CTG Season II Apologetics - Homosexuality

HOMOSEXUALITY

What does the Catholic Church teach about homosexuality?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUffSrtLlrg (Catholic Answers, Fr. Paul Check, 7:04 min)


Catholic Answers TV, Season 4, Episode 8. https://www.catholic.com/video/105112

• 07:20 – 11:32 What is the Church teaching on sex and sexual sin? – BP. Joseph E. Strickland

• 11:33 – Understanding the Church’s language on homosexuality being disordered – Karlo Broussard

Text from the resource book


PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION TWO
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

CHAPTER TWO
"YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF"

ARTICLE 6
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

You shall not commit adultery.¹¹³You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.¹¹⁴

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,¹⁴¹ tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."¹⁴² 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. 

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. 

2359 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. 

141 Cf. Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10.

Gen 19:1-29

The Immorality of Sodom

19 * The two angels came to Sodom in the evening; and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed himself with his face to the earth, ² and said, “My lords, turn aside, I pray you, to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the street.” ³ But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. ⁴ But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; ⁵ and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” ⁶ Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, ⁷ and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. ⁸ Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” ⁹ But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door. ¹⁰ But the men put forth their hands and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door. ¹¹ And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves groping for the door. 

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

¹² Then the men said to Lot, “Have you any one else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or any one you have in the city, bring them out of the place; ¹³ for we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” ¹⁴ So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place; for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. 

¹⁵ When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.” ¹⁶ But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him forth and set him outside the city. ¹⁷ And when they had brought them forth, they said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley; flee to the hills, lest you be consumed.” ¹⁸ And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; ¹⁹ behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me, and I die. ²⁰ Behold, yonder city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” ²¹ He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. ²² Make haste, escape there; for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. ²³ The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 

²⁴ ¶ Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; ²⁵ and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. ²⁶ ¶ But Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. ²⁷ And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord; ²⁸ ¶ and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. 

²⁹ So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt. 

 The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Ge 19:1–29). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

Romans 1:23–27

²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. 

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, ²⁷ 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. 

 The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Ro 1:23–27). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

1 Tim 1:3-10

Warning against False Teachers

³ As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, ⁴ nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies† which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith; ⁵ whereas the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. ⁶ Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, ⁷ desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. 

⁸ Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, ⁹ understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, ¹⁰ immoral persons, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, ¹¹ in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 

 The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, 1 Ti 1:3–11). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

142 CDF, Persona humana 8. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.html

SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH

PERSONA HUMANA 

DECLARATION ON CERTAIN QUESTIONS
CONCERNING SEXUAL ETHICS

VIII

At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.

A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.

In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.

In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.[18] This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.

Resources

COURAGE INTERNATIONAL

https://couragerc.org

A Roman Catholic apostolate for men and women who experience same-sex attraction and those who love them.


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