral judgment that a homosexual act, regardless of desire, is still unnatural and morally illicit. And I wonder this because it is clear to me that each of you still wants to be Catholic, and are concerned with morality generally and with Catholic morality specifically. But--and I may have missed it--I don't believe either of you clearly stated what your own views are regarding the morality of the homosexual act. So I guess that leads me to a third and final question.
3. Is it your view that the act is morally illicit, but you nevertheless permit yourself to engage in it sort of as a matter of indulgence in light of the practical near-impossibility of resistance to it? Or is it rather that you believe the act to be morally licit and/or morally neutral, either in general or in certain contexts? Or are you unsure?