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Question
Father Angelo,
I am a 26-year-old boy, raised in a Catholic Christian family (not particularly practicing but still principled), but from the beginning of adolescence until two years ago I have been far from the Faith, both for adhering to atheist visions of the world (scientistic and materialistic) and for my homosexual inclination.
But for two years, thanks to a colleague adhering to Communion and Liberation, I decided to return to that Father that I had denied, I resumed attending the parish and a biblical course, managing to love God who became man for me too, loving me in spite of everything. I am also reading many lives of Saints and I am developing a Marian devotion also thanks to a trip to Lourdes.
But I come to the point: for a year and a half I have decided not to have sexual intercourse, also because I understood that it is precisely the LGBT gender ideology that makes us homosexuals victims of a cultural-ideological project aimed at relativizing everything by destroying what is natural and imposing pansexual lifestyles. Nevertheless I wonder, since I have gay friends with whom I speak anyway (and believe me, many of them would like to be Christians): according to the teachings of the Church, as a person with homosexual inclination, may I cultivate (if I were to meet a man to fall in love with) a (sexual too) relationship with a man?
Thanks for the answer you will give me, please remember me in your prayers.
Luca
Answer
Dear Luca,
1. First of all, I am delighted with the newfound faith which for you was an authentic liberation from every point of view.
CL’s friend was the instrument that God used to free you from what you defined in a very precise way with these words: “I understood that it is precisely the LGBT gender ideology that makes us homosexuals victims of a cultural-ideological project aimed at relativizing everything by destroying what is natural and imposing pansexual lifestyles“.
2. Now you are finally back home.
When you live in communion with God it is as if you were at home.
Saint Catherine of Siena says that we are like the fish that is in the sea and the sea that is in the fish.
Out of the water the fish gasps and dies.
So also when you live without God.
3. You live your communion with the Father within a community, the parish, which is an authentic spiritual family.
A spiritual family that drinks from an inexhaustible source of life, light and love.
What else but this is the bible course you are taking?
It is the same thing you live by participating in the sacraments, that is by encountering God who comes into you.
God the Father comes into you as the source of life.
The Son, who is the divine Wisdom, comes into you as a source of light.
The Holy Spirit comes into you to dwell permanently as a source of love.
4. The parish is a spiritual family in which you live in communion with many people who live on this earth and with many others who live in Heaven.
Reading the life of the saints takes you to an atmosphere of Paradise, which is the environment of God.
I can intuit the joy you feel in being in communion with the Saints.
It is an experience that helped Ignazio di Loyola to completely change his life.
He had noticed the enormous difference he felt when he indulged in the imagination of courting ladies and when he immersed himself in reading the life of the Saints.
The courtship of the ladies at the time exalted him, but then left him empty.
Identifying himself in the lives of the Saints, on the other hand, brought a joy that persisted and grew.
5. You now understand well that communion with God through sanctifying grace is incompatible with mortal sin, especially with sins of impurity.
You have experienced it firsthand.
And that is why you feel liberated now.
6. Those who have not had these experiences of yours restrict themselves to repeating the usual slogans and finally hoping that the Church “opens up”.
But openness to the supernatural and to grace requires purity.
Those who live permanently in impurity and are a slave to it do not even know what the experience of grace is.
Just as God says in his divine revelation: “Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh” (Rom 13: 13-14) and “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul” (1 Pt 2:11).
7. Coming now to your specific question: nothing prevents authentic friendships from being cultivated even between homosexual people.
Friendship arises from the fact that there is an affinity of views and interests.
The ancients said “amicitia aut similes invenit aut facit” (friendship either finds or makes alike).
Especially since the homosexual orientation (although it is not according to the intrinsic meaning of sexuality) is not a sin.
8. You then ask me if according to the teachings of the Church it is possible to have a sexual relationship as well.
Well, the Magisterium of the Church says that “according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality” (Persona Humana, 8).
Procreative abilities have been given to us by God for a particular purpose, which is intrinsic to sexuality itself.
Thus, the letter Homoxessualitatis Problema, reminds that “it is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good” (HP 7).
9. It should be noted that it is not simply a question of contradicting some rules (which among other things are the ways of God that lead to Heaven) but of maintaining or instantly losing the supernatural experience of grace, that is, of life-giving and sanctifying communion with God.
It is the most beautiful experience you have had so far.
I assure you of my prayers so that you may keep this communion and increase it more and more.
This is why we are in this world.
I wish you well and bless you.
Father Angelo