Ushauri, Maoni, Mapendekezo na Pongezi kwa Mkuu wa Mkoa wa Dar, Paul Makonda

[reuben kombe]

[emoji15]

 

[ngulwi]

Nimeona kwenye taarifa ya habari TBC ,makala yake ya hadubini, imesikitisha sana , kumbe wengine wanaomba barabarani ,hawakupenda ni shida za hii dunia ,yule mama amezaa watoto watano wawili tu ni wazima wengine ni walemavu , toka mtwara hadi dar kuja kuomba ndugu wamemtelekeza ,mume kafariki, ee RC Dar wanaomba kumbe kupata pesa ya kula , ee MUNGU tutee hujafa hujaumbika

 

[gnassingbe]

You only see what your eyes want to see........Sijasema mimi kasema Madona Louise Ciccone "Material girl"

 

[swissme]

CCM KUNA KILA AINA YA VITUKO.

swissme

 

[SAUTI YAKO]

Ata kuja mwingine tena "paul makonda piga marufuku uuzwaji wa supu ya pweza mtaani maana wanaume wa dar wanapenda kugegedana sana" jinga sana huyu.

Anaweza Mkuu hAkaifungia kwel Meza z wauza pweza kama kwel atachukua akil za nyumbu kuwaridhisha.ukasikia biashara ya pweza inachangia mimba zisizotarajiwa

 

[mwanatanu]

Mhe Makonda umepongezwa sana baada ya kuzuia uvutaji sigara hadharani na kuzuia uvutaji wa shisha.

Na katika hotuba yako ya kupinga ushoga ulisema wewe ni mbabe wa Dar Es Salaam sasa juzi kati katika tembea yangu pale kinondoni nilishtuka kuona vijana wetu wa kike wazuri sana kama wale uliwaona wakivuta shisha pale Double Tree wakiwa wamelewa na mate yakiwatiririka baada ya kutumia madawa ya kulevya.

Mhe Makonda hili la dawa za kulevya halina ubishi ni tatizo kubwa sana kwa vijana wetu viongozi wa kesho na nguvu kazi yetu inakuwaje na Ubabe wako unaodai umeshindwa kulisemea?????
au unaogopa kupoteza kazi kwa vile Mhe Kitwanga alishasema wauza unga ndio walomwondoa.

 

[Rtbkazoba]

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Mbona hakuna mjadala hapa, Makonda alinyoosha maelezo kwamba lazima wanaDSM wakemee na kuzuia mambo ya watu kushikishana ukuta DSM. kisa ni kaoge a.k.a God kademu ambaye yeye mwenyewe hata kama akipata mtoto hataki aje kuwa bwabwa. Hapa bado watu hawaelewi kabisa kaka na dada wagombee bwana acha huko kwengine wao hamna sheeda.Lazima jamii iwakinge vijana wetu wasifike huko kitu ambacho Makonda hatakuja kuulizwa mbele.

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You haven't read chapter seven below.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: HOMOSEXUALITY​

[Source: Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, The sexual person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008), pg 215-235]

ONE SEXUAL ISSUE is today causing anguish to some Christians and confusion and anger to others and is tearing the churches apart as never before. It is the issue of homosexuality. In this chapter we consider this issue in the context of scripture and the Catholic moral tradition interpreted in the contemporary socio-historical context.

Our approach is that mapped out by Pope Benedict XVI when he was Professor Joseph Ratzinger: ‘‘Not everything that exists in the Church must for that reason be also a legitimate tradition; in other words, not every tradition that arises in the Church is a true celebration and keeping present of the mystery of Christ. There is a distorting, as well as legitimate, tradition, . . . [and] . . . consequently tradition must not be considered only affirmatively but also critically.’’[1]

The approach is an empirical theology that examines traditional norms not as moral facts for uncritical and passive acceptance but as bases for active and critical understanding, pondering, and evaluating that leads to reasoned, conscientious judgments and decisions in the contemporary sociohistorical context.

The theological tools for this approach draw from four sources of moral knowledge: scripture, ‘‘tradition’’ and ‘‘Tradition,’’2 reason, and experience. Traditionally, Catholic moral theology has relied upon these four sources of moral knowledge in developing its natural law method and formulating norms to guide human behavior.

Both traditionalists and revisionists have recourse to these four sources. What distinguishes them fundamentally in their ethical methods in general, and in the issue of homosexual acts in particular, is their hermeneutic or interpretation and prioritization of those sources. Traditionalists use a hierarchical approach to the sources of moral knowledge and tend to interpret Tradition in the narrow sense of magisterial teaching, especially as this teaching pertains to moral absolutes. Scripture, reason, and experience, in that order, are all subject to the Magisterium’s interpretation.

One could say that traditionalists espouse an apologetical ethical method defending the moral absolutes of the Magisterium. Revisionists, while assigning a very important role to Tradition, understanding it in a broad sense to include the Magisterium and the other aspects that make up a universal, ecclesiastical Tradition, use a dialectical approach between the four sources of moral knowledge.

Though there is a presumption of truth in favor of magisterial teaching, that teaching is to be critically reflected upon in light of theologically sound scriptural exegesis, the reasonable input of the sciences in areas where it has competence, and the cultural, historical, and relational experiences of the faithful, not necessarily in that order. When there is a conflict between these sources, a process of research, dialogue, and discernment must be undertaken to determine right understanding of divine law. This is a complex and involved process, which takes time, patience, and a commitment to dialogue.

The received tradition of the Catholic Church condemns homosexual acts as ‘‘intrinsically disordered’’3 and gravely immoral and does so on the basis of three foundations. The first is the teaching of scripture, in which such acts ‘‘are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God’’; the second is ‘‘the constant teaching of the Magisterium’’; and the third is ‘‘the moral sense of the Christian people.’’[4]

This theological tradition is not, and cannot be, in question in any contemporary discussion. Following Ratzinger, however, and the scientific and experiential insights available to us, the tradition can be and must be approached critically, to clarify its foundation, rationale, and continued meaningfulness in the changed sociohistorical circumstances of the contemporary world. It is the clarification of each foundation that is sought in this chapter.

Though we respect the theological tradition on this issue, on the basis of empirical theology and a dialectical hermeneutic of the sources of moral knowledge, we maintain that the teaching on the intrinsic immorality of homosexual acts represents a distorting tradition.We conclude by defending our principle of holistic complementarity and argue that some homosexual acts may be morally right.

The Bible and Homosexuality

Because Christianity is a religion of the book, Christians automatically turn to their Bible, believed to be the Word of God, for guidance in ethical matters. The issue of homosexuality is no exception. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) turns to the Bible in its discussion of the ‘‘problem of homosexuality’’ and rhetorically asserts that ‘‘there is . . . a clear consistency within the sacred scriptures for judging the moral issue of homosexual behavior. The Church’s doctrine regarding this issue is thus based not only on isolated phrases taken out of context, from which could be developed uncertain theological arguments, but rather on the solid
foundation of a constant biblical testimony.’’5

It lists the texts on which this ‘‘solid foundation’’ is built: Genesis 19:1–11; Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26–7; 1 Corinthians 6:9; and 1 Timothy 1:10.6 Interestingly, when the Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the biblical texts that present ‘‘homosexual acts as acts of great depravity,’’7 it omits the Leviticus text. Lawler, Boyle, and May, none of whom is a Catholic biblical scholar, all accept this ‘‘solid foundation’’ without question and assert that ‘‘there are specific biblical passages referring to homosexual acts, and in each of these passages such acts are unambiguously condemned.’’[8]

In the light of contemporary biblical scholarship, Catholic included, it is impossible to agree that the texts on which this Catholic tradition of the immorality of homosexual acts is based are ‘‘unambiguous’’ and provide ‘‘solid foundation.’’ We believe that, when read as the Magisterium itself requires they be read, that is, in the ‘‘literary forms’’ of the writer’s ‘‘time and culture,’’ [9] ‘‘contextually’’ as Coleman puts it, [10] the texts that are advanced as a solid and unambiguous foundation of the Catholic teaching on homosexual acts are far from clear and unambiguous.

They are, rather, complex and sociohistorically conditioned literary forms that demand careful historical analysis that raises questions in the informed and inquiring theological mind. Those questions are not as easily dismissed as Lawler, Boyle, and May dismiss them, as ‘‘not well founded.’’11 Three questions are central to this issue.

First, does the Bible say anything about homosexuality as we understand it today? Second, if it does say something, what does it say and what does it mean? Third, can the Bible speak to and enlighten the confusion that characterizes contemporary Christian dialogue about homosexuality? Ultimately, the real issue in this section is one we have already confronted in our opening chapter. It is the issue, not of homosexuality and what the Bible says or does not say about it, but of how to read the Bible in order to inform our contemporary Christian lives. This issue is central as we confront our three questions in turn.

Homosexual Orientation and the Bible

The first question, does the Bible say anything about homosexuality as we understand it today, is a question of definition. What do we mean today by the words homosexuality and homosexual? The answer to that question is embedded in what the sciences and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church now take for granted, namely, the distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior.[12]

In contemporary scientific and theological literature, the noun homosexuality and the adjective homosexual are used to refer to a person’s psychosexual condition, produced by a mix of genetic, psychological, and social ‘‘loading,’’13 not to refer to a person’s sexual behavior. Sexual orientation, in general, is defined as ‘‘the sustained erotic attraction to members of one’s own gender, the opposite gender, or both—homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual respectively.’’14 Homosexual orientation, specifically, is ‘‘a condition characterized by an emotional and psycho-sexual propensity towards others of the same sex,’’15 and a homosexual is ‘‘a person who feels a most urgent sexual desire which in the main is directed towards gratification with the same sex.’’[16]

In its modern, scientific connotation, homosexuality is a way of being before it is a way of behaving. Stephen Donaldson, president of the organization Stop Prisoner Rape, was therefore correct in 1994 to challenge the New York Times’s characterization of rape within American prisons as ‘‘homosexual rape’’ and to point out that prison rape is predominantly ‘‘heterosexual rape,’’ that is, rape committed by those who share the heterosexual condition.[17] The homosexual actions of heterosexuals do not make them genuine homosexuals any more than the occasional homosexual temptations of some 37 percent of the American male population reported by Kinsey in 1972 make them homosexual.[18]

Neither the Bible nor the Christian tradition rooted in it prior to the twentieth century ever considered the homosexual condition; they took for granted that everyone was heterosexual. To look for any mention in the biblical texts of what today is called ‘‘homosexual orientation’’ is simply anachronism. One might as well search the Bible for advice on buying a car or a computer.

The biblical passages most frequently cited as condemning homosexuality actually condemn homosexual behaviors, and they condemn these behaviors specifically as a perversion of the heterosexual condition they assume to be the natural condition of every human person. In its modern meaning, homosexuality is not and cannot be a perversion of the heterosexual condition because homosexuals, by natural orientation, do not share that condition.

Homosexuality is, rather, an inversion of the heterosexual condition that psychosexual homosexuals, by no choice of their own, do not naturally share, and they cannot be held morally accountable for something they did not choose.[19] The context in which both the Old and New testaments condemn homosexual acts is a false assumption, shaped by the sociohistorical conditions of the times in which they were written, that all human beings naturally share the heterosexual condition and that, therefore, any homosexual behavior is a perversion of ‘‘nature’’ and immoral.

Because that biblical assumption is now scientifically shown to be incorrect, the Bible has little to contribute to the discussion of genuine homosexuality and homosexuals as we understand them today. This conclusion will become clearer when we consider our second question: What does the Bible say about homosexual behavior and what does it mean when it says that?20 We might add, with Vacek, what is obvious, namely, that the Bible contains many questionable moral teachings—on sex during menstruation, stoning adulterers, women’s role, slavery, and a host of others—all of which have been rejected by modern Catholic moral theology.[21]

Interpreting the Bible on Homosexuality

The single most influential strand in theWestern tradition leading to the condemnation of homosexual acts is probably the interpretation given to the biblical story of Sodom, at least since the Jewish historian Josephus and the Hellenistic philosopher Philo.22

Western churches have taught that the fiery destruction of Sodom was caused by the immoral male homosexual behaviors practiced there, and understandably Christians have uncritically believed what their churches taught. Sodom has even given its name to one form of male homosexual activity, sodomy. Two reasonable questions may be raised with respect to this widespread interpretation, the first about its accuracy, the second about its basis in the biblical text. Our contextual exegesis shows that the homosexual interpretation of the Sodom story is not accurate and is not supported by a reading of the text in its sociohistorical context.

The biblical story is not as straightforward as it appears to the untrained reader. The context of the story and its meaning begins not with Lot and the men of Sodom in chapter 19 but with the story of Abraham’s hospitality to ‘‘three men,’’ one of whom is soon identified as ‘‘the Lord,’’[23] in chapter 18. Three ‘‘men’’ pass by Abraham’s tent on their way to Sodom, and Abraham offers the strangers the hospitality required by the Levitical law: ‘‘When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. . . . You shall love him as yourself.’’[24] Abraham invites the strangers to his tent. ‘‘Let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and rest yourself under the tree while I fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves.’’ [25]

In fact, Abraham does more than offer the strangers bread and water. He has his wife, Sara, bake cakes for them; he kills a calf ‘‘tender and good’’ for them; and he serves them himself. His goodness is established by his hospitable reception of the three strangers, and so too will his nephew Lot’s goodness be established in the sequel. After they were fed, two of the men left for Sodom, while the Lord remained behind to have with Abraham the famous discussion about how many righteous men would be required to save Sodom from destruction.

‘‘Two angels came to Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.’’26 Lot offered the two angels the required hospitality, bringing them to his house and feeding them, but before they retired for the night the men of Sodom surrounded the house and called for Lot to bring the two men out ‘‘that we may know them (yadha).’’27

That word yadha is critical for understanding what the men of Sodom were asking. Yadha is the ordinary Hebrew word for the English know, as it is translated in the Revised Standard Version, but it is also used on occasion to mean specifically sexual intercourse. The question then is which meaning is intended in this text. The Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament notes that yadha is used 943 times and in only 10 of those instances is it used with any sexual connotation.

Taking his stance on this datum, Barton argues that in this text it is not clear that yadha is to be interpreted in its sexual connotation and that it could just as easily mean that the men of Sodom simply wished to get to know the two strangers.[28] We do not find Barton’s interpretation convincing. The sexual meaning of the word seems, at least, to be insinuated by two facts.

First, if all the men of Sodom wanted to do was to learn the identity of the strangers, why would Lot beg them ‘‘do not act so wickedly’’;[29] second, the same word yadha is used in a clearly sexual sense when Lot offers his two daughters to the crowd: ‘‘Behold I have two daughters who have not known man (yadha), let me bring them out to you. . . . Only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof.’’30

We believe there is clear insinuation of homogenital intent against the two strangers at Sodom, which does not mean that the sin of the men of Sodom was the sin of homosexual behavior. The clearer sin in both the Hebrew text and context is the sin of inhospitality.

That Lot is concerned about that hospitality is made evident in the phrase we have underscored above, ‘‘do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof,’’ that is, under the shelter of my hospitality, which embraces protecting them against the wrongful designs of the crowd. The men of Sodom are as bound by the law of hospitality as is Lot, but they demonstrate their wanton sinfulness by not living up to the law.

If yadha is to be understood in its sexual connotation, and we believe it is, then the men of Sodom demonstrate the extent of their inhospitality by seeking violent rape of the strangers. If any action is condemned in the text, it is the crime of wrongful, violent, and inhospitable homosexual rape carried out by perverted heterosexual men.

Moore’s rational principle for argument about the morality or immorality of homosexual behavior is a` propos here: ‘‘Argue with the best of homosexual practice, not with the worst. The Church wants to show that homosexual practices are as such contrary to the will of God, and so contrary to human well-being, not simply that the worst excesses of homosexuality are contrary to human well-being.’’31 Even if the act of male homosexual rape perpetrated by perverted heterosexuals is condemned in this text, that is a long way from a clear and unambiguous condemnation of the loving homosexual acts of people with a homosexual orientation.

The interpretation of the text we propose is supported by the fact that in the rest of the Old Testament, where Sodom is regularly mentioned, not once is its crime said to be homosexual behavior. Ezekiel describes it as ‘‘pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy; they were haughty and did abominable things.’’32

Isaiah advises the rulers of Sodom, insinuating the standard Old Testament equivalence between God and the poor,33 to ‘‘seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.’’34 The Book of Wisdom explicitly charges both the men of Sodom and the Egyptians with inhospitality: ‘‘Others [the men of Sodom] had refused to receive strangers when they came to them, but these [the Egyptians] made slaves of guests who were their benefactors.’’35

For Christians, a prime argument in support of our interpretation that the sin of Sodom is inhospitality is Jesus’ mention of Sodom in the same breath as the inhospitality accorded his disciples: ‘‘Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into the streets and say ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you.’ . . . I tell you it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.’’36

Jesus also makes hospitality or inhospitality a major cause of salvation or damnation in the great judgment scene in Matthew.37 Lawler, Boyle, and May opine that Jude 1:7 ‘‘refers to Sodom and Gomorrah, and indicates their sin as unnatural vice,’’38 but the Greek text ekporneusasai kai apelthousai opiso sarkos heteras—especially sarkos heteras, ‘‘other flesh’’—simply does not support that tendentious reading.

If the Sodom story is ultimately about inhospitable and not homosexual acts, no such reservation can be made about the prescriptions of the Holiness Code in Leviticus. ‘‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination’’;39 and ‘‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.’’40

What the Holiness Code says could not be clearer: Male homosexual behavior is an abomination. It is important we realize it is male acts that are prohibited in these texts; lesbian acts are not part of the prohibition.

The word you in ‘‘you shall not lie’’ can be misleading. In English you applies indiscriminately to both males and females; in Hebrew the word that is used is used only of males. It is male homosexual acts that Leviticus says are an abomination, and that restriction yields some insight into both the sociohistorical context in which Leviticus says what it says and what it might mean when it says it.

The first thing to be noted about the Hebrew context is bad biology. The ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman understanding was that the male gave ‘‘seed’’ that contained the whole of life; the female simply provided the ‘‘ground’’ or the ‘‘field’’ in which the ‘‘seed,’’ a true homunculus, was sown to develop into a fully fledged human.41 To spill that seed or nascent homunculus anywhere it could not develop properly, on the ground or in a male body, for instance, was regarded as tantamount to murder, and murder was always held as an abomination.

Those guilty of murder suffered the same penalty as our present text prescribes for male homosexual acts, namely, death.42 Because they waste no life, perhaps also because women in a patriarchal society simply do not count, female homosexual acts are not considered worthy of consideration in the Holiness Code or anywhere else in the Old Testament. The fact that only male homosexual acts are declared an abomination introduces another contextual consideration, that of male honor and the actions appropriate to it.

Extended family was and is ‘‘the primary economic, religious, educational, and social network’’ in Mediterranean society.43 Within the social network, family was also the locus of honor, carried exclusively by males, particularly the patriarch who headed the family and, for all intents and purposes, owned the females in it, whether they were daughters or wives.

For a male to ‘‘lie with’’ another male, that is to act passively and allow himself to be penetrated like a female, seriously compromised male honor, not only that of the male being penetrated but also that of every male in the family or clan. The passivity of a male, who was expected to be active in all things, including the sexual, was always abhorred and dishonorable.

In such a sociohistorical context, of course, male homosexual acts would be an abomination, not, however, qua homosexual acts but qua passive and dishonorable acts that threatened the patriarchal and hierarchical sexual arrangement that pervaded the Old Testament.44 Xavier Lacroix writes that ‘‘ ‘abomination’ is the translation of the Hebrew to-ebah, which can evoke the tohu-bohu of the beginning of Genesis, that is, the chaos that preceded the creative action of God, that consisted in separating, introducing difference: between day and night, waters above and waters below, land and sea, male and female.’’

This hermeneutic enables him to conclude that ‘‘homosexuality, therefore, is considered as a return to tohu-bohu [chaos].’’45 This conclusion displays creative imagination but is so removed from accurate etymology as to be itself an hermeneutical abomination. There is no etymological connection whatsoever between tohu-bohu and to-ebah.

But what of an utterly different social context: a context in which not every human being is assumed to be by ‘‘nature’’ heterosexual and some are known to be by ‘‘nature’’ homosexual; a context in which honor is not a dominant concern; a context in which male and female are understood to contribute equally to the procreation of new life?

In such a context, male homogenital behavior need not be judged as dishonorable and ipso facto immoral; just and loving homosexual behavior, flowing from an innate homosexual orientation, cannot be regarded as a perversion of a universal heterosexual condition and, therefore, cannot be judged as ipso facto immoral; and the spilling of male semen or seed would no longer be regarded as the spilling of life, murder, and an abomination.

In short, when the interpreter considers what the Bible says about male homosexual behavior and the sociohistorical context in which it says it, it is difficult to consider the Bible as saying anything more instructive in the present sociohistorical context than what it says about kosher laws.46 As understood today, male homosexual behavior may or may not be immoral, but current judgment of its morality cannot be based on what the Old Testament says about it in the context of its own time and place.

Because many Christians consider the Old Testament fulfilled, or even superseded, by the New, they automatically give more credence to what the New Testament says about homosexual acts. We must, therefore, consider what the New Testament says and, in particular, we must consider what many consider the centerpiece of what it says about homogenitality, namely, chapter 1 of Paul’s letter to the Romans. It is important, again, to note the context, which is a Pauline attack not on homosexual acts in particular but on degenerate, especially idolatrous, Gentile society in general.

After introductory greetings Paul launches into standard Jewish accusations about Gentile idolatry: ‘‘What can be known about God is plain to them [Gentiles] because God has shown it to them.’’47 But however plain the existence of the true God of Israel might be and however much Gentiles ought to have known that God from the things God made, they did not acknowledge God, they ‘‘did not honor God as God or give thanks to God.’’ Rather, ‘‘they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.’’48

What is radically wrong with Gentiles, Paul believes, is that they do not worship the true God of Israel; they are idolaters, and he immediately moves on to describe the behavior of such idolaters. Because they are idolaters, in some divine punishment, ‘‘God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies. . . . God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . . . God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.’’49 The dishonorable passions and the male and female homosexual acts performed by perverted heterosexuals are God’s punishment on Gentiles for their idolatry.

It is Gentile idolatry that is directly at stake in the Pauline text, and the perverted homosexual acts of heterosexuals to which it is presumed to lead, not the homosexual acts of those who by ‘‘nature’’ share the homosexual condition and the just and loving homosexual acts in which it might issue.50

Language expresses meanings from and within a social system, and Paul’s language clearly reveals the social system from which he writes. Women exchanged natural for unnatural relations, and men gave up relations with women for relations with men. Exchanged what, we might ask, gave up what? Exchanged or gave up the heterosexual actions to which their presumed heterosexuality obligated and entitled them. All men and women are heterosexual, Paul believes, with the Judaism of his time, and to engage in homosexual acts they have to pervert their true ‘‘nature.’’

That perversion is, of course, immoral. First-century Paul has no insight into the contemporary psychosexual condition of homosexuality in which some people, homosexual by ‘‘nature,’’ would have to pervert their true ‘‘nature’’ to engage in heterosexual acts. The language also reveals that Paul is speaking of relationships ‘‘heavy with lust,’’51 very possibly of pederasty, the only publicly discussed male same-sex activity in his time.52

He is not talking of, because he has no concept of, relationships between homosexual couples who might justly love one another and might be committed to one another as faithfully as any heterosexual couple. The condemnation of the perverted homogenital actions of heterosexuals does not easily translate into the ipso facto condemnation of the just and loving actions of those whose condition is by ‘‘nature’’ the inversion, not the perversion, of heterosexuality.

A further point of note, as Countryman points out, is that Paul nowhere in this text uses the language of sin; Gentiles have been given up only to uncleanness.53 The two remaining texts cited by the CDF as a solid foundation for the Church’s teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and 1 Timothy 1:10, present a serious difficulty of translation.

We need only consider the former text in detail, for the difficulty is the same in both texts. Paul presents to the Corinthians a list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. ‘‘Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor malakoi, nor arsenokoitai, nor thieves, the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.’’ The translation difficulty lies with both malakoi and arsenokoitai, and we shall have to consider each in some detail.

Malakos, the easier word to translate, literally means soft, and its cognate malakia means softness. It can be applied to people in a metaphorical sense, as it is, for instance, in Matthew 11:8 when Jesus asks about John the Baptizer: ‘‘Why then did you go out? To see a man clothed in soft raiment [en malakois]?’’ How does Paul use the word? There is some evidence that both malakos and malakia were used metaphorically of feminine sexual behavior without, however, being restricted to that meaning.54

The Vulgate translated it as molles (the effeminate); the King James translated it along the same lines as effeminacy; the 1973 Revised Standard Version translated it as adulterers; the new Revised Standard Version translates it as male prostitutes; and the New English Bible translates it as adultery. There is no unanimity of translation. Malakos is clearly difficult to translate but, bearing in mind the Hebrew context we discussed in connection with Leviticus 18:22, there is a legitimate and clear contextual translation.

Honor was a primary value in Hebrew culture, especially male honor that was earned and preserved by a man behaving like a man; masculinity was honored and femininity was correspondingly disparaged. Softness or effeminacy in men, therefore, qua effeminacy without any suggestion of homogenital behavior, was held in horror as an ‘‘abomination.’’ D’Angelo articulates this reading when she writes that ‘‘the biblical texts that have been read as condemnations of homosexuality originated in part as guardians of the kinds of sexual hierarchy that . . . is violated when a male is ‘reduced’ to the status of a woman.’’55 Philo confirms this cultural value and the disparagement of its opposite.

The man–woman, androgynos, Philo judges, is ‘‘rightly judged worthy of death by those who obey the law,’’ and the man who loves him is worthy of the same penalty. ‘‘He pursues an unnatural pleasure [and] he sees no harm in becoming a tutor and instructor in the grievous vices of unmanliness [anandrias] and effeminacy [malakias] by prolonging the bloom of the young and emasculating the flower of their prime, which should rightly be trained to strength and robustness.’’56 For Philo, a leading commentator on Jewish culture contemporary with Paul, a male is to be masculine; he is to have ‘‘strength and robustness’’ and avoid malakias and every soft, feminine way of behaving.

One feminine way of behaving is, undoubtedly, to act passively like a woman rather than actively like a man in the act of sexual intercourse (we are speaking of Paul’s first-century culture, not our twenty-first-century culture with its more advanced understanding of male and female sexuality), but that does not yet mean that the passive act of intercourse is what is condemned. It is very likely that what is condemned is masculine effeminacy in any of its forms. That reading is confirmed by the other difficult word arsenokoitai, a most uncommon word, maybe even a word coined by Paul himself.

The common opinion is that it is inspired by the Septuagint version of Leviticus 18:22. If that is true, then Paul uses it in the context of the sexual acts between men prohibited in Leviticus, but again that does not mean that it is precisely those acts qua homogenital that are an abomination. The abomination may be again the more general disvalue of a man behaving like a woman. Paul condemns both the malakoi and the arsenokoitai (which is also the word at stake in 1 Tim 1:10), not for perverted homogenital acts as the Revised Standard Version insinuates, but for the feminization of men whom the creator God calls to be masculine.

The Bible and Contemporary Discourse on Homosexuality

This leads us to our third question and its answer: Can the Bible speak to the confusion that characterizes contemporary Christians with respect to homosexuality? It should first be noted that homosexual action is not a prominent biblical concern. There is no mention of it in Israel’s earliest moral codes, there is nothing about it in the Decalogue, the gospels record no saying of Jesus about it, and there is not even a word for it in either Hebrew or Greek.

Malina’s conclusion about the Romans text is difficult to gainsay: ‘‘If we return to the twenty-first century after this excursion into the first century we can see that Paul’s perspectives, if taken consistently, simply do not make sense.’’57 Paul does not live in our context in which homosexuality is scientifically recognized as a natural condition; we do not live in Paul’s context of bad biology, ritual purity, or cultural value; and the ancient context does not translate diachronically into the modern context on any issue, including homosexuality.

The same conclusion applies to the even more distant texts of the Old Testament. They are articulated in the same context as Paul’s texts. Everyone is presumed to be heterosexual and, therefore, any male homogenital act is a freely chosen perversion; the male is the sole source of life and, therefore, any spilling of the homunculus in a place where it cannot develop is murder and an abomination; the male is also the source of honor in the society and for a male to behave as a female, sexually or otherwise, shames not only him but every other male in the family or corporate clan: ‘‘The Old Testament narratives about the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 and the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19 are more concerned with egregious failures in hospitality and gang rape than with homosexuality per se.’’58

Because of the difficulty of translating meanings diachronically across time, the Christian traditions are moving away from a biblical rules approach to moral judgments and are exploring a more profound, and perhaps even more morally ambiguous, interrelationship between rules, norms, values, and virtues. There are both historical and contemporary movements away from the simplistic judgment that what the Bible says is definitive for all time and is, therefore, the universal moral norm.

Historically, Rodgers notes that this movement can be found in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Romans, which, when read closely, demonstrates a keen awareness of the interrelationship between scripture, anthropology, experience, natural law, and virtue; which has implications for interpreting scripture on homosexuality; and which ‘‘requires theologians to keep the matter open.’’59 Contemporarily, Cahill puts the matter succinctly: ‘‘Realizing the impossibility of transposing rules from biblical times to our own, interpreters look for larger themes, values or ideals which can inform moral reflection without determining specific practices in advance.’’60

Furnish articulates well the larger theme that we can abstract from both the Old Testament and New Testament texts on homosexual behavior: ‘‘Paul, in common with the tradition by which he was influenced and in accord with the wisdom of his day, saw the wickedness of homosexual practice to adhere in its lust and its perversion of the natural order.’’61

The same wickedness, suggested as homosexual rape, and the same judgment of perversion of the presumed natural order are found in the Sodom account. Those judgments against uncontrolled and violent lust and a perversion of the natural order cannot automatically be applied to just and loving homosexual acts in persons whose natural sexual orientation is to persons of the same sex. Those acts may or may not be immoral, but any judgment of immorality will have to be substantiated on bases other than the simple fact that the Bible condemns the homosexual acts of heterosexual males.

Sparks’s judgment is also ours: ‘‘On scriptural evidence alone we are left short of a clear and clean condemnation of what might be called committed or covenantal homosexual acts.’’62 We agree with the majority of Catholic moral theologians that a universal and absolute moral norm exists and that such a norm dispels all possible confusion. We agree also with the Catholic moral theologian Dietmar Mieth, however, that the only absolute moral norm is the abstract norm that ‘‘good is to be done and evil left undone,’’ and that every other moral judgment requires concrete, empirical discernment.63

Joseph Fuchs agrees. ‘‘There is no discrepancy of theories and opinions within Catholic moral theology about the one ethical absolutum,’’ he writes; ‘‘the translation of the ethical absolutum into the [concrete] material plurality of human reality is, however, a different matter.’’64 The hermeneutic for that translation is controlled, as it is always controlled in the Catholic moral tradition, by the free human person seeking to be attentive, intelligent, rational, and responsible in the actual sociohistorical situation.65 It cannot be otherwise for free persons who live in a physical and human world subject to historicity.

Bernard Lonergan was convinced that something new was happening in history in the twentieth century and that, because a living theology ought to be part of what was taking place in history, Christians were living in a new theological age that required a new theological approach. That new approach, he prophesied correctly, would be necessarily historical and empirical. Lonergan’s distinction between a classicist and an empirical notion of culture has become widely accepted:66 ‘‘The classicist notion of culture was normative: at least de iure there was but one culture that was both universal and permanent.’’ The empirical notion of culture was ‘‘the set of meanings and values that informs a way of life. It may remain unchanged for ages.

It may be in the process of slow development or rapid resolution.’’67 Classicist culture is static, but empirical culture is dynamic. Theology, which is inescapably part of culture, mirrors this distinction.

In classicist mode theology is a static, permanent achievement that anyone can learn; in empirical mode it is a dynamic, ongoing process requiring a free person who is trained and committed. This distinction is as valid for moral theologians as for the practitioners of any other discipline.

The classicist understanding, Fuchs writes, conceives of the human person as ‘‘a series of created, static, and thus definitively ordered temporal facts.’’ The empirical understanding conceives of the person as a subject in process of ‘‘self-realization in accordance with a project that develops in God-given autonomy, that is, along a path of human reason and insight, carried out in the present with a view to the future.’’68

Classicist theology, like that of New Natural Law Theory, sees moral norms coming from the Magisterium as once and for all definitive; sexual norms enunciated in the fifth century continue to apply absolutely in the twenty-first century.

Empirical theology sees past moral norms not as facts for uncritical and passive acceptance but as insights that are partial bases for active and critical understanding, pondering, and evaluating leading to a reasoned judgment and decision in the present sociohistorical situation. What the writers of Genesis and Leviticus, Paul, Augustine, and their medieval successors knew about sexuality cannot be the exclusive basis for a contemporary moral judgment about sexuality.

At this point in our consideration of homosexuality, the theological news for contemporary Christians in classicist consciousness is twofold: first, that the Bible is undeniably subject to historicity and that, therefore, second, there are no definitive absolute norms about sexuality or homosexuality uncritically translatable from the sociohistorical contexts of the Bible to those of contemporary times. Christians will, therefore, have to discern moral judgments about natural homosexuals and homosexual behavior on bases other than what the Bible says. These bases include magisterial teaching and the reflection of the empirical sciences on human experience. To these we now turn.

Magisterial Teaching on Homosexual Acts and Relationships

Our analysis of the biblical texts, which can be extended to the equally historically and socially constructed theological texts of the Magisterium, points to the direction of moral discernment we propose as a way to arrive at a conscientious judgment about the morality or immorality of homosexual acts and homosexual relationships.

Tradition teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered for the following reasons: They ‘‘are contrary to the natural law,’’ the principles of which are reflected in human nature itself; ‘‘they close the sexual act to the gift of life’’; and ‘‘they do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.’’69 We will consider each of these teachings in turn.

Natural Law Argument

First, there is in every human being by ‘‘nature’’—and remember that ‘‘nature’’ is always an interpreted category, and therefore there may be dialectical judgments about what is and what is not ‘‘nature’’—a sexual orientation. The meaning of the phrase ‘‘sexual orientation’’ is complex and not universally agreed upon, but the Magisterium offers a description.

It distinguishes between ‘‘a homosexual ‘tendency,’ which proves to be ‘transitory,’ and ‘homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct.’ ’’ It goes on to declare that ‘‘it seems appropriate to understand sexual orientation as a deep-seated dimension of one’s personality and to recognize its relative stability in a person.’’70

Sexual orientation is predominantly heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. This ‘‘natural’’ and historically, socially, and experientially revealed reality may be obscured by the obvious statistical preponderance of persons of heterosexual orientation, but it is in no way negated by that statistical preponderance. We are in complete agreement with the CDF when it teaches that ‘‘there can be no true promotion of man’s [and woman’s] dignity unless the essential order of his nature is respected.’’71 We disagree with the CDF, however, on its exclusively heterosexual interpretation of that ‘‘essential order of nature.’’

‘‘Nature’’ and natural law have always had a prominent place in Catholic moral theology and, in official Church teaching, not only homosexuality but also premarital, extramarital, contraceptive, and nonreproductive type marital sexual activity are condemned as contrary to the natural law. Any sexual activity that deviates from God’s ‘‘wisely ordered laws of nature’’72 and is not open to the transmission of life, the Magisterium teaches, is morally wrong.

The fundamental principles that dictate this moral judgment are contained ‘‘in the divine law—eternal, objective, and universal—whereby God orders, directs, and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community. . . . This divine law is accessible to our minds.’’73 It is precisely this ‘‘accessible to our minds,’’ however, as we explained in our prologue, that raises serious hermeneutical questions.

Already in the thirteenth century, Aquinas taught that natural law is ‘‘nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God.’’74 He also argues, however, that, although the precepts of natural law are universal and immutable, their application varies according to the circumstances of people’s existence. We argued the same in chapter 2, and here we need only briefly summarize our argument.

Historical, reasonable men and women have no access to pure, unembellished ‘‘nature.’’ ‘‘Nature’’ reveals to our attention, understanding, judgment, and decision only its naked facticity. Everything beyond that facticity is the result of interpretation by attentive, intelligent, rational, and responsible persons; that is, we experience ‘‘nature’’ only as interpreted and socially constructed. The uninterpreted experience of ‘‘nature,’’ as indeed of every other reality, is restricted to its mere facticity and is void of meaning, a quality that does not inhere in nature but is assigned to it by rational beings in interpretive acts. ‘‘The potter, and not the pot, is responsible for the shape of the pot.’’75

It is inevitable that different groups of equally reasonable and historically grounded women and men—traditionalist and revisionist theologians, for example—may derive different interpretations of ‘‘nature’’ and the moral obligations deriving from ‘‘nature,’’ and that any given interpretation may be wrong.

Because every interpretation of ‘‘nature’’ is a socially constructed reality dependent on human, perspectival interpretations, the reality of ‘‘nature’’ is always to be subjected to scrutiny, even if the interpretation be advanced by the Magisterium of the Church.

Our sexual anthropology recognizes sexual orientation as an intrinsic dimension of human ‘‘nature.’’ As such, what is ‘‘natural’’ in sexual activity, which is an expression of the sexual person, will vary depending on whether or not the person’s sexual orientation is homosexual or heterosexual.

Homosexual sexual acts are ‘‘natural’’ for people with a homosexual orientation, just as heterosexual sexual acts are ‘‘natural’’ for people with a heterosexual orientation. They are natural because they coincide with, and reflect, the fundamental human ‘‘nature’’ of a person created in the image and likeness of God.

We are not arguing here that homosexual activity is moral because it is natural for those with a homosexual orientation; that would be to treat natural facts as moral justification and to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Any sexual act, whether homosexual or heterosexual, must be not only natural but also, as we explained in chapter 4, just, loving, and in accord with holistic complementarity.

Procreation Argument

Second, the magisterial claim that homosexual acts ‘‘close the sexual act to the gift of life’’ has been addressed in chapter 4, and we need not repeat it here. Suffice to say that, if one explores ‘‘openness to the transmission of life’’ in biological terms, then potentially reproductive and permanently or temporarily nonreproductive heterosexual acts are essentially different types of acts.

As Koppleman points out against Finnis, ‘‘A sterile person’s genitals are no more suitable for generation than a gun with a broken firing pin is suitable for shooting.’’ It is a conceptual stretch, he goes on, ‘‘to insist that the sexual acts of the incurably infertile are of the same kind as the sexual acts of fertile organs that occasionally fail to deliver the goods.’’76

Heterogenital complementarity, therefore, becomes, as for New Natural Law Theory, the essential difference that distinguishes nonreproductive heterosexual acts from homosexual acts. If one explores ‘‘openness to the transmission of life’’ in metaphorical terms, then both homosexual and heterosexual couples can exhibit Hanigan’s ‘‘iconic significance’’ in their embodied interpersonal unions and sexual acts.77

Complementarity Argument

Third, though the Magisterium consistently condemns homosexual acts on the grounds that they violate heterogenital and reproductive complementarity, it does not explain why they also violate personal complementarity other than to assert that homosexual acts ‘‘do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.’’78

This statement, however, begs the question whether or not such acts can ever be truly human on the level of sexual and personal complementarity. Though the Magisterium has not confronted this question, monogamous, loving, committed, homosexual couples have confronted it experientially and testify that they do experience affective and communion complementarity in and through their homosexual acts.

Margaret Farley notes that the experiential testimony of these couples witnesses ‘‘to the role of such loves and relationships in sustaining human wellbeing and opening to human flourishing’’ and ‘‘extends to the contributions that individuals and partners make to families, the church, and society as a whole.’’79

This coincides precisely with our foundational principle on the immediate and mediate relational impact of truly human sexual acts. ‘‘Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses [immediately] enrich each other [and mediately enrich their family and community] with a joyful and a thankful will.’’80 Farley’s claim is amply supported by anecdotal and scientific research on the nature of homosexual relationships.

Some twenty years ago, while acknowledging that the question of same-sex relations is a question of dispute, Farley noted anecdotal experiences of homosexual couples and commented that we ‘‘have some clear and profound testimonies to the life-enhancing possibilities of same-sex relations and the integrating possibilities of sexual activity within these relations. We have the witness that homosexuality can be a way of embodying responsible love and sustaining human friendship.’’ She concludes, logically, that ‘‘this witness alone is enough to demand of the Christian [and political] community that it reflect anew on the norms [and laws] for homosexual love.’’81

Her judgment accords with that of Bernard Ratigan, a gay English consulting psychotherapist, who notes that ‘‘the gap between the caricature of us [gays] in Church documents and our lived reality seems so huge.’’ He asks legitimately ‘‘on what evidence does the Vatican base its assertions about us?’’ and goes on to point out that psychoanalysis ‘‘has moved on from being solely concerned with genital sex to thinking much more about human relationships and love.’’82 So, too, has revisionist Catholic moral theology.

This call for evidence can also be posed to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ most recent statement on homosexuality. Speaking of a homosexual inclination, the bishops note that it ‘‘predisposes one toward what is truly not good for the human person.’’ The predisposition is towards homosexual acts that are ‘‘not ordered toward the fulfillment of the natural ends of human sexuality’’ and therefore ‘‘acting in accord with such an inclination simply cannot contribute to the true good of the human person.’’83

The statement that homosexual acts, by definition, cannot contribute to the good of the human person seems to contradict the relational experiences of committed, monogamous, homosexual couples. Though this statement does not cite scientific studies to verify its claim, there are a number of studies that explicitly contradict it.

Lawrence Kurdek has done extensive research on gay and lesbian couples and notes the following characteristics when comparing these relationships with married heterosexual couples. Gay and lesbian couples tend to have a more equitable distribution of household labor, demonstrate greater conflict resolution skills, have less support from members of one’s own family but greater support from friends, and, most significantly, experience similar levels of relational satisfaction compared with heterosexual couples.84

Not only do empirical studies challenge magisterial claims that homosexual acts, by definition, are detrimental to the human person and human relationships, such studies also challenge the Magisterium’s claims regarding the detrimental effects of homosexual parenting on children. The CDF argues against same-sex couples socially parenting children based on the claim that, ‘‘as experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. . . . Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.’’85

Not only is such a statement rhetorically unjust and discriminating,86 but it is also empirically unsubstantiated. The CDF provides no scientific evidence, here or elsewhere, to substantiate its claim that homosexual unions are an obstacle to the normal development of children. There is, however, abundant evidence to the contrary.

While acknowledging that research on gay and lesbian parents is still evolving, especially with respect to gay fathers, Patterson summarizes the evidence available from twenty years of studies: ‘‘There is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial [including sexual] development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.’’87

In her overview of the research, Laird goes further to suggest that the scientific data indicate that homosexual parents are somewhat more nurturing and tolerant than heterosexual parents, and their children are, in turn, more tolerant and empathetic.88 This preponderance of evidence led the American Psychological Association to approve and disseminate an important resolution.

Because ‘‘lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children, . . . [and because] research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish,’’ the association opposes any discrimination based on sexual orientation.89

The important and thoroughly child-centered Child Welfare League of America is also convinced by the data that there are no significant differences between the parental attitudes and skills of heterosexual, gay, and lesbian parents.90 In 1994, the league’s policy statement recommends that ‘‘gay/lesbian adoptive applicants should be assessed the same as any other adoptive applicant. It should be recognized that sexual orientation and the capacity to nurture a child are separate issues.’’

The league further recommends that factual information about gays and lesbians should be provided ‘‘to dispel common myths about gays and lesbians.’’91 It is not the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian parents that produces negative outcomes in their children but the social discrimination toward them generated by myths propagated about their parents.

The Second Vatican Council praises the advances of the social sciences that bring the human community ‘‘improved self-knowledge’’ and ‘‘influence on the life of social groups.’’92 Pope John Paul II teaches that ‘‘the Church values sociological and statistical research when it proves helpful in understanding the historical context in which pastoral action has to be developed and when it leads to a better understanding of the truth.’’93

The present question, namely, the effect of homosexual parents on their children, is a classic case in which the social sciences have clearly led to a better understanding of the truth. There is abundant social scientific data to support the claim that communion and affective complementarity are evident in homosexual relationships and that, in the case of homosexual parents, these complementarities facilitate both parental complementarity and the positive nurture of children.94

These assessments on the relational and parental experiences of homosexual couples recall John Courtney Murray’s principle that practical, as distinct from theoretical, intelligence is preserved from ideology by having ‘‘a close relation to concrete experience.’’95

As we saw above regarding the scientific studies of persons in homosexual relationships and children being raised by gay and lesbian parents, magisterial positions on gays and lesbians tend to be theoretical hypotheses unsubstantiated by the practical experience of those gays and lesbians. The magisterial position regarding its claim that homosexual acts ‘‘do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity’’ is open to the same accusation, theoretical hypotheses unsubstantiated by practical experience.

The Moral Sense of the Christian People and Homosexual Acts

Data from the social sciences also suggest that the third foundation on which the CDF grounds its judgment on the immorality of homosexual acts, ‘‘the moral sense of the Christian people,’’ is now as open to critique as the reading of biblical texts and the natural law argument. In a 1997 study, James Davidson and his colleagues describe ‘‘how American Catholics approach faith and morals.’’96

They found, with respect to homosexual activity, that 41 percent of parishioners agree with the Magisterium that homosexual acts are always wrong and that 49 percent believe that, at least in certain circumstances, the decision to engage in such acts is up to the individual. 97

A 2001 study replicated that figure of 49 percent, believing the decision to engage in homosexual acts belongs to the individual; only 20 percent believed it had anything to do with the Magisterium.98 The authors comment that their data ‘‘depict a trend away from conformity and toward personal autonomy’’ with respect to sexual issues.99 That trend was most marked in ‘‘Post–Vatican II Catholics,’’ those aged thirty-eight and younger.100

Dean Hoge and his colleagues also document this trend away from authority to personal conscience in matters of morality. In his study, he found that 73 percent of Latino Catholics and 71 percent of non-Latino Catholics judged that, in matters of morality, the final authority is the individual’s informed conscience.101 The same trend is well documented in other Western countries.102

A reasonable theological question then arises: Do sociological data of this sort tell us anything about magisterial teaching and the faith of the Church? An immediate and crucial answer is that sociological data are not an expression of the belief and teaching of the Catholic Church. Nor do they tell us what the Church ought to believe and teach, for 50 percent, and even 100 percent, of Catholics could be wrong.

The empirical data reported above, however, do two important things. They tell us what the beliefs of Catholics actually are with respect to the morality of homosexual acts and they demonstrate that these beliefs are at serious variance with the beliefs proposed by the Magisterium.

These data may not tell us anything about the truth of magisterial teaching with respect to the morality of homosexual acts, but they do tell us something about its relevance to the life of the contemporary Church. It ought neither to be accepted uncritically nor dismissed out of hand as if it had no relevance to the life of the Church. Pope John Paul II teaches that ‘‘the Church values sociological and statistical research’’ but immediately adds the proviso that ‘‘such research is not to be considered in itself an expression of the sensus fidei.’’103

The pope is correct. Empirical research neither expresses nor creates the faith of the Church, but it does manifest what Catholics actually believe and do not believe, and that experiential reality is a basis for critical reflection on any claim about what ‘‘the Church believes.’’ It is this critical reflection, always required of the Church’s theologians,104 that we undertake in this chapter and throughout this book.

The theologian and sociologist Robin Gill complains that Christian ethicists have been ‘‘reluctant to admit that sociology has any constructive role to play in their discipline. It is rare to find a Christian ethicist prepared to examine data about the moral effects of Church-going. Instead, Christian communities have become far too idealized.’’105

‘‘Christian communities’’ may be a euphemism for Catholic Magisterium, which tends to talk of the belief of the Church as it has been rather than as it is. If, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, ‘‘the body of the faithful as a whole cannot err in matters of belief,’’106 then they must be infallible in the beliefs they actually believe. It is that actual belief that is uncovered by sociological research.

Avery Dulles argues that, to determine sensus fidei, which has important relevance in this discussion, ‘‘we must look not so much at the statistics, as at the quality of the witnesses and the motivation for their assent.’’107 We agree. Sensus fidei, the connatural capacity to discern the truth into which the Spirit of God is leading the Church, must be carefully discerned by all who are competent. John Paul II is correct: A simple head count does not necessarily express the faith of the Church.

A head count, however, which would include virtually all the faithful, especially virtually all the competent theological faithful, would most certainly manifest the actual faith of the whole Church. All we claim here about the sociological data with respect to the belief of the Church about the morality of homosexual acts is that they may manifest a development that Church theologians and the Magisterium ought to examine carefully.

What is clear from the above investigation of biblical and magisterial teaching on homosexual acts and homosexual relationships is the importance of experience as a source of moral knowledge. In the dialectic between the sources of moral knowledge for morally assessing homosexual acts and relationships, experience is foundational and even primary. We concur with Farley, who notes that experience ‘‘is an important part of the content of each of the other sources, and it is always a factor in interpreting the others.’’108
It provides a sociohistorical context for interpreting the other sources of moral knowledge, and it illuminates if, and to what extent, the sources taken individually and as a whole and the normative conclusions that they reach ‘‘make sense’’ and ‘‘ring true’’ in terms of ‘‘our deepest capacity for truth and goodness.’’109

Furthermore, ‘‘given the arguable inconclusiveness of Scripture, tradition, and secular disciplines’’ on the morality of homosexual relationships, ‘‘concrete experience becomes a determining source on this issue.’’110 Relying upon the historical critical method espoused by the Magisterium, we have demonstrated that traditional interpretations of scripture condemning homosexual acts lack legitimacy.

There seems to be a disconnect between the evolving tradition and its use of scripture to condemn homosexual acts on the one hand, and its relatively recent espousal of the historical-critical method for interpreting scripture on the other hand. The historical-critical method does not support traditional normative conclusions deduced from the Bible on this issue.

This same historical-critical method, when applied to recent magisterial teaching on homosexual acts, reveals another disconnect between what empirical studies convey regarding the experiences of homosexual couples and parents and unsubstantiated magisterial claims to the contrary.

Given the entrenched, and sometimes discriminatory and hurtful, magisterial rhetoric addressing the issue of homosexuality,111 openness to a revised hermeneutic of the sources of moral knowledge that might allow for a revision of magisterial teaching on homosexual acts will take some time.

The Morality of Homosexual Acts Reconsidered

We defend what we believe to be a more adequate foundational principle, which is doubly grounded in sound biblical exegesis and the best of magisterial teaching on human sexuality, and which also incorporates the reflection of the empirical sciences on human experience.

Bearing in mind our revised foundational principle and everything we said about complementary, just, and loving sexual intercourse in chapter 4, we conclude this section by, again, approving of Farley’s judgment: ‘‘Sex between two persons of the same sex (just as between two persons of the opposite sex) should not be used in a way that exploits, objectifies, or dominates; homosexual (like heterosexual) rape, violence, or any harmful use of power against unwilling victims (or those incapacitated by reason of age, etc.) is never justified; freedom, integrity, privacy are values to be affirmed in every homosexual (as heterosexual) relationship; all in all, individuals are not to be harmed, and the common good is to be promoted.’’112

Heterosexual orientation is an innate, deep-seated, and stable orientation to, predominantly, persons of the opposite sex; homosexual orientation is a similarly innate, deep-seated, and stable orientation to, predominantly, persons of the same sex. ‘‘Ethics can have for its object only acts that are free, acts that can be imputed to personal responsibility. Whatever is determined, insofar as it is determined, is neither moral nor immoral; it simply is.’’113

Sexual orientation is neither chosen nor readily changeable; it simply is. It is, therefore, in itself neither moral nor immoral nor even premoral. The sexual acts that flow from it, however, may be moral or immoral. We apply the principle we have already enunciated to arrive at the judgment of the morality or immorality of all heterosexual or homosexual acts.

Sexual acts are moral when they are natural, reasonable, and expressed in a truly human, just, and loving manner. All terms of this articulation are important and must be carefully understood. Sexual acts are moral when they are natural, and they are natural when they coincide with the ‘‘nature’’ of the human person according to right reason and what facilitates human flourishing.114

For men and women who are by ‘‘nature’’ heterosexual, heterosexual acts are natural, reasonable, and therefore moral when all other requirements for moral acts are safeguarded, and homosexual acts are unnatural, unreasonable, and therefore immoral, even if all other requirements for moral acts are safeguarded. For those who are by ‘‘nature’’ homosexual, it is the reverse. Homosexual acts are natural, reasonable, and moral, and heterosexual acts are unnatural, unreasonable, and immoral.

Sexual acts are moral when they are reasonable, and they are reasonable when, as a result of careful attention to and understanding of all the relevant human circumstances, a person makes an informed judgment that a given sexual action is according to right reason and facilitates human flourishing. The circumstances to be attended to will include sexual orientation and holistic, that is, orientation, personal, and biological, complementarity. Sexual acts are moral when they are truly human, that is, when they fulfill all the requirements of holistic complementarity.115

Heterosexual acts are truly human, and therefore reasonable and moral, when they are in line with holistic complementarity, which embraces orientation, personal, and genital (though not necessarily reproductive) complementarity. Personal complementarity embraces everything we considered in chapter 4 under the headings of the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and relational dimensions of truly human sexuality.

Any sexual act that violates any of these dimensions will ipso facto be deemed immoral; any sexual act that is true to all these dimensions will ipso facto be deemed moral. Heterosexual rape, therefore, or any heterosexual intercourse that is not just and loving, will be deemed immoral, and so too will homosexual rape. Heterosexual intercourse without relational connection—casual sex, for instance, or sex with a prostitute—will be similarly deemed immoral because it violates personal complementarity, and so too will homosexual intercourse without relational connection.

Heterosexual intercourse that is predetermined to be free of responsibility for its outcome—the birth of a child, for instance, or the communication of a sexually transmitted disease—will be deemed immoral because it violates personal complementarity as justice; and so too will homosexual intercourse. However, heterosexual intercourse that is mutually freely chosen, just, and loving will be deemed moral, whether it is actually reproductive or not, and so too will homosexual intercourse.

Conclusion

We argued earlier in this book that, given the essential historicity of every human teaching, what Augustine and Aquinas, Trent and Vatican II, Pius, Paul, and John Paul taught in the past about human sexuality cannot be the exclusive basis for conscientious moral judgment about sexuality today. All must be subjected to critical scrutiny. It is that scrutiny we have attempted throughout this book, and again in this chapter with respect to homosexuality, enlightened by Ratzinger’s judgment that remains true today: ‘‘Not everything that exists in the Church must for that reason be also a legitimate tradition. . . . There is a distorting as well as a legitimate tradition, . . . [and] . . . consequently tradition must not be considered only affirmatively but also critically.’’116

With respect to historicity, the CDF teaches that ‘‘the meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a given time and in given circumstances.’’ That being so, a truth that is first expressed incompletely may, ‘‘at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, [be] expressed more fully and perfectly.’’ 117

In the light of contemporary human knowledge about homosexual orientation, we have examined in this chapter the threefold bases on which the Catholic Church rests its judgment that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and gravely immoral, namely, the teaching of scripture, the teaching of the Magisterium, and the moral sense of the Christian people. On all three bases, we argued, the Church’s teaching needs serious reevaluation.

We believe we have comprehensively shown that, following the Magisterium’s sanctioned way of reading the sacred scriptures—namely, historical-critically—the texts cited in support of the claim of the serious depravity of the homosexual activity of persons of genuine homosexual orientation, which was simply unknown when the Scriptures in question were written, do not support such a judgment. The same historical-critical approach that was used to demonstrate the meanings of the biblical texts in their sociohistorical contexts applies equally to the sociohistorically conditioned texts of the Magisterium.

We believe we have shown that the Magisterium’s argument for the immorality of all homosexual acts on the basis of a classicist and ahistorical interpretation of ‘‘nature’’ is also unsound and open to critique as is the absolute assertion that homosexual acts can never ‘‘proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.’’ So, too, is its argument on the basis of the constant belief of the Christian people, when faced with the data of contemporary research on what Catholics actually believe.

A lack of understanding, indeed misunderstanding, of the full scope of sexuality in a human life until very recent history; a lack of understanding, indeed misunderstanding, of the essential contribution of both male and female in human reproduction until the latter half of the nineteenth century; a lack of understanding, indeed misunderstanding, of the natural reality of heterosexual and homosexual orientation until the twentieth century—these are not good bases for making any normative judgment about sexuality in general or about heterosexuality and homosexuality in particular.

Nothing we have argued in this chapter proves that homosexual acts are ipso facto morally right. We have argued only that the arguments advanced by the Church’s Magisterium to sustain the judgment that all homosexual acts are ipso facto morally wrong are unsound and need to be revisited. Our present judgment endorses Farley’s judgment: ‘‘At this point, . . . it is difficult to see how on the basis of sheer rationality alone, and all of its disciplines [including theology], an absolute prohibition of same sex relationships or activities can be maintained.’’

She goes on to point out that ‘‘we are still pressed to the task of discerning what must characterize same-sex relationships if they are to conduce to human flourishing.’’118 Again we agree, though we also believe we have developed criteria in previous chapters for the judgment that some homosexual acts may be morally right. We content ourselves here by repeating the criteria with which we concluded a previous chapter.

Some homosexual and some heterosexual acts, those that meet the requirements of complementary, just, and loving sexual relations, are truly human and moral; and some homosexual and some heterosexual acts, those that do not meet the requirements of complementary, just, and loving sexual relations, are immoral.

This judgment, we believe, stands in spite of the rhetorical assertions of the Catholic Magisterium, and it stands for the good of the whole Church. We embrace Moore’s judgment: ‘‘This is not a matter of dissent or materialism; it is simply that the Church at the moment produces no good arguments to assent to. Regrettably, in this area, the Church teaches badly.’’119

=======================THE END OF CHAPTER SEVEN==========

 

[YEHODAYA]

First of all, the RC directive is beyond his legal powers. Nowhere does the Tanzania legal system empower the government to engage in anti-gay crusades.

Heterosexual and homosexual is illegal in Tanzania .It is the duty of any government leader to engage in anti gay crusades to make sure that people abide to the law .You write as if that thing is legal in Tanzania!!

 

[kinauche]

Oh, my God. What a long post. One question? Why would Makonda abide with the given laws while others are not? These days if you are in power just utter any word to scare the innocent people and you will be respected and rewarded.

 

[YEHODAYA]

On Sunday, 26 June 2016, Pope Francis said that Christians owe apologies to gays and others who have been offended or exploited by the church.

Can you address your article to CATHOLICS in your church? Please!.In Tanzania or even in this forum not everybody is a Catholic who share your beliefs in gays or whatever

 

[kweleakwelea]

The point is clear. Homosexuality..yaani ushoga ulikuwepo tangu mwanzo wa dunia..na ilikuwa ninoption kwa wale walionyimwa urijali....kikikuwa ni kitu cha aibu na kinachofanywa kwa siri....tatizo nni kuwa wewe mtoa hoja na wenzio mnataka.kugeuza hii kitu kuwa ni suala la mtu.kuchagua awe shoga au la....kisha kutuharibia vijana wetu. Kama mzazi sitaki na siwezi kukubali....Tanzania hata kuongea mambo unayofanya na mkeo chumbani hatuwezi kuongea hadharani....itakuwa hilo.la kugeukana wenyewe kwa wenyewe???toa ushetani hapa..Mr Makonda yuko sahihi...Go on Mr Makonda we support you....wasikulegeze hawa washenzi....

 

[YEHODAYA]

Governments, Christian Religions and Anti-gay Crusades in Tanzania: Pope Francis is right and Makonda is wrong​

Ok in Vatican if you are a gay,Pope will Kneel down and ask for forgiveness for calling you a gay while you are a gay!! That is a new modern Vatican!!

In tanzania if a gay is caught he will be given 30 years imprisonment or life sentence in jail per Tanzania laws.

 

[A view to a kill]

still reading

 

[Membe S K]

Must we believe everything we read? Is everything published makes the list of scientific evidences? Is science the only factor in decision making anywhere everywhere?

I am suprized that RtbKazoba (thread author) puts so much effort leading us believe pro-gay books and publications. Lots of literature in support of homosexuality is out there just as much as those supporting earthiest and other believes/practices that are perceived deviant. Sane readers and top of the country decision makers don't take what is in the literature at face value. No they don't. For, published evidence isn't relevant evidence for every setting. As such, RC Makonda is right to not bother read pro-gay publications that do not account for values, history, belief and norms featuring his jurisdiction.

Likewise while science is an important and major factor in decision making one must not think it is the only factor. This is particularly the case for political decisions shaping and rearranging a wide range of national interests. A decision to got to war, legalization of homosexuality, and affirmative policies for example are cases in point. Value judgements are so important in these cases that they rightly undermine and overide scientific evidence. We use science, we need science all the time, but we are not science!

That said I don't know where RC Makonda and the Tz government go wrong criminalizing homosexuality. It is government role to uphold national interest irrespective of individual interests that are so diverged and nonlinear.

 

[mwanatanu]

Mhe Makonda najua unapitia humu JF kila kukicha kwa hiyo nategemea na utalivulia njuga hili suala la MADAWA YA KULEVYA

 

[Drifter]

Mkuu Rtbkazoba. I deeply appreciate the unprecedented lengths you've gone to, to extrapolate on this rather confounding subject. It has taken me decades to accept that some folks could be genuinely homosexual. I'm not one for untangling complex hypotheses. I just simply reasoned (in the sexual context) that for a "normal" man to feel aroused (get stiff) by the mere sight of the very masculine morphology of another man, that cannot be faked! Even terrible, I still have not yet settled for the notion that a "real" man can get sexual relief by being penetrated by another man. Sounds the ultimate degradation of manhood and an abomination to me in every sense. That these conditions could be learned and faked, I concluded, NO! It would be too much of a sacrifice! These people must be in that way by construct.

HOWEVER, people like Makonda and most TZ folks in general, have a very different or incomplete context of what they call "mashoga". They usually envision "male prostitutes" who masquerade as women peddling sex to men for sale. For them, gays are those "feminine or effeminate" men who make themselves up and posture as ladies - and work the streets, bars and night clubs (selling sex). Combating these kind of folks and their business could be ok as far as clearing the blister of prostitution in general is concerned (though that's a tall order for the oldest profession). But I wonder if Makonda and the like are aware and/or could detect the "unmarked" gays with all the "normal" physical traits of their visible gender who lead "quiet" lives in their communities but enjoy homosexual relations. Some are even notable professionals, party cadres, political leaders, etc. Due to societal restrictions, they still remain in closets.

For such ignorant persons, your complex analysis is of no use. You may even be talking from different premises. Makonda may just be addressing the problem of prostitution in the city - be it heterosexual or homosexual based. Attributing anti-gay crusade to him, could amount to elevating his cognitive powers to where they don't belong. I think what President Uhuru Kenyatta once said during his interview with CNN holds a lot of water. Time has not yet come for gay rights to be an issue in our countries. A genuine discourse on the subject would be possible ONLY when the gays in "high; respectable" places come out of their closets and speak for themselves - not the street peddlers.

 

[Freeland]

maandishi yote hayo unatetea kupumuliwa...punguani wahed

 

[The Invincible]

Heterosexual and homosexual is illegal in Tanzania .It is the duty of any government leader to engage in anti gay crusades to make sure that people abide to the law .You write as if that thing is legal in Tanzania!!

Kiingereza kigumu aisee.

 

[Nduka]

Rtbkazoba are you gay? This discussion can only make sense if you can share your personal experiences not tone of hypothesis.

 

[MAPARA ZNZ]

i,m steeel reading see u later