Thanks, Aga.

My background holds Scripture as central but not sola scriptura. Tradition, contemporary church authority, guidance from a local worshipping community and personal conscience are also vital.

No, don’t support private personal interpretations. Which is why the piece references Professor Bill Loader. With a bit more space I would have quoted Professor Keith Dyer and others whose Hebrew, Greek, OT and NT research is applicable.

Sacred tradition is an area of rapidly expanding rediscovery, it seems, Aga. Here in France, Allan Tulchin researched mediaeval brother-making rituals. He wrote in the September 2007 Journal of Modern History that Christian ceremonies joined unrelated same-gender couples in lifelong unions which raised family, held property jointly, and were virtually equivalent to marriages.

Tulchin claims "considerable evidence that the affrèrés were using affrèrements to formalize same-sex loving relationships ... I suspect some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way ..."

So it is no longer universally accepted that tradition has always opposed same-sex unions, is it?

Magisterial authority also shifts from time to time. Influential cardinal Carlo Martini publicly split with the Vatican in March by expressing support for same-sex unions. More than 260 Catholic theologians last year signed the document 'Church 2011' supporting unions for gay couples among other reforms.

The recent John Jay Reports prepared for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops brought into the open the reality of overrepresentation of active homosexuals in the priesthood.

So shifts are afoot.

Yes, Jesus says "one male and one female". But he is quoting Genesis 2. He is not adding “one and only one”, is He? As the article suggests, singulars often imply plurals in both the OT and NT – and vice versa.

As the other OT passages quoted confirm pretty overwhelmingly, there is no sense anywhere from any OT or NT writer that they understood Genesis 2 to mean M1W1 only, is there?

The three problems with insisting Genesis 2 instructs M1W1, outlined in the piece, seem to apply also to Matthew 19. No?

Cheers, AA

Alan,

I'm not sure you understand Sacred Tradition?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm

Reimagining Church History for Gay Marriage has been debunked.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/in-the-case-of-john-boswell-4
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gay-marriage-reimagining-church-history-50

As for a Bishop who splits from the Pope and 2000 years of Church Teaching
in regards homosexuality and marriage, the answer is self-explanatory.
That is NOT Sacred Tradition. Read above. Sacred Tradition
does not change, but develops in understanding, without changing its roots.

If you are looking for solid material, try sites like these.
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/index.html
http://www.ewtn.com
http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm
http://socrates58.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/catalogue-index-catholic-apologetics.html

Yes I mispelt Didache, but I do not condemn all the work
of Protestant Biblical scholars, only that not in accordance
with Sacred Tradition and Magisteral Authority; which is a lot.
The Church Fathers are the ones who aid understanding and clarity
on Sacred Tradition and Magisterial Authority.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

If you really want to engage with Church thinking and correctly understand
the Truth of its position on Homosexuality, start with its epistemology.
Then you will understand how to interpret the Bible correctly.

As for the Catholic Church ever accepting Marriage as something
other than one man and one women, it is simply not going to happen.
You would have to deny Jesus Christ as God, and that is not going to happen. I have spent enough time here. I wish you well.
There are others with better knowledge on these subjects.

Try these sites for useful information
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/homosexuality
http://couragerc.net/
http://narth.com/
http://narth.com/2012/06/2532/
http://www.thepinkswastika.com/

Alan, Actually, as one extra very last aside, read these document links below. The first provides more explicit NT biblical condemnations of homosexual acts. St Paul does this comprehensively in his various letters. So trying to legitimise homosexual acts as normative moral behaviour is simply farcical from a biblical perspective, and is certainly so from the perspective of Sacred Tradition and Magisterial Authority. We are all tempted to sin.
No-one has a mortgage on errant sexual temptation. One can sympathise with those tempted, but not approve of the sin.
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df86ho.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df75se.htm

Thanks for these resources, Aga.

Pretty sure I am across most of these ideas. But I shall check.

This issue has challenged all Judeo-Christian communities for decades now and will to do so for some decades yet.

Many of us believe this is the most profound challenge the Church has faced since the Reformation. It will indeed shift long-standing and firmly-held beliefs.

But the shift is underway, Aga, including in the Roman Catholic Church. This is the course of our history.

The OT prophets continually called God’s people back to obedience. The Scribes and Pharisees knew Scripture off by heart but were woefully astray in understanding God’s heart. Saints Paul and Peter got important things seriously wrong and were forced into painful repentance.

Every generation has had to re-examine its teaching to locate its errors. All churches - Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox - persecuted for blasphemy astronomers who taught that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

For centuries the Church failed to teach the essentials of salvation by faith in Christ alone.

Thousands of unfortunates with mental illnesses were tortured or killed for demon possession.

Scholars have only recently accepted that Moses did not personally write the Pentateuch and that other books attributed to particular prophets had different authorship.

All denominations have failed in the past with regard to slavery, the subjugation of the black races, accepting the infinite universe, equality of women, inter-racial marriage and issues of economic justice.

Tragically, the Body of Christ throughout history has been slow to hear the Holy Spirit’s correctives to erroneous theology and praxis brought via Biblical and other scholars.

On same-sex unions, many churches are now discovering that texts traditionally used to condemn all homosexual behaviour really address only abusive acts - rape, paedophilia, adultery, prostitution and pagan ritual worship.

It seems there is a challenge to each generation to rediscover Biblical truth. Accepting that gay orientation is in fact a normal, natural, God-given variation in human sexuality seems to be ours.

Happy to explore any particular aspect of this with you further, Aga.

Cheers, AA.

Hello again Aga,

I have accessed your links and found some excellent info. So thank you.

But ultimately the future beliefs within all strands of Christendom will be shaped by Scriptural revelation.

Increasingly, scholars within all denominations are showing us that the old interpretations relating to homosexuality are just not sound. A bit like earlier interpretations of cosmology, the authorship of Scripture and other passages the Churches have recently revised.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:18 condemn ritual prostitution worshipping the Canaanite god Molech. If these referred to faithful same-sex unions, they would have covered other homoerotic acts, and included women. It is probably reasonable to extend this prohibition to all prostitution.

Romans 1:26-27 relates to naturally straight men having unnatural gay sex for thrills, usually with young boys. It is reasonable to extend this as a prohibition also against gay men or women seeking pleasure through casual opposite-sex liaisons.

Corinthians 6:9. Different English versions translate this differently. NRSV translates as “male prostitutes and sodomites”. The RSV second edition has “sexual perverts”. The best translation is probably the New International Version UK: “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders …”

Here the two key words refer to prostitution and abusive behaviour, not life-long, monogamous faithful unions.

And 1 Tim 1:9-10 also condemns perverted sex, not monogamous, loving relationships.

The understanding among an ever-growing number of Biblical scholars and Church leaders is that Scripture condemns abusive, coercive and idolatrous homosexual behaviours.

There are no teachings anywhere prohibiting faithful, loving, permanent same-sex unions, are there?

In other words, homosexuality is now being seen as an equivalent concept to heterosexuality.

There are six warnings against abuses of homosexuality in Scripture. And 300 warnings against heterosexual abuses in Scripture. We don't prohibit all opposite-sex unions, do we?

Nor can we, on Biblical grounds, continue any longer to prohibit all same-sex unions.

Alan,

You're on the wrong side of history, and as for the Catholic Church accepting homosexual acts as valid, you must be smoking something whilst at the keyboard. As for issues with cosmology and Sun centred verses Earth centred, Galileo et al. your so way behind in promoting the secular propaganda of the past 40-50 years. The Catholic Church happened to be scientifically correct in its judgement on Galileo.

Try the following just for example. All that stuff has been debunked.
http://www.rcta.com.au/RCTAApologetics-Mar2008-Galileo.html

You seem to have a sixties secular education? Its been bypassed.
http://www.rcta.com.au/RCTAApologetics-Apr2008-GospelDating.html

When your generation passes, and its sexual deviations wane, as they will, we'll get back to the Truth of the matter.