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Brother/Cantor Joe raised many valid points. We all seem to be clear on the fact that there are actions that injure both the sinner and others involved in an activity.

The real dilemma subsists in the fact that we need to know the individual in order to determine his/her culpability. It is the 'ipso facto' element that leads folks to judge, that is: if a person does X then he/she is automatically sinning. This flies in the face of the guidance of the Church to the confessor: the confessor MUST listen to the penitent and understand the life and soul of the penitent before making any penance and recommendation. To assume, for example, that an overweight person is automatically a glutton and unable to exercise self-control, the fact is: the priest MUST understand the person's life, including his/her medical history and efforts to control his/her appetite. To do less is to sin against the individual penitent. To assume, from physical evidence, about the sinfulness of the individual is non-canonical and prejudicial and no where near the criteria needed for absolution. (Guess us Easterns with the concept of Spiritual Father/Mother mandates this kind of relationship as opposed to the "get in the confessional with whomever" theology accepted by others is going to be 'superior'! Sorry for the bias and commercial, but what the heck.... It's a Byzantine Forum and we get to show off our practices.....!!!! }

We must be first and primarily focused on the individual and his/her spiritual reality and progress. For an individual whose primary relationship is with another of the same gender, I see this as a question of how and if the relationship with the other person stimulates and instigates the individual's ability to love God and love one's neighbor. To focus solely upon the erotic aspects of the interpersonal relationship (if they do indeed exist - and that is just an assumption!), is not canonical from the Penance requirements unless and until one examines the totality of what is going on. And even then, the confessor has got to deal with the person as he or she is.

Though tbere are some who disagree, for me the fact that Christ came to save people -- sinners-people - and we are ALL there!! -- leads me to accept all- as people where they are. And if I find that one or other aspect of their lives is, in my perspective, less than what they could be, then I have the obligation to point this out to them. And make suggestions for how they can improve their lives. But it is not an open invitation to either denigrate them nor suggest that the fires of hell are awaiting them for their deeds.

If Boris and Gleb have a mutually supportive relationship, and they help each other to grow, then I should support them. If, perhaps, there is a type of erotic element in their relationship that I find unacceptable, then I should allow that they know of my perspective. But I'm not sure that it is my business to tell them that they are 'outside the pale' of the Church's salvation. I can surely tell the individuals that I am disquieted by their relationshp (presuming that I know what it is - I mean REALLY know and not just fantasize!!) and that I hope that this relationship is for their mutual good. But beyond that, it is the Lord's decision.

I just fear that Mary of Magdala will come along and smack me upside the head with a two-by-four and tell me to 'back off' since a person's relationship with the Lord is personal and not subject to the perspectives of others. And I am not one to deal with Mary of Magdala. From the Scriptures, this in not one lady that one would desire to butt heads with. She'd win. Because she'd know what was going on. I'm a big guy, and I don't wimp out. But, I know when the women of this world take a stand for a principle, no one should get in the way. This is lunacy.

May we all accept anyone and everyone who has breath as servants of the Lord. And may we honor and respect them.

Christ is Risen!!

Dear Administrator,

I look forward to hearing from those "Jesuit-types!"

Any time you are in town, you are welcome over as well!

I feel better today and perhaps I should just not post on my off-days.

But I'll have to deal with my addiction to the Byzantine Forum on another thread . . .

It seemed to me, and I'm probably wrong as you know, that you were basically giving a "black and white" approach to sexual morality.

And I said that the CCC, while stating traditional Christian moral teaching, emphasized that circumstances and other issues relating an individual's background can lessen or increase moral culpability.

Since you affirm the latter too, I apologise to you for acting like a jack-ass.

Hopefully, extenuating circumstances will, in your view, lessen my culpability with respect to the above as well.

Alex

Dear Dr John,

Thank you for your kindness, Sir, and I almost regret calling you up on the carpet for your comments on the incident in Jerusalem . . .

FYI, the Jesuits weren't the only ones called "Black Robes."

The monks of the Kyivan Caves Monastery were, from time immemorial, nicknamed so as well.

I cherish my life-long ties to the Jesuit Martyrs' Shrine Church in Midland, Ontario and the belief that my birth was a miraculous one due to their intercession.

Khrestos Anesti!

Alex

Brian:

Christ is Risen!

While I certainly don't condone Johann's fundamentalist-leaning pronouncements, I believe the charge you level against him might just as easily be leveled against you. It is, after all, you who continues to lob accusations of bigotry, hatred, and a lack of mercy/charity against those who consider the sin of homosexual sodomy to be justifiably, and justly, the subject of the law.

Mercy, by the way, is ultimately the same thing as justice: giving to each what is properly due to him or, stated otherwise, treating each person as a unique image bearer of God. Only God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful, though he has given us the ability to aspire to (or at least be guided by) what is perfectly just and perfectly merciful. As such, I consider laws that criminalize sodomy to be a form of mercy.

That said, if you would like to continue screaming about how morals legislation is a form of bigotry, please at least try answer the objections I and others have raised against this characterization, i.e., that all law discriminates and that the critical question is whether the discrimination is justifiable/just -- a question which, by its very nature, requires us to consider issues of morality, human nature, and the like.

In Christ,
Theophilos

Theophilos,

I have known and seen first hand men and women who have experienced eveything from being totally rejected by their families (one mother actually writing to her son that she would have had an abortion rather then have a gay son-this from an ostensibly respectable Catholic mother!!!!) to being harassed and beaten for being gay or percieved as being gay. I'm sure having experienced and seen these things may have made me emotional about such issues. I'm not sure that is a bad thing. Those things DO stem from bigotry and hatred. There is no way around that fact. I was just saying that those who make pronouncements from on high about a group of people should really learn to see the perspective of those people as well.
Certainly those who advocate reintroducing sodomy laws etc should read the Wolfenden Report from the UK of the 1960's on how life was like before decriminalizaion and why these laws were called "Blackmailer's Charters"

Peace,

Brian

Posted by JThur:

"You mean there was a reason why God created Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve?"

Who created Adam? Who created Steve? I get kinda tired of hearing this cannard. Wouldn't you?

Steve

Dear Steve,

Let me take this opportunity to apologise again for having once used it here as well . . .

Alex

Again, Dr. John�s post misses the mark. There are certain behaviors that are ALWAYS WRONG because they violate God�s Commandments. The mental and spiritual state of the individual choosing to engage in such immoral activities affects only the level of moral culpability for that particular immoral activity. It cannot turn an immoral action into a moral action nor does it lessen our responsibility to call a brother or sister back into the Church. This is not a matter of individuals taking it upon themselves to determine a right to �come down upon an individual� but a matter of Christians taking the responsibility to call people on the wrong path back into the Church.

Again, Dr. John�s post misses the mark. The issue here is not the moral culpability of the individual (whether he is guilty of sin). The issue here is that the immoral homosexual sexual behavior he or she has chosen to engage in is wrong. The Commandments are clear that such behavior is always wrong and always destructive. As Christians we have a responsibility to warn people away from immoral and destructive behavior. To warn people against immoral and destructive behavior is an example of love, not judgment.

No. It is the business of each Christian to call people back to the Church. Matthew 18, along with numerous Scriptural mandates, the witness of the Church fathers, and even the current editions of the catechism all speak to the responsibility of Christians to go to his brother when he on the wrong path to win him back. Some of the more strict Scriptural passages go so far as to instruct Christians to have nothing to do with people who refuse to listen to the Church on these issues. [This is, of course, for more extreme examples and is more to keep Christians from accepting sinful activities as acceptable then it has to do with the individual engaging in unacceptable, immoral behavior. Christian love demands that the individual never be judged but only the unacceptable behavior.]

Such behavior (as Brian gave in his example) is not Christian. Parents can reject the sinful behavior while always communicating love and a call to return to Christ.

I�ve seen some horrible things, too. Homosexual individuals have a difficult enough time and do not need the bigotry. Christians must lovingly call those involved immoral lifestyles to give up those livestyles. The worst thing a Christian can do is to leave someone in such a lifestyle with the impression that such a lifestyle can be anything but destructive to them.

Criminalization of immoral behavior does not need to be yoked with mistreatment of individuals. There is a difference between just discrimination against immoral activity and unjust discrimination against immoral activity.

Joe T�s and Theo�s posts on this topic have been most excellent.

Dear Alex,

Thank you from the Adams and the Steves out here! I know the cannard is used unthinkingly. However, the statement's annoying besides being extremely poor theology, I think.

It is a sign of your sensitivity to others that you apologize again!

Perhaps after the first 1000 times, I got too sensitive? :rolleyes:

Steve

Dear Steve,

The first 1,000 apologies from me, you mean ?

You're O.K., Big Guy!

Alex

Christ is Risen!

I think I am beginning to understand Dr. John�s perspective more clearly, but I still think his argument misses the mark.

I will preface this by relating an anecdote, however suspect anecdotes are in the context of making an argument: I have two practicing homosexual friends who are more committed to one another and more faithful to one another than many of my commitment-phobic heterosexual friends (whose phobia extends only so far, i.e. they seem to be committed to having sex with as many women as possible).

That said, I do not consider my homosexual friends� relationship to be anything other than a deep and abiding friendship � in some ways, the paragon of friendship. Lurking behind Dr. John�s similar example of a faithful, loving homosexual couple seems to be a conflation of friendship and marriage. What Dr. John has described, and what my two friends enjoy, is a friendship. It cannot be more than this, though achieving true friendship is no small feat. To the extent that my friends attempt to express this friendship physically/sexually/erotically, they have trespassed the nature of friendship � which must be rooted in treating human persons as ends, never as a means to some other end, such as physical pleasure or gratification � and thus marred that friendship.

Only marriage � from Christian and natural law points of view � offers two unique persons the opportunity to connect with one another on spiritual, moral, psychological, emotional, and SEXUAL planes and form a new single unity, which is also open to the creation of a new, third person. Friends cannot, no matter how hard they try, make this connection.

Consider, if you will, the distinct unity achieved through joining male and female gametes � outside of their male-female connection, these cells are completely useless because they are incomplete. I won�t make the Adam and Steve point, but nature has been ordered in a specific and purposeful way (pace Darwin, S.J. Gould, et al.), and its order dictates certain norms. There is no way around this, in my humble opinion, short of remaking nature (see advances in genetic engineering/stem cell research). Committed homosexual relationships between two men or two women � why two? an important question, incidentally � seeks to imitate this normative order of marital relationships (a good thing), but ultimately and necessarily the imitation fails.

At any rate, Dr. John and Steve make the important point that the reformation of a sinner must be achieved through the sinner�s freely-willed decision to reform/be reformed by God. Repentance and the good life are matters of conscience, and no one knows what is in another person�s heart except for that person and God.

Fair enough. But how far are we willing to take this idea. If, ultimately, we are asked not to judge anyone because we don�t know what that person really feels or intends, the possibility of any sort of meaningful, ordered community � family, state, Church, chess league, etc. � seems nil. All communities instantiate certain norms, and all norms discriminate against certain behaviors, choices, actions, and activities. The question, I repeat, is whether the discrimination is just � which throws us back to ultimate questions of right and wrong, the nature of justice, etc. Even an anarchical society � which asserts that there are no norms � is asserting that there is at least one norm, i.e. that there shouldn�t be any norms. Of course, as Chrysostom notes, anarchy is always and everywhere an evil.

More important, the emphasis on conscience misses an important point: conscience does not exist in a vacuum, but is molded, formed, and nurtured by the environment in which it exists. The conscience, like the self, is necessarily encumbered. All have the divine speak of Christ in them, but to make that spark a burning flame, one needs both combustible material and oxygen. Without combustible material, all the oxygen in the world won�t make a fire; likewise, without oxygen, combustible materials won�t burn.

A similarly useful metaphor in thinking about the encumbered conscience is the parable of the sower. Some seeds grow when planted in the right environment, some grow and then whither, some never take root, etc. Our conscience, no matter how personal we think it is, is also social.

Our ascetic Fathers, who escaped into the desert or into monastic communities, knew this very well. They recognized that man�s natural/God-given ability to do good needed the right environment to flourish.

Hence my defense of a virtue-based communitarian polity: though no law can, by itself, make a man moral, it can furnish / help to furnish the proper environment for one to become / be made morally good.

In Christ,
Theophilos

Dear Friends,

After all this, does anyone know where those bishops got to?

Alex

My bishop is with his clergy right now.


And the Bishops DID speak on homosexuality some years back.


But my main point was to Dr. John:

If they travel via Amtrak, I am perfectly safe. Columbus hasn't had passenger train service in well over 30 years - more's the pity.


Cheers,

Sharon

"Hence my defense of a virtue-based communitarian polity: though no law can, by itself, make a man moral, it can furnish / help to furnish the proper environment for one to become / be made morally good."


Dear Theophilos,

And a spirited and good defense it is. If the community whose polity was under discussion was the Church it is good Church teaching.

I want to be sure that I understand what you intend to say so let me summarize what I understand you to be saying:

Christians have the obligation to seek to properly form their consciences. Sin has an effect on the Body of Christ. As a result, christians have the obligation to point out the dangers and ill that comes from sin to those in sin. We, as christians, have the responsibility to help form and shape consciences. We do not have the right to reform anyone. That is the role of God and the sinner who might be assisted by his brothers and sisters.

There is the spark of Christ in each person. This spark needs to be ignited and fed to enable its growth to completion.

The authority of the secular state should be used to determine what behaviors are moral and which are not, i.e. those behaviors that lead to feeding the spark of Christ in us and which behaviors extinguish it. The state should criminalize those the behaviors which extinguish the spark of Christ or at least slow it's growth. Theological reality is the determining factor for determining the value of law and the importance of criminalizing certain behaviors.

Civil authority, in a society that is made up of Christians and non Christians, has the responsibility to create civil conditions because they are based on values found in Revelation as conveyed in the Christian Community.

I hope that I did not misunderstand or misrepresent what you are saying. Please correct me if I did.

Thanks,

Steve

Posted by Alex:

"Dear Steve,

The first 1,000 apologies from me, you mean ?

You're O.K., Big Guy!

Alex"

1,000 repetitions of the cannard, Alex. Sensitivity is never annoying to me!

Thanks again,

Steve