Beyond the surface. What does the Catholic Church say about homosexuality
Reflections of the Catholic psychologist Jacques Arènes and the theologian Dominique Foyer taken from the website of the Catholic weekly La Vie (France), 31 May 2011, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro
The psychoanalyst Jacques Arènes and the theologian Dominique Foyer entrust us with their common reflection on the evolution of the Catholic Church on the question of homosexuality.
Currently the homosexual question is like an iceberg: the social fact of visibility, often colored with claims, does not say everything.
Essential questions, hidden for a long time, appear little by little: on the anthropological level, the recognition of the homosexual fact leads to reconsider the space of sexuality in human existence; On the social and political level, the legitimate aspiration of individuals must be harmonized to decide independently of their lives, therefore of their sexuality, with a necessary social regulation of human relationships, including the emotional and sexual side; On the theological and spiritual level, one must wonder how the good news of salvation, brought by the Church of Christ, can reach homosexual people in the diversity of their situations.
The doctrine of The church and its implicit anthropology
In all religions, a severe control is noted and often a recruitment of homosexual acts. But the "homo offenders" relationships are generally valued: virile friendships between warriors, tenderness between women ... Judaism and primitive Christianity are no exception.
The Catholic Church, as for her, states that there is a universal moral value of human acts, independent of the circumstances of these acts.
It considers "objective" homosexual acts as sinful. However, it distinguishes the morality of the acts from the responsibility of the people who live them.
In "homo offenders" situations, the Catholic Church does not approve the transition to the sexual act, however recognizing that the evaluation of the real freedom and therefore of the moral responsibility of people is always difficult to do.
A homosexual person is not responsible for his psycho -effective orientation, and does not necessarily master its expression.
In contemporary theology the central topic rests on an anthropology where the difference of the sexes, with its theological meaning-the union between man and woman in the image of the relationship with God-is an essential element of identity and human becoming, in its sexual dimension, marital and procreative: humanity is created in the complementarity of man and woman (Genesis 2, 20-24), "in the image of God" (genesis of 1,27).
With historical variations
From the beginning of Christianity, in the furrow of Judaism, homosexual practices are considered at the same time as idolatrial, unworthy and against nature: idolatrial, because they are too linked to forms of sacred prostitution or social consequence of a profound ignorance of God (Romans 1, 18-32); Indignance of men and women who have become, through baptismal grace, "adoptive children of God", "brothers of Jesus Christ" (Romans 8, 2.21); Finally against nature, because they are contrary to the natural order created by God.
According to the prospects already present in ancient philosophies (stoicism, Aristotelianism) medieval Christianity has developed the conception of homosexual acts as sins against nature, strongly binding the sexual act to its procreating purpose. But the psychological and relational dimensions of human sexuality remained underestimated.
In the present day, the topic based on respect for the natural law on sexuality and reproduction has a little lost its relevance, above all due to the development of technologies related to human procreation. An anthropological argument is preferred based on the notion of "truth of the sexual act".
To the extent that it does not lead to procreation, a homosexual relationship is anthropologically "less true" than an heterosexual relationship; However, it can be a carrier of ethical quality: sincerity, a gift of self, the search for the serenity of the other etc.
Moreover, in the doctrine of Christian marriage that the recognition of the positive value of human sexuality and the taking of consideration of the "Mortgage of the Spouses" opens from Vatican II, opens the way to a taken of sexual pleasure regardless of its procreative purpose. But can these two constitutive dimensions of human sexuality can totally dissociate?
Questions posed to the Church today
The Church is confronted today, like the whole of the company, with a new data. "The homosexual identity", personal and collective, emerges as such.
As Michel Foucault pointed out, in the past centuries, people who considered themselves as "homosexual", but of homoerotic "practices" did not exist.
The psychomedical approach to sexuality, and homosexuality, developed in the nineteenth century, has gradually enhanced sexuality, and sexual orientation, as "truth" of the subject. In its reality and in its expression, sexual orientation is considered today as a brand of authenticity of the person and its profound aspirations.
The emergence of the claims of social legitimacy of Homosexual Relations ("gay" marriage) then constitutes the sign of a fundamental desire for recognition, which concerns groups and people.
The Church must listen to these expectations, trying in the same time to promote its anthropological vision, hardly audible today.
In a highly erotic society, in which genital activity is considered a fundamental and inevitable experience, sexual abstinence, proposed by the Church to homosexual people, becomes difficult to put into practice.
However, self -mastery, in this essential area, is also a path of freedom. Homosexual people are so called to live a chaste love, without sexual acts, even when they live under the same roof.
In our fragmented world in which loneliness is difficult to support, this requires heroic virtues and special graces. The Church knows it well (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n ° 2359).
What is essentially at stake with homosexual people, more or less close to the Church, is realism and accompaniment.
In the diversity of factual situations (life in pairs or lonely) and the types of sexuality, possibly in contradiction with its prescriptions, the Church must nevertheless reflect on the way of accompanying homosexual people, just like with heterosexuals, towards greater loyalty, respect and support of the loved one, on a human and spiritual path.
Conclusion
These difficult questions concern all of us: sometimes personally, often through friends or people close to us; Always as citizens and even more as Christians.
We make our words of the Second Vatican Council of our own: "The joys and hopes, the sadness and anxieties of the men of this time, of the poor especially and of all those who suffer, are also the joys and hopes, the sadness and anxieties of the disciples of Christ, and there is nothing truly human that you do not find echo in their heart" (Constitution Gaudium et spes, on the Church in the world).
Original text: Ce qui dit the eglise sur l'homosexualité
