In case you needed any proof, here’s more evidence that the 1997 document from the US bishops on homosexuality called “Always our Children” was a disaster in implementation, this article from the gay activist group Human Rights Campaign provides it.
We are given the example of a formerly non-Catholic gay man who was so affirmed in his homosexuality by his Catholic pastor that he converted. Note that he received no approbation from his pastor about the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. (Is the baptism valid if the person really doesn’t intend to hold to the Church’s teachings he’s professing? Probably, but it’s still disturbing.)
And then there’s the nun who was involved in AIDS ministry and felt so bad for all the gay men who were dying and felt rejected by the Church. And rather than help them to understand how and why they had placed themselves outside of the Body of Christ, but not outside of God’s love, rather she told them the lie that their homosexuality isn’t a sin.
And how are these two people connected? Through a group called ... Always Our Children. Since the document was so much pablum, and gave such a watered-down version of the Church’s teaching so as not to give offense, even those who take the name of the document for their own recognize its weakness, not in being too soft, but in being confusing. Even they recognize that it is trying to play both sides and doing justice to neither.
I take David’s point in the charitable way he intended it. But I wonder if it’s a distinction without a difference. In the context of what I was writing about these aren’t people who are stuggling with their same sex attraction. In fact, I make a distinction between SSA and homosexuality. The former is a temptation that people fight, the latter is an ideology that people embrace. When I’m writing about the topic I’ll use those terms in those ways.