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Monday 21 September 2015

"The Ways of True Love": Rome Conference in October Addresses Pastoral Needs of Homosexuals

This is interesting and good news.
Courage International and Ignatius Press announce their first Rome conference to address the pastoral needs of men and women who experience homosexual tendencies. Living the Truth in Love is a conference and resource event which will be held October 2, just before the start of the Ordinary Synod on the Family, at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas ("The Angelicum").
The theme of the conference will be "The Ways of True Love—Pastoral Approaches to Welcome and Accompany those Living with Homosexual Tendencies."....
Conference organizers intend the event and its resources to help those responsible for pastoral ministry to better understand each of these dimensions and to be better equipped to welcome and accompany men and women with homosexual tendencies, and ultimately to help them find the fullness of joy in their journey with and to Christ. 
Father Paul Check, executive director of Courage International, explains that the Living the Truth in Love conference distinguishes itself from other conferences by offering a fuller and more precise understanding of the human person. "Through his Church, Christ invites everyone to the abundant life (Jn 10:10). He offers his mercy ('neither do I condemn you'), and then he calls us to conversion of heart ('now go and sin no more'), and he gives us the grace to make this possible. In the Gospel, Jesus not only offers his compassion but he also calls us to conversion because he knows we will only be truly joyful and fulfilled when we live as he created us to be."
"So many of the current approaches to homosexuality... seem to limit themselves to 'acceptance' without recognizing Jesus' call to conversion. And they defend a 'right' to sexual intimacy, but they do not acknowledge God's design for marriage to which Jesus himself refers in Matthew 19." 
It's open to anyone, and will be, one presumes mostly if not entirely in English?

I have looked around for it a tiny bit, but can't find any reference to it, which may mean I'm making it up completely, but I think I remember seeing a television show when I was very little, perhaps one of those anthologies? because none of the faces in my memory are familiar from any other context.
Anyway, black and white, drama, an adult babysitter accidentally kills a small child who, as he is put to bed, begs for a blankie, or pillow, or stuffed animal or something, that he and she have been told he is not to have.

But he wanted it so badly!

Of course, the point was he had a life-threatening allergy. (It stuck with me because I had allergies, so of course at some level it terrified me, but in a fun, monster-movie way, since mine were dermatological, and never life threatening.)

But it has always informed my knowledge, again, even when I was a small child, that just because someone "wants" something, it is not "mean" to keep it from them or criticize their pursuit of it.

Chastity is not a punishment.

Let me say that again, CHASTITY IS NOT A PUNISHMENT.

I was thinking of that yesterday listening on the radio to a writer named Dawn Eden, speaking of the days when she embraced "outercourse."

Off-topic, she said, if I heard correctly that she is now a vowed celibate?
I'm curious about that, and how non-Catholic react to the knowledge.
The world insists on conflating celibacy and chastity, and will, no doubt continue to do so.

The conference's disputation of the so-called "right" to sexual intimacy is, I think, a very important point, the absence of any such right lost on many today.
In fact, the fought with tooth and nail insistence of such a "right" by the world has led to insane contortions of logic, (never mind the other kind,) as people try to reconcile, for instance, under-aged girls and boys "right" to sex, with the necessity of preventing the EXPLOITATION THAT IS A DIRECT RESULT OF THEIR CHAMPIONING OF THIS PURPORTED "RIGHT."

Go ahead, plaster over your guilt with lots of words, and nonsense, and moving subjects as far from verbs as possible, [emphasis below supplied.]
Article 2
The right to participation for
all persons, regardless of sex,
sexuality or gender
All persons are entitled to an environment that enables
active, free and meaningful participation in and
contribution to the civil, economic, social, cultural and
political aspects of human life at local, national, regional
and international levels, through the development of
which human rights and fundamental freedoms can be
realized.
All persons are entitled to participate in the development
and implementation of policies
that determine their
welfare, including their sexual and reproductive health,
without formal or informal barriers such as marriage
qualifications, conditions related to HIV status, or
discriminatory gender norms, stereotypes and prejudices
that exclude or restrict the participation of persons
based on ideas of
gender and sexual propriety.
Young people, who are frequently excluded, shall have
the right to be participants and protagonists in processes
of change in their societies
.
I wonder, would, say, your Grandma feeling ashamed of your behavior count as an "informal" barrier?
But speaking of nonsense, there are those who of course claim Grandma's is the shameful attiutde:
The idea of a sweet-talking carnivore enchanting, then devouring a gullible, aging caretaker only to gain access to a child’s bed speaks to the culturally-assumed pedo-sexual tendencies of men-at-large, but to note that and go no further, I merely subscribe to the common consensus that folk stories function best as didactic, cautionary tools for young readers unwise to the ways of the world, and exist chiefly to cater to the moral needs of children.  I prefer, instead, to question why Western society instituted a children’s literature genre for this purpose in the first place, and, at the risk of undercutting the moral effectiveness of these tales, to reevaluate what society considers to be morally reprehensible:  Do the Wolf’s tendencies to eroticize innocence denote a universal sexual evil American society pledges to eradicate even if it means castrating every last man who cops to a sexual preoccupation with youth, or is the object of the Wolf’s desire strictly forbidden only to the extent mainstream society refuses to grant children sexual autonomy?
But he wanted it so badly!

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