The recent suicide of a Rutger's student who was "outed" by his roommates, pushed me to look more closely at what our Church teaches about homosexuality. The Catechism says in 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,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. 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." The call to treat all people with respect, compassion, and sensitivity is what struck me the most. It ties back to the issue of bullying which I wrote about in the last blog. Why is our society so obsessed with everyone being the same? What is wrong with being different? The folks that are a little different are usually the most interesting people. They are usually the folks you want to hang around with at a social gathering. Our society as a whole has become so uncivil. I am not sure that it is worse than it was ten or twenty years ago but I am convinced that technology has allowed it to reach new heights. People are able to anonymously sabotage other people's lives using the Internet in venues just like this. It very much resembles the story of the Noah's time in the original testament of the Bible. God has to be so exasperated with us as a people. I pray that He inspires leadership to step forward and address this problem specifically. I am committed to doing my part. What are you going to do?
Kurt Hilgefort, is a Catholic father of six who publishes his thoughts on his blog Shadows of Augustine . He responded to my seven question survey with the following answers. Kurt is the first layperson to respond to the seven question survey and I think that his experience is extremely relevant to me personally and I hope that you are inspired by his thoughts as well. If you would like to respond, please send an email to fellmananthony@gmail.com with your thoughts and I will be happy to publish them as well. 1. What is the biggest challenge to your faith that you have faced so far? The biggest challenge for me has been the whole dying to self thing. On an intellectual level, there are no barriers. It comes down to a matter of accepting the authority of the Church that Christ founded upon Peter. My challenge is not in the intellect, but rather in the will. The challenge for me has always been to continually seek conversion. I want to be transformed, but I want it to be over all ...
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