Full Question
My daughter is having a same-sex marriage. Everybody says that, as her father, I should go. What do you have to say?
Answer
Your daughter certainly needs to know that you love her, and it’s important that you do all you can to maintain communication with her. But part of loving her is not affirming her in gravely immoral decisions. Some would say you can go to the ceremony but express your disapproval otherwise. However, there is the maxim that “actions speak louder than words,” and if “everyone” is telling you to attend—I infer that doesn’t include your parish pastor—it’s all the more important that you not provide public support for your daughter’s decision. She will benefit from your witness, as will many others.
While U.S. law recognizes such relationships as “marriages,” God and the Catholic Church never can. Scripture and the Church’s magisterium otherwise teach that homosexual sex—whether between two men or two women—is an intrinsic moral evil, let alone attempting to publicly sanction such a relationship. And the Church distinguishes between same-sex attraction (SSA) and homosexual acts (see CCC 2357-59). Only the latter are condemned.
We can also affirm the genuine love that two people with SSA have for each other, but the attempted sexual expression of that love can never be legitimized. The obvious lack of bodily complementarity illustrates that one need not invoke God to make a compelling argument against homosexual sex. And trying to live chastely but as an exclusive “couple” is not recommended, either.
I suggest that you, your daughter, and others concerned view the documentary Desire of the Everlasting Hills, which the faithful Catholic apostolate Courage has produced. I also invite you to read a commentary I have written on ministering to those with SSA. God bless your efforts.
By Tom Nash
This post is a good example of the harm from religion. The Catholic Church is against same-sex marriage solely because of its Tradition based on dogma. Science has shown that sex and gender are not binary, but both are on continuums. I attended the same-sex wedding of my Catholic-raised niece and it was well-attended and beautiful. It is amazing how reality is so much clearer without the fog of unsupported dogma.
This post saddens me greatly. Love is love. I think you should attend your daughter’s wedding. I fear you will regret it one day. I fear you will lose your relationship with your daughter. As a parent, you should have and show unconditional love for your children. Attending her same sex wedding will deeply express your unconditional love. Your daughter has to make it right with her maker. That is up to her. And I believe that God is shining down on her brightly. Go to the wedding. Celebrate your daughter’s union with another person that she loves.
Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning made them MALE and FEMALE, for this reason a MAN shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one?
Do you know what dogmas are?
You talk about Catholic tradition, but you and others with the same ideas as yours are creating your own tradition.
You or anyone else can’t prove God’s existence in the way you want Him to be proven. In simple language, you’re looking for God in the wrong direction.
Bishop Barron talks about that kind of searching for God as “scientism”.
You try to prove everything thru science. But it’s wrong to reduce all knowledge thru science. Reducing all knowledge thru science is scientism. Because there are so much things that science can’t prove. You forgot about philosophy. Philosophy is also finding truth but not using the scientific way.
What is the scientific way? Observation, formulate hypothesis, do lots of testing, then draw a conclusion.
If anyone reduce all knowledge to this kind of thinking then they won’t reveal so many things. All they have are facts that are still and constantly changing. (Pluto is now a planet and dinosaurs now have feathers) With all the things that science reveal, it still can’t prove God or anything so definitely. If you have faith science that much then everything that Hamlet, shakespeare, aristotle or other great minds that has revealed, not thru science but thru philosophy, about the human heart and human mind and soul would be discredited.
If you want to stick with science, well, science has the burden of proving God, not religion. Because from the start, even before science came around, people first believed in a god or a superior being.
Science and religion are two different beliefs but they don’t contradict each other. Science arguably answers the “how”, religion on the other hand answers the “why”.