RELIGIOUS LABELLING IS BASED ON A RELUCTANCE TO SEEK AND AFFIRM SELF-KNOWLEDGE

If you think the Bible is just the word of man or not dependable, then why stop there?  Why not go for the jugular and say Jesus was not dependable?  "Religious" people who use their feelings and desires to tell them when the Bible is right seem to consider themselves dependable.  The arrogance of saying religious people writing Bibles are unreliable and then acting like you are wonderfully wise and know better is astounding.  Liberal religion is only aversion therapy, it drives people into fundamentalism.  Actually it is fundamentalist to make yourself your own prophet and judge and Messiah.

Some Catholics reject the core Catholic teaching on marriage and gay sex and want to be affirmed as Catholics.  Rubbish like, "No one should have to give up their faith in order to hold on to being gay." "Or if you are Catholic you can be gay and both of these describe your true self."
 
Stop distorting.  Make no mistake.  This is to get the social benefits and perhaps financial ones that come from the label.

I would speak to LGBT people who do not believe in the Church or attend its worship, and tell them they need to think if they can identify as Catholic. How dare anyone imply that people who tick the no religion box who no longer identify as Catholic are not embracing their true selves.
 
They have already given up the Roman Catholic faith to hold on to being gay. They cherry-pick and have created a Roman Catholicism of their own. The intellectual dishonesty is absurd.

I did not encourage the polarisation of religion and sexuality when I called on gay people who are not truly Catholic any more to stop ticking Roman Catholic on the census form. Those who said I did must think its polarising for a Catholic to go to Islam.

 If I had surely it would be a matter of polarising not religion but one specific religion the Catholic religion.

Church doctrine says, "Being gay and a good Catholic is impossible but you could still be a true Catholic as far as membership goes. Being gay and being a true Catholic is possible. However, being a believer that it is not a sin for two men to go to bed and being Catholic is not possible.  That is heresy and it cuts you off the faith of the Church and outside the requirements that the Church is defined as that which is one, holy, Catholic and apostolic.  The person living a gay life can be Catholic but remember, the term Catholic is a call.  It calls you to obedience.  It is not something to boast about.  The Bible says that using religious labels in pride is a sin".

We can glean from this that if the LGBT is claiming to be Catholic they are abusing the term.  The term only describes that they are obligated to accept what the Church as the body of Christ teaches.  Catholic is obligation and practice not a label.

 You may pretend there is no contradiction between being a gay man and a Catholic. To reject a religious teaching on homosexuality when it is that religions official teaching and when the religion claims that it is authorised to speak for God is to separate from that religion.
 
You have already given up your faith if you think that being gay is not a sin. The Church says the true Church has four marks - one, holy, Catholic and apostolic. It is one in faith - all members agree that the Catholic faith with its doctrines and ethics is true and that the Church cannot contradict its teaching but may grow in understanding it. It is holy which refers primarily to the doctrine and ethics of the Church. Even if Catholics are all bad, the principles at least are holy and the Church is called to be holy. Holy means to be separate and different. A Church that is a close match for the values of the secular world is not holy in any sense. The Church claims to be a church of sinners so the holiness refers principally to the teaching and the sacraments the Church provides. It is Catholic - Catholic means universal or meant for all people. A Catholic Church that accepted gay rights would not be Catholic any more for it would excuse the vast majority of sincere Catholics who oppose such rights. It is apostolic - meaning it accepts the teaching of the apostles and cannot change it for it was given once for all in the past. The Church may increase in understanding the faith but it cannot change it or contradict it. It is insanity to imagine the twelve apostles ever allowing homosexuality or ordaining practicing gay bishops. St Paul wrote in Romans 1 that those who burn with lust for the same sex have been abandoned by God because they are so sinful they are not worth bothering with and that is why they now suffer this lust. He also wrote that those who commit the sin of same sex intimacies are without excuse for God has planted his law in the heart. Thus it is denied that any person can sincerely believe that same-sex sexual activity is acceptable. You are not Catholic for none of the marks apply to you.
 
Your faith requires people to marry the once and if the marriage breaks up to remain faithful to one another. Dating and remarrying is only allowed of the spouse is dead. The Church says this is terribly hard but says Jesus' power gets people through it. You obviously think that because it can be hard to be a celibate, the gay person may engage in gay relationships and be a good Catholic. That doesn't look like faith to me. Jesus who stressed that the Church is to be one as intimately as he and God are one would frown on LGBT people for being at the centre of controversy and division in the Church.
 
Nobody should have to give up their faith to remain gay some say. It is not their faith but the Church's faith. If your faith has to be yours then you are your own religion. You pretend to support the Church and then you see it not as a Church but a collection of individuals.  Some say nobody should have to give up their Catholic membership to be atheist!

Last word, you belong to your country in a loose sense.  You belong to your family in a loose sense.  You belong to your religion in a loose sense.  Nobody can really own you.  But there is a sense in which they can.  Your religion does not belong to you.  You cannot own any person and you cannot own any persons making up an organisation.  Catholicism claims to belong to Jesus.  It is not up to anybody to diverge hugely from Catholicism and then claim to own it. If I could own communism, I cannot if I believe in private property being held.

NOTE: Helfaer's The Psychology of Religious Doubt asserts, "Generally, homosexual feelings and fantasies, and feminine submissive longings, can be channeled into the relationship with God....The man's intensive love for Jesus may be a homosexual, narcissistic object choice, sometimes overriding any other object choice in the individual's life".  See page 132.  Jesus was a hypocrite for he demanded that he indeed be the only object choice and so he produced gays despite saying sex was between a man and his woman only in wedlock.



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