No Unambiguity: Homosexual Acts Sinful and Disordered

October 1, 2014 - 3:23 PM

By Msgr. Charles Pope

In recent years, homosexuality has frequently been in the news. An increasingly nationwide effort to make homosexual acts something to celebrate has gained great ground and sowed serious confusion, even among those who describe themselves as Christian and Catholic. Hence, it is necessary, once again, to instruct on this matter, to reassert what Scripture plainly teaches and explain why the Church cannot affirm what the world demands we affirm.

An essential fact is that the Scriptures are unambiguous and uncompromisingly clear in declaring homosexual acts as sin and as disordered. “Disordered” here means that they are acts that are not ordered to their proper end or purpose. Sexual acts are, by their very nature, ordered to procreation and to the bonding of the mother and father who will raise the children conceived by their sexual intimacy. These ends or purposes have been intrinsically joined by God, and we are not to separate what God has joined. In the Old Testament, Scripture describes the sinful and disordered quality of homosexual acts by the use of the word “abomination,” and in the New Testament, St. Paul calls homosexual acts “paraphysin” (contrary to nature).

Attempts by some to reinterpret Scripture are fanciful at best, and they use theories that require twisted logic and questionable historical views in an attempt to set aside the very plain meaning of the texts.

Likewise, in the wider culture, among those who do not accept Scripture, there has been an increasingly insistent refusal to acknowledge what the design of the human body plainly discloses – that the man is for the woman, and the woman is for the man. The man is not for the man. Nor is the woman for the woman. This is plainly set forth in the design of our bodies. The outright refusal to see what is plainly visible, and literally built into our bodies, is not just a sign of intellectual stubbornness and darkness (cf Rom 1:18, 21), but it also leads to significant issues with health, even to deadly diseases.

And we who believe in the definitive nature of scriptural teaching on all aspects of human sexuality are not merely considered out-of-date by many in our culture, but are being increasingly pressured to affirm what we cannot reasonably affirm. Cardinal Francis George recently expressed the current situation in this way:

In recent years, society has brought social and legislative approval to all types of sexual relationships that used to be considered “sinful.” Since the biblical vision of what it means to be human tells us that not every friendship or love can be expressed in sexual relations, the church’s teaching on these issues is now evidence of intolerance for what the civil law upholds and even imposes. What was once a request to live and let live has now become a demand for approval. The “ruling class,” those who shape public opinion in politics, in education, in communications and in entertainment, is using the civil law to impose its own form of morality on everyone. We are told that, even in marriage itself, there is no difference between men and women, although nature and our very bodies clearly evidence that men and women are not interchangeable when it comes to forming a family. Nevertheless, those who do not conform to the official religion, we are warned, place their citizenship in danger.

Whatever pressures many may wish to place on the Church to conform, however they may wish to “shame” us into compliance by labeling us with adjectives such as bigoted, homophobic, or intolerant, we cannot comply with their demands. We must remain faithful to scriptural teaching, to our commitment to natural law, and to Sacred Tradition. We simply cannot affirm things such as fornication and homosexual acts and reject the revelation of the body as it comes from God.

What some call intolerance or “hatred” is, for us who believe, rather, a principled stance, wherein we see ourselves as unable to overrule the clear and unambiguous teaching of Holy Scripture. And this teaching exists at every stage of revelation, from the opening pages right through to the final books of Sacred Writ. The Church has no power to override what God has said; we cannot cross out sentences or tear pages from the Scripture. Neither can we simply reverse Sacred Tradition or pretend that the human body, as God has designed it, does not manifest what it clearly does.

Read more: http://cnsnews.com/commentary/msgr-charl...-and-disordered