“Doesn’t God Want Them to be Happy?” and Other Questions

“Doesn’t God Want Them to be Happy?” and Other Questions Do you ever find yourself wondering how to reply to some comments you encounter?  You know the answers, but for some reason when you are finally presented the chance to answer in a logical and charitable way, you find yourself stumbling.  Fr. Timothy Henderson has short, simple and yet extremely helpful answers for those unexpectedly tough questions: “If God is a loving God, why can’t gay people be married if they love each other?  Doesn’t God want them to be happy? Why does the church hate gay people?” Part of the problem is that people put the onus on God instead of looking at the behaviors. (1) Homosexuality is disordered.  It has been believed/known to be so for 5,000 years.  It is this world in its brokenness that suddenly wants to change this.  Societies that have allowed this to be installed as an institution have not lasted, and it is a marked sign of its decline.  See the Roman Empire.  There are other symptoms as well… for example the use of mercenaries… which by the way, the U.S. now employs a lot of mercenaries… (2) Look at our own bodies… you have remarked on the complementarity of the sexes physically, but also emotionally.  But looking at the physicality itself, particularly among males, the body was never meant to do what some of these acts do, and the tearing of the flesh was responsible for the transmission of AIDS in the 1980s and why it became so widespread.  AND it took several years before it began affecting the heterosexual population in a meaningful way. Even without AIDS, the body is clearly NOT meant to act in this way, but is rather ordered to the coming together of male and female. (3) As you already state, Marriage is for the procreation of children as much as it is the development of the spouses, and even a heterosexual couple, if they are perpetually incapable of performing those acts which can bring about children, are not allowed to marry.  A soldier who has taken damage for example and is either without or has damage that prevents the body from acting in that capacity.  A man or a woman who finds their spouse so physically repulsive that he or she cannot act physical (and it does happen).  They are in effect impotent.  Such people are not allowed to marry.  If a person cannot perform the act with life giving effect, they are not allowed to marry whether heterosexual or homosexual.  It is the performance of the act that is the key… not the fertility of the act… that is important to differentiate. (4) God indeed does love everyone, but love does not allow someone to act in a disordered way, but rather always points to acting in a wholesome life-giving way. The Church does not hate such people, on the contrary, it demands that people help people with same sex attraction to carry their heavy cross by real friendships and moral support… not for acting on their attraction but to act as Christians before God. (5) There is a brand new study which shows same sex parents do have adverse effects on the rearing of children.  The homosexual community has gone out of their way to attack that study, but the University of Texas and all reviews of the study show the methods used to come to this conclusion follows the norms for Behavior Science Studies… “The Catholic Church just has too many rules..” (1)  Rules are the limit one may go without hurting another.  A good question to lay on them is: name one thing that is a ‘rule’ of the Church that if you do not follow it, people will not be hurt. (2) The Lord does not want rules, as much as He wants a converted heart.  Those who just follow rules are at the lowest strata of following God.  In other words, ‘what little must I do to get to heaven?’  Such people really set themselves up for disaster. When God moves people along in morality, His first move is to lead a soul to see the ugliness of sin and its effects.  The second move is show the beauty of TRUE Charity: acting for the good of the other for no other reason than the sake of the other; willing the good of the other for the sake of the other. The third move of God is to fire one’s virtue into steel is to remove physical comforts. The fourth move of God is to remove spiritual comforts… this proves one’s Faithfulness to both Charity and love of God for the sake of loving God and neighbor. God moves people away from rules to True Charity… but True Charity NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER violates the moral rules…