It Must Be Understood - The Catholic Church Will Never Never Never Accept Homosexuality As

[TheMastersNemesis]

NOTHING but sin and depravity. Just like it will always imply that women are responsible for the fall in Eden. That is their core believe set in concrete, diamond, granite, or whatever.

I was raised Catholic and spent 16 1/2 in Catholic schools. They will never change their basic dogma on that issue. In the Catholic mind homosexuals are condemned to hell because of who they are. The only way they can achieve grace is celibacy or abstinence or revert to being straight. Period.

[Cleita]

1. I think it can change. It was a reaction after the fall of Rome to

reject all things Roman that the Christians considered depraved like bathing for instance and exotic sexual practices. There is no real dogma that can't be changed if Jesus Christ said nothing about it and he didn't. Of course if the head of the Church is a life long fire breathing homophobe, it won't happen in his lifetime or as long as he is Pope.

I was raised in Catholic school and had to memorize the Catechism like all good Catholic children and it was pretty black and white in concept. However, when I got to college and had to take theology and Church history, as well as philosophy and the like among my courses, a whole different picture emerged on how the Church came to adopt certain dogmas and practices and it would seem very little is chiseled in stone.

It would take calling a Vatican Council, like Vatican II and a major rewriting of laws by the Curia and then finally probably a Papal Encyclical to seal the deal, to make it happen, but I believe it could be done. It also would take a movement by millions of Catholics both, lay and clerical, to pressure the Vatican to even visit the idea of another Vatican Council, but it's not impossible. However, I feel this Pope will not be the one who will want to do it.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. Hopefully You Are Right.

My experience is that dogma was developed in the early church based on the scholars of that time. The philosophy behind the dogma the church teaches would have to be completely redone. The string of logic behind their teaching in moral theology calls homosexuality unnatural. They could change the underpinning of Catholic moral theology, but I do not see them doing it.

[Cleita]

3. That's the big problem, forcing them to do it, yet

I have seen change in my lifetime, when activists pushed the Church, to make the changes. For one thing being able to say Mass in a modern language instead of Latin. Freeing the nuns and monks from the cloister and allowing them to wear modern clothes was a really huge step from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. There were other changes from Vatican II but the Church did an abrupt halt with the death of John XXIII and then the conservatives started taking over again.

[KittyWampus]

5. I think it will change. Let's be optimistic! We lived to see an African American POTUS.

and might see a woman elected as well.

Great things can happen.

[Lex]

4. And the Catholic Church can continue to die off.

Fine by me.