Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted’s Third Column on the Catholic Position on Homosexuality

PHOENIX, June 10, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Phoenix bishop Thomas J. Olmsted has published his third in a series of letters on homosexuality in the Phoenix diocesan newspaper, titled The Blessing of a Chaste Life. Valiantly, Bishop Olmsted addresses the delicate topic with candor and charity. He describes four difficulties that face a person with homosexual inclinations.  The first difficulty, he explains, is an “Intellectual confusion about whether sexual activity outside of marriage is always wrong.” Bishop Olmsted argues that popular culture has consistently portrayed sexual activity outside of marriage as the norm, lending to a growing degree of confusion for Catholics. He contends that sexual activity outside of marriage has been considered immoral for all religious traditions throughout history. The modern laxity results from the faulty idea that “Feelings, not truth, become criteria for whether something is right or wrong,” he says. “Some things are always wrong, no matter the times, the circumstances, or people’s intentions,” he asserts.  The popular push to have homosexual unions recognized as “marriages,” gives rise to the second difficulty, that society and Catholics have “Confused notions of what constitutes marriage . . .” Drawing on language used by Pope John Paul II in his writings on marriage and sexuality, Olmsted argues that “. . . marriage can exist only between a man and a woman because only the union of male and female can express the sexual complementarity created and willed by God for marriage.”  He argues that there is no justification for allowing civil unions for same-sex couples either. “. . . t is not unjust to deny legal status to ‘same-sex unions’ because such unions are essentially different from marriage,” he says. “Moreover, such a legal redefinition would harm the institution of marriage itself.”