The Roman Catholic Church disobeys the commandment:
Of course, they also usurp the power granted to Peter, so I don’t expect virtue from that institution.
I am a practicing catholic (Latin Rite). An adult convert from a protestant church that thinks the Baptists are a not strict enough when it comes to drinking. Let’s just say, I have cast a well educated eye across a spectrum of fraud, embezzlement, adultery by the preacher, psychological manipulation, and sexual and physical abuse across denominations.Ain’t no denomination got any monopoly of having a member church running a long con. So when I ‘went catholic’ I did so full knowing that the church, is made up of people, and people are flawed. I’m in it for the Sacraments.
On to our topic of the Church and Gays.
Outside of marriage all catholics are biden to be celibate.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen. The Church seems to have given up on homilies about the sin of masturbation, adultery and limited it to homosexuality. Let’s face it Catholics are just like anyone else , they never see the the log in their own eye. Instead homilies on same sex marriage and the act of same gender sex really bring in the big bucks during the offertory. Yeah, it’s all about the benjamins.
Does the church have anything to say on the matter of women playing with themselves? Or is that just something women never do?
Hehe. Thanks for bringing that up.
AIUI (and this is from the Dark Ages during the Black Death before Vatican II), sexual pleasure is an incentive to procreate, that’s what it’s for, and it can only be enjoyed in that context by a husband and wife (of different genders, obviously) while trying to make a baby.
It is a pleasant, but unnecessary side effect of getting the sperm-to-ovum train into the station. To enjoy sexual pleasure without being on that train and headed for the station is, alas, a sin, too. For a male, it’s clear that “spilling your seed on the ground” or anywhere except where God meant for it to go, is a big sin. For a woman, enjoying sexual pleasure on its own is also clearly a sin. It’s selfish and constitutes an abuse of your own body. You are not entitled to enjoy this pleasure on your own. That is wrong. It’s like saying you’re never allowed to eat a meal alone, but must always have your husband there. And if you don’t have a husband, then you have to wait until you do. Seriously.
That was my reference to the awkwardness, yet utter necessity (to avoid hell), of confessing masturbating (not that I knew the terminology at the age of 12 or so) IN CONFESSION to the priest. Can you even imagine how awful that was? Most of the time you didn’t mention it, but then you wondered if the absolution “took” since you had held back a major sin and would you go to hell if you were hit by a bus on the way out of confession (as I mentioned, always a concern).
As for, as you asked, whether self-pleasure was something it was assumed women/girls would never do, consider the Church’s eternal Woman Problem. Madonna or whore? Are women so pure and non-sexual that they can have a baby or at least aspire to (like their perfect heavenly role model) without the dirty, messy necessity of sex (like the “lower” animals have to do)? Or are they so full of erotic power and depraved desires that they go through the world seeking men to prey upon and bring down to satisfy their filthy, earthbound lust? The Church can’t make up its mind, but it leans toward the latter.
I don’t know what they Church teaches today about sex. I don’t know if masturbation has been deprecated to a venial sin. I can’t believe self-pleasuring is no longer any kind of sin at all. What about all those poor bastards who are burning in hell because they jacked off in 1955? They’re down there with the poor suckers who ate meat on Friday back when it was a big ol’ sin. Joke’s on them, I guess, eh?
Catholics on the board are welcome to rebut and tell me my ideas belong in the Dark Ages. I’d welcome knowing that.
Whether you or I agree with it or not, the Catholic Church teaches the same thing about unmarried (according to church rules) heterosexual Catholics. My sister shouldn’t have received Communion or served as a godparent when she was living a non-chaste life with her boyfriend. The only difference is that the rules don’t allow same-sex marriage - which is indeed a big difference, but it’s not like they’re OK with straight people in committed, loving, non-marital relationships (that are not chaste).
^^this means the Catholic Church is an equal opportunity oppressor.
/signed/ a recovering Catholic
Um, no it doesn’t. The exception doreen noted – straight people can be married in the eyes of the church. There’s no equality involved.
And for that matter, a straight couple married other than in the church is probably still treated as married – right? If a straight couple married by a justice of the peace joins the church, are they required to get married again in the church before their marriage is recognized?
Of course they are. A civil marriage means nothing in the eye of the church, only the sacramental marriage in church is the real deal.
Really? What if they were married in a Protestant church? Are they really treated as unmarried, or just nagged that they ought to do what is expected and get properly married in the church?
I asked myself the same question, and I really don’t know. Maybe the Catholics treat it like a protestant baptizing, which is seen as valid as far as I know. But definitely not a non-Christian religious or a civil wedding.
I don’t know that I’d say your ideas are in the Dark Ages, but my Catholic education was post Vatican II and this is what I was taught-
1)Every sex act must be open to conception - but conception need not be the intended outcome of every sex act. I can be open to something without actually intending that to be the outcome. It is not all that unusual for a couple to take an “if it happens, it happens” attitude toward pregnancy for a period of time.
- It is not “grudgingly accepted” that sex can enhance affection and closeness in a marriage - that is one of the purposes of sex. And while you will sometimes see something stating that procreation is the primary purpose of sex, sex is not forbidden after menopause or if one of the spouses is infertile. What is taught is not that pleasure is an unnecessary side effect but that the affection/bonding/uniting aspect is not to be separated from the procreative aspect - that was very likely prompted by technology but has the result of disallowing assisted reproductive techniques that separate the two aspects. Figuring out fertile days- fine. Medication or surgery- fine. Artificial insemination or in vitro - fertilization- not allowed.
As far as I know, they haven’t changed their stance about masturbation being a sin - but I don’t recall ever seeing a list of sins classified into “mortal and venial” . As far as I remember we were just taught the definition of a mortal sin since circumstances might make a difference ( and by “circumstance”, I mean if the person knew it was a sin, and if the action was voluntary and intended.)
This article, written by a priest, indicates that, no, there is no list of mortal sins, and was specifically inspired by the question, “is masturbation a mortal sin?”
Good Catholic boy here; singer in the Sunday Choir, etc. I have a lot of faith in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and some skepticism about the people running it. Yeah, there’s a number of Bishops / Cardinals out there that have done a lot of damage.
You’ve got a few years on me. I was born (just) after Vatican 2. got married in 1990. As part of the pre-Canna, they had a section on birth control that was lead by a married couple. The priest was still there, but he pretty much did and said nothing. They basically said “the RCC official position is this; it also has the official position of ‘there’s too many people in the world, and having too many children is a bad thing.’ How you interpret the two conflicting messages is between You and Your God.”
Again, interesting how times change. Was cantoring for a Confirmation mass the other day. As part of his homily, the priest was talking about the kids driving soon, and comparing the Bible to a GPS. Yes, they are actually PROMOTING the reading of the Bible in the RCC, after years of “Y’all are too dumb to interpret the bible - let us do that for you. Trust us.”
yes. It’s weird how the RCC recognizes marriages outside of the Church. If you are Catholic, than anything outside of the RCC doesn’t matter. If you are not a Catholic, then they’ll recognize it. So, you are RCC; married by a judge; you’re living in sin as far as they are concerned. You get divorced, that’s fine. You want to marry a non-Catholic who was previously married then divorced. You’re OK, but your prospective spouse has to get an annulment.
From this page Why would a Protestant convert to Catholicism need an annulment to remarry? | Catholic Answers Q&A and Wikipedia, I glean that apparently the Catholic Church recognizes non-same-sex marriages performed in other Christian churches as “sacramental marriage.” But not the same sex ones, obviously.
I’m not 100% sure about a couple both of whom became Catholic after marriage- I know the Church recognized their marriage before conversion so I assume it is still recognized afterwards. But if two Catholics get married in other than a Catholic ceremony , it is not recognized, and if a Catholic wants to marry a Baptist in a Baptist ceremony, the Catholic will need a second dispensation for the marriage to be recognized ( the first is to marry a non-Catholic)*
- They’re fairly automatic, as long as you have a good reason for the non-catholic ceremony - "the Baptist church is prettier won’t do "
Another Question- I’m Jewish (as you should know by now). No Jewish group can claim to have the Kohen Gadol (The High Priest). Certainly, a lot of people can claim descent but Jewish Law maintains that in order to prove you’re the right guy, you have to fulfill all the tasks assigned to the Moshiach.
BUT- In the New Testament, Jesus says “I name you Rock. On this rock, I build my church.” To me that would seem to make the RCC the One True Church if you accept the NT as G-d’s word. Last time I checked, the Pope claimed an unbroken laying of hands going back to Peter and Jesus. How do non Catholic Christians answer this?
Well, I don’t know if I count as a non Catholic (in the eyes of the Church I’ll stay Catholic forever because some water was sprinkled over me as a baby and some words were mumbled), but the answer is that most religions have the tendency to pronounce their absolute uniqueness over other religions, and the Catholic Church maybe has been the worst offender in that regard over its 2000 years history. Judaism OTOH today has few of those tendencies as a religion, but that’s an outlier.
This is a newer ruling, pushed by the uber-right-wing part of the church. They believe that this is the path to weeding out the pedophile priests. Like other right-wingers they conflate homosexuality and pedophilia. The problem is, besides the little fact that they’re wrong, the pool of applicants is now very small – and a lot of that very small pool is gay. They’re in denial about that, too.
The traditional idea is that everyone who is not in a heterosexual marriage, should be celibate. Not just priests, but anyone who is unmarried, widowed, gay or straight. Of course this has led to complications, one of the more famous ones being that many young gay men from Catholic families saw the priesthood as a way to have a very respectable profession with no questions asked. A friend of mine (female) who had a thing for seducing priests so was in the know, told me that in our diocese the bishop preferred gay priests because they did not father children, with all the messiness that entailed (plenty of hush money paid in that direction, you bet). Having been quite the fag hag in my younger days I have some acquired gaydar and at any function such as an ordination, which all diocesan priests attended (as did I because I sang in the diocesan choir), I could see it was running over 50% in that direction.
The Anglican Church is part of the same tradition (is Catholic). The Italian church is schismatic, but the High Church wing of the Anglican Church would welcome them back into the Catholic church.
After the Italian/French church decisively split with their puritan, evangelical and traditional-theology wings, they adopted some theological positions that would make it difficult for the Low Church wing of the Anglican Church to agree with them, but since even the Low Church wing of the Anglican Church mostly agrees with the idea of Apostolic Succession, and since it’s the Low Church wing of the Anglican Church that has the problem with Women and Gays in apostolic positions, that wouldn’t cause any more problems than the current Africa/USA split.
Baptists don’t believe in Apostolic Succession, and think the whole thing is bunk.
Um, did you forget about all the Chosen People stuff?