Are you also going to out the many straight priests having affairs as well? Might as well-they’re just as hypocritical. I’m sure there are gay priests who manage to remain celibate, just as some straight priests do, after all.
By itself, probably not. But combined with the church’s stand against the ordination of women, protecting child molesters, on birth control and abortion, it contributes to the ever louder drumbeat that will eventually drown out the dogma.
Every little bit helps.
You don’t actually expect us to believe that, do you?
On what authority, precisely, does the Catholic Church feel qualified to make this determination? What part of the Bible describes how to properly diagnose and treat mental illnesses?
And while we’re at it, does the Catholic Church also oppose legislation designed to protect, say, schizophrenics from public discrimination? If there were a law making it illegal to fire someone, or refuse to rent them property, because they suffered from a neurosis (that did not affect their ability to do their job or pay their rent), would the Church oppose such a law? If not, why do they do so when such laws are proposed to protect people who suffer from the “mental illness” of homosexuality?
The Church still holds that not believing in Jesus gets you damned too, right? Do you think the Church should actively oppose legislation protecting freedom from religious discrimination? If not, why not? How is that different from opposing gay marriage? I’m not a Catholic, why does the Catholic Church get to have a say in how I live my life?
Sorry, but you have neither the moral, nor the decent, position in this argument. On this subject, at least, you represent an active and repugnant evil.
What other sins, if found in a practicing priest, do you think should result in them being defrocked? The Church holds that we are all sinners, and that we all sin in some manner every day. What sins are “okay” for a priest to commit, and what should have him thrown out of his order?
And whatever happened to “all sins are equal?”
Is “wanting a flat-panel monitor” also a mental illness?
In point of fact the Catholic Church calls it a “grave moral disorder” and an “intrinsic moral evil”. I have never seen any declaration in which they presumed to judge that it was a “mental illness”. Do you have a cite for that?
Nor does the American, the Canadian, nor any other western Psychiatric Association consider it a mental illness. In fact, there are perhaps hundreds of gay persons practising as psychologists and psychiatrists in the western world. It would be odd to think that all of these countries and professional associations allow mentally ill people to practise as mental health professionals. But perhaps you, Martin Hyde, are better able to judge who is or is not mentally ill.
So first of all, may I ask what your professional qualifications are?
Secondly, since you obviously cannot be carrying on a rational debate with a mentally ill person, I guess this will be the last communbication between you and I. Have a nice life, Martin.
But in your example, you purposely cite an act that is intrinsically wrong, i.e., breaking and entering and stealing a flat-screen monitor. What about if a consenting adult gives you an FSM or if you buy one with your own money from a consenting adult who freely chooses to sell it to you?
What makes it “intrinsically” wrong?
Considering that practicing heterosexuals aren’t supposed to be priests either, what difference does it make? :dubious:
(sorry for the double post)
My point is not to debate whether or not the Catholic belief is right or correct. As I said, I’m not a Catholic and I never have been one.
My point is that asking if “adultery” or “thievery” are considered mental illnesses in Catholicism to see if the religion is consistant makes no sense. Adultery and thievery are acts in and of themselves. Homosexuality is not.
To say that adultery, thievery and homosexual acts (whatever the church defines those to be) are all sins is consistant (whether or not it is right), because they are all actions.
They are separating homosexual acts with identifying one’s self as a homosexual. Surely you’re not stating that all people attracted to other people of the same gender must act upon that attraction to be a “real” homosexual (just as someone identifying as a heterosexual need not act upon it to identify as such)?
Again, I’m not trying to defend the Catholic belief that homosexual acts are sin and homosexuality is a mental illness. I just don’t see any inconsistancy in separating acts from beliefs.
Actually, the RCC does not hold this postition and excommunicated the last priest to insist on preaching it.
That is a belief of some Protestant denominations, but is not a belief promulgated by the RCC.
Thanks for the corrections, tom~. I was not aware of that.
Garfield, you ask why breaking in and stealing somegthing is intrinsically wrong. Well, let me ask you a question. In your value system, is stealing wrong because it violates something in the Bible or because it violates the basic rights of the victim whose property is being stolen? For me it is the latter.
By the same token, two consenting adults who use their bodies to give one another pleasure are not commiting an intrinsic moral evil. Although if one or both of them have sworn fidelity to another, such as in marriage, then they are doing something evil because they are violating their given word and thereby the rights of the person who is counting on them to keep their word.
By the same token, if an adult has sex with a child, they are doing something evil because the child does not have the knowledge and maturity to consent to the act. They are violating the rights of the child.
Yes, I would agree that there is a difference between temptation of inclination to do and the act itself. There is no intrinsic harm in being tempted to do anything. You are not harming anyone if you are only tempted to kill your father to inherit his money. But if you do so you do evil because you are violating his right to life.
There is no harm in my being tempted to have a dish of ice cream. And I believe I will now do so, and I will not be doing an evil act because I harm nobody (except my waistline a little 
).
There is no harm in my male spouse and I being tempted to have sex (we still feel like it after 30 years together). And if we do so, we are commitging no evil because we are two consenting adults pleasuring one another with our bodies, and harming nobody.
On the other hand, if a heterosexual or a homosexual makes a free personal decision to be chaste and not to have sex with anyone, that is perfectly all right. Just as it is perfectly all right if I change my mind and decide NOT to have that dish of ice cream.
But what you did in your example is you used the example of somethiung perfectly normal and morally neutral, (wanting a flat screen monitor), and combined it with an act that is intrinsically wrong, namely, stealing the FSM.
So you CAN separate the act and the state of being, and are only debating the rightness or wrongness of it. Then we are not in disagreement.
Tomndeb, since you seem to have a lot of answers about Catholicism, refresh my memory. As I remember from my 13 years of indoctrination (sorry, I mean education) in Catholic Schools it would be a contradiction of Catholic doctrine for an act to be BOTH a result of mental illness AND a sin, would it not?
From my recollection of Cathecism, a rational understanding of the act is necessary before it can be sinful, is it not?
For example, babies are felt to be incapable of sin.
Similarly, kleptomaniacs cannot be guilty of the sin of theft.
If I kill my father to inherit his money it is certainly a sin. But if I kill my father because I am suffering from some form of severe mental illness in which I imagine him to be a giant spider about to kill me, it is not a sin.
In fact, as I recall, there is striking difference between sin and crime. If I shoot into a bed wrongly thinking that my intended murder victim is sleeping there, I cannot even be accused of attempted murder, because as I learned in law school, an attempted crime must be possible to commit. If the bed is empty and my intended victim is in another city, I might at worst be convicted of discharging an firearm illegally.
But I remember a Catholic priest explaining that I WOULD have committed the sin of murder FROM THE RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW since I conceived the plan and took the action. The fact that I only shot bullets into a bed does not change the fact that I willingly committed the sin.
Am I right on any of this?
Besides, in order for, in turn, declaring that the “conduct” part is Mortal Sin, the person would have to be of enough of a sound mind to freely chose to act.
Let’s see… ah, here – the relevant passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Notice they do not call it a mental illness but state “its psychological genesis remains lergely unexplained”, leaving it open to any origin; which when combined with the next two articles seem to point to an expectation that the "disorder’ does not affect the soundness of mind to make moral decisions if the effort is taken. Notice it admits that as far as the Church is concerned the originof homosexuality is not the point, since it being “intrinsically morally disordered” is “revealed teaching” from Scripture and traditon – not from science, not from human experience, not from empirical observation (“natural law” in Churchspeak does not mean the same thing as “laws of nature” in science). Only way could such an absolute declaration that gay relationships “do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” can be made is if you presume a from-above definition of “genuine” that’s independent of what each human experiences.
Continuing:
And boy, wouldn’t this last article at first blush seem to say the hierarchs have it all backwards and they should be seeking to maximize gay (celibate!) priests, rather than shutting the doors. Good thing they threw in that “intrinsic disorder” language earlier, eh? :dubious:
And as if to show that even here the devil (ha) is in the details, notice how how “there should be no unjust discrimination” is tacked on immediately following “is objectively disordered” – precisely, that’s where problems will arise, because if something is objectively disordered and “great depravity”, then some discrimination could be “just”, right? :smack:
As to the OP, a priest that while ostensibly practicing his profession, is at the same time cruising bathhouses or clubs looking for sex, be it gay or straight, he most definitely has a problem and we can suspect he is not in the right line of work. I’d be inclined to treat this on a case-by-case basis: If a gay priest, in his day-job is actively railing against gays and their corruption and lobbying against gay rights, while by night working the gloryholes (or one who wails and hollers about family values and life, but is doing parishioner’s wives and has personally caused a couple of Sisters to head for the Planned Parenthood clinic), he may be due for a take-down or at least a warning shot across the bow to zip it, in every sense. If OTOH there’s another one who is trying to keep a low profile and struggling to see how he can reconcile his sexual identity and his calling, and do something good quietly and patiently behind the scenes, I say let him come to the necessary terms with his conscience.
I’m not tom~, nor have I yet played him on TV, but let me see if I may be of assistance…
Catechism:
It seems to say “mortal sin” definitely requires full knowledge and complete consent, but that you may still be on the hook for venial sin (misdemeanor, so to speak) depending on how bad was it that you did in the thrall of pathological disorder.
Catechism:
This one has a biblical basis – during the Sermont of the Mount Jesus says it’s not enough that you not murder your neighbor or sleep with his wife, if you have been mad enough to wish him ill, or have been thinking of how you could get it on with her, you have already sinned “in your heart”.
No. There was, at common law, a distinction between legal impossibility and factual impossibility. But today, most jurisdictions now recognize that legal and factual impossibility are “logically indistinguishable,” United States v. Darnell, 545 F.2d 595, 597 (8th Cir. 1976), and have abolished impossibility as a defense.
Exactly what I’ve been trying to say.
Okay, Hyde has it completely wrong, not surprisingly. The Catholic Church has no opinion on why people are homosexual. They believe that homosexual sexual acts are intrinsically “disordered,” just like divorce, fornication, masturbation, and lust itself. See the relevant section of the catechism, on the Sixième Commandement, as Father LaVecque would so delicately put it.
Lust – an emotion God or evolution hard-wired into every animal species, and without which every species would die out – is a disorder?!