Step by Step to Sodom & Gomorrah…
Novus Ordo Blogger Ponders if Celibate Homo Partnerships could be a “Valid Vocation”
“Elizabeth Scalia is a Benedictine Oblate and the Managing Editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos. She is an award-winning writer and a regularly-featured columnist at First Things and at The Catholic Answer Magazine. Thus says the biographical snippet at her blog, The Anchoress. It continues: “Read her books, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life and ‘I Don’t Want to Be a Hoo-er’ (*And You Shouldn’t Want to be One, Either), with Foreword by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.”
Get ready to face-palm: On July 16, 2014, Ben Conroy posted an entry at Scalia’s blog in which he publicly ponders the question whether “a committed, lifelong, celibate partnership between two gay people [could be] a valid vocation, a holy thing, a place where virtue and love might flourish”.
Effectively endorsing “a group of [celibate] gay Catholics – like Eve Tushnet, Aaron Taylor, Gabriel Blanchard, and Melinda Selmys –, and Christians of other denominations – such as Wesley Hill, Kyle Keating, and Julie Rodgers”, Conroy relates that these people believe that their “‘being gay’ can be a gift as well as a cross. They believe it’s possible both to be an out and proud gay Christian, and to live out a celibate life (or in some cases a married one – Selmys and Keating are married to people of the opposite sex in what they call ‘mixed-orientation marriages’)”. How about that!
But wait — there’s more! Conroy continues:
If we accept some of the distinctions these writers have made – that to be gay is not reducible to what the catechism calls “deep-seated homosexual tendencies”, that being gay can be a call to particular, unique kinds of virtue, that the modern, Western notion of sexual and romantic partnership has appropriated kinds of love that historically were also found in non-sexual relationships – doesn’t that open up a space for the idea of a committed, lifelong, celibate partnership between two gay people as being a valid vocation, a holy thing, a place where virtue and love might flourish?
Lindsay and Sarah, who blog at a A Queer Calling, describe themselves as “a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple reflecting on life together”. They don’t see their relationship as marriage or a marriage analogue, nor do they see it as vowed friendship. But they live together, describe each other as partners, as a team, and as a family, and have committed to one another for the rest of their lives.
Is there a place in orthodox Christianity generally, and in Catholicism specifically, for Lindsay and Sarah, or couples like them? (They haven’t yet revealed which tradition they belong to).
(Ben Conroy, “Homosexuality, Celibacy and Partnership: An Awkward Question”, The Anchoress, July 16, 2014)
How about we answer that with a resounding “NO”? Especially considering that any romantic attraction someone might have to a member of the same sex must be firmly resisted, because it is in and of itself depraved and wrong — it is contrary to nature, to the created order, and aims at an unnatural sexual act.
As long as this attraction is not willed and is resisted, there is no sin, of course, because there is then no attachment of the will; but the idea that we can assent to or tolerate the attraction, the affection, and the partnership as long as there is no sexual activity — is ludicrous, reprehensible, and absurd. Obviously, by the time you have a “partner” and call yourselves a “couple”, even live together, you have consented to the attraction. That’s a detestable mortal sin!
So, no, there is no place for this wickedness in “orthodox Christianity”, which Mr. Conroy somehow separates from “Catholicism”, as though there were any kind of “orthodox Christianity” apart from Catholicism.
The Novus Ordo Sect is fading fast, ladies and gentlemen, and soon it will be even more irrelevant than it already is now. This is probably the precondition for the true Catholic Church to rise gloriously once more in the sight of all scoffers and doubters.
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