Don’t get me wrong. I support his coming out. What I do not understand is why he and other gay Catholics continue to hang around the Catholic Church. The fact is that the RC Church has not changed its attitude to homosexuality ONE FRIGGIN’ IOTA, no matter what Pope Francis says in media bites. When I realized I was gay over 50 years ago, I understood there was no way I could remain in the Church and also be actively homosexual. I got the fuck out and I have never regretted it. I have never since set foot in a Catholic church except to visit one as a tourist and except for the funerals of my parents, where I attended but did not participate. I have refused to stand as godfather for my nephews and niece.
And please don’t feed me that bullshit line about how the RC Church does not consider homosexuality sinful in itself, but only if it is actively practised. That is like the old joke about the diet where you can eat anything you want as long as you don’t swallow. It makes as much sense as my saying there is nothing wrong with being Catholic as long as you don’t actively practise the religion.
Monsignor Charamsa and all other gay Catholics should stop kissing the ass of a church that abuses them and condemns their sexuality as an “intrinsic evil” and a “grave moral disorder”, give the Pope the finger, and walk out of the RC Church with their heads held high.
Otherwise I have no sympathy for Charamsa or any other whining gay Catholic.
Was he fired for being gay, or for unapologetically breaking his vows of celibacy? It is my understanding that a heterosexual priest with a girlfriend would be guilty of the same offense and treated t he same way.
This of course is tangential to the larger issue which you are posting about, and which I agree with. However, for the sake of clarity, I wanted to know if my current understanding of the situation is accurate.
You are quite correct and this is why I have no sympathy for him or other gay Catholic. BTW, he did not break his vow of celibacy, since celibacy means not getting married (I assume he has not married Eduard, although they COULD get married in Spain, to name but one of many countries). He has obviously broken his vow of chastity, which means he had sexual relations.
I no more sympathize with gay catholics than I would sympathise with a convert to Islam who complains that they want him to face Mecca and pray.
You are right that a heterosexual priest with a girlfriend would be guilty of the same offense and treated the same way. The difference is that heterosexual priests can and do leave the priesthood, marry women, and remain members in good standing of the RC Church. Nobody tells them it is all right to be heterosexual as long as you don’t do anything heterosexual. Nobody calls their sexuality a “grave moral disorder” and an “intrinsic moral evil”.
The Catholic Church is fundamentally homophobic. If you are gay and you want to express your sexuality, then stop being a hypocrite, and leave. If you want to remain a good Catholic, then resign yourself to a life of cold showers and frustration knowing that you will be rewarded with a beautiful mansion in the sky when you die. Or maybe you will just be dead, never having known the joy of lying next to the man you love, replete and satisfied with love, emotional, spiritual and physical.
It’s good to know what gets the Catholic Church all riled up, isn’t it? If he’d been a fucking child molester they’d have just shuffled him off to another diocese.
You’re generally on track but this explanation is a bit confused.
The virtue of chastity is the use of one’s sexual activities in accord with their state in life. There is nothing unchaste about a married couple’s sexual activity.
Continence is the choice not to engage in, to abstain from, sexual activity.
Celibacy is indeed the decision to eschew marriage, but also includes continence. Mary and Joseph are examples of continence but not celibacy. Celibacy must include continence; continence does not necessarily require celibacy.
A single person, to be chaste, must not engage in sexual activity. A married person who has sex is chaste, but not celibate or continent.
The Catholic Church teaches that everyone is called to follow a life of chastity at all times. Single persons are called to observe continence while they are single. Some single persons may, for different reasons, choose a life of celibacy.
Candidates for the priesthood in the Roman Rite vow to undertake a life of celibacy and continence. However, this vow is not fundamental to the nature of the priesthood. Ordained married men who have served as Episcopal and Lutheran ministers have been permitted to convert to Catholicism and retain their clerical state. Such priests would be chaste, but neither continent nor celibate.
Here is something ironic. Monsignor Charasma, as a Catholic priest, has vows of celibacy (which means not to get married) and of chastity (which means not to have sinful sex, which in the RC Church is any sex outside of marriage.)
Now, looking at the Monsignor and his hunky lover Eduard as they bill and coo and pet each other, I can easily assume that they have gotten it on already, which goes counter to the vow of chastity, to be sure.
But what if the Monsignor were to marry Eduard in one of the 23 countries that offer same-sex marriage? Oddly enough, the Vatican might NOT consider him to have broken his vow of celibacy. Why not? Because the RC Church does not recognize same-sex marriage. So in their eyes, marrying another man is no more a marriage than if he had married a Popsicle stick or a brick. So technically, only if he gets married to a woman could he be considered as having broken his vow of celibacy. Fun facts about the wonderful laugh-a-minute Church that brought you the Inquisition, the strapaddo and the rack.
Indeed, you could simplify the concept by saying that for Catholics, there are only two ways to be chaste. One is to have no sex except with a member of the opposite sex to whom you are married, and the other is to refrain from all sexual activity (I assume that includes maturbation?)
Before I can agree or disagree, you must explain what you mean by “be gay”. There are two possible meanings: 1) Sexually attracted to members of one’s own gender and 2) As a result of that attraction, actively engaging in sexual activities with members of one’s own gender.
If you mean purely no. 1), then yes, it is not entirely impossible for a person to simultaneously be gay and believe that the Catholic Church is the only path to salvation. All you have to do is refrain from sex and take cold showers the rest of your life and if you don’t die with an unforgiven mortal sin, you will go to heaven after a certain time of torment in Purgatory.
But if you mean no 2), then I don’t see how you could logically be sucking dick and receiving the eucharist with the same mouth. You could be forgiven an occasional transgression, but you would have to resolve never to indulge in that inherent moral evil again.
If by being gay you mean having a lover and having sex regularly, then you would have to ignore the church’s teaching on homosexual behaviour and you would most certainly not attain salvation. You would die with one mortal sin for every time you and your lover had sex, and God, (who loves you) would send you to Hell where you would be tormented in the universe’s biggest and oldest torture room for ever and ever.
Boy, am I ever glad I don’t believe any of that shit. When I die, I’m dead!
Absolutely, and it really needs to happen. I understand it seems strange when people want to belong to an organisation that appears to hate them, but if it helps to soften the church’s homophobic stance, it’s got be a good thing. The alternative is for all gay people to leave or remain silent. Who does that help? It just perpetuates the misery of gay people born into catholic families and communities. I’m all for people abandoning religion, but it should be because they realise it’s not true, not because their Sexuality makes them unwelcome.
I thought it was justified by the idea that everyone was going to wind up in purgatory anyways. Everyone’s got some sin.
And while I can maybe agree with the OP for the layperson, I want more gay people in the clergy. That’s how the Boy Scouts got their homophobia problem fixed. As I pointed out in another thread, there’s nothing in the actual dogma that forces the Catholic position on homosexuality–just an interpretation thereof. And it wouldn’t be the first time the Church didn’t take something in the Bible literally, choosing to explain stuff like that away.
Heck, there’s already enough for Biblical literalists in the ambiguity on what the Greek words in the New Testament mean and the extent to which they apply today. It’s the same logic that got women out of having to cover their heads or to be silent in church–those were just specific commands for specific situations.
Raised Catholic here. Definitely not a believer now. The Church has both Scripture and Tradition, so it really doesn’t need to justify its beliefs and practices based on Scripture, since it can always cite Tradition.
Re the OP, totally agree. I don’t get the people who gripe but remain in the Church, which is probably 90% of Catholics. I.e., cafeteria Catholics. I think very few people take the Church’s specific teaching seriously now and stick around for the community and tradition (not “Tradition” with a capital T).
I’ve heard people say things like, “But this is my Church!” while wanting radical changes like married priests, women priests, etc. Well, it’s not “your” Church if you disagree with it that much.
There’s one issue with all those gay priests getting out. I wouldn’t be surprised if 70% of American-born Catholic priests were gay/bi and 20% more asexual or sexually confused. IOW, I highly doubt more than 10% of priests are straight. I had a priest friend who was in the seminary in the 1970s. He said that virtually every other student in his class was more or less openly gay and actively practicing homosexuality, to the point where they would put on their “whoring clothes” (his words) and go out and get laid.
Some of the above are certainly not active. But what percentage of priests fall in the following categories?
• Actively gay. Don’t know, I could imagine anywhere from 20-60%.
• Actively straight. Small, since the number of straight priests is certainly small.
• Actively something bad. Gay or straight, doing things I care not to mention. Obviously, this number is huge, since so many have gotten caught.
In any case, if every priest who is actively violating the Church’s sexual rules were to “get out,” I have little doubt that the Church would lose a very large percentage of its priests. If one were to include the number of “chaste but not wanting to be” priests, I have no doubt it would be the majority of priests.
Not according to church doctrine. If you confess your sins, they’re forgiven. If your confession is up to date, and a priest gives you the proper last rites, you go straight to heaven.
