As Msgr. Pope states, the Church makes no definitive assertion about the origins of unchosen same-sex attractions, although I believe that developmental psychology can offer some degree of insight. Although the Catechism exhorts compassion and sensitivity for persons who deal with these attractions, which are not understood as sinful in and of themselves, I think such persons may frequently feel like (whether it’s true or not) that they’re viewed by other Catholics with a dismissive platitude of “Well, that’s the cross God gave you. Best of luck in bearing it.” It is true that all of us have crosses that, even despite the best experiences of human compassion, solidarity, or empathy (if we are blessed enough to experience them), still can be completely understood only by the God who, in Jesus, bears our sufferings in himself and, through the Holy Spirit, intercedes for us with “inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26). We would do well to be gentle with one another, as we often have no knowledge of what another is going through internally.

Whatever the truth may be regarding the origins of same-sex attractions, it seems that fundamental questions concerning what constitutes manhood/masculinity or womanhood/femininity, and related questions concerning the experience of relational intimacy within the human family, are certainly involved. Indeed, these are questions that all people deal with. The Church teaches that men and women are equal in dignity before God as bearers of His image, but that they bear that image in different and complementary ways. We are invited by the Church to understand ourselves as a unity of body and soul and not simply a “ghost in a machine.” This understanding undergirds the Church teaching on sexual intimacy, for only within the monogamous, lifelong union of one man and one woman can sexual intimacy embody a truly complementary self-giving according to the male or female dignity that God has bestowed on a person. Because sexual intimacy between two persons of the same sex cannot embody this complementary self-giving, such physical expression would be a diminishment, or in some degree, a negation, of the male or female dignity that God has bestowed. Even though the capacity of the marital union to bring forth new life is the most powerful testament to its sacramental character, the marital union of infertile or older husbands and wives still has the capacity to embody self-giving in a manner that reveals the complementary goodness of fatherhood and motherhood together. In how such couples choose to reach out to those around them, this might take the form of adopting children, giving of themselves to adult children, grandchildren, or extended family, and giving of themselves in other ways to their parish or community.

To be sure, love between persons of the same sex, as with all important non-marital relationships, can point to God and reflect dimensions of God’s love. My understanding, though, is that the Church would view this love to be of a fatherly/brotherly or motherly/sisterly nature, with everything good that may be entailed in those kinds of connections. Scripture and the history of the Church provide examples of such love. However, I think that because our sexualized culture finds it difficult to disentangle understandings of intimacy with the physical act of sex, the goodness to be found in this kind of love, and what it also can offer for understanding male or female dignity in relation to others, can be lost on many people.

But regarding how to understand male or female dignity, or the spiritual dimensions of masculinity and femininity, there is so much to examine here (i.e. “the theology of the body”) that a post like this is certainly inadequate to that task. I think that learning to understand Christ as our Elder Brother who leads us to the love of our Heavenly Father, and learning to understand Mary as our Blessed Mother, are good starting points for trying to understand these matters. As for the matter of finding human connectedness in a society that seems intimacy-starved, I don’t have easy answers as to how to find it, but I’ll just conclude with two Scripture passages that convey something of what such connections may look like. The Book of Proverbs tells us that “He who is a friend is always a friend, and a brother [or sister] is born for the time of stress” (Proverbs 17:17). In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul enjoins those in the body of Christ to “love one another with mutual affection” and to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:9-15). Of course, this kind of connectedness is rare if one cannot find others in the family of God with whom to reveal and share the sorrows of our particular crosses or joys of resurrected life in Christ.

Although history is a great interest of mine, I cannot say that I’m an expert on the history here. However, I think that just a few historical issues that it would be important to understand or investigate, if you’re going to insert this into an argument, include the following: the Church’s role in holding together Western civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire, the roles of Church and state during the events in question and who did what, the extent to which Muslim expansionism or heretical movements posed real threats, and any differences (?) between what people did and what a particular pope, or the Church as a whole, taught or warranted.

I raise this point because I think it’s easy for a 21st Century person, if he or she hasn’t studied history extensively, to assume a morally superior posture to people of these earlier ages because they didn’t share the assumptions of good post-Enlightenment people who, in a live-and-let-live manner, defend religious liberty or believe that religion is a private affair or that all religions are just different paths to the same God. Cynthia, If anything I’ve said in this last statement does not reflect your own level of knowledge, or attitude, or beliefs, then please correct me.

Can you provide some examples, with historical reference and a good understanding of cultural context, of “the pretty heinous things” that supposedly the Church has taught?

On a separate note I have to say I welcome the robust dialogue occurring in this forum. What a great idea for a blog!

Jesus told us what a marriage is before he even gave the prohibition on divorce.