Writing about the Church of England’s new report on living in love and faith was never going to be easy, and the aftermath of the reports about child sex abuse in my own church and the Roman Catholic Church make it no easier; but they make it necessary. At the most basic level, churches which freak out about people in faithful and loving gay and lesbian marriages and then cover up child sex abuse by priests and cardinals have their priorities wrong. It gives the public the impression of a set of churches obsessed by sex for the wrong reasons, and that’s one reason ‘living in love and faith’ is so important. It encourages a discussion about how churches approach trans, gay and lesbian people.
Whatever St Paul meant, or did not mean by the passages which get trotted out every time this subject is raised, gay, trans and lesbian people exist and are not going to vanish. What should you do if you so identify and also identify as a Christian? If you have a call to celibacy, the problem does not go away, as others peoples’ reactions to you may make you feel unwelcome. How must that feel when you know God is love? And no, I am not talking about lust or sex, I am talking about that type of love which means people make sacrifices for each other and want to make a life long commitment.
The new report asks us all as Christians to think again about whether we evidence our faith in the ways we relate to those whose sexuality is different from that which the church has traditionally accepted. ‘The Church wants to ensure that it offers pastoral care to all people, especially in the context of changing perspectives on gender, identity and sexuality.’ To those raising their hands in horror, stop and moment and think – are you sure that closing our minds on this issue is the wise or the Christian thing to do?
Few things were, or indeed are, more characteristics of Judaism than its dietary requirements. It never occurred to those running the church in Jerusalem that Gentiles should be accommodated by remaining as they were when they became Christians. Even when Paul said God had said it was okay, the Church refused to accept it and there had to be a discussion. By contrast, what Jesus had to say about sex was not much, and the idea that we should not even discuss it seems well, narrow-minded.
I am sure there are many saying that this is whatever the church equivalent of #fakenews is, and that the Church is simply going to go all ‘woke’. If so, it’s an odd way to go about it, encouraging a real discussion. There are study groups to go with the online material, and I am part of one, and looking forward to it. I am one of those strange creatures who really believes it when she says she is in favour of freedom of discussion because good ideas drive out bad, and the truth wins over lies. The one thing that is always clear is that no Christian should object to others querying her views, or be afraid to air her views because of others.
It is clear many among the first Christians objected very strongly to what Paul was teaching about the dietary laws. It is clear many modern Christians object very strongly to women priests/ gay marriage / gay priests etc, etc. It is also clear that many modern Christians find these positions objectionable and would call those holding them ‘bigots’. Divergences like this are not to be healed easily, and will never be healed until all parties respect the other enough to listen – and to hear out a case to which they may, themselves, violently object. Jesus never said that being a Christian was going to be easy, but then she who hates her sister or brother should first set that right before worshipping. This, God willing, is a step in that direction.
All Along the Watchtower 
I actually find Jude to be the most decisive NT text on this matter, not Paul.
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I am not quite sure I follow, Nicholas. Are you equating trans, lesbian and gay people with the ‘ungodly’ and their sexuality with ‘perversion’?
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Re: Paul, I am saying that people will always argue over minimalist and minimalist interpretations of his words. A minimalist will say he is only censuring abusive relationships, sacred prostitution, prostitution, and promiscuity. A maximalist will say he is criticising homosexual intercourse and those other things.
Jude’s argument is about unnatural carnal relations, so you can’t have the arguments over his text that people have with Paul. Jude argues by analogy: if it was wrong for the Sons of God to populate with humans, it is wrong for humans of the same sex to copulate. Jude is referring to Genesis 6, mediated through the apocryphal text of Enoch, specifically the portion known to scholars as “The Book of the Watchers”.
On a personal note, you know why this issue is important to me. I have done a considerable amount of reading around it.
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Here everything depends on what we understand by natural and unnatural.
Modern science suggests that some people are naturally attracted to more than the opposite sex, indeed many women who would consider themselves heterosexual have found themselves attracted to other women, so by what measure are we saying that such feelings are unnatural?
If the standard is that of the time in which the man who wrote Jude wrote, then fine, that was the view then. It is still the view taken by maximalists, but two things: is it supported by modern science, and what is it saying the Christians who feel naturally attracted to their own sex? It is also, of course, saying nothing to trans people, who are not even mentioned.
For me this is the problem with the maximalist position, it tends towards saying we accept what past ages taught on the basis of what they knew? What other parts of modern science should we reject? Do we not come close to an Amish position if we travel down this route?
I think as an approach to mission, it’s as wrong as we can get it. It makes Christians look like bigots. How can we ask people to dialogue is we are telling them we already know the answer?
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I don’t mean natural in the sense of what happens in nature and I reject biblical views of science as outdated. You will note my writings about Paul’s Hippocratic gynaecology, which has long since been refuted. I don’t rely on the bible for scientific truth (though I do for historical facts that it claims as historical): see my rejection of literal reading of Genesis and my philosophical writings about linguistic, ontological, and epistemological idealism.
Jude’s argument does not rely on scientific knowledge because it is not based on nature but on authority. His argument is that God has ordained patterns of behaviour and that we are not permitted to transgress them. The fate of the Watchers is cited illustratively.
Of course I believe we should treat all people with respect, but I think we need to be careful not to confuse the physical with the metaphysical.
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But if, as many would say, it is natural for some women to love other women, what then? Unless one takes the views that Jude had an insight for the Ages, then viewed contextually, we need to move on here.
We certainly won’t begin a dialogue if we start off saying “Jude was right”.
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I don’t equate nature with God and I’m not sure I accept the premise that it is genetic and even if it were, that wouldn’t help us because we already accept that we are born with a proclivity to sin without any say in the matter (which is why I have often considered apostatising). For me, my orientation is simply another burden I have to bear. I’m not happy about the matter, but I’m in no position to change things. Jude teaches that it is against God’s ordinances to engage in same-sex carnal relations. We can explain that God loves all people, but we cannot say that these unions fall within God’s ordinances. It would be one thing if we could contextualize Jude like we do Leviticus, but that doesn’t work because he is not writing about ordinances for Israel but general ethical standards and explaining the eschatological results of disobedience.
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I understand where you are coming from. But it does seem to me unwise to rely on a premodern understory human nature which assumed that such relations were unnatural. That is why the dialogue my church is initiating on this is important. If we only listen to one side of something, we get only that side. I’d recommend following the links and seeing what you think. I am hugely sympathetic.
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The Report does raise interesting questions with which we all need to engage. I shall be interested to watch – from my perch across the Tiber.
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Thank you. Let’s hope there is some genuine dialogue.
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Absolutely a Satanic breech of natural reason which simply plays into the desire for the world elites to whittle the population down to about 1 billion sustainable lives.
They love to invoke science (like psychiatrists who claim this is a born trait . . . though still only hypothetical). Simple logic tells you that the alimentary canals were created and/or ‘evolved’ to process food and nutrition. Sex organs were created or ‘evolved’ for natural sex and reproduction. Any thought other than this is mere fiction. It stands up both to reason and to science as we know it.
Satan must be laughing his ass off at the moment.
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You might want to reconsider this as a mode of dialogue. Science is never black and white, so you will always be able to find a scientist who dissents, but the majority consensus is that sexuality can be fluid. You can, of course, reject this, but IF some people are made this way, are you sure that it is okay to tell them they aren’t?
You see Satan in a lot of places. It may not occur to you that to some of us, he is present in the sort of inflexible attitude you evidence. If we are to get on with the mission of spreading God’s word, we need to do more than just condemn people on the basis of our understanding of “science”. Your own church does not seem to wholly agree with you to judge by what your Pope says, but then I lose track, maybe he is not your Pope any more.
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As per usual the ‘elitists’ (sexual deviants from academia, philosophy, psychiatry, the arts and entertainment crowd, politicians and the idle rich etc.) have moved the moral goal posts to fit their own predilections. Many are swayed by their arguments to make themselves appear normal and the rest of the unwashed and uneducated peons (the unwashed masses) see that the emperor has no clothes.
And where are the goal posts going to be for the next generation? NAMBLA perhaps? or are we going to see the same types of arguments used for necrophilia, beastiality, or other unnatural acts. Note that the argument line (that most scientists agree . . . which is not true) is equally effective for any deviancy group that wants to use it.
That you love your friend or your pet or your robot is not an excuse for wanting to find your sexual gratification in them. Soldiers love their comrades in arms and will give their lives for one another (which is natural) but they do not want to climb in the sack with one of the same sex for their mutual pleasure.
You don’t need to know how to read or write to know what is right or wrong and what is natural and unnatural.
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Beginning with your conclusion and insulting people is a unique way of conducting dialogue; have you ever found it worked with anyone except those who agree with you?
Meanwhile, back in a world where Christians try to understand each other and preach the Word to those outside a narrow self-defining elite, there is work to be done, and I can’t see that your methodology provides it.
You may associate bestiality and NAMBLA with those is gay marriages in the way you seem to, but no one with any sense of balance thinks they are in any way comparable. The same is true of loving with pets, the second time you go there.You seem to be associating love between gay people who are married, with bestiality and child abuse, I can’t speak for your church and ‘uncle Ted’, but normal people can see a big difference. I am not sure why you think that people who are legally married to someone of their own sex shouldn’t make love with them?
You don’t need to read and write to know what is right and wrong, you just need to think about how Jesus approached the marginalised and follow him. But you and I shan’t ever agree, although your own church is closer to my position of wanting dialogue, than it is to your position of condemnation.
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You are wrong. No one, not even the Pope, can change constant Church teaching.
I didn’t equate the different psychological maladies or diseases of the mind except that they all have that same cause. So why would any of these people say that they were born this way or that they aren’t hurting anyone.
As to “legal” marriage; that is simply a a faux legal definition to placate those who know that two males or two females does not a marriage make, So in Catholic speak they may be civilly married (as is abortion) though spiritually and religiously reprehensible. So it is not valid and never will be.
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And yet doctrine develops. At the beginning St James and the Church of Jerusalem insisted on the Jewish dietary laws and opposed St Paul; yet St Paul changed the constant teaching. At the beginning, priests and bishops could be married, then they couldn’t, and now in some churches they can. Women played a more notable role in the Apostolic Church and then didn’t and now they did. The Church used to burn heretics, then it didn’t. You Church used not to talk to the rest of us, now it did. This is another area where things are changing and your own church, like mine, but unlike you and whatever part of your church you belong to, is engaging in dialogue. You will not stop this, and I can’t see that your method is very persuasive – have you ever persuaded anyone who was not in agreement with you of your point of view using the methofs you use.
Law is law, and if you think the laws passed in your country or mine are in some way false, sorry, they are laws and duly passed by the proper authority. So, sorry Scoop, but yes, two women who love each other can get married and have sex and not go anywhere near the alimentary canal.
In terms of the churches, yours and mine, no such marriages cannot be conducted in church, and part of any dialogue will involve explaining that.
Dialogue is about listening to both sides. I am rather in favour of it, but you don’t get there by calling people names.
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Doctrine develops and it does not ever change; that is to say that what once was wrong is now right. That is not development. Development is a furthering of the doctrine itself which, like a blossom, opens up the doctrine to further insights. But it never changes it. Your trying to equate the jump from Judaism to Christianity is not a case of doctrine but Jewish law which was replaced by Christian law. That is not the same thing as I am sure you know. Even married priests in the early Church were expected to be continent which is the reason many married men awaited old age before they gave the remainder of their lives to the service of the Church. How heretics were treated and the punishment which was doled out for the offense was a practice. It did not change the doctrines concerning what was a heretic (not accepting doctrine). Heretics still exist and are excommunicated normally.
I have no problem dialoguing with anyone as long as they don’t expect me to surrender the teachings of my faith. Understanding why people do things sometimes brings people together and at other times creates a barrier that others cannot bridge. Christ can break those barriers and it has been my experience that personal sin and attachment to that sin is usually the obstacle to overcome. And yes, I have converted many to Catholicism after vigorous debate and by giving them appropriate materials to read.
Sounds like you are a apologist for lesbianism. Whether that is your own personal psychological pathology or not I find it rather revealing. For you are doing as Freud, Masters and Johnson and a host of new pop-psychologists that were spawned have tried to do: explain away their own disordered lusts by speaking as ‘experts’ who know better than the average man. As far as lesbianism goes, whether they are using sex toys or they simply masturbate one another is still a simple act of misguided hedonism which makes no logical sense. If your reproductive organs were made for natural sex and (should God bless the union) the birth of another soul then it is in keeping with the natural order.
I am not even coming at this from a religious sense of how to treat or interact with people with psychological disorders anymore than I would if I speak to those who have an unhealthy fear of heights, closed spaces or cannot stop cutting themselves. Some can be helped if they are willing to try and others have dug their heels in and refuse to even listen if it were to mean that they could not engage their phobias or unnatural desires. Just like bodies get sick so do minds and the link is perhaps partially a product of both: like over or under production of hormones. But it does not excuse unhealthy actions as unnatural actions are not good for the mind or the soul and they are a form of self-abuse.
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Most theologians I know would not agree with your rather binary view of the distinction between Judaism and early Christianity. Jesus was a Jew, so were his earliest followers, and not only is there no sign they repudiated their Judaism, there are signs pointing the other way – the major one being over the dietary laws and circumcision. So I reject, as most theologians who have written since the 1950s, your rather dated ignoring of the Judaic nature of the early church. That changed, and yet you say doctrine doesn’t. Yet the Torah defined doctrine for the Jews and that changed. Try almost anything by Moltmann, it might help you.
It is interesting you use the phrase “surrender your views”, by definition, that is not what dialogue means, so it is quite revealing that it is where you go.
As I commented earlier,it is a minority view among experts that homosexuality is a psychological disorder, and whilst you are free to side with that view, to describe those of us who side with the majority view as suffering from a pathology is hardly accurate, except as a sign of your hostile attitude.
In terms of digging their heels in and refusing to listen, I would have to admit that you evidence that so well, that you must know what you are talking about.
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Ecumenism was supposed to be an exchange of ideas and explanation of both party’s side. It did not mean that we were to create a false peace but clarify each other’s position. That people are now violating the Council’s warning against creating a false irenicism we have folks like you thinking that we were to change our teaching in view of your own understanding. But all we agreed to do was dialogue about why each of us do or believe what we do, period: without letting go of our beliefs, doctrines or holy traditions.
I am a simple man with principles formed by the Roman Catholic Church. But on issues such as this I just a common man who never saw such foolishness while I was growing up. To actually see people who argue all these deranged ideas about sexuality is rather perverse and it seems that this is the most important issue of the day for them. I don’t know why normal people get swayed by the elitist few who have managed to explain away their abnormality. Now we have heterosexuals who are banner waivers of the coopted rainbow flag of the LGBT. It is a victory for ignorance and our lack of control of our elected officials and the curriculum taught in our schools. I never gave this stuff a second thought growing up and neither did my friends. We saw the occasional homosexual, trans-gender or what-have-you and paid little attention to them unless they tried to hit on us. Otherwise we simply, lived and let live. We were neither cruel nor were we affirming of what was looked at as a psychological pathology . . . which it was considered in the psychology of the day. They simply did like the democrats have done: infiltrated every major avenue they could to mold us into consenting to that which we could never consent to starting with our children and sex education which is an evil joke.
It only goes to show that if you give an inch they will take a mile. First they got the blue laws reminded and they got the ability to get legal recognition for a number of things that traditionally were family related. That was fine. Then we have the pornographic marches and shows and now we have PC speak and genderless public bathrooms and honestly it has become complete insanity.
For the Church’s to give in and now, it seems, we are at a point where some don’t see a reason to pray for the sinner since they have dispensed with the notion of grave moral matter as sin at all. So no sin; no sinner.
Do you fight so hard because you are a lesbian yourself? That is is your own business of course. But you do seem a bit touchy on the issue and bring it up an awful lot. Either way there is help as I have mentioned before which is both compassionate and understanding like COURAGE. I don’t know if you have a similar ministry in the CofE but I believe that their ministry has been a Godsend to many.
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It may be, but it may equally be that you have sculpted a view of a church from a period when, by your own admission, you were not following its precepts. If it was so attractive when you were young, why were you not following it?
As people get older and the world changes, it’s not uncommon for them to hark back to some supposed golden age, and given the distance between yourself and your church on this and other matters, you might want to consider whether this is what you have done. You may want to live in the church was it was in the pre-V2 days, but your church disagrees. Your Pope disagrees, but do you listen? No, you tell him he’s wrong. Psychologically that’s interesting, but hardly evidence that you and your church are following the same line. You may call it “false irenicism” but your own Pope, who is infallible on matters of faith, does not agree. That you think he is wrong says a lot – not least about your claim to have been formed by your church. Your church is changing, you have decided not to.
That you did not ‘see such foolishness’ when you were young is because back then people were fearful of being arrested (in this country), blackmailed, blackballed and discriminated against. You saw no ‘foolishness’ about equal rights for African-Americans when you were young either, or women being treated as equals – was that ‘foolishness’ too? It seems your message is ‘stop the modern world I want to get off’. You are welcome, but it, like your church and mine, do not have that option if they are to be faithful to Christ’s word to preach his gospel to all the world.
Rather than try to tell people what they should be feeling, my church takes the view that listening to what they say is a good place to begin dialogue. It seems rather closer to the message of Jesus than telling people they are psychologically disturbed when the majority of those actually qualified to pronounce on this matter don’t take that line.
As I say, this is about dialogue, and alas, you show that even with the best will in the world, there are some people who fail to understand that the Lord gave us two ears and one tongue for a reason.
I fight so hard for a simple reason, there are many people in this world who love Christ and who find some of those who claim to preach his message to be hateful to them. I cannot find that in the Christ I have followed all my life. It may be that those who have lapsed suffer guilt feelings for which they make up later by being rigid, never having been tempted by New Age or anything outside my church and faith, I couldn’t tell, but it is something I have noticed.
You ask if I am a lesbian because I advocate dialogue, that’s like me asking if you are into bestiality because you keep mentioning it – weird.
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Your understanding of my youth is pretty shabby but I shan’t correct your many misnomers and fictions concerning it or your mischaracterizations of my Church and my relationship with it.
As to the your last sordid words; you would have a point if I were constantly writing posts about how we should show compassion in our Church for those who make love to animals and say they were born that way. Let them come to the Eucharist they way they are. Welcome them as they are etc.
The biggest obstacle to our having a dialogue seems to be the fact that you have no children and did not have to endure the cultural changes that corrupt a young person’s soul: like nudity, pornography, homosexual scenes in movies and the language used in by many in public as well as the constant news chattering that constantly is invading our lives around this small, insignificant group of 3% of the population who want to suck all the oxygen out of the room to push forward their agenda.
As to blacks. I would remind you that it was my generation that went to the south on buses and marched with MLK etc. and many others at least backed the movement to stop the segregation. Even so, I had more friends that were black when I was in grade school, high school and college than I do now thanks to the new narrative and false premise of systemic racism and the new identity politics that now reigns. It didn’t exist systemically during my life. Prejudice was not based on the color of skin in most of the places I lived (and I moved every 2-3 yrs.) and it played little part in those feelings. If we had a prejudice it came from criminal behavior. It just happened that young black men were and are more likely to exhibit that behavior than anybody else. But again, we didn’t think about it. I was prejudiced against young white’s and anybody else that was criminal in nature. To not be wary is to become a victim. I learned “street smarts” in NYC but I had common sense which helped the process.
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My point, as you seem to have missed it (I forgot some Americans don’t do irony) was that there were many bad things in your youth which have been changed by liberal attitudes, and to a better attitude to Afro-Americans and women, can be added a better attitude to homosexual people. It is you, again, who dashes off mentioning pornography as though in your mind it and homosexuality are linked.
Your need to links homosexuality with, so far, child abuse, bestiality and pornography is simply sad. Still, your church does not agree with you, nor does your Pope. Or are you recognising him as anti-Pope now, one can’t can’t keep up with your attempt to be more Catholic than the Pope.
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I’m not more Catholic than the Pope. Benedict XVI is the legitimate Pope. Bergoglio is the head of the anti-Church which shares the same space as the RCC. I guess you might call him an antipope as it seems apt and we have had such men before.
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There you go again … 😂
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My Catechism agrees with me or should I say that I agree with it. That this Bergoglio doesn’t accept Church teaching only creates chaos and fog. I was always told that when confusion abounds, there is Satan.
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Your whole hierarchy recognises him as Pope, but you know better? In my day they called that Protestantism.
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