THANK YOU.

A television director a good friend of mine works with is both very gay, and VERY Catholic.

Whenever I start in on a line of questioning it's not very long before the logic starts to break down. I don't think they think about it too hard, and many view themselves as flawed humans but still loved by Jesus.

Personally, I refuse to believe I am flawed in any way, shape or form.

I think there's a capacity — especially among those who are "cultural Catholics", raised in the Church from families that are Catholic for several generations — to see the church as an institution that isn't synonymous with what its heirarchical leadership is saying. In this sense, it's like the fact that I'm an American: despite the fact that I disagree both with many of the policies and beliefs of the government at any given moment and aren't too high on some of the core aspects of American-ness, I don't see myself ceasing to be American anytime soon, even though I could theoretically do so.

Such an attitude towards Catholicism was probably easier to hold in times and places where virtually everyone was Catholic, by law or convention; the Church was just one more background institution, and you took from it what you could and ignored the rest. What the current pope has said fairly openly is that he wants to reconfigure the church for the new world where you actually have to choose to be Catholic, which in practice means catering to its firmest devotees by enforcing the dogma more strictly. I think it will be harder and harder to be an Andrew Sullivan kind of Catholic going forward.

This is just off the top of my head, but it does seem that Catholic dogma tends to paper over the cracks in its cosmology with the most preposterous magical thinking — e.g., transubstantiation or the complicated political hierarchy between the individual and God. Basically, then, the more impossible and absurd something seems, the better, because it's evidence of how important faith is.

So a same-sex attraction feels natural and normal, but the Church infallibly teaches that it's sinful. Both these things can't be true. But if you're a Catholic, they can be, because Catholics get to do impossible things. Faith.

It should be noted here that the Catholic church is not alone in espousing this malarkey, but they have had a couple of thousand years to polish it.

"Paper over the cracks in its cosmology" is very good. And yeah, the deep emphasis on faith starts at the very beginning, with Christ telling Thomas, "Blessed are they who have not seen, but have believed." But I'll bleat anyway.

Belief in transubstantiation, however preposterous, is rooted in Jesus' own words in the Gospels ("This is my body," etc.) and in the letters of Paul. if you believe that Christ was God, I think you have to take His claim seriously.

(Of course, I'm sure that lots and lots of people think the claim that God became man at the Incarnation and redeemed fallen humanity through His death and resurrection is the most preposterous sort of magical thinking as well.)

As for the complicated political hierarchy between the individual and God, I think that comes to us from our elder brothers in the faith. Jesus was a Jew, and belief in His divinity means accepting that His Father is the same God referenced in the Old Testament.

My point: I don't think the Church looks for/delights in claims that seem absurd or impossible. I think it starts with belief in the apostles' claim that Christ was raised from the dead and works from there.

I'm not about to throw down on the question of same-sex attraction, but I will say that there are plenty of things that feel natural and normal (and really pleasant) which the Church teaches are contrary to nature and/or God's will. (Hence PinkPundit's mention of sadomasochism below.) The Church calls it fallen nature, and claims that it's precisely what Christ came to redeem.