Does Jesus see homosexual behaviour as
sinful?
Now and again I come across people saying or
writing that Jesus did not speak out against homosexuality and therefore must
have approved it.[1] He was loving and tolerant.
I saw one person state confidently on Twitter the other week
that she had a Masters in New Testament Studies and had studied all four Gospels
closely and nowhere does Jesus condemn homosexuality (or abortion for that
matter).
My sister posted an article in our
family WhatsApp showing how in Australia any church that says homosexual
activity is sinful are seen as ‘hardline’ – why can’t they be like other
churches that have moved with the times and see how outdated the church’s
teaching is?
The subtext: Why can’t they be more like Jesus? Why can’t the church
change with the times?
This argument that ‘Jesus never condemns homosexuality, therefore must
have condoned it’ frustrates me and fails on many levels.
First: The argument
fails on canonical grounds:
If you are going to critique Christianity then you have to do so on
historical Christianity’s terms not yours. And creating a dichotomy between
Jesus’ teaching and the rest of the Bible is to mistreat Jesus and the Bible.
Christians for two thousand years have believed the whole Bible is the
Word of God and has authority. Yes, we must read it within the three horizons
of its immediate context, covenantal context and canonical context. But we
can’t and we don’t (as Christians) elevate Jesus’ words over the rest of the
Bible, especially the rest of the New Testament.
We don’t create a mini canon within the wider canon
of Scripture. We’re not red-letter Christians who only believe Jesus’ words.
Paul and the disciples were writing as disciples and followers of Jesus. And
Paul clearly states sex between a man and a man, and between a woman and woman
is a sin (see Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10).[2] Therefore, to make Jesus and the Gospels the
sole arbiter of this debate is lazy and misguided.
Second: The
argument fails because of bad historical methodology:
It is a historical fallacy to make a positive argument from silence,
especially when the historical setting speaks negatively against this.
To say Jesus condoned homosexual practice because
he didn’t condemn it is not how historians study history. We don’t base our
arguments from silence, especially when we know what the wider culture believed
– to do so is simply to apply a faulty method of historical reasoning to your
historical argument.[3]
The end result: your argument is deeply flawed. In addition, too often
today we take our present-day ideals and try to impose them on different
historical cultures. You can’t read history like that and hope to be a good
historian.
Third: The argument
fails on historical grounds:
People fail to put Jesus in his historical context. He was a Jew living
in Palestine, living under the authority of the Torah. It would have been
inconceivable for a popular Jewish Rabbi to have condoned such practices,
especially one who said to enter the Kingdom of God you have to be more
righteous than the Pharisees (Matt 5:20).
That is not the kind of teaching that condones
homosexual behaviour. He likely didn’t discuss it directly because as a Jew
living in Jewish Palestine teaching Jewish people, the Law was clear on this
(see for example Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and it was largely a non-issue. It
only later became an issue when the Gospel was preached to the Romans and
Greeks, where such practices were deemed acceptable in most cases.[4]
Fourth: The
argument fails on theological grounds:
Christians believe that Jesus is our sinless Saviour and lived a sinless
life (2 Cor. 5:21). We believe he obeyed and fulfilled the Mosaic Law as the
perfect Israelite (Rom. 8:3-4). He said himself he did not come to abolish the
Law and Prophets (i.e. the whole of the Old Testament) but to fulfil it as the
One it was pointing to (Matt 5:17).
If he had condoned homosexual behaviour, he could not have perfectly
kept the Torah, since the Torah clearly states homosexual practice is a sin
(Leviticus 18:22; 20:13). If you break the Torah, even one command, then you
are a sinner under God’s curse (Gal. 3:10).
In fact, Jesus himself said to the Pharisees, who
were looking for any reason to arrest him and kill him, “Who among you can convict me of sin?” (John 8:46 CSB).
All they could do in response was to call him names, but they couldn’t point
out in what way he was sinning, certainly not on moral grounds. There’s no
conceivable way the Pharisees would have allowed Jesus to get away with such
teaching. To them it was sinful and everything we know about the zeal of the
Pharisees for God’s Torah tells us they would have called him out on it.
Fifth: The argument
fails on Biblical grounds:
Despite the fact Jesus did not directly condemn homosexual practice, his
hearers would have understood he included it in his teaching on sexual sin.
For example, when Jesus says in Mark 7:21-23
(CSB): “For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts,
sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit,
self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things
come from within and defile a person”, his hearers would have
understood homosexual practice to be implied from that list.
This is because of the word ‘sexual immoralities’ which is from the Greek word Porneia. The fact that Jesus speaks of ‘sexual immoralities’ and ‘adulteries’ shows us
Jesus is speaking of more than just unfaithfulness in marriage. He used it as a
term to convey all sexual sin outside of marriage.
As well as this broad meaning, historically the
earliest Christians saw it used particularly to speak out against prostitution
and homosexual practice in what was the first sexual revolution.[5]
Jesus was clear on what marriage is in Matthew 19
when quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 when he said, ‘“Haven’t you read”, he replied, “that he who created them in the
beginning made them male and female, and he also said, ‘For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will
become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what
God has joined together, let no one separate”’ (Matthew 19:4-6 CSB).
He clearly grounds marriage between male and female
and then says that the alternatives are: some people were born eunuchs, others
made eunuchs, and yet still others choose to live like eunuchs (i.e. not having
sex) for the sake of the kingdom of God (Matt 19:11-12). There are two choices
for Christians when it comes to sex, either sex within marriage between a male
or female (becoming one flesh), or celibacy. There’s no third way. As difficult
and as painful as this is for some and as much as we should seek to speak truth
in love, we cannot allow our feelings and experiences overrule the Bible and
create an alternative or modern solution within the church. For Jesus says: ‘what God has joined together, let no man separate’ –
these are apposite words for those who try to make Jesus fit their
pro-homosexual worldview.
[1] Some Christians don’t see a distinction
between homosexual behaviour and homosexual inclination or orientation – that
the whole person is sinful and needs to repent of his/her temptations and
inclinations. But I am persuaded of the fact that the Fall has broken us all sexually and so clearly homosexual inclination
is a result of the bigger picture of sin and yet choosing not to follow your
inclination is not sinful but faithful,
because it seeks to say no to temptation and sexual desire. The emphasis of
this article is on homosexual behaviour as
sinful and yet is encouraged to be seen as acceptable within the church. For
more on this read Sam Allberry’s Is God Anti-Gay? He
writes: ‘We should expect a number of Christians to experience forms of
same-sex attraction. We live in a fallen world…Being Christian makes us no less
likely to fall ill, face tragedy, or experience insecurity. It is not
un-Christian to experience same-sex attraction any more than it is un-Christian
to get sick. What marks us out as Christian is not that we never experience
such things, but how we respond to them when we do’, p. 41.
[2] 1 Timothy 1:10 also speaks against an argument
that goes like this – Christianity once believed slavery was okay and not
sinful and changed its mind on that, so why not homosexuality? Well, 1 Timothy
1:10 includes ‘practicing homosexuality’ with ‘slaver traders’ as unlawful and
sinful. What is more, Paul constantly undermines slavery at various times.
Whether it’s asking Philemon to accept his former slave Onesimus back not as a
slave but as a ‘dear brother’ (Philemon 1:15-16), or when Paul says ‘slave or
free’ we’re all one in Christ (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11), Paul is radically changing
the way slaves are to be treated and recognised. Or when Paul says if you can
earn your freedom then do it (1 Cor. 7:21-23). Even though Paul doesn’t say
flee your masters but obey them (Eph. 6:5; Col. 3:22) and Peter says honour
them even when they are cruel (1 Peter 2:18), (which in itself was subversive
and revolutionary), this kind of subversion to slavery soon led later Christian
thinkers to see slavery and having slaves as utterly repulsive – which was a
revolutionary thought in the ancient world. For example, John Chrysostom
described slavery as ‘the fruit of covetousness, of degradation, of savagery…
the fruit of sin, [and] of [human] rebellion against … our true Father’. Homilies on Ephesians, Homily XXII. The point is, that
early Christian teaching on slavery saw it as sinful, not okay. And they
saw it as sinful because they saw it as sinful
in the Bible.
[3] We also know that the Gospels did not record
everything Jesus taught or did (John 20:30 and 21:25). Like all history, the
Gospels are edited. This should make us pause before categorically stating
Jesus must have condoned homosexual behaviour.
[4] See William Loader, The New Testament on Sexuality, pp. 83-91 and Kyle
Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality
in Late Antiquity, pp.35-37. Harper even discusses evidence of
same-sex marriages between men, and between women, dispelling the myth that the
Greco-Roman world did not have the categories of romantic homosexual love.
[5] See Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin.
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May 24, 2024
Two months after the Coptic Orthodox Church suspended theological dialogue with the Catholic Church over Fiducia Supplicans, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández traveled to Egypt to explain the declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings to the church’s leader, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria.
The prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith explained in his May 22 meeting with the Coptic Pope that “these blessings are not given to the union between individuals,” according to Vatican News. “If two people present themselves together, they can be blessed, making the sign of the cross over each and adding a short prayer. But this must happen briefly, spontaneously, without any rite, without liturgical vestments, and without any outward manifestation that might confuse this blessing with a marriage.”
Cardinal Fernández told the Coptic Pope that “the Catholic Church shares the teachings” of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s March 7 statement on homosexuality, according to Vatican News.
In “The Belief of the Coptic Orthodox Church on the Issue of Homosexuality,” the church’s Holy Synod stated that “the Bible in both Testaments condemns, warns, and forbids sexual practices between two people of the same sex. The synod cited Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-28, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
“Accordingly, the Coptic Orthodox Church rejects what is called sexual perversion in its general and comprehensive understanding, and all types of sexual practices outside the sacred framework of marriage,” the statement continued.
Cardinal Fernández, according to Vatican News, also told the Coptic Pope that the Catholic Church “has a positive view” of the March 7 statement’s “pastoral approach.”
In its pastoral approach, the Holy Synod called on persons tempted to homosexual activity to engage in “warfares of thought, sight, and attractions, just like heterosexuals.”
“Whoever suffers from homosexual tendencies and controls themselves from sexual behaviors, the control is credited to them as a struggle,” the statement noted.
The synod continued:
As for someone who falls into homosexual behaviors, they are like the heterosexuals who fall into the sin of adultery/fornication, needing true repentance. Both need continuous spiritual and psychological follow-up. These follow-ups have proven effective with unwanted homosexual tendencies.
As for those who choose to reconcile with their homosexual tendencies, letting go of themselves to homosexual acts, rejecting spiritual and psychological treatment, and choosing of their own free will to break God’s commandment, their condition becomes worse than the one who lives in [struggle against] adultery/fornication. Therefore, they must be warned and cut off from communion until they repent.
A London-born teenager - whose proficiency at spreading the teachings of the Catholic church online led to him being called "God's influencer" - is set to become a saint.
Carlo Acutis died in in 2006, at the age of 15, meaning he would be the first millennial - a person born in the early 1980s to late 1990s - to be canonised.
It follows Pope Francis attributing a second miracle to him.
It involved the healing of university student in Florence who had bleeding on the brain after suffering head trauma.
Carlo Acutis had been beatified - the first step towards sainthood - in 2020, after he was attributed with his first miracle - healing a Brazilian child of a congenital disease affecting his pancreas.
The second miracle was approved by the Pope following a meeting with the Vatican's saint-making department.
It is not yet known when he will be canonised.
Carlo Acutis died in Monza, in Italy, after being diagnosed with leukaemia, having spent much of his childhood in the country.
His body was moved to Assisi a year after his death, and it currently resides on full display alongside other relics linked to him.
The Tomb of Carlo Acutis in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Assisi
As well as designing websites for his parish and school, he became known for launching a website seeking to document every reported Eucharistic miracle, which was launched days before his death.
Mr Acutis' nickname, God's influencer, has been attributed to him after his death due to this work.
His website has now been translated into several different languages, and used as the basis for an exhibition which has travelled around the world.
His life is also remembered in the UK, where in 2020, the Archbishop of Birmingham established the Parish of Blessed Carlo Acutis incorporating churches in Wolverhampton and Wombourne
And there is a statue of the soon-to-be-saint in Carfin Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine in Motherwell.
Miracles are typically investigated and assessed over a period of several months, with a person being eligible for sainthood after they have two to their name.
For something to be deemed a miracle, it typically requires an act seen to be beyond what is possible in nature - such as through the sudden healing of a person deemed to be near-death.
The most recent person to be canonised was Maria Antonia de Paz y Figueroa, also known as Mama Antula, an 18th Century religious sister who became Argentina's first female saint.
Pope Francis on female
deacons: ‘No’
By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, May 21, 2024 / 11:26 am
Pope Francis has once again come out strongly
against an ordained female diaconate, reiterating what for the Holy Father has
been a consistently firm stance against women becoming clergy.
The pope made the remarks this week
in an interview with CBS News
anchor Norah O’Donnell during an appearance on the
network’s flagship magazine program, “60 Minutes.”
“You will have many young boys and girls that will
come here at the end of next month for World Children’s Day,” O’Donnell said to
the pope at one point during the interview. “And I’m curious, for a little girl
growing up Catholic today, will she ever have the opportunity to be a deacon
and participate as a clergy member in the Church?”
“No,” the pope replied.
Pressed by O’Donnell as to whether a female
diaconate was “something you’re open to,” Francis replied: “If it is deacons
with holy orders, no.”
“But women have always had, I would say, the
function of deaconesses without being deacons, right?” he said. “Women are of
great service as women, not as ministers, as ministers in this regard, within
the holy orders.”
The Holy Father in the interview stressed the
importance of women’s roles in the Catholic Church, describing them as “the
ones who move changes forward, all sorts of changes.”
“They are braver than the men. They know how best
to protect life,” the pope said. “Women are masterful custodians of life. Women
are great. They are very great. And making space in the Church for women does
not mean giving them a ministry, no. The Church is a mother, and women in the
Church are the ones who help foster that motherliness.”
“Don’t forget that the ones who never abandoned
Jesus were the women,” he pointed out. “The men all fled.”
Francis last year reaffirmed the impossibility of
women becoming priests, or even modern Church deacons, stating
that “holy orders is reserved for men.”
The pope in his discussion with
O’Donnell — his first in-depth interview with a U.S. broadcast network —
touched on a wide variety of subjects, from immigration to war to
antisemitism.
Here are some other highlights from the Holy
Father’s remarks during the interview, which aired in full on Monday
evening:
On immigrants fleeing violent
countries for safer nations:
“The solution is migration, to open the doors to
migration. For an immigration policy to be good, it must have four things: for
the migrant to be received, assisted, promoted, and integrated. This is what is
most important, to integrate them into the new life.”
On washing the feet of female
prisoners at a women’s prison in Rome on Holy Thursday:
“It is true, this time it was only women because it
was a women’s jail. And the message is that men and women, we are all children
of God. That men and women we are all apostles and we all can lead. Let us not
forget that the bravest apostles, the most courageous, were the women: Mary
Magdalene, Mary Salomé, and Mary of Santiago. They stayed with Jesus to the
very end.”
On climate change:
“Unfortunately,
we have gotten to a point of no return. It’s sad, but that’s what it is. Global
warming is a serious problem. Climate change at this moment is a road to death.
A road to death, eh? And it is an artificial climate change, no? Something provoked,
not the normal climate change, right? …
“In great measure, [wealthy countries are to
blame], because they are the ones that have more of an economy and an energy
based on fossil fuels that are creating this situation, right? They are the
countries that can make the most difference, given their industry and all,
aren’t they? But it is very difficult to create an awareness of this. They hold
a conference, everybody is in agreement, they all sign, and then bye-bye.
But we have to be very clear, global warming is alarming.”
On his plans for retirement:
“It has never occurred to me. Maybe if the day
comes when my health can go no further. Perhaps because the only infirmity I
have is in my knee, and that is getting much better. But it never occurred to
me.”
Pilgrims pray around a statue of Mary on Apparition Hill in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in this 2011 file photo. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.)
ROME – On Friday Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández presented a new set of norms for evaluating the authenticity of Marian apparitions and other spiritual phenomena, saying a ruling on the famed occurrences in Medjugorje is still in the works.
Speaking to journalists during the May 17 presentation of the new norms, which stipulate that the Vatican will no longer deem apparitions or other similar spiritual events as ‘supernatural’ in nature, Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), said of Medjugorje, “we’ll see.”“I haven’t read the material in the dicastery. I know some details, but we must study to arrive at a conclusion with these new norms,” he said.
Among other things, the new norms state that instead of ruling on the supernatural nature of apparitions or other similar phenomena, the DDF will now issue one of six possible rulings, the most positive being a declaration of Nihil obstat, or, “nothing stands in the way” of encouraging devotion.hey also include other rulings such as Prae oculis habeatur, “it should be kept in mind,” to be given in cases in which “positive signs are recognized” surrounding an alleged spiritual event, as well as “some aspects of confusion or potential risks.”
In this regard, Fernández reference to Medjugorje urged faithful to “Keep in mind that a phenomenon can be considered good, not dangerous at its origin, but it can have some problems in the later development.”
“If we suppose there was a Nihil Obstat, at the same time, perhaps, some details must be clarified, they must not be taken seriously,” he said, noting that in the alleged ongoing visions from so-called “seers,” the Virgin Mary has stipulated the time and place she will send a message, or “seers” have claimed to receive messages on stage during talks.
These are things “that must be clarified,” Fernández said.
Long a point of discussion and debate in Catholic circles, the alleged Medjugorje apparitions began in June 1981, and are often divided into two categories: the “originals” which took place from June 24-July 3 of that year when the Virgin is believed to have appeared daily to six young people aged between 10 and 17 at the time, and subsequent apparitions some of the original seers claimed to have, at times daily, since 1989.
While the original set of alleged apparitions all occurred in the same place, seers who claim to still receive messages from the Virgin Mary have said they see her at random times and places.
In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI formed a commission to study the alleged apparitions led by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who at the time was retired as the pope’s Vicar of Rome. He had also served as president of the Italian bishops’ conference.
The commission submitted its report, called the “Ruini report,” to Francis in 2014.
Francis has previously voiced his own personal skepticism regarding the alleged ongoing apparitions, telling journalists on his way back to Rome May 13, 2017, after a two-day visit to Fatima, Portugal, where one of the largest Marian shrines in the world is located, that the original Medjugorje apparitions need to be distinguished from the ongoing appearances.
“About the first apparitions, when (the ‘seers’) were young, the report more or less says that the investigation needs to continue,” he said, saying the Ruini report “expresses doubts” on the ongoing apparitions.
“Personally, I am more ‘mischievous.’ I prefer Our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time – this is not the mother of Jesus.”
Francis in 2017 named Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser to study the pastoral care given to the town’s residents and visiting pilgrims, with the Vatican emphasizing that his role had nothing to do with determining the authenticity of the apparitions.
In May 2018, Hoser was sent as “Apostolic Visitor” for an undetermined time to the Saint James parish in Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, run by the Franciscan friars.
Francis in May 2020 ruled that pilgrimages to Medjugorje were permissible, but the Vatican said in a statement at the time that studies into the authenticity of the alleged apparitions were still ongoing, and that the pope’s move should not be interpreted “as an authentication of the noted happenings, which still require an examination by the Church.”
“It must therefore be avoided that these pilgrimages create confusion or ambiguity under the doctrinal aspect,” the statement said, saying this also applies to parish priests who intend to visit the site to celebrate Mass.
During Friday’s press conference, Fernández also voiced a word of caution surrounding the visionaries in alleged apparitions themselves, saying there is often a tendency, when an apparition is deemed supernatural, to request sainthood for the person.
This, he said, is “another reason” the Vatican has opted out of issuing a ruling on supernaturality.
Alleged visionaries “are weak like everyone,” he said, and drew a distinction between different kinds of grace faithful can receive, jesting that a sinner can be used by God for something good and still “do cazzate,” which is an off-color Italian term for doing foolish things.
With the new norms, Fernández said, “we expect it will be faster to move forward toward a conclusion” on the Medjugorje apparitions.
