Well, Swedish law is secular in nature, and therefore yes, it considers Christianity an ideology based on subjectivity. So your reasoning on what is and what is not "breaking natural law" and "objectively sinful" would be totally irrelevant to the Swedish courts.
PS: an intresting note, when I googled to find the pastors sermon, I found it, not on any Christian site, put on the site of a Swedish Neo-Nazi group.
Bear in mind that it is only 50 years ago since the Nazis put both Jews and Homosexuals in camps, using the term "cancerous tumor on society" to describe both groups.
Ok, ok. Then remove the word 'sin' and my argument still stands based on Aristotelian teleology. Natural law is natural law, its a question of logic not deontology. Just as lawyers use philosophical schools of thought like determinism and liberterianism etc. in court, I will use neo-Thomist Aristotelianism to defend my views in the secular arena.
Moreover, I didnt say what he said was right. I said if you read my post that it was not 'semantically errenous'. The way he said it was not in accordance with the Christian principles of charity. However, if I were not a member of the Catholic Church but a student at the Lyceum under Aristotle I could reason my way to exactly the same conclusion I came to before about his
meaning . In a homosexual relationship there is a 'privatio bonni', a privation of the good of procreative possibility. That is objective. There is no subjectivity in maintaining that when two women or two men have intimate relations with one another there's no chance of children being born--children, of course being essential to the survival of our race. Therefore, objectively, in cold logician's terms isolated from a Nietchze inspired emotivism that causes all sorts of defensive reactions. It is an evil. It is against the natural law because it doesnt allow nature to attain, in this instance, the design it evidently has.
In the same way that blindness is an evil because there is a privation of what should be present i.e. sight. Or that death is an evil because there is a privation of what should be present i.e. life. Homosexual relations are evil because there is a privation of the good of procreative potential. Natural law holds, Christian or un-Christian. Thats why its called natural law and not divine law or eternal law, which are other terms Doctor Angelus uses to describe God's will as revealed in other means. I'm not saying Homosexuals themselves are evil I'm saying when they have sex with members of their own gender
that is an evil. Just like I wouldn't call myself evil but when I sin I do evil and I must go to Confession and start over.
Another point I'd like to make is: even if the law is secularised, does that make a difference? If God exists whether or not some legislators say he doesnt is irrelevant. The brute fact is God exists. Thats not an opinion. That too can be reasoned and has been reasoned by philosophers from Plato onwards--probably from Socrates too since he also rejected polytheism. Now also if God is God of revealed truth as witnessed in Christ Jesus, which he has given us grace of faith to accept, then the fact that the secularist's framed Europe's laws means nothing because there is a Supreme Legislator to answer to. The fact of the matter is, as Dr Alex has shown, to proffess to believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is to believe that Homosexual marriage, abortion, euthanasia et al. are wrong.
Never have I advocated the murder of any sinner. If I did I've have to nuke the world and kill myself too, since we're all sinners. But just cos lots of people lie, does that mean we should give up trying to stop lying? No lying should be removed from society as should all evils including all the things that characterise what the Holy Father calls 'The Culture of Death'. How to do it? John Paul II's life is an example: suffer for love.
Many people in the Pontiff's position quit when things get that bad. When they can barely control their own bodies, when even breathing is intensely painful. But he refuses. Why? As witness to the love of God. In his life John Paul II has reinforced the truth of the gospel as John the divine told us in his 1st letter: "God is love"
Look beyond the Thomism and see the predicates as St Thomas saw them. God is a perfect act, so perfect, so infinitate that we cant even make positive statements about him. We cant say what God is only what He's not. Yet that God, who needs nothing, out of a perfect act of love reaches out to all, giving Himself to all, so that we can be united to Him in grace. Now this is a question of logic: How can a man be united to God in true mystical sacramental grace and not be happy? The answer is its impossible.
Since God is everything and each man desires everything (the more we have of something the more we want of that thing or something else) if people only hear his voice and unharden their hearts they can have everything. They can say with St Augustine "For thou has made us for thyself, our hearts are restless lest they rest with you".
John Paul II could've caved in by John Paul II suffers to show the world that God's love is more powerful than that. Because God loved Him until death, death on a cross, He wishes to suffer for God to show His love for God in turn ala Colossians 1:24. He is living the teaching of redemptive suffering, which is applicable to all sins not just the one's that characterise the culture of death but the very least venial sins. This is why Jesus could say his burden is easy and his yolk is light because for love people can find the stregnth to do anything, and the love of God once we see it inspires us to love. 1 John 4:19 'we love because God first loved us' The attractive power of God's love presented to us in personal terms through the sacraments particularly in the Eucharist draws us in. It inspires us to make acts of love, to deny ourselves. This is the antidote to the culture of death: God's love.
I mean for me as a young university student I see what the English call 'top totty', there are some beautiful women around this place. But the fact is no matter how beautiful they are, they can never be more beautiful than beauty Himself. I need only turn to look at God in my heart and tempation fades from me. Through meeting with me in prayer and coming to me in sacramental grace, God draws me to Himself. I need not really do anything than let myself be loved and respond with the love that flows from my heart as a response to God.
If we present this teaching to all, then sin will dissapear because all will be united to God loving God and doing as He asks out of love not fear. John's first letter tells us elsewhere perfect fear turns to love. And Jesus himself reminds us that the most important commandment is to love the Lord our God. If we love God all the other commandments are easy to fulfill no matter how difficult they might seem at the start.
When we lived under law it was impossible to fulfil because God was distant. But now God is imminent through grace its barely possible to turn from Him once you've seen His face. Once one has tasted the bread of life, how can one turn away from the wedding feast of the bride and the lamb? It causes pain and suffering and misery. Thus, if we as sinners, as a race of sinners, simply open our hearts to God sin will end. There is no excuse for not keeping the law now because God's grace has been given. I'll repeat the words of Dr Scott Hahn: "the sacraments dont make salvation easy, the sacraments make salvation possible"
If we ourselves go upto the table of the Lord and take the world with us. Then as God commands all sins shall cease. As an Orthodox Christian I would've thought you'd share that vision?