Sexuality: homosexuality and trans-sexuality

The answers to the questions are edited by the theologian, Monsignor Costantino Di Bruno, Central Assistant of the Apostolic Movement.

The theme of the meeting: Sexuality: Homosexuality and Tran-sexuality

Q. Is homosexuality a pathology or a vice?

A. The problem is not whether homosexuality is a pathology or a vice. The point is that the exercise of male and female sexuality can only take place within an institution called marriage, as the sacred text reads: “A man shall leave his father and mother, he will join his wife and the two will be one flesh.” A homosexual cannot create one flesh, open to life, because the difference is missing. Ironically, if we created a society of only homosexuals after thirty years humanity would disappear because the difference which is constitutive, essential to the human family, is missing; there is no life without a difference. The exercise can be only within marriage: “Let no man divide what God joins together”, and how can one flesh be made where there is no difference, where there is no otherness, where there is not a female or male specificity. That is what faith tells us.

Q. Concerning the adoption of a child by a homosexual couple. Notwithstanding that a child must grow up in a family where a male figure and a female figure are present, when there is a case of an abandoned and lonely child, is it not perhaps preferable that he can be adopted by a homosexual couple?

A. This way of reasoning was typical of the Sadducees in Jesus’ time, that took the extreme case and posed it as a life principle. Adoption means that there is a couple, otherwise you cannot talk about a son; the couple is essential for a son to be born, grow, develop, and be able to walk in the truth of his nature. Every one of us has a natural, sacrosanct truth, and we must find the ways, institutions, and resources to meet the child’s natural truth; and the child natural truth is only one: that he needs a man and a woman, this is a necessity of life that if it is not respected the child grows bad and can also be marred in his nature. In a case of serious difficulty you can always ask a person to have care and attention of the child; and Christian charity is essential in this, for the help in these cases attests to our true Christian education. Even Jesus, when he came into the world could have been born of Mary alone; but God put a father and a mother beside him, and God through the maternal and paternal authority always acted and intervened in the family of Nazareth. Even if Joseph is only the father of adoption of Christ, however, he adopted him, he made him his, he made him grow up, he fed him, he was for Christ the Lord an example of real life every day for a child in order to grow needs an example, a complete love; a love in half is not enough because a love in half breaks the child. We must be able to provide the best, and it is our obligation to respect the truth of the nature of the other.

Q. How must we behave in a relation of friendship with a person who admits being a homosexual?

A. We Christians have a commandment that says: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. And in the neighbour there is distinction neither of friend, nor of foe, neither of man nor of woman, neither of sinner nor of holy person, neither of just nor of unjust, neither of a person who lives his sexuality in an orderly way, nor of another person that due to causes we do not want to judge does not live it. Respect, love, understanding in the law of the Gospel must be given to all. The Church is not against anybody, because she is the mother of all, they are all her children, because they all came from God. There is no discrimination. I never made discrimination as a confessor between sin and sin, but I have always taught the truth of God, because God’s truth must be taught. Homosexuality in itself is not a sin but it is its exercise outside of marriage, but this is also true for a heterosexual if he uses his sexuality outside the institution of marriage. The Church must also affirm the truth of God, and everyone in his freedom listens to it, in his responsibility can refuse it, but you need to know that diversity is essential to human life on earth. Even to physical life the difference is essential and a child who grows up with a father and a mother is not like a child who grows up with a single parent, he is missing a part of life which later can no longer be constituted. Here is why divorce is a plague that kills and upsets the future life. You may also not believe but nature wants to be respected in its laws, which come from the Lord; and the truth always works, as falseness; the truth produces fruits of life, falseness fruits of death. We must respect all according to the commandment of love, but understanding is not justification and excuse is not admission.

Q. Reading the CCC it is stated that each of us must recognize his own sexual identity. I ask you: how do you recognize and accept your own sexual identity? Can the non-acceptance of one’s sexual identity lead to homosexuality?

A. Each of us does not make his nature, he is given it. What must I do the moment life is given me? Life is not conceived in an instant, because every day it is given by the father and mother, so that from an early age, parents must help their children to accept themselves as they are. Sometimes even parents make mistakes because they do not accept their children as they are and who is a man wishes he were a woman and who is a woman wishes she were a man. Here is that through their desires parents can affect not to arrange that the child may accept himself according to his natural identity. The acceptance of identity does not only come from themselves but it comes from the family, it comes from the environment, it comes from the Church that has the task of explaining everything. Sometimes you are alone abandoned and this solitude does not help so that one can accept himself. But our truth is that we do not make ourselves and we must necessarily accept us, and this is the journey of a man. One must accept himself in his sexuality, in his limits, in his precariousness and in his poverty. Today we have this difficulty to welcome ourselves in the environment where we are and we wish we were somebody else, an exceeding that leads you not to welcome yourself as you are and you have to change sex. The reception is a law of life because it is the law of human nature. Modern society is educating not to accept yourself any more as you are, and this even in physical form, and all must be altered and changed. But nature has its laws. Sometimes medicine can help but it takes that saint limit beyond which you cannot go because I have to accept myself in my personality, the way I am.

From Salerno: Q. If in today’s society, on the one side there is the commercialization of sex and on the other there is the idea of considering sex almost like a shame. Do not you think that there exists an imbalance in the sphere of values ​​and commandments and there is often too much speaking of sex only in a negative way?

A. The problem depends on the little education and on a family and Church tradition that led to this emphasis. The holy virtue that we must always live is the equilibrium, the virtue that gives the right question the right weight. For a long period sexuality has been lived as a source of sin. We failed in the formation of man. All that is human must be trained, educated, elevated, must be purified, but with proper manners and good balance. You have to understand the growth of a boy, a girl, and it takes lots of patience, so much wisdom, so much spiritual ability and not think that all is sin, evil and it must be abolished. In the past, this education has been lacking until recently people were also afraid even to tell as a child how people were born, and for so long the training has been lacking and the child was formed in the street with that older guys that put malice in him with overtones. Humanity is sexual and J.P. II says it in his letter Mulieris Dignitatem (A woman’s dignity), he affirms that if male and female sexualities come into communion they do wonderful things. If then, everything is reduced to sex at that moment there is the death of sexuality, because sexuality is not just sex, it is the human person that is different and diversity contributes to life. We must be formed, we must say what human life is. Christ has this freedom, and takes the woman and puts her in his mystery of salvation. In the gospel, his dialogues with some women are beautiful, (the Samaritan woman, the sinner, etc …). Today, some women are treated as slaves, as servants, as objects and as only bodies. This is not sexuality, because sexuality is the nobility of the human being, because that is how God made the woman and wanted her so that she gave luster to our society with all that which is the relationship of her inner and outer wealth. So thought Christ and so we must also think. If sexuality is reduced only to that moment of sex or to that moment of passion it is wrong, because this is what the animal does and not man and the woman who must instead recompose that divided being, but not just for a moment but for life . Everyone is an asset to society and this wealth must be put in its proper place. In Scripture, God entrusted the government of the world to the man and woman together. In the Apostolic Movement who did the Lord entrust with the mission of doing anything? A woman. Let us reflect on the feminine genius of the inspirer, of the love and gentleness, let us observe her femininity as it reappears at any moment: a caress, a smile, a kind word and an encouragement. With a single word that springs from her woman’s heart she can save a meeting. Mrs. Mary is not a neutral object she is a woman who talks to you as a woman, who has the sensibility of a woman. Even in the Church we must reconstruct this unity is not in a physical but in a spiritual sense, otherwise the other half is missing. Unity must be reassembled.

From Salerno: Q. What decision has the Church taken on hermaphroditism?

A. When we speak of hermaphroditism we refer to people who are man and woman together. The Church did not even exclude these people from the sacrament of marriage. But before marriage she has always asked these brothers to make a choice, that of living only a part of themselves, because nobody is perfect and complete in himself and needs the other party in order to be recomposed. There is need for everyone to act in order to fulfill his spiritual and physical recomposition. Where this does not happen then one looks in the same sex for the complementarity that is lacking, and he goes with the same sexual part and he is up to no good. The Church is entrusted with the task of restoring man and woman in their spiritual dimension, and this must occur at every level.

Q. If two people of the same sex who love each other put aside the sexual sphere in their relationship and live only in the dimension of feeling, is it still sin?

A. All that remains in the order of friendship can be done. But marriage goes beyond friendship, because the marriage requires the difference of the sexes, otherwise there can be no marriage because the matter, the subject would be lacking. The subject of marriage is a man and a woman that are capable of the physical unity, otherwise the marriage is void because one of the essential purposes of marriage is lacking, the unitive one (the other essential purpose of marriage is the procreative one). You can always remain in the realm of friendship. The Church has never denied this, and also in the history of the Church the many male and female saints who have experienced a deep friendship testify it to us, they have always remained within the friendship, they have not transgressed.

Q. Does the Church dialogues with the associations of homosexuals and transgender people spread around the world? How should a young man behave If he discovers he is a homosexual?

A. The Church is a mother and she always helps, she never abandons anyone. Even at the level of ordinary pastoral, what does the priest do: he helps, illumines, lifts, makes one understand, leads and defends. The Church is the mother who goes towards a man, she is a doctor that heals. The problem is if the other wants to let himself be helped to walk by the truth of God. If one finds out he is a homosexual the first thing to do is not to dramatize. She tries to be understanding, to enlighten him, and he is helped in any way. Therefore, he is led to a capable person, an expert in the human sciences that can help well, and this is a holy thing. We must be gentle, talk and collaborate with those who may help well. One of the problems we have is the physical loneliness, spirituality solitude, moral solitude, psychological and operative solitude. The Ecclesistes says: “Woe to him who is alone,” and since one cannot do everything it is necessary to make use of the other. In the Church collaboration at all levels is being established with: physicians, psychiatrists, educators, psychoanalysts, and everyone helps with his special grace, and this produces many fruits and helps the brother to get up again. In our society there is a bad habit of not understanding the other in his problems, and a boy who were to find out he is a homosexual he gets over huge difficulties because the others laugh at him, humiliate him, tease him and that persons becomes withdrawn and may fall into the wrong hands. That is why we must work together.

Q. The CCC says that immoral acts are disordered. What does that mean?

A. All of creation is ordered and in the creation of man God has also placed another further order. The disorder is getting out of this wonderful symphony that God has ordained. Today, there is so much disorder. Sexual intercourse is between a man and a woman within marriage, otherwise we are in disorder.

Indications for the preparation of the meeting provided by Monsignor Costantino Di Bruno:

– Catechism of the Catholic Church from number 2331 to number 2391

– WYD 2005: The world of young people: who are they? What are they looking for?

– Genesis 19, 1-29.

– Romans 1, 24-27.

– 1 Corinthians 6.10.

– 1 Timothy 1.10.