Brace yourself, again and always, I am coming from an entirely different perspective from the one Becky and millions of others have been traumatized by.
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The good news is that "the soul finds rest in God alone; salvation comes from our God." (Psalm 62:1) And, thank God, NOT from the churches which bar us from salvation. Thank God, it is not theirs to take away. Maybe they need to be reminded that Jesus came to unite us with God; that is, to take away our sins, not to take away our sexuality.
Good contemporary Catholic teaching informs us that sin is "separation from God." And furthermore, that "act" does not equal "sin."
So far, so good. This teaching of good moral theologians is the starting point for a proper understanding of sin. An act in itself cannot automatically be sin; sin is separating oneself from God.
Fortunately, we have the teaching of St. Paul in Romans 8. "No power [outside of ourselves] can separate us from the love of God." When church powers impose their power to try to separate us from God, they are barking up the wrong tree and contradicting the very Word of God they claim to uphold and preach.
My brothers and sisters, cling to the salvation God offers you in Psalm 91. God rescues you, protects you, answers you, and brings you safety and honor. Embrace the love of God guaranteed in Romans 8.
The most common bad theology they use in their efforts to force our separation from God is the medieval concept of "ACT=SIN."
There are whole books on the "Penitential Books" of that bygone era. I will spare you. The "Penitential Books" were like pocket books the priests used in the confessional. They were long lists of "ACT=SIN" with the designated penance for each act which was not a few Paters and Aves. They got into sackcloth and ashes and even worse.
The "sin book" writers got carried away making those lists. They were like columnists getting paid by the inch. The more inches the more pay. The more sins, the thicker the books; and the more sinners they could catch, mortify, and put in sackcloth and ashes.
Oh, goodie! Surely that is how masturbation must have become a sin. Of course, it is a sin, under the sixth commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Yeah? Yeah, masturbated adultery!
The Church teaches about the age of reason. A child must be seven years of age, more or less, before sin is possible because the child has reached the age of reason. So a two-year-old pulls a trigger and kills someone. ACT=SIN, right? Wrong! Of course, there is no sin of murder. No age of reason (or ability to make responsible decisions). Act does not equal sin. Adult thinking and mature intention are required.
But reason is also positive. No power can separate us from the love of God unless we want to be separated from the love of God. My reason tells me I cannot be separated from the love of God for loving my same-sex lover. There is nothing in the Bible which condemns my love. If you think so, prove it.
There is no word, no verse, no story which condemns our orientation, our love, or even our marriage. The few comments in the Bible they love to throw at us are not about same-sex orientation, love, or marriage. Temple prostitution, probably; pederasty, probably; but not gays and lesbians as we know them in their loving lifestyle today.
Anyway, they have made these lists of "sins" and now they use them to condemn us. They even incorrectly throw the word "homosexual" into Paul's list of sinners in I Corinthians 6:9. Yet the word homosexual was not invented until nearly two millennia later. Paul was not condemning "homosexuals."
In those days everybody, they thought, was heterosexual, and some of those heterosexuals worshipped pagan gods by sex-acts in the temple, and some of them had sex with underaged boys. Paul did not like that, and we shouldn't either.
Besides the Greek words used by Paul in that list of people he says who are not accepted in heaven are malakos and arsenokoites. The meanings of these words do not even slightly resemble today's gays and lesbians. They probably refer to people engaged in either temple prostitution or in pederasty, or both. (The problem is Paul is the only one in all literature who used the word arsenokoites and we can only guess what he meant by this word he made up.)
ACT is not equal to SIN. It takes some important elements involved in the act and around the act in order to make it a sin.
For examples, harm or force. As we have said before, it is not the bed of consensual adult sex which sends people to the lethal injection bed. It is the harm (to minors, for example) and the force (rape of women or anybody)! Sex is good, a gift from God, in itself. It takes other ingredients and circumstances to make it "sin."
God is love and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. Nobody can force sin on us. Only we can choose to harm or to force so that the Law of Love is broken.
But, so many of us become victims of "guilt." I find it is easier to banish sin than it is to erase guilt feelings because of the psychological damage from all this "God-will-get-you" theology.
I wish I were a magical psychologist. The priest can work magic in the confessional. The penitent says, "I am sorry for loving my lover, Father." And the priest can say, "Go, your sins are forgiven." But the work of a psychologist is not that easy. Guilt feelings linger and take more than a magic word or holy water to be washed away.
Sorry, I can't do it all in one column here. But I keep trying. Part of it depends on you. Do you want to believe that the all-loving God banishes you into outer darkness or eternal fire for masturbation or harmless consensual adult sex?
If you want to claim to an archaic unbelievable sexual theology, then you can also choose to have the masochistic pleasure of clinging to your guilt feelings.
For thirty-some years MCC has been working on a sensible sexual theology. I'm writing a book on it, but only you can decide if you want to hang on to your sex-negative theology and guilt feelings.
For more information about these or similar issues, e-mail your questions or comments to me at saintaelred@gmail.com (just click on the moving envelope)