Here is another paragraph from the Relatio that has got people hot and bothered and buzzing with fury.
Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?
What I don’t understand here is the focus on homosexuals as such. Why pick them out as deserving of some special mention?
Surely we believe that all persons have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community. Are we saying that homosexuals have some sort of special, unique gifts to offer simply because they are persons with same sex attraction? Where does that come from? What exactly are those unique gifts they have because they are homosexuals? Do they have gifts and qualities and insights because they live a celibate and single life? How are their gifts different then, from the gifts and qualities of the heterosexual single, celibate person? Isn’t this patronizing and offensive to heterosexual single people?
I fear this is ill thought out, sentimentalist, wishy washy, secularist nonsense.
This does not mean I am some sort of homophobe. I am not taking an anti-gay stance, I simply don’t understand what they’re talking about. What particular gifts to homosexuals offer the church that are different than the range of gifts that all people might bring to the church? Can anyone specify that? What are the “gifts and qualities” that homosexuals have that heterosexuals do not?
People with same sex attraction are already welcomed into the church equally with whatever gifts and qualities they have as individuals. Why does their sexuality have anything to do with it? Are we suggesting that homosexual people are more sensitive, caring, artistic or spiritual? If so, isn’t that patronizing–almost like saying, “Gerald is such a witty person! He’d make such a good interior designer…” If that is what we are saying are we suggesting that all homosexual people have these gifts and qualities simply because they have same sex attraction? Does that mean we think there cannot be homosexuals who are dull, selfish, stupid, brutish, violent, vulgar and boorish? Are we putting one group of people in some kind of special category because of their sexual orientation? If so how crazy is that?
A Catholic former gay porn actor comments on this subject here.
Furthermore, in what way does the Catholic Church exclude people with same sex attraction? I have been a Catholic for nearly twenty years and I have never met a Catholic who excludes a person simply because they have same sex attraction. Sure, there is plenty of animosity towards gay activists and those who wish to destroy the Catholic Church and impose their life style on Catholics, but rejection of people simply because they experience same sex attraction? I’ve never seen it. I’ve seen exactly the opposite–kindness, toleration and mostly indifference.
This can only refer, therefore, to Catholic exclusion of men and women who are living an active homosexual lifestyle. Are these individuals to be granted “a fraternal space in our communities”? How so? How can we reject their lifestyle while accepting them? In what way exactly are we to grant them “fraternal space in our community”?
Again, my grumble here is not so much with what has been said, but the totally wishy washy, sentimental, ignorant and vague way in which they are being stated. The manner and style is far closer to the Anglican Church than the Catholic Church.
Let’s have more specifics. In what way do homosexual persons “wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home”?
