<p><strong>To the editor:</strong></p>
<p>I read the editorial piece by John Krull on August 22 ("A tale of selective indignation at southside school") and came away with several concerns. I am not a Roman Catholic; I am a Presbyterian. Presbyterians come from the Reformed expression of the Protestant Christian faith. I do not subscribe to Roman Catholic doctrine, but along with other believers in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, I share much in common with it.</p>
<p>Let me be clear from the start: Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor includes all of our neighbors; however, love does not compel us to endorse all behaviors.</p>
<p>The sexual revolution has “progressed” within the last half a century or so, gifting us “freedoms” such as casual sex (the freedom to treat each other like disposable objects), a large increase in divorce (and children free to live in broken homes), children born outside of wedlock (for many, great freedom of poverty and a less positive family environment), millions of aborted babies (denying them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as well as emotional and physical damage to women) and overwhelming social costs and the toll on the human spirit.</p>
<p>The latest inroad of the sexual revolution is the overt social approval of homosexual practice, including marriage.</p>
<p>The article challenges the Catholic Church’s position on homosexual behavior and marriage by saying that it is inconsistent and therefore must surrender its theology to current societal norms. I do not know anything about the case he mentioned, but based on what it said, I would agree with his assessment of the coach, but do not see its relevance in this case. There is no case made to choose one expression of the secular culture as the only, or best, alternative.</p>
<p>What happened in Roman bathhouses without official sanction, the article asserts, should now be overtly accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. But why stop there? Why not sanction the other expressions of the sexual revolution as models for parochial school children? Why not publicly condemn all those who believe that fornication or adultery is unfaithful, and those who practice it are not eligible to lead in a church which says that it is unfaithful behavior? Why not publicly condemn all those who believe that sexual expression is limited to the heterosexual marriage covenant? Why not publicly condemn those who believe that human beings are more than mere animals, defenseless victims of their hormonal urges, without the dignity of moral or spiritual choice? And if we are left without real choice, why condemn pedophilia, rape, incest and the like?</p>
<p>Homosexual practice is deemed sinful by most Christian faith communities. This is not to condemn people who practice those behaviors, but to reject those behaviors as faithful. By my observation, the few denominations, including my own, which have bended to cultural pressure have been informed more by the sexual revolution than by accurate biblical insight. Most societies look to their religious institutions to bless their beliefs and behaviors. Perhaps this explains why people believe churches to which they do not belong should endorse their culture.</p>
<p>The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. The New Testament clearly states that homosexual practice is a sin. The assertion that it is ambiguous is a false and isogetical reading of the text. Mark 7 contains what form critics call a vice list. In this list Jesus cites behaviors he considers sinful. In addition to thefts, murders, greediness, deceit and pride, he cites sexual sins, frequently translated as fornications, adulteries, and lewdness. The word translated as lewdness includes homosexual behavior. The Epistles explicitly cite homosexual practice as sinful activity. At one point, the words are so graphic as to describe male homosexual activity in both the receptive and invasive functions.</p>
<p>Those who try to assert that each of these instances refer only to prostitution have nothing to substantiate that restricted meaning in the text. Using the same exegetical method would render fornication and adultery as sins only for those engaged in prostitution. Finally, in the Gospels Jesus tightens, not loosens, the Hebrew Bible’s boundaries concerning sexual behavior, including intentions as well as actions.</p>
<p>Religious and irreligious folks who condone homosexual or other sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual marriage, simply and honestly do so by rejecting the authority of the Bible, not by denying what it says. They believe that they have more insight than 2,000 years of critical Biblical exegesis, or perhaps, because they simply want to do what they want to do.</p>
<p>The counselor has been presented a contract each year, which basically requires her to uphold Catholic teachings, which I would assume includes honesty. Now that those responsible for upholding Catholic teachings, as well as the students she is to guide, have discovered this, what are they to do? Endorse a decade and a half of deceit or defiance or dishonesty and hold it up as an example? Of course, rather than sit as judge and jury over a church to which he does not belong, the author may simply choose to which school he sends his children or his grandchildren, and the rest of us may do the same.</p>
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