What do look like to be gay – and a practicg Catholic? | Catholic News Agency

Contents:

• GAY AND CATHOLIC - ACCEPTG MY SEXUALY, FDG COMMUNY, LIVG MY FAH
• WHAT’S LIKE TO BE GAY AND CATHOLIC? AN TERVIEW WH EVE TH
• WHY CHOOSE CELIBACY? A GAY CATHOLIC SPEAKS OUT
• WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?
• GAY CATHOLICS
• WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?
• CATHOLIC BLOGGER ANDREW SULLIVAN SPECULAT THE POPE ULD BE GAY
• OPN IT’S HARD TO BE GAY AND CATHOLIC. IT DON’T HAVE TO BE.

GAY AND CATHOLIC - ACCEPTG MY SEXUALY, FDG COMMUNY, LIVG MY FAH

What I do believe is that God ma me who I am and I should live my life as the person God tend me to be, that beg a gay Catholic.

December 17th, 2012 Recently a iend send me a lk to a story tled ‘Pope Bls Uganda’s Rebec “Kill The Gays” Kadaga’ om a blog lled Joe. Wrten by an openly lbian and celibate wrerHer journey om atheism to fahful CatholicismHow to accept your sexualy and live as a fahful CatholicHow gay Catholics n pour their love to iendship, muny, and serviceA fahful perspective on a difficult social issue First Place Wner of a 2015 Catholic Prs Award the Genr Issu CategoryIn this first book om an openly lbian and celibate Catholic, wily published wrer and blogger Eve Th reunts her spirual and tellectual journey om atheism to fahful Catholicism and shows how gay Catholics n love and be loved while adherg to Church teachg. Already self-intifyg as a lbian, Th searched for a third way the seemg two-optn system available to gay Catholics: reject Church teachg on homosexualy or reject the tth of your sexualy.

WHAT’S LIKE TO BE GAY AND CATHOLIC? AN TERVIEW WH EVE TH

Gay and Catholic: Acceptg My Sexualy, Fdg Communy, Livg My Fah is the u of Th’s searchg: what she learned studyg Christian history and theology and her articulatn of how gay Catholics n pour their love and need for nnectn to iendships, muny, service, and artistic creatn. There are a few good books on personal experienc of beg gay and Christian, wrten a way that’s fahful to historil Christian teachg on sexualy, but there wasn’t anythg that was foced on the different paths that one’s life uld take. The primary target dience is actual gay Christians who are tryg to figure out what their liv are gog to look like, and then anyone who wants to make the church more welg for gay and lbian you suggt ways for church to be more welg?

Even if you don’t do by the terms of fdg muny the church, right now my primary muny wh the church is pretty much other gay Christians. One of the reasons I wrote the book is to cut down the miseri that gay people experience wh the pendg on where the person is g om, we n talk about more posive stuff too.

WHY CHOOSE CELIBACY? A GAY CATHOLIC SPEAKS OUT

I thk a lot of people have only heard some church lears give a list of thgs you n’t do if you’re gay and offer some weak explanatns of why you n’t do them.

I didn’t know any other gay people who were at all terted followg the Catholic Church’s teachgs and I was sure there was some reason for that. I thk the biggt thg is really jt that there is a future for dividual gay people the Catholic Church that don’t require reprsn, or self-hatred, or beg totally alone.

WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?

And then the sendary thg would be that the troubl you experience are gog to pend somewhat on your cultural ntext, but they’re not gog to be totally alien for Catholics and is possible to build solidary both wh other gay Christians and wh the straight people who are the majory. ” So I really wanted to make sure I had a sectn dited to explorg the tim when is really hard to be a gay Catholic the early 21st century.

More than 10 years ago, Steve Gershom (not his real name) found himself surg the ter for anythg that might help him: he was gay, Catholic, and nfed. Rourc were srce for a man stgglg wh homosexualy and tryg to rema fahful to the Church’s the terveng years, Catholics experiencg same-sex attractn have bee a more vol prence the the words “gay Catholic” and one of the top s to appear will be Gershom’s own blog, a blog wh the tagle: “Catholic, Gay, and Feelg Fe. ” There, the 30-somethg wrer nsirs his own experienc as a man stgglg wh same-sex attractn and tryg to live out the virtue of follows is an eded versn of a nversatn about everythg om homosexualy and Batman to poetry and football.

GAY CATHOLICS

I thk ’s immoral, for one reason, bee is trsilly closed to life and thereby distorts what the sexual act is meant to gets tricky is where we talk about the emotnal realy of homosexualy, bee some people ask me, ‘well, that’s fe if you thk that gay sex is wrong, but what about gay romance? And the specific problem of silence is that if you grow up Catholic and gay, or at least if you did a few years ago when I was growg up, or before that, then the overwhelmg imprsn you get is not so much that you’re bad or evil, but ’s that you’re absolutely not allowed to talk about this. Now the qutn is where that imprsn om and what n be done to rrect difficulty is: how n we overe and rrect that, whout, at the same time, givg ground on the moraly of homosexual actns?

They should start by tellg somebody about , preferably a prit who is willg to talk wh them and help you thk pastors and others should do a better job of beg aware of what people are gog through regards to homosexualy? Like the Catechism says, the number of people wh ep-seated homosexual tennci is not negligible: this is a large segment of the populatn we’re talkg about, and ’s not a matter of a few ‘edge’ s.

WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?

And that is exactly the sort of suatn I alt wh growg up, which is where was sort of standard to make jok, ‘ha ha, gay people’ bee nobody we know is gay – and of urse if you hear that sort of thg all the time, you beg to thk of yourself as outsi of the realm of normal human that how you felt growg up?

I only say that bee I’m thkg of a particular Evangelil iend of me who nstantly has to al wh – he’s gay, but believ basilly what the Catholic Church teach about homosexualy – he has to al nstantly wh people tellg him that for him to ll himself gay is for him to be embracg a s.

The are people who say, ‘well, I might go around experiencg temptatns to adultery, but I don’t go around intifyg myself as an “adultero Christian, ” so why are you gog around intifyg yourself as a “gay Christian? My rponse to that is that while ’s te that homosexualy means that a particular kd of temptatn is prevalent someone’s life, also means a lot more than that.

CATHOLIC BLOGGER ANDREW SULLIVAN SPECULAT THE POPE ULD BE GAY

Sce sexualy self is so eply tied to so many aspects of our personaly, and our experience as human begs, then homosexualy has very wi-reachg effects to almost every aspect of our liv, or at least as many aspects of our liv as sexualy Ameri, stereotyp on many levels associate gay men wh beg effemate. It's also te that eher many or most, or possibly all of gay men I've ever known have experienced some difficulty ftg wh other men, and very many of them have experienced what they feel is a lack of masculy themselv.

I believe that among gay men general there is a higher cince of personaly tras which are generally not nsired to be as mascule.

OPN IT’S HARD TO BE GAY AND CATHOLIC. IT DON’T HAVE TO BE.

(Lghs) what do you thk we n do to help men who stggle wh homosexualy not squelch their natural tennci toward good thgs, like beg talented the arts or sensive toward others?

I thk the reason people are so terted homosexualy at all is bee people are profoundly terted how human begs relate to one another, and what sex has to do wh any of that – and nobody is really clear about any of those thgs right now.

But sudnly, the qutn of homosexualy requir to thk clearly about those thgs, and a lot of are fdg out that we have no, everythg is nnsg to this one, huge weather system – I don't even know what's gog to happen. They are poems that exprs the ‘masculy’ of God and the ‘femy’ of God and we have to take them serly, which don't mean we n p down (exactly) what the poems are you thk a lot of the cultural nversatn gog on is not precisely about homosexualy, but about humany? The reason I'm glad that everyone is talkg about homosexualy is that we are beg forced to nont all of the qutns, which we've need to do for a very long of me had imaged that after I me out, then there would be lots of people lg up to talk about my gayns, and that we would be talkg about all the time, and that everyone would talk about .