The orthodox church and homosexuality

Reflections by Pietro C.

The complex relationship that the catholic church has towards Homosexuality is known to all. The most conservative hierarchical part considers it a pathology, a morally unacceptable situation. the Most attentive part of people experience, in the lower clergy, considers it something that must find its own place, perhaps in a stable and lasting relationship framework. sometimes this Position is reflected in some exponent of the hierarchy, as lately in the archbishop Of Berlin (June 2012) who showed a certain opening to the marriage of gays.
The Orthodox world, on the other hand, is very waterproof to all kinds of articulated reflection that has tried to characterize the Catholic world and, above all, the Protestant one.

When someone tries to deal with this theme - I remember the attempt of a Romanian Orthodox priest in France - he does it insufficient, rhetorical and inconclusive way.

Se l’apporto delle scienze umane è riuscito a scalfire un poco certe infondate sicurezze del Cristianesimo occidentale, mostrando che l’omosessualità non è una realtà voluta ma, piuttosto, qualcosa che un uomo vive e gestisce, uno stile con il quale impronta affetti e relazioni, tutto ciò pare non essere stato assolutamente recepito in Oriente.
Le società in cui è tradizionale la confessione cristiano ortodossa hanno, sull’argomento, opinioni come quelle dell’Europa occidentale di ottant’anni fa. Mi riferisco, soprattutto, alle società uscite dal comunismo sovietico.

L’identità delle Chiese orientali è fortemente improntata sul concetto di tradizione, laddove per tradizione si deve intendere tutto un genere d’orientamenti e interpretazioni bibliche provenienti dalla vita e dalla riflessione di santi, teologi e asceti.
Almeno in teoria, dunque, la dimensione di questo Cristianesimo è molto ascetica. L’ascetismo ortodosso non conosce punte estreme di rifiuto del corpo, esistite o ancora esistenti in Occidente, ma subordina il mondo delle sensazioni corporee a quello spirituale senza una necessaria e costante opposizione tra i due. E’ questo ad aver generato una certa valutazione della vita sessuale, al punto che pure i preti si sposano.
Ciononostante l’omosessualità è sempre stata ritenuta un’attività disordinata e riprovevole comunque la si ponga.

In the history of the oriental churches, the homosexual was invited to become a monk, to move away from the world and to sanctify themselves by avoiding the traps of the devil represented by its kind of affectivity.
Even today in Mount Athos there is some monk who cries on himself, considering himself an insult to God for the simple fact of being homosexual!
This explains why in the history of the Orthodox Church there were saints, most likely homosexual, who have never listened to their type of affectivity, considering it an evil in itself. One of them was San Simeone the new theologian (XI century).

Quite recently, in the early decades of the 1900s, a Greek saint, responsible for a male college, San Necario di Egina, urged the boys to cut every friendship with each other if he began to have too emotional developments. Evidently the existence of these situations was recognized but it was cut into the bud, perhaps in the belief that homosexuality could be a simple evolutionary stage towards the heterosexuality to which everyone inevitably had to reach without delay, conviction today very relativized if not denied by the anthropological sciences. Homosexuality represented the stumbled of an emotional path and, above all, an insane expression hated by God.

The current era with its sexual liberalism has had its disruptive effect also in traditionally Orthodox societies. Thus, a sort of dichotomy has been created which, as it is, is incurable and absurd. We therefore have two positions. On the one hand there are the lovers of tradition for which homosexuality, any application can have, is reprehensible because it has contrary to what has always been established by God in the genian revelation.
"If you really fall into sexual sin, follow nature, do not go against them," says some monk atonite contemporary to certain pilgrims, demonstrating, with this, a perfect ignorance on homosexuality.

The last externalization, in this sense, is that presented by the Greek-Orthodox metropolitan archbishop of Australia, in front of the Gay marriage proposal by the State (June 2012). The archbishop believes that preventing the state approval of homosexual marriages is a "sacred duty". The Byzantine rhetoric with which you want to consider the opinion against gay marriages "sacred" is ridiculous in the eyes of today's secular mentality. But this is far from glimpsed by those who, like him, seems to be waterproof to some important contemporary reflections.
On the other hand, there is the presence of clerics and lay people who, without even trying to articulate mediation, discernment and an intelligent analysis between homosexual behavior and tradition, approve or tolerate several "alternative" solutions.

So if, on the one hand, we have the existence of cohabiting bishops in fact (while at least the bishops traditionally should not have relationships and remain monks), on the other we have some priests who coexist either with women or with men, others who practice promiscuity, still others who, despite being married, have extramarital relationships, someone else who is even activist within homosexual realities, etc.
All things that, as a whole, are an indication of an extraordinary confusion and juxtaposition that can lead to a dangerous splitting of the personality and to a total isolation between the religious and personal dimension.

Even in the Orthodox world, therefore, it seems that many things can be tolerated as long as they are not known and the tradition relating to them do not reinterpret, leaving it unaltered, as if it were perfect in all its aspects. In fact, a healthier attitude of reflection on homosexuality finds the Orthodox churches still refractory, as if all this did not concern them at all and the solutions adopted by the tradition were always valid at every time and place.
Bisogna ammettere che il Cristianesimo occidentale, nonostante molte opposizioni, si affatica a comprendere meglio questa realtà. Al contrario, l’Oriente ortodosso non ne vuole assolutamente sapere, pur avendo nel suo stesso seno laici e chierici omosessuali. Così se, in quel contesto, un omosessuale cerca consiglio dal confessore, si sente rispondere che deve divenire monaco o deve sposarsi.
Gli vengono propinate queste due classiche vie senza neppure capire se effettivamente le può sostenere. Un uomo con tentazioni omosessuali deve pregare tantissimo, a differenza di uno con tentazioni eterosessuali il quale può trovare la sua pace e soluzione nel matrimonio.
Non è neppure concepito consigliare un rapporto fedele e monogamo omosessuale. Il XXI secolo è dunque appiattito al VI o al II.

Ecco perché nel mondo ortodosso sembra che non si senta lo stridore di certe affermazioni, proprie alla sua tradizione, come quella di san Giovanni Crisostomo, per cui l’omosessualità, in se stessa, è l’espressione d’un abbandono da parte di Dio. Il santo affermava che quando Dio abbandona qualcuno, immediatamente la sua natura s’inverte e questo spiega l’esistenza dell’omosessualità (San Giovanni Crisostomo, Homilia IV in Epistula Pauli ad Romanos; cfr. Patrologia Graeca, vol. 47, coll. 360-362).

The need to reinterpret the tradition represented by these authors towards homosexuality seems, at the moment, still something immensely far away and if someone dares to lift this question it could be seen as a heretic.
This formalist staticism, however, is certainly not an expression of discernment and, above all, ends up ruining in some the true sense of a tradition of which the Orthodox are considered the only faithful representatives.

Bringing a homosexual particularly active to live a choice that cannot support, it means stumbling and making it unhappy, making him curse his faith.
If the old wine is therefore not brought to new ones inevitably ends up corrupting! Unfortunately this concern does not seem not even remotely touching the environments of Orthodox Christianity. Thus, a ligia facade is maintained to tradition and a practice that can also be radically devouded.

The final product of these two elements is always terrible and consists in the emptying of a Church and a faith, which the Orthodox are still far from considering but that is already happening.