Natural law goes beyond just human sexuality and its purpose and meaning, but also has applications for a number of moral issues that the world faces, political and otherwise.
But because of Jesuitical Father James Martin, SJ, gushed in a self-affirming way, about Pope Leo’s affirming meeting with him on Tuesday, 9/2, can Fr. Martin claim that Pope Leo does not accept or believe in natural law which supports and upholds what the Catholic Church teaches through Scripture and Tradition about the true nature of human sexuality?
This is an AI summary of natural law concerning Catholic sexual morality:
AI Overview
Based on Catholic natural law, sexuality is a good and integral part of the human person, created by God for the twofold purpose of expressing marital love and procreating new life
. Moral judgments about sexuality are based on objective standards rooted in human nature and divine law, not individual preferences. Core principles
The twofold purpose of sex
The Catholic Church teaches that the sexual act has two inseparable purposes:
- Unitive: The physical intimacy of sex is a profound expression of the spiritual and emotional communion between a husband and wife.
- Procreative: The sexual act is ordered toward the begetting and education of children, allowing a couple to cooperate with God in creation.
The importance of marriage
- The fullness of human sexuality is properly expressed only within the lifelong, covenantal bond of marriage between a man and a woman.
- Sexual acts outside of marriage, such as fornication and adultery, are considered morally wrong because they separate the unitive and procreative meanings of sex from their proper context.
Chastity for all people
- Chastity is the virtue that successfully integrates sexuality within the person.
- Married couples are called to chaste sexual relations that honor the unitive and procreative meanings of the act.
- Unmarried individuals, including those with homosexual inclinations, are called to express chastity through sexual abstinence.
Specific applications
Contraception
The Church considers artificial contraception to be intrinsically evil because it deliberately frustrates the procreative potential of the sexual act. This separates the unitive aspect of sex from the procreative one, which the Church believes harms the marital union and human nature. Natural Family Planning, which respects the body's natural rhythms, is viewed as a morally licit way to space births for just reasons.
Homosexuality
- Homosexual acts are considered "intrinsically disordered" because they are contrary to natural law, are not open to procreation, and do not arise from a genuine complementarity between sexes. The Catechism asserts they "cannot be approved under any circumstances".
- The Church distinguishes between homosexual acts and a homosexual inclination, which is not considered a sin in itself. The Church calls for homosexual persons to be treated with "respect, compassion, and sensitivity" and for unjust discrimination against them to be avoided.
- Homosexual individuals are called to live a life of chastity, like all unmarried people.
The purpose of these teachings
The Catholic Church frames these teachings not as arbitrary rules but as a guide for human flourishing. From this perspective, living in accordance with the natural law, as revealed through both reason and scripture, leads to authentic human happiness. Violating natural law, including in the area of sexuality, is seen as destructive to the human person and to society.
10 comments:
Natural law is an interesting concept. Previous popes condemned electric lighting and railways as against natural law but the Vatican has both now!
Followers of Fr. James Martin often see these posts by him as affirmation of same sex romance.
They often ask "What constitutes a homosexual act that violates Natural Law?" Does holding hands and kissing, without going further? Does pledging oneself to a romantic lifetime commitment (without trying to marry) without overt sexual acts?
Although Fr. James Martin clearly loves the attention he gets, yet it seems doubtful that he's lying about what the Popes that met with him have said to him.
The Holy Father makes it seem like he's very ok with same sex romance couples.
What to do?
Just goes to show how easily popes can err in prudential pronouncements.
Nick
I’m sure he loves them for who they are as children of god and doesn’t think too much about what they might or might not do in private. Just as he doesn’t obsess about what a heterosexual non-married couple he meets might or not do in private.
“Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected… When two persons love, they experience in a limited manner in this world what will be their unending delight when one with God in the next… To love another, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to have entered the area of the richest human experience…” (Cardinal Basil Hume, Note on the Teaching of the Catholic Church Concerning Homosexual People, 1995).
benny,
That document itself distinguishes love, in its many forms, from homosexual physical relationships.
That document itself states, "The love which one person can have for and receive from another is a gift from God. Nonetheless, God expects homosexual people, as indeed he does heterosexual people, to keep his law and to work towards achieving a difficult ideal[.]" (Though do note, Pope Leo has made clear that a holy Christian marriage is not an unachievable ideal).
So, what's this about just letting the things people do in private be private? That ridiculous canard is the domain of secularists and atheists, not Catholic theology or soteriology.
Nick
A holy Christian marriage ie including sexual intimacy open to procreation may well be unachievable to a gay person.
The things people do in private are a matter between them and their confessor. I don’t feel it’s healthy for other people to obsess about what they may or not be doing in private.
Agreed, and therein lies the modern problem with putting in a public way what the LGBTQ+++ ideologies want. Have you have watched a gay pride parade in San Francisco????? And in other American cities???? I don’t know what happens in this regard in London or the rest of Europe, Did you watch the funeral at St. Patrick’s for a homosexual Catholic and the despicable public acts of disrespect that occurred there, bare asses, French kissing between two men and in the altar area of the Cathedral. It was so disordered and vile that the cathedral had to have a purification rite, closed to the public, to spiritually and morally cleanse the Cathedral! Do you want Catholic men in drag at Mass? Do you want homosexuals at the sign of peace French kissing their partner(s)?
That’s what’s happening.
Also, there is advocacy for men or women transvestites, transsexuals and the like given public roles at Mass such as altar serving, lectors and Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, not to mention admittance to Holy Orders.
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