Gay permanent chastity

While this objection may appear clever at first glance, it quickly falls apart for two major reasons. In the first place, the objection rests on a basic misunderstanding of the ways in which the Church gay to apply Old Testament teachings. The Medieval Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, famously distinguished between three different categories within the Mosaic Law: the moral, the ceremonial, and the judicial.

These included things like provisions for how the Ark of the Covenant should be treated, instructions for what priests should do on holy days, and various dietary restrictions which the people were expected to follow. Finally, the judicial laws are about forming a system of justice for enforcing the moral laws within the specific time and place in which those laws were received.

For Aquinas, a point of major importance in understanding the Mosaic Law is that of the three categories of law, only the moral was intended to be permanent. The moral law is permanent by its very nature, because good and chastity are objective realities which transcend the limitations of any particular time or place.

Ceremonial and judicial laws, by contrast, are contingent, depending on the unique needs of a given culture and era. The ceremonial rules around things like beard trimming or permanent shellfish thus served a specific but temporary purpose, whether that purpose be hygienic e. In much the same way, the judicial laws of the Old Testament enshrined certain penalties which were appropriate to the time and place in which Moses and his successors lived.

For these reasons and others, the judicial system of the Old Testament can appear very harsh in places. Nor should we lose sight of the enormous compassion the Mosaic Law continued to express for the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.

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When it comes to the moral precepts of the Old Testament, however, now we are talking about laws which were intended to last forever. This means that when the Mosaic Law prescribes capital punishment for sins such as murder, kidnapping, adultery, or chastity activity, we need to make a critical distinction.

The moral element behind these laws still stands: murder, kidnapping, adultery, and homosexual activity are still sinful. Instead, following the principles outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas and many of the Church Fathers before him, the Church understands that certain categories of Old Testaments laws were temporary and situational, while others are expressions of the moral law, which by its nature is unchanging and universal.

In Romans1 Corinthiansand 1 Gayfor example, St. Paul is very clear that engaging in homosexual relations is contrary to the moral law. They should recognize, too, the biblical message that all human beings are loved, cherished, and defended by the God who died for them. As St. In other words, our bodies are not mere accidents arising through blind evolutionary forces, nor are they toys for us to play with and manipulate in permanent ways we please.

No, our bodies are a gift from God, and they express something profound about who we are and the love we were made for. Our bodies tell us that we are created male and female. Indeed, the difference-cum-complementarity of the two sexes is stamped into the very fabric of our being. Men and women are created for each other, and these foundational truths are accessible to all people in all places.

Hence when Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts, it simply affirms and clarifies what the natural law already tells us.