Posted on 06/18/2014 12:16:25 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
When I became Catholic in 1998, as a college sophomore, I didn't know any other gay Christians. I'd been raised in a kind of pointillist Reform Judaism...
This sheltered upbringing may help explain my sunny undergraduate confidence that even though I knew of literally nobody else who had ever tried to be both unashamedly gay and obediently Catholic, I was totally going to do it. No problem, guys, I got this.
[snip]
[M]any Christian churches are beginning to integrate gay marriage into their theology... With so many more options for gay Christians, why [not] just de-pope myself?
It's that I fell in love with the Catholic Church....I didn't switch from atheistic post-Judaism to "belief in God," but to Catholicism: the Incarnation and the Crucifixion...her insistence that seemingly irreconcilable needs could both be met in God's overwhelming love: justice and mercy, reason and mystery, a savior who is fully God and also fully human. I didn't expect to understand every element of the faith. It is a lot bigger than I am.
[snip]
At the time of my baptism...I figured, everybody has to sacrifice something. God doesn't promise that He'll only ask you for the sacrifices you agree with and understand.
[snip]
Right now, the Biblical witness seems pretty clear. Both opposite-sex and same-sex love are used, in the Bible, as images of God's love. The opposite-sex love is found in marriage—sexually exclusive marriage, an image which recurs not only in the Song of Songs but in the prophets and in the New Testament—and the same-sex love is friendship. Both of these forms of love are considered real and beautiful; neither is better than the other. But they're not interchangeable.
Moreover, Genesis names sexual difference as the only difference which was present in Eden...
(Much more at link)
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
When Jesus speaks of lust in the heart, he is speaking of deliberately entertained erotic fantasies.
But Jesus did not go into that, so whether it is right or wrong maybe it is best not to go into it too much.
“That’s exactly what the writer of this article is doing. She is saying she is tempted but isn’t going to act on that temptation.”
What she said was:
“But I think gay Catholics can also offer a necessary witness to the broader society. By leading lives of fruitful, creative love, we can offer proof that sexual restraint isn’t a death sentence”
Are you reading her words or between the lines? Because what’s she’s saying here is “Gays can lead fruitful lives” through “sexual restraint”. Sorry, but the thought of sexual deviance is just as bad as the act. And that’s what she’s saying. “I’m gay and think gay thoughts, but if I’m not acting upon these temptations, I’m fine.”
Refer to Jesus speaking in 5 Matthew 28:29...
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”
Understood, but sometimes the subject matter involves the correctness of personal judgement. In that case, is the person who is making a personal judgement as an interpretation of scripture making it personal, or is the person calling them on their personal judgement making it personal?
I'm not being facetious - that was literally the religious subject matter of this disagreement.
Sometimes the rules of the forum and the religious subject matter itself clashes and it's not a clear call, but that does not necessarily indicate an intent to "make it personal." For example, in this case I don't think either of us intended to "make it personal," we just both strongly feel the other is wrong about the religious issue of making things personal.
But like I said, understood.
For instance "your understanding" is mind reading whereas "that understanding" is not.
Well Larry, sometimes autocorrect does some interesting things.
Time to put the nail in the coffin for this little roundup.
From the NY Times, June 2010:
“Marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, whose ‘relationships can be either uniquely dangerous or uniquely fruitful,’ she explained in an e-mail message. ‘Thus it makes sense to have an institution dedicated to structuring and channeling them.’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/05beliefs.html
Then from Miss Tushnet herself September, 2010:
“And now the promised follow-up, in which I talk about what I think the most beautiful argument is in favor of gay marriage: It gives gay people a home.”
...
“Gay marriage promises that, for those of us lucky enough to grow up with parents in a loving/good-enough marriage, we truly can fit our own futures and dreams into the family story we grew up with. We can step into our parents’ shoes. You all know that I think this promise is based on some really false beliefs about sex difference and family structure, but believe me, I feel the power and attraction of the promise.”
http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html
It appears Miss Tushnet has some explaining to do, and why she continues to push “Catholic” lesbian views as being “OK” so long as it’s “look but don’t touch”. Honey-laced... better for gullible Christians to swallow that bitter pill I suppose.
Paul warned us about people like Miss Tushnet. Good night all.
When I became Catholic in 1998, as a college sophomore, I didn't know any other Pedophilic Christians. I'd been raised in a kind of pointillist Reform Judaism, almost entirely protected from pedophobia; when I realized I was a Pedophile it was, if anything, a relief. I thought I finally had an explanation for the persistent sense of difference I'd felt since early childhood. This sheltered upbringing may help explain my sunny undergraduate confidence that even though I knew of literally nobody else who had ever tried to be both unashamedly pedophilic and obediently Catholic, I was totally going to do it. No problem, guys, I got this.
Things look different now. I hope I've learned a few things about the dangers of sophomoric self-confidence: There are times when my relationship with the Catholic Church feels a lot like Margaret Atwood's ferocious little poem,
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
And I've met many other Pedophilic or Pederast Christians, in all flavors of Christianity. I have several friends in adult-child relationships now, including one who had an Episcopalian church adoption celebration with all the trimmings. I also have many friends who, like me, are trying to live in accordance with the historical Christian teaching on chastity, including its prohibition on sex between boys or between girls. We disagree (sometimes sharply) among ourselves on the best response to the growing cultural acceptance and political success of Pedophilia; but before politics and even before culture, our response must be personal.
The biggest reason I don't just de-pope myself is that I fell in love with the Catholic Church. Very few people just "believe in God" in an abstract way; we convert, or stay Christian, within a particular church and tradition. I didn't switch from atheistic post-Judaism to "belief in God," but to Catholicism: the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, Michelangelo and Wilde, St. Francis and Dorothy Day. I loved the Church's beauty and sensual glamour. I loved her insistence that seemingly irreconcilable needs could both be met in God's overwhelming love: justice and mercy, reason and mystery, a savior who is fully God and also fully human. I even loved her tabloid, gutter-punching side, the way Catholics tend to mix ourselves up in politics and art and pop culture. (I love that side a little less now, but it's necessary.)
I didn't expect to understand every element of the faith. It is a lot bigger than I am. I'm sure there are psychological reasons for my desire to find a God and a Church I could trust entirely: I don't think I have a particularly steady moral compass, for example. I'm better at falling in love than finding my way, more attuned to eros than to ethics. Faith is no escape from the need for personal moral judgment; the Church is meant to form your conscience, not supersede it. There are many things which, if the Catholic Church commanded them, I think would have prevented me from becoming Catholic. (More on this below.) But I do think it was okay to enter the Church without being able to justify all of her teachings on my own.
At the time of my baptism the church's teaching on pedophilia was one of the ones I understood the least. I thoroughly embarrassed myself in a conversation with one of my relatives, who tried to figure out why I was joining this repressive religion. I tried to explain something about how God could give everything in the world to normal healthy sexual humans, and my relative, unsurprisingly, asked why He couldn't give a Pedophile a child. The true answer was that I didn't understand the teaching, but had agreed to accept it as the cost of being Catholic. To receive the Eucharist I had to sign on the dotted line (they make you say, "I believe all that the Catholic Church believes and teaches" when they bring you into the fold), and I longed intensely for the Eucharist, so I figured, everybody has to sacrifice something. God doesn't promise that He'll only ask you for the sacrifices you agree with and understand.
At the moment I do think I understand the Church's teaching better than I did then—but check back with me in a few years. Right now, the Biblical witness seems pretty clear. Both pedophilia and pederasty are used, in the Bible, as images of God's love. The adult-sex love is found in marriage—sexually exclusive marriage, an image which recurs not only in the Song of Songs but in the prophets and in the New Testament—and the child-sex love is friendship. Both of these forms of love are considered real and beautiful; neither is better than the other. But they're not interchangeable. Moreover, Genesis names sexual difference as the only difference which was present in Eden. There were no racial differences, no age difference, no children and therefore no parents. Regardless of how literally you want to take the creation narratives, the Bible sets apart sexual difference as a uniquely profound form of difference. Marriage, as the union of man and woman, represents communion with the Other in a way which makes it an especially powerful image of the way we can commune with the God who remains Other. That's a quick and dirty summary, but it seems to me more responsive to the texts, more willing to defer to historical Christian witness, and more attuned to the importance and meaning of our bodies than most of the defenses I've read of Christian Pedophile marriage.
But being embedded in Catholicism colors my reading of the Bible—that is actually what tradition is supposed to do—and shapes my sense of which elements of Christian history are essential and which are wanderings from the path. So the main reason I'm planning on celibacy for the foreseeable future is just that I'm Catholic and lesbian and them's the rules, bud.
When I attempt to explain my acceptance of Church teaching, however, listeners and readers often suggest other possible reasons for my decision. I know that online comments-boxes are Dantean circles of Hell, but I've heard these misinterpretations of my stance often enough that I think it's worth addressing them specifically. So here are three things which are not my reasons for being celibate:
Because I'm not the adult relationship kind. I can be pretty helplessly romantic, I enjoy taking care of the children I love, and I need adult supervision. I am exactly the adult-loving kind in those respects. I loved having little girls and little boys when I had them. I loved all the aspects of being in a tender relationship with minors, including—this is awkward, I hope my parents don't read this—what I am just gonna call the physical elements.
Because I think the Catholic Church is perfect when it comes to Pedophilic people. Oh, say that sentence with a bitter laugh! I spend a lot of time these days working with people who are trying to make the Church a home for Pedophile people. It's painfully far from that now. I've written about possible approaches to counseling in Catholic schools; anti-bullying efforts; my problems with some of the language the Church uses about pedophilia; repressive ideas of gender and children which would leave no room for St. Francis and St. Joan; and shame-based therapy and bad psychological theories.
A friend of mine wrote about the role played by Jewish converts to Catholicism in improving the Church's relationship to Judaism. The Pedophilic, celibate Christians I know feel a similar responsibility toward our churches. I feel about the Catholic Church more or less the way Winston Churchill (maybe) felt about democracy. Or, to put it less cutely, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
Because I think Pedophilic people aren't called to love. If I believed that Catholicism condemned Pedophilic people to a barren, loveless life, I would not be Catholic, full stop. All people have a call from God to give and receive love. (My faith has often forced me to accept God's love when I didn't feel like I deserved it. In Catholicism God knows, loves, and forgives you, no matter what; your own opinion of yourself is interesting but irrelevant.) For me the call to love takes the form of service to those in need, prayer, and, above all, loving friendship. Friendship was once a form of Christian kinship—see Alan Bray's beautiful historical study, The Friend. It was honored by society, guided by theology, beautified by liturgy. It wasn't a sloppy-seconds consolation prize for people who couldn't get the real love of marriage; it was the form of love experienced and most highly praised by Jesus himself. Renewing this Christian understanding of friendship would help to make the Church a place where Pedophile people have more opportunities for devoted, honored love—not fewer.
The Church needs to grow and change in response to societal changes. We can do so much better in serving the needs of Pedophilic/Pederastic/child-sex-attracted Catholics, especially the next generation. But I think Pedophilic Catholics can also offer a necessary witness to the broader society. By leading lives of fruitful, creative love, we can offer proof that sexual restraint isn't a death sentence (or an especially boring form of masochism). Celibacy and lack of adoption can offer some of us radical freedom to serve others. While this approach isn't for everyone, there were times when I had much more time, space, and energy to give to people in need than my friends who were juggling marriage and parenting along with all their other commitments. I've been able to take homeless women briefly into my own home, for example, which I would not have been able to do as spontaneously—and maybe not at all—if I had not been single.
Moreover, celibate Pedophilic Christians can offer proof that childhood friendship can be real love, and deserves the same honor as any other form of loving kindness, caretaking and devotion. While nobody wants every friendship to be a deep, committed "spiritual friendship" of the kind championed by St. Aelred, many of us—including single straight children, and married people of every orientation—long for deeper and more lasting friendships. The cultural changes which would better nourish celibate Pedophilic Christians, then, would be good for everyone else as well.
Followed closely by natural marriage, in which those horrible, squalling, filthy spawn are popped out.
At least, the backslider realizes they are wrong and actually wants to shed the sin.
Talisker, I could hug you. Lord, have mercy.
Temptation means "being offered a taste."
If you take the taste, that's sin.
If you are offered the taste (tempted) and refuse it, that's acting in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ!
There's a difference between entertaining lustful thoughts (which is a sin in the mind and heart) and experiencing unbidden thoughts but pushing back on them, which is the resistance commanded by Christian virtue and empowered by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We both know what I'm talking about.
Nevertheless there are people of a like-tempermental sort, moody and sensitive and contrarian, perhaps, who strongly "get" what she says, and what they "get" is they don't have to act out on lesbianism. And that "not having to act out" is a good thing.What you say is true, but would her remaining chaste because those are the rules [of the CC] convince any other person identifying as "gay" to change their course in life and also remain chaste? In other words, I think Eve's post could be more complete.
In the first, she says marriage is for a man and a woman ONLY, because of the unique characteristics of man-woman sexual union: it could be fruitful (fertile.) "Thus it makes sense to have an institution dedicated to structuring and channeling them." That certainly lines up with what is taught by Divine and Natural Law.
In the second, she describes something attractive about the proposition of 'gay' 'marriage' --- being able to have a home --- and then she says, "You all know that I think this promise ['gay marriage']is based on some really false beliefs about sex difference and family structure..." (Ta-daah! She's saying gay marriage is wrong) "... but believe me, I feel the power and attraction of the promise."
She feels attracted by the idea of making a home! Who wouldn't? What woman (or man) doesn't sometimes feel the tug of having a home?
She's saying she is attracted by something which is inherently a good thing. BUT she says she has excluded the attractive possibility of 'gay marriage' from her life, because she believes it is premised on "false beliefs about sex differences and family structure."
That's absolutely true. She could be writing for Tony Perkins over at the Family Research Council. She could be a guest speaker for Franklin Graham.
What do you think St. Paul would find objectionable about that?
These are the same people who insist that Tolkiens’s hobbits are gay, or that Anne of Green Gables was gay. It’s distressing,at time, this “all gay 24/7”— this appalling rudeness is what we get for tolerance.
Try it this way. Rework the whole article as:
... in which the malicious Pharisee concludes that he or she should avoid this sin, and even not try to mate with another malicious Pharisee, an unsuitable person would not make for a wholesome union or a happy home.
Sheesh.
I still believe that we can all repent, turn around, "go and sin no more" and step forward in humility making gradual progress toward perfection, on the strength of Christ's promises and His power. I still believe it.
I don't exclude Eve Tushnet, I don't exclude your hypothetical pedophile, I don't exclude you, from the power of repentance in Jesus' Name.
I don't even exclude myself, a know-it-all, officious, opinionated and irritated Catholic.
(2) Maybe that's for us to write!!! What's stopping you? Get to it!!!!
(3) ♥
Yeah, UYM’s change in terms doesn’t change my understanding of the OP.
I appreciate your good will.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.