Part I – Sexuality and Homosexuality Fr. PAUL SCALIA | For the Catholic Herald
Part I – Sexuality and homosexuality
One of the greatest issues before us now is that of homosexuality. The phenomenon of homosexuality is nothing new. But now we face something completely new in the history of the world: the demand that homosexual relationships be approved as normative and recognized as “marriages.” Such approval would radically change the understanding of marriage and family that has been at the heart of our civilization for millennia. Given not only this threat but also the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the Church’s teaching, we must know the truth about homosexuality.
But first we must review the Church’s teaching on sexuality in general. For the Church does not propose different standards of sexual morality (one heterosexual and another homosexual). Rather, she articulates the truth about human sexuality for all — a truth that is not her exclusive possession but pertains to the nature of man. She bears witness to the natural law, to the design and purpose of human sexuality. The truth is this: Human sexuality has meaning, purpose and design — all discernible by natural reason. It is for something: for procreation and union.
We want our lives (especially the most intimate part of them) to have meaning and purpose. But these come with limits. Consider this in a less controversial context. Eyes and ears have a purpose and design — both physical and spiritual. Physically, they have a particular design that enables us to see and hear. Spiritually, they have a purpose as well: to see reality and to hear the truth; to see others and to hear them. The design brings limits. To disobey the physical design brings pain, perhaps blindness and deafness. To disobey the spiritual purpose brings moral decline — the inability to know the truth and form relationships.
So also with human sexuality. Physically, human sexuality is designed for procreation by the union of man and woman. Biologically it makes sense no other way. Human genitalia have no other purpose or meaning. Their physical design is inexplicable apart from this. Further, the physical is a sign of the spiritual. The physical complementarity of man and woman indicates a deeper, spiritual complementarity. As one writer puts it, one-flesh unity is the body’s language for one-life unity. Human sexuality is designed for the consummation and expression of the one-life unity of a man and woman. The moral norms follow. It is immoral to use one’s sexual faculty in any manner that violates either procreation or union.
Cool! I had no idea one of my favorite justices had a priest for a son.
__________________ Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. - Proverbs 3:5
I am glad that Fr. Scalia is working as a chaplain with Courage, and pray that he will be a blessing to those he ministers to.
I'm glad he's not like his brother Eugene, featured in Mollie Ivins' book "Bushwhacked."
MI:One of my favorite examples is that chapter on ergonomics ("The Blues in Belzoni"). When Bush came in, he appointed a guy named Eugene Scalia, son of the Supreme Court justice, to be the top lawyer at the Department of Labor. Scalia the Younger has spent his entire career as a very highly paid lobbyist in Washington, working for manufacturers associations, for the specific purpose of defeating ergonomic regulations. That was an effort started at the Labor Department by Elizabeth Dole -- that well-known communist. For 12 years they worked on trying to set up a central set of regulations. Everybody was at the table -- the manufacturers, the labor unions, the docs, all the players -- trying to prevent repetitive stress injuries, which actually cost industries an enormous amount of money, because millions of people get these things from repetitive motions at work. These regs had been worked out, they had been placed in the Federal Register, and then the Bush administration came in with a very clever ploy, and they undid the whole thing.
One son a good priest, the other an unscupulous shill of corporate greed--one out of two ain't bad.
Don't forget the prodigal son.
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"Wisdom enters through love, silence, and mortification. It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others." - St John of the Cross, OCD"
"Look for Christ Our Lord in everyone and you will then have respect and reverence for all."
- St Teresa of Jesus, OCD"
Rom 14:22 -
"Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Blessed is the one not condemning himself in what he approves."
"There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church— which is, of course, quite a different thing." - Archbishop Fulton Sheen
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of the unborn baby that I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion." - Archbishop Fulton Sheen
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