Former “Spiritual Friendship” contributor Chris Roberts, who also gave a presentation at the November 2014 “Gay in Christ” conference, was selected as the editor of the official preparatory catechesis for the September 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, a Vatican-sponsored event.
https://stream.org/the-dangers-of-a-homosexuality-of-the-heart/
Maybe the first openly homosexual pope is the next big thing for Rome.
ReplyDeleteThese spiritual friendship people are nuts. Seriously nuts. I've written a certain amount about them at my personal blog. Eve Tushnet thinks it would be ducky if a man with same-sex attraction marries a woman but *simultaneously* has a kinship-creating "avowed friendship" with *another homosexual man*, who will (she explicitly envisages this) compete for his loyalty and attention with his wife. As long as they don't do sex acts or lust after each other and bad stuff like that. But they can feel "eros" for each other. Because "eros" isn't lust, so it's okay.
ReplyDeleteCraziness.
To be fair, they have definitely received pushback from within Catholicism, and Deacon Russell is Catholic and has been one of their most articulate critics.
But everybody wants so much to give them a medal for being celibate, and no one wants to "be mean to the poor,celibate gays," so this pernicious idea that there is a "positive gay identity" (as long as you don't have sex or engage in sexual fantasies) is being given a primary voice in Catholic circles in America. And I mean also orthodox Catholic circles. It's nuts.
I've toyed with the idea of doing a post about Wesley Hill's position. What I find striking is not that some "gay Christians" endorse it, since that's to be expected, but that it's been endorsed by some folks who ought to know better.
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