Christianity is not a democracy. Catholicism is not a democracy. “But X Catholics do it!” Is not good reasoning. “But X Catholics think it should be okay!” Is not good reasoning. Catholics do terrible things all the time, and even if most Catholics decided they wanted to change the Chruch’s teaching tomorrow, it still doesn’t matter.
Jesus didn’t say “Go and do what you think is right.” He said “Go and sin no more.”
Christianity that’s all about making people feel good isn’t Christianity. Christianity that’s all about making people feel bad isn’t Christianity either.
“The challenge was made that since there are “homosexual animals” it “proves” homosexuality is natural. But, given that a few animals seem to demonstrate what might be referred to as homosexual behavior, that in itself, certainly provides no conclusive or foundational basis for the acceptance of homosexual behavior in the human population.
It does not establish homosexual behavior as normal, healthy, desirable or even morally right. Animals can be born with two heads (my friend hatched such a snake a few years ago) and people can be born as Siamese twins, but such aberrations don’t make the condition normal, healthy, or desirable.
If one replies, as you did, that homosexuality is natural because it is found among animals, then we should notice that there are all sorts of activities practiced by animals that we as humans reject as repulsive. There is extreme cruelty among animals: mothers eating their young, mates eating their partners after mating (e.g., the Black Widow spider), animals eating their own feces and vomit (dogs and cats), or urinating on themselves (goats), etc.
Some animals have mates for a lifetime while others have sex with multiple partners indiscriminately. I could go on and on. What can we draw from these facts? That it is OK for people to practice such things because animals do? Heavens no! Just because animals do things that animals do does not make them our model of morality and accepted behavior.
We are in sad shape if we look to the creatures to search for our origins or to find a model for our behavior. Even worse, if we begin to use animals as our model, we as humans can then justify any deviant behavior since many forms of aberrant and repulsive behavior can be found among the animals that share our planet.
St. Paul was no fool 2,000 years ago when he wrote …
Well, Buddhism is just one big version of St. Peter’s aversion to suffering, as Fleming Rutledge notes:
“It seems likely that the versions of Buddhism so popular in America today are actually types of gnostic spirituality. The Dalai Lama continues to attract adoring crowds wherever he goes, but there are many points of difference between what he has to say and the theology of the cross. In an interview with Gustav Niebuhr of the New York Times, he sought to explain his appeal with this observation: ‘We all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering.’”
The big difference between Buddhism and Christianity is over the role of suffering: Buddhism says suffering is only to be avoided, while Christianity says it is something to be embraced as an act of love and redemption. These can’t be reconciled, and they are essential differences. Jesus says that Buddhism’s central message is “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” That’s why it’s both popular, and deeply wrong.
People who think that Christianity is supposed to save you from bad things happening to you have a very, very, extremely flawed understanding of the religion whose founder was publicly and painfully executed.
Wide Spread Interests 