Chastity as the answer
It’s a fundamental teaching in the Church since Christ, and before that in Hebrew Scriptures that moral order requires living a chaste life. Fr. Joseph Fessio and company raised that bar again in a discussion of same-sex attraction.
Ave Maria University leaders spoke out about same-sex attraction recently, calling it a disorder that can be corrected or suppressed.
Provost Joseph Fessio and President Nick Healy participated in the crafting of a statement outlining the Catholic church’s teachings against same-sex attraction and sexual promiscuity during a leadership conference in Denver in October.
The participating group, called the Cardinal Newman Society, encouraged leaders on Catholic college campuses, like Ave Maria, to promote abstinence from sex before marriage. College officials also should urge students experiencing same-sex attractions to seek guidance from school leaders, or, for students who cannot fight their gay urges, to live a chaste life.
“There is a problem that has arisen on many Catholic university campuses on which the roles of marriage and men and women are being confused, and that can be damaging to young people,” Fessio said. “God created us male and female, so we might be help mates, support for each other and multiply the Earth.
“That is the meaning of sexuality. Anything other than that is a disorder, and will lead to bad consequences.”
Cultural powerbrokers will call that judgmental. But the ultimate concern of the teaching is the good and dignity of the human person, though the meaning of that teaching has become blurry in the culture of relativism.
Although the Catholic church has maintained a strict opposition to the homosexual lifestyle throughout history, Healy said refreshing the issue is important.
And in the clear language Fr. Fessio always speaks.
Fessio recognized same-sex attraction exists. But, he said, it is against God’s plan for the human race.
“This is a fact of history that there are people who have same-sex attractions,” he said. “The church does not speak authoritatively on science and psychology, but it does speak on God’s plan and what the Bible teaches us.”
There’s a lot of information on this subject here that you won’t see in the big media.
