Keen's book on ethics and LGBT relationships is thoughtful, considerate

Keen's book on ethics and LGBT relationships is thoughtful, considerate
My experience with gay siblings and in-laws is that they simply leave the Church, especially when authors like this get close but stop short of a more courageous conclusion. Even some one, like me, offering a more courageous stance, does not keep them. It must come from the Church as a whole. Seeing the Church as arbitrary on sexual issues, especially ordination, has many Millenials simply leave.

Pastors and denominations who take a different tack have more success in keeping them in Church. See Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber's recent book, Shameless, for her experience and that of her congregation on dealing with sex.

In ancient Jewish attitudes, it has been argued that lying with a man as if a woman us a reference to and condemnation of, pederasty. The great anthropologist, Mary Douglass, in see book, The Abominations of Leviticus, sees all such morality as an attempt at forging a separate moral identity for the people in exile. It is not hard to see Catholic sexual teaching as a kind of religious branding as well.

Christ's injunction in leading children astray is much more likely about this issue than doctrinal difference, given the penalty he suggests. He does not ever suggest the same about anyone who has doctrinal diputes with him. Not finding the Kingdom of God was more about faith than orthodoxy. It still is.

Jesus does not endorse the view of Moses on complementarity. He simply references it. He goes on to say that marriage is part of leaving one's parents and creating a new family. That teaching is equally true for gay couples, as our experience as culture and Church indicates regarding next of kin issues at Catholic and secular hospitals alike.

To not accept gay unions infantaluzes them in the family of origin. Doing so is both insulting and wrong. That society recognizes marriage rights for gays and lesbians is progress on this road. To keep gays and their families, a Millennial Church will likely rethink its bad branding once their priests come of age as bishops.

The idea of marriage itself has changed. It is no longer seen as hierarchical. It is now a partnership. This busts the metaphor of the relationship of Christ with the Church and power relations in the Church itself.

In ancient times, virginity was idealised as part if asexuality. What is seen as holy in the modern Church may simply be a justification of difference. Asexuality is even rarer than homosexuality, which if you use statistical terms us equally deviant from the norm or abnormal.

The imposition of clerical sacred continence likely had more to do with emerging conformity to Hellenism, which spits on the graves of the martyrs who resisted it, from Jesus Maccabee to Jesus Christ to the Diocletian martyrs.

St. Jerome's pious musings about the Holy Family seem to be based on pious imaginings to justify a desired conclusion in much the same way that Helen found the true cross.

This should not be the basis for a moral code, especially when it is at variance with the text of scripture. Indeed, not kidnapping Salome (wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John), Jude (aka Thomas) and his brother Jude (note that, like Jesus, named for Maccabees) shows Mary as anti-Hellenist rather than perpetually virginal. That would be inconvenient in Hellenizing the Church.

It is time to escape Hellenistic morality, which at best is quaint and at worst perverse misogyny. See again clerical continence as a rejection of feminity in the Church and the dignity of women in sexuality.

Seeing relations with a woman as a bar toward celebrating Mass can only be sexist, as is the view of Augustine that sin comes to us from sexuality. In truth, the Genesis myth has nothing to do with disobedience and everything to do with blame. It is no wonder the Church once Charles Darwin and now Gloria Steinem.

Renewal in the Church will junk much of Church teaching on sex and power. God does not make junk. We created it ourselves.

It is past time to rent and, ordain women and have them presidecat gay weddings. All it takes is real courage and acceptance and yes, mocking the anti-gay apostolate is entirely intentional.

In recovery, we have a term that you must only change one thing to get sober - everything (lest we win a Darwin Award).