I HAVE observed during my long stay in the Philippines that Filipino men and women have a tendency to be feminine. I think this might be the reason why Filipino people are generally considered by foreigners to be friendly people. Compared to Americans and may be some Europeans, who are more straight, Filipinos are looked at as very friendly and kind.
Being gay is being homosexual. The official teaching of the Church says that homosexuality is an objective disorder. Personally I believe that God does not create disorders. How many priests and even bishops in the Philippines are clearly gay? Do they have to live with an objective disorder in themselves? Is it “unnatural” to be gay, to be a homosexual?
Clearly, the Church must change its teaching on homosexuality. The Church’s teaching on marriage also is that the purpose of marriage is procreation. Of course, two men or two women by themselves cannot procreate.
Connected with this issue are questions like: is the ordination of women wrong and if so why? The Anglican Church has women priests and even women bishops. Is the Anglican Church not a real Church?
It is bluntly stated in the document Persona Humana, issued in 1975 by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with paper approval, that a homosexual orientation is “intrinsically disordered and homosexual acts are always gravely sinful. The purpose of marriage is procreation: that is the end product for which it is designed, its “finality.”
Something else: the war of artificial contraception, sex between persons of the same gender, masturbation and so on – is contrary to natural law and so prohibited.
The Anglican Church doesn’t actually believe this. Since the Lambeth Conference in 1930, it has allowed contraception. Sex was uncoupled from procreation and it officially abandoned the natural law argument about “finality.”
My question is also: can two men or two women not go to bed with each other? What they do together in bed is a private affair. That is nobody’s business. They have to follow their own conscience.
In this age of ecumenism, I believe the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church and even the other non-Catholic Churches, like the Lutherans, the Pentecostels, the Jehova Witnesses, etc. should go into dialogue with each other on those above mentioned issues.
Virtually no Anglican believes in Humanae Vitae, and fewer and fewer Catholics do either. Natural law has lost its grip in both cases. So if there is a way forward, it has to be through a much more fundamental and radical appraisal of what the “tradition” – as represented by traditional Catholic teaching for instance as in Persona Humana – has had to say. Then freed from those mental shackles, the Church of England could move on. At the very least it would know what it doesn’t believe.
People who believe in one God should reflect together on this issue: Who is God really, where does He come from?
(For your comment email: nolvanvugt@gmail.com)
