Catholic Church and homosexuality

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The Catholic Church and homosexuality describes the relationship between the Christian denomination and the sexual orientation. The Christian tradition has generally proscribed any sexual activity between members of the same sex, and the Catholic Church maintains this teaching today. The Church also holds that LGBT people must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, and every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.

While varying from diocese to diocese, the Church has provided pastoral care for LGBT Catholics through a variety of official and unoffial channels. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, there has been a call from some popes, bishops, and other church leaders to improve the amount and quality of pastoral care this population receives.

Some scholars and church leaders have dissented from the Church's teaching on homosexual activity, while others have supported it. The Church has been described as sending "mixed signals" regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation. It opposes gay marriage and civil unions for same sex couples, and also teaches that LGBT people should not be unjustly discriminated against. In many parts of the world, it is active politically around issues of importance to the LGBT community. The opinion of lay Catholics tends to be more supportive of gay marriage than the hierarchy.

There have been a number of notable Catholics who have been gay or bisexual, including priests and bishops. Gay activists have also staged protests against church teachings, sometimes disrupting mass and desecrating the Eucharist.

Video Catholic Church and homosexuality

Church teaching

Catholic teaching condemns homosexual acts as gravely immoral, while holding that gay people "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," and "every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." "The Catholic Church holds that, as a state beyond a person's choice, being homosexual is not wrong or sinful in itself. But just as it is objectively wrong for unmarried heterosexuals to engage in sex, so too are homosexual acts considered to be wrong."

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History of the Catholic Church and homosexuality

The Christian tradition has generally proscribed any and all noncoital genital activities, whether engaged in by couples or individuals, regardless of whether they were of the same or different sex. The Catholic Church's position specifically on homosexuality developed from the teachings of the Church Fathers, which was in stark contrast to Greek and Roman attitudes towards same-sex relations including the "(usually erotic) homosexual relationship between an adult male and a pubescent or adolescent male" that is called pederasty.

Canon law regarding same-sex sexual activity has mainly been shaped through the decrees issued by a number of ecclesiastical councils. Initially, canons against sodomy were aimed at ensuring clerical or monastic discipline, and were only widened in the medieval period to include laymen.

In the Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas stated that "the unnatural vice" is the greatest of the sins of lust. In January 1976, Pope Paul VI published a homily, Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics, that outlawed extra-marital sex, including gay sex, but homosexuality received no mention in papal encyclicals until Pope John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor of 1993. In John Paul II's teaching, homosexual intercourse is performed by a choice of the will, unlike homosexual orientation, which he acknowledged is usually not a matter of free choice.

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Pastoral care for gay Catholics

In response to the push within the United States for greater recognition within the Church for gay men and lesbian women, Courage International was established in New York City in September 1980. Chapters have subsequently been established around the world. Courage also has a ministry geared towards the relatives and friends of gay people called Encourage.

Beginning in the 1970s, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have taught that gays "should have an active role in the Christian community" and have called on "all Christians and citizens of good will to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons. We understand that having a homosexual orientation brings with it enough anxiety, pain and issues related to self-acceptance without society bringing additional prejudicial treatment."

A number of individual bishops around the world have held diocesan events with the goal of reaching out to gay Catholics and ministering to them, and more have spoken publicly about the need to love and welcome them into the church. Several assemblies of the Synod of Bishops have struck similar themes while maintaining that same-sex sexual activity is sinful. Pope Francis has also spoken out about the need for pastoral care for gay and transgender Catholics, and has said that God made LGBT people that way.

In 2018, the Vatican used the acronym LGBT in an official document for the first time, in a paper which stated, "some LGBT youth" wanted to "benefit from greater closeness and experience greater care by the church."

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Dissent from official Church teaching

There have a number of practical and ministerial disagreements within the clergy and hierarchy of the Catholic Church concerning the Church's position on homosexuality. A number of Catholics and Catholic groups have sought to adopt a more inclusive approach.

Such individuals and groups make the general argument that the Catholic Church's line on homosexuality emphasises the physical dimension of the act at the expense of higher moral, personal and spiritual goals. Gay and lesbian Catholics also feel that the practice of total, life-long sexual denial risks personal isolation. John J. McNeill writes that since gay people experience their sexual orientation as innately created, to believe that it is therefore a tendency towards evil would require believing in a sadistic God; and that it is preferable to believe that this element of Church teaching is mistaken in arguing that God would behave in such a way.

In several cases, clergy or laypeople have been fired from jobs at Catholic schools or universities because of their support for LGBT rights campaigns or their marriages to partners of the same sex. In the United States, more than 50 people have reported losing their jobs at Catholic institutions since 2010 over their sexual orientation or identity, according to New Ways Ministries

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Defenders of official Church teaching

Knights of Columbus

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organisation, have also been active in political campaigns across the United States in the area of same-sex marriage. The Order contributed over $14 million to help maintain the legal definition of marriage as one man and one woman in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington. - thus becoming one of the largest funders in the US in terms of opposition to permitting gay men and women to marry.

Catholic Medical Association

The Catholic Medical Association of North America claims that science "counters the myth that same-sex attraction is genetically predetermined and unchangeable, and offers hope for prevention and treatment."

Catholic League

The Catholic League, a Catholic anti-defamation and civil rights organization, has frequently opposed LGBT policies and positive depictions of gay men and women. Its president, Bill Donohue has described the Church child sex abuse crisis as a "homosexual" problem rather than a "pedophilia" problem since most of the incidents involved sex between men and boys rather than girls. Donohue has repeatedly opposed the inclusion of LGBT groups in St Patrick's Day Marches across the US. After organizers of the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade announced in 2015 that they were ending the ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time, Donohue announced that the League would not march in the parade. He also indicated his belief that 'Corporate America' was lined up with the gay rights movement: "It's not a secret. And they've done the same thing here."

In 2016 the Catholic League publicly supported the cancellation of the gay-themed sitcom, The Real O'Neals, which had been loosely based on the life of columnist Dan Savage and dealt with his conservative Catholic mother's reaction to his sexuality.

Life Teen

The Youth Ministry organization Life Teen has a series of blog posts written on the topic of the love God has for LGBT people, explaining the Church's teaching, and offering advice on how LGBT people can live in harmony with the Church's teaching. It also features a number of entries written by gay and transgender Catholics.

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Protests

On 10 December 1989, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) demonstrated both inside and outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York while Cardinal John O'Connor was celebrating a Mass attended by Mayor Edward I. Koch in protest at the Church's failure to respond positively to the AIDS crisis.. A group of 4,500 protesters gathered at the cathedral, and a few dozen activists entered the cathedral, interrupted Mass, chanted slogans, blew whistles, laid down in the aisles, and chained themselves to pews. One protester desecrated the Eucharist by breaking it and throwing it to the floor. One-hundred and eleven protesters were arrested, including 43 inside the church.

In Los Angeles the same year, gay activists splattered bright red paint on four churches to protest Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and the US Bishops Conference's condemnation of condoms to fight AIDS. They also pasted posted of Mahoney calling him a murderer.

During an ordination of priests in Boston in 1990, ACT UP chanted and protested outside during the service. In January 1998, 39-year-old Alfredo Ormando set fire to himself in St Peter's Square, Vatican City as a political protest against the Catholic Church's condemnation of homosexuality. He died shortly after from his injuries.

In Belgium in 2013, four topless women from FEMEN drenched archbishop André-Joseph Léonard with water during a public event to protest the Church's position on homosexuality. The annual meeting of the bishops of the United States in 2000, including a Mass, was interrupted by a series of protests by gay activists from Soulforce, the Rainbow Sash, and others. The protests came at the end of a year of protests for Soulforce, several of which resulted in arrests, including 104 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

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Homosexuality and Catholic clergy

Priests

Homosexual clergy, and homosexual activity by clergy, are not exclusively modern phenomena, but rather date back centuries. Estimates presented in Donald B. Cozzens' book The Changing Face of the Priesthood of the percentage of contemporary gay priests range from 23-58%, suggesting a higher than average numbers of homosexual men (active and non-active) within the Catholic priesthood.

A 1961 instruction from the Sacred Congregation for Religious on selecting men for the priesthood gave bishops discretion to allow gay men, but held them to the same standards of chastity as straight men. In 1997, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued further guidelines for candidates for the seminary, stipulating "sufficient affective maturity and a clearly masculine sexual identity." In 2002 it said that admitting gay men would be inadvisable and imprudent.

In November 2005, the Congregation for Catholic Education stated that "the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality." In May 2008, Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, acting on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI, confirmed that the 2005 declaration applied to all Catholic seminaries everywhere.

In October 2015, on the day before the second round of the Synod on the Family, a senior Polish priest working in the Vatican, Krzysztof Charamsa, stated publicly in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that he was gay and had a partner. He said he had intended to draw attention to the Church's current attitude towards gay Catholics which he described as "backwards".

Bishops

The existence of gay bishops in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and other traditions is a matter of historical record, though never, until recently, considered licit by any of the main Christian denominations. Homosexual activity was engaged in secretly. When it was made public, official response ranged from inaction to expulsion from Holy Orders. As far back as the eleventh century, Ralph, Archbishop of Tours had his lover installed as Bishop of Orléans, yet neither Pope Urban II, nor his successor Paschal II took action to depose either man.

Although homosexual sexual acts have been consistently condemned by the Catholic Church, a number of senior members of the clergy have been found or alleged to have had homosexual relationships including Rembert Weakland, Juan Carlos Maccarone, Francisco Domingo Barbosa Da Silveira, and Keith O'Brien. A number of Popes were rumored to have been homosexual or to have had male sexual partners, including Pope Benedict IX, Pope Paul II, Pope Sixtus IV, Pope Leo X, Pope Julius II and Pope Julius III.

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Political activity

The Church supports legislation that conforms with Catholic moral theology and Catholic Social Teaching surrounding issues of importance to LGBT peoples. The Church condemns all forms of violence against LGBT people and all criminal penalties against them, and also supports legally defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Church is active in local, national, and international forums.

In various countries, members of the Catholic Church have intervened on occasions both to both support efforts to decriminalize homosexuality, and also to ensure it remains an offence under criminal law. The Catholic Church has been described as sending "mixed signals" regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation. It holds that because of "moral concern," sexual orientation is different from qualities such as race, ethnicity, sex, or age, and therefore it actively opposes the extension of at least some aspects of civil rights legislation, such as nondiscrimination in public housing, educational or athletic employment, adoption, or military recruitment, to gay men and lesbians. It said that such a limitation of rights is permissible, and sometimes even obligatory, to "protect the common good", and does not constitute unjust discrimination.

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Notable lesbian, gay and bisexual Catholics

There have been a number of notable gay Catholics throughout history. Writers such as Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Lord Alfred Douglas, Marc-André Raffalovich, Robert Hugh Benson, Frederick Rolfe, and John Gray, and artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, were influenced by both their Catholicism and their homosexuality, via the physicality and eroticism of the image of Christ and the idea of a relationship with him. Gay Catholic academics such as John J. McNeill and John Boswell have produced work on the history and theological issues at the intersection of Christianity and homosexuality. Some notable LGBT Catholics are or were priests or nuns, such as McNeill or Jean O'Leary, who was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister before becoming a lesbian and gay rights activist.

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See also

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Notes

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References

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Bibliography

• David Berger (November 2010). Der heilige Schein. ISBN 978-3-550-08855-1. 
• Randy Engel (2006). The Rite of Sodomy. ISBN 978-0-9778601-3-5. 
• Atila Sinke Guimara?es (December 1999). The Catholic Church and homosexuality. TAN Books. ISBN 978-0-89555-651-6. 
• Kate Saunders; Peter Stanford (6 April 1992). Catholics and sex. Vintage. ISBN 978-0-434-67246-2. 
• Elizabeth Stuart (July 1993). Chosen: Gay Catholic Priests Tell Their Stories. Geoffrey Chapman. ISBN 978-0-225-66682-3. 
• Eve Tushnet (2014). Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. ISBN 978-1594715426. 
• Barbara Zanotti, ed. (1986). A Faith of One's Own: Explorations by Catholic Lesbians. ISBN 978-0895942098. 

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External links

• Why Marriage Matters: A Statement of the Irish Bishops' Conference on the Civil Partnership Bill
• Christian Anthropology and Homosexuality

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