Fascinating article by a lesbian who converted from atheism to Catholicism — who chooses to remain Catholic and honor the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexual activity.
Moreover, celibate gay Christians can offer proof that friendship can be real love, and deserves the same honor as any other form of lovingkindness, 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 people, and married people of every orientation—long for deeper and more lasting friendships. The cultural changes which would better nourish celibate gay Christians, then, would be good for everyone else as well.
(Read the whole article.)
What do you think?
Celibacy, when freely chosen and not imposed by others, is an option for all people, gay and straight. I live in a city that is an historic stronghold for Roman Catholicism. Whenever my windows are open I hear the chimes on the hours from the local Catholic church and everywhere I drive it seems there are Catholic institutions. There is much more diversity and informal autonomy among Catholic churches than most Protestants believe. Different Catholic churches, depending on the priest, take different approaches to gays. The one close to me has a pragmatic priest who has been there for a lifetime almost. He is very welcoming of gays, celibate or not. Plus he is widely believed to be gay himself. So it is not always necessary to leave the Catholic church for non-celibate gays. I spent a few years in graduate studies in a Jesuit college and discovered that the American Catholic Church is not at all monolithic. They range from the far right to the far left much like Churches of Christ.
The authoress of the article is more biblical than Gary, in that she does not attempt to equate committed relationships between homosexuals with the heterosexual marriage relationship created in Eden, but blemished in so many ways by so many ever since. I especially appreciate her description of the male-female distinction in Eden as being the only distinctive between humans that is from the beginning.
Jerry, that goes back to the question I asked repeatedly in the previous series but no one ever answered. If Adam had had no sexual desire for Eve or for any woman would Eve have been a suitable, helpful or meet help or mate for Adam? If it’s all so simple then that should be a simple question to answer. It’s either yes or no. If the answer is no then how is it any different today? How can a woman be a suitable help or life companion for a man who is not sexually attracted to women? If it’s all so simple and plain please explain that.
In related news the Church of England has publicly indicated today that it will no longer oppose the legalization of gay marriage in the UK.
I have just reread Leroy Garrett’s article, “A Church for Gays and Lesbians” in the September, 1989 issue of Restoration Review. It is available online. The openness he expressed 24 years ago is still scarce in Churches of Christ.