Stances of Faiths on LGBTQ+ Issues: Roman Catholic Church
BACKGROUND
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the planet, with approximately 1.2 billion members across the globe. With its origins in the earliest days of Christianity, the Church traces its leadership––in the person of the Pope––to St. Peter, identified by Jesus as “the rock” on which the Church would be built.
The Catholic Church in the United States numbers over 70 million members, and is organized in 33 Provinces, each led by an archbishop. Each bishop answers directly to the Pope, not to an archbishop. Those Provinces are further divided into 195 dioceses, each led by a bishop. At the base of the organizational structure are local parishes, headed by a pastor, appointed by the local bishop. The Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States meets semi-annually.
As part of a global company with its institutional center at the Vatican, the Catholic Church in America is shaped by worldwide societal and cultural trends. It is further shaped by leadership that is entirely male, with women excluded from the priesthood and thus from key leadership roles.
LGBTQ+ EQUALITY
ON S
How Should Christians Respond to Gay Friends or Family Members?
Caleb Kaltenbach (M.A. ’07) is an alumnus of Biola’s Talbot School of Theology, lead pastor of a large church in Simi Valley, Calif., and a married father of two. He’s also an emerging voice in the discussion of how Christians should engage the LGBT community. That’s because Kaltenbach has an insider perspective, having been raised by a dad and mom who divorced and independently came out of the closet as a male lover man and a female homosexual. Raised in the midst of LGBT parties and pride parades, Kaltenbach became a Christian and a pastor as a youthful adult. Today, he manages the tension of holding to the traditional biblical teaching on sexuality while loving his gay parents.
Kaltenbach’s unique story is detailed in his new manual Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction and landed him on the front page of the New York Times in June. Biola Magazine reached out to him to talk about his guide and his perspective on how Christians can finer navigate the complexities of this issue with correctness and grace.
In your publication you say that it’s time for Christians to own the issu
This may not be a huge surprise, but we receive A LOT of questions via email, social media, and in person on Tuesdays. What courteous of questions? Well, anything from, Should I obtain back together with my boyfriend or girlfriend? to What should I carry out next with my life? to How should I lovingly engage those in the LGBTQ community?
In this blog series “Ask The Porch,” we’re answering real-life questions that we’ve received from you. Disclaimer: our highest priority is always to first respond with biblical counsel from God’s Word. The hardest questions to answer are those in the “grey” areas. So we’ll do our best to share our biblically-informed opinion, but understand that we may possess different convictions on the non-essentials (vs. the essentials).
Now, let’s dive into the question for this week emailed in from an online listener:
Can a Christian be gay?
“Hey David,
I am a Christian and possess struggled with same sex attraction since childhood. I would not wish it on anyone. It’s very hard being alone and longing for someone to hold hands with. I want the chance to love and have someone love me back. I want to live a life for God but I also don’t crave to live on this earth alone.
Should a Christian hold gay friends?
Answer
In considering whether a Christian should have queer friends, we depend on to ask ourselves whether Jesus would have gay friends. The New Testament nowhere identifies any specific individuals as homosexuals. So, there are no records of Jesus interacting with a lesbian. We know from the gospels, however, that Jesus loved everyone He encountered. He did not consider one team of people less deserving of the gospel than any other. In truth, He went out of His way to deliver a demon-possessed man (Mark 5:1–20) and carry hope to an immoral woman from a despised ethnic background (John 4). He healed lepers (Luke 17:10–19), pardoned an adulteress (John 8:1–11), and ate with tax collectors (Mark 2:16)—all of whom were considered unfit for the company of righteous people. We can assume Jesus would have spent hour with homosexuals as well.
Homosexuality was a sin in Jesus’ day, and it is a sin now. God’s standards of human sexuality have not changed. However, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). We learn from the gentle way He dealt with sinful people that He would own offered homosexuals the same compa
What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?
What Does The Bible Tell About Homosexuality?
Introduction
For the last two decades, Pew Research Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. For many Christians, one of the most frequently first-asked questions on this topic is, “What does the Bible say about attraction to someone of the similar sex?”
Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation (for example, the term homosexual wasn't even coined until the slow 19th century) for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.
Before we can spring into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a concise but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.
What is the Bible?
For Christians to whom the Bible is God’s very written word, it is widely understood that God produced its contents through inspired
