Galadriel
Well-Known Member
I am in full agreement with you ladies about guarding your heart/mind, eyes, and ears! Its hard out here for a saint!
I think the biggest difference between what @Galadriel & @JaneBond007 and I am saying is that in Catholicism, the predisposition/inclination toward a specific activity that is wrong is only wrong if one engages in the actual activity/sin. (Are their any other things categorized as disorders besides sexual sins in Catholicism?).
Found a great post entry by a person who suffers bipolar disorder who touches upon how suffering from a psychological disorder has parallel struggles to suffering from the disorder of SSA:
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Bipolar Disorder is, obviously to most people, a disorder. Same-sex attraction is, according to the Church, “objectively disordered.” The Courage apostolate has a good explanation of what objective disorder is and why people should not identify as “gay” or “lesbian.”
The term “objective disorder” is a philosophical term. It is used to describe homosexual attractions because such attractions can never lead to a morally good sexual act. It is objected that if a man lusts for a woman or vice versa, this too is an objective disorder. This latter example is not an objective disorder, because, if the man or woman learns to control their heterosexual attraction, and wills to express it in the natural state of marriage, it is a good thing.
In a nutshell, attraction to someone of the opposite sex is a natural thing that God puts into people for obvious reasons. Because of the Fall, people aren’t always born perfectly healthy. Anything about you (anything) can be “broken.” A baby born with a cleft palate is not less a person than any other baby. Thankfully, God has given the vast majority of us a natural desire to see such a child’s mouth repaired. Someone who has a desire to leave such a child in a mutilated condition, or to have their child’s mouth mutilated through surgery, has a desire that is “objectively disordered.” It is “objectively disordered” because it is neither natural to have such a desire, nor is it in keeping with God’s will for us.
So it is with same-sex attraction and also with suicidal ideation that people with Bipolar Disorder experience. Unfortunately, also because of human nature, if it became more popular for children to have a mutilated mouth, more and more people would begin to agree that it is bad to treat a child with cleft palate. They might even say it is “hateful” to say cleft palate is a “disorder” that should be treated. Thankfully, we are not in such a world with cleft palate, but we are in such a world with same-sex attraction, where it is considered “hateful” to say that same-sex attraction is objectively disordered. “I was born this way” is supposed to be enough to advance that argument, but children with cleft palate were also “born that way.”
Like people with same-sex attraction, people with Bipolar Disorder frequently deal with a disordered desire — suicidal ideation.
It is not natural, nor is it in keeping with God’s will, for someone to want to end his own life. The desire to end one’s own life is objectively disordered. It is also not natural, nor is it in keeping with God’s will, for someone to want to have sexual relations with someone of the same gender. Suicidal ideation and same-sex attraction are both objectively disordered.
I promise you, when I write about same-sex attraction, I am thinking of myself because I have Bipolar Disorder and suicidal ideation, so there is no “bigotry” involved in my discussion of this issue. The reason that I think it is important that I speak on this issue is because I have real-life experience with avoiding disorder and seeking God’s will instead of what my brain is telling me to do.
Desires that are disordered will lead us away from God. If I, as someone with Bipolar Disorder, want to kill myself, I am not thinking in accordance with God’s will for me. I cannot really help having suicidal ideation. It comes as the result of a physical condition that science still, thankfully, classifies as a “disorder.” People with Bipolar Disorder are at high risk for suicide. One in five people with Bipolar Disorder commit suicide. I would guess that close to 100% experience suicidal ideation (which is the equivalent of “same-sex attraction” philosophically speaking.)
Unfortunately, scientists no longer classify same-sex attraction as “disorder.” God still does, though, and He allows it to occur in people the same as He allows other disorders to occur in people, like cleft palate, so that His glory might be manifest in the world as people minister to them in their struggles, helping them to be the saint God made them to be, and as they carry their Cross in the world….just like people with Bipolar Disorder need people to minister to them and help them to be the people God made them to be...
http://www.catholicbandita.com/objective-disorder-and-the-cross/