There are a number of states where marriage is on the ballot this fall.  Some states seek to clarify the definition of marriage by adding the language that marriage is only to be legally valid between one man and one woman.  Other states are seeking to legalize gay marriage by popular vote, something which has never before passed in previous elections.

This is such a difficult subject to discuss because of the immediate accusations and assumptions that come with a belief in favor of traditional marriage:

You’re a Bigot!

You Hate!!!

This is no different the slavery or other past forms of unjust discrimination!

It’s just love, what’s wrong with that?

And the attack goes on…

Yesterday I heard one of the most well spoken, theologically sound, LOVING talks I’ve ever heard on the subject. 

Father Mike Schmitz is the Chaplain for the Catholic Campus Ministry program at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  He gives a clear, informative, engaging homily about same sex attraction, the attempt to re-define marriage, and what it means to all of us and society as a whole.  More-so he does this with authentic love and respect for everyone involved.  We must be able to have honest dialog about this issue without shame or fear.

I know asking you to take almost 30 min to invest in a message is a tough sell, but I’m doing it anyway.  Take the time.  You won’t regret it.

Click Here: Called to Love

 

Kristin Detloff

Kristin Detloff

Kristin Detloff is a married, homeschooling, mother of four, loving life in small town Iowa. When not immersed in the unpredictable adventures of motherhood you can often find her chatting it up with the girls at Living The Sacrament: A Catholic NFP Community, an online, Natural Family Planning support forum she founded in Jan of 2010. Kristin is deeply invested in the future of the pro-life movement, currently working as a member of the The Guiding Star Project Board of Directors. Read more of her thoughts by visiting the LTS blog and connect by following her on Twitter!

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12 thoughts on “Called to Love”

  1. I heard this talk through Lighthouse Ministries…definitely the most compassionate treatment of the subject I’ve ever heard.

    1. Hi Phil,

      Jesus didn’t address homosexuality because he stayed in Israel where nobody was saying gay sex was OK. When the apostles went out into the Roman Empire they did encounter that idea. That is why you find it condemned in the epistles. It is not because Jesus and St Paul had different sexual moral teaching.

      As for the varieties of biblical marriage. You need to understand that Catholics believe doctrine develops. That development is clarified by tradition. So the fact that you can find polygamy in the bible does not make it OK. It is a problem for bible-only Christians but not for Catholics.

      1. @ Randy, sorry, but there are some errors in your response
        (1) Matt. 2:13,14 “And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt.” That’s Africa.
        (2) The Bible is silent on Jesus from ages 12 to 30? Who knows where he went; myth has India?
        (3) The Judaea of Jesus’ time was ruled by the Romans, who, like the Greeks before them, accepted homosexual relationships in some contexts but not others. The key was sexual dominance. So it was there through Greek and Roman influence, not Jewish…why didn’t JC talk about the issue?
        (4) I’m unsure of Bible-only Christians; aren’t Catholics sola scriptura?

      2. Phil:

        The first “error” you list from Randy is a technical error but not a relevant one. Yes; Jesus spent a small part of His childhood in Egypt. But we have not one quotation of what He said or did there, even assuming that He observed gay goings-on as a child (unlikely) or was old enough to comment on anything He saw.

        The second is not something you (or anyone) can plausibly comment from, a lacuna. The India thing is a fantasy worthy of Dan Brown.

        The third item is also an argument from a lacuna: You’re trying to say that Jesus, a Jew, the descendant of David and thus a genuine heir to the throne of a people under occupation, raised by a devout couple in a backwater town in Galilee, who stated so explicitly that His first mission was to the “lost sheep of Israel” that He looked like He was about to turn away a Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed daughter…was so frequently in contact with Roman homosexuals that His failure to comment on it can only be construed to indicate acceptance? Ridiculous. His apostles were tasked to go to “the ends of the earth,” though, and the apostolic tradition He gave them is quite consistent, from the Thomasite churches in India to the site of Peter and Paul’s martyrdom in Rome, to Irenaeus’ digs in Gaul, and right down to the ancestors of the Tewahedo church in Ethiopia.

        To argue, then, that Jesus accepted any sexual activity other than the monogamous, for-life, no-divorce, no-remarriage, fruitful kind depicted in Matthew 5 and 19 and the Apostle Paul is pretty absurd. It is to argue that the ancient Israelites took Moses’ view on the matter — not terribly accepting, is it? — and suddenly reversed it, without comment, in Jesus’ day…and then His apostles and their earliest hearers reversed it back without comment, and that went unquestioned for the next one thousand nine hundred years.

        As for your fourth item: Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox) regard “sola scriptura” firmly as HERETICAL. (And quite silly: It’s deeply incompatible with apostolic Christianity, with how the Jews dealt with Scripture, and with logic.)

        So, know your audience.

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  3. I am a gay man who has been partnered for some time. I am way past the point of thinking I will ever desire to marry a woman. It’s just not going to happen. Yet, my partner is very much my “family”, and we share many facets of our lives with each other.

    I don’t understand how extending a civil marriage contract to us is “imposing” anything on anyone, so please explain this to me. I’m not the type to sue a small business because they didn’t want to photograph or cater our ceremony. Why should we? We’d end up with half-hearted, lousy service if we did, anyhow.

    So please … explain to me why you’re fighting against us having a legal contract that doesn’t even involve you with every ounce of reserve you have while your Church chose (wasn’t legally *forced to* … CHOSE) to bless the third marriage of a career politician to his second mistress. It makes no sense to me.

    Do you understand why your opposition at least appears to be rooted in hatred more than anything else when you willingly separate children from their biological parents by presiding over and blessing second and even third heterosexual marriages?

    1. Tell me where would draw the line against marriage, do you oppose sibling marriages or some other perversion after all they are not hurting anyone. You are imposing a perversion that the rest of us who want nothing to do with you or your partner. You will open the doors the countless lawsuits to make the rest of us recognize your so called marriage. I am so tired of queers infecting this society like a virus

      1. @Canisius: Queers? Naw … no hate here!

        In any rate, you ARE aware that Abraham had three wives, one of them his half-sister, Sarah, right? (She was the daughter of *his* father, Terah).

        Are you also aware that Lot (whom God declared “righteous”) got drunk and impregnated his daughters? King David had a multitude of wives (one also being his half-sister Abigail). So did Solomon (who actually had a whole harem of concubines as well). Yet, Solomon is credited with several books of Scripture, so God must have deemed him sufficiently “worthy” to act as a conduit for passing along His “inerrant” Word.

        If one wishes to look for other odd Scriptural ideas of what constitutes a “real marriage”, one need look no further than Deut 22:28-30 which insists that women who are raped should be forced to marry the men who raped them (well, after the rapist pays her father for his trouble).

        So tell me, should we base our laws on the Biblical models of marriage or not?

        In terms of lawsuits, as I said, I have no interest in that, unless you or anyone else were to attempt to publicly level accusations about me personally that are untrue, in which case I’d remind you that I can afford a very good attorney.

  4. As the mother of a daughter who struggles with a same-sex sexual attraction that was greatly influenced by a date rape during her freshman year of college, I know my daughter suffers with an emotional issue. It is because I Love my daughter, as I Love all my children, that I want her to learn to develop healthy and Holy relationships that are respectful of the inherent Dignity of the human person. Any act, including any sexual act that does not respect the inherent Dignity of the human person, is not an act of Love. Love is not possessive, nor is it coercive, nor does it serve to manipulate for the sake of self-gratification.

    God did not address same-sex sexual attraction, or any other disordered sexual relationships that exist outside of Marriage, because He made it clear what God’s intention for Sexual Love was from The Beginning: “Have you not heard that from The Beginning, God created them male and female, and for THIS reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh…” Only in a Marriage between a man and woman, united as husband and wife, can two become one body, one spirit, in Love, creating a new family. Our call to Holiness is a call to authentic Love.

    The Catholic Church, The Church that Christ Has founded, recognizes the personal and relational essence of the human person, who, from the moment of conception, has been created equal in Dignity, while being complementary as male and female, to live in Loving relationship, not as objects of sexual desire, but as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters…

    While there are many different types of sinful disorders, including sexual disorders, some more difficult to overcome than others, The Catholic Church has always taught that if we are willing to accept God’s Grace and Mercy, we can be healed and transformed through The Truth of Love, Our Savior, Jesus The Christ.

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