St augustine homosexuality

Homosexuality - 5

CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY AND HOMOSEXUALITY - 5
Sexuality and Friendship in Preceding Christianity

Vittorino Grossi
Professor of Patristics
Pontifical Lateran University, Rome

The problem of sexuality in recent years has fanned out to cover numerous questions, emphasizing more than ever before the phenomenon of homosexuality and lesbianism. This tendency is causing ever more insistent questions to be raised at the level of the mass media, especially with regard to those who live the consecrated life, in addition to the intense questions that are posed by the world of singles, whose number, according to statistics, is on the multiply . The way the phenomenon is existence interpreted is gradually leading to a mentality which closely links sexual outing with friendship, in the sense that the latter is thought to be already connected with sexual activity, even between those of the same sex. The problem, therefore, lies not so much in seeing sexual activity as the expression of a friendship, as in thinking it impossible for a group of women or men to live in friendshi

Augustine on Loving Too Much

Abstract

The article analyzes the friendship narratives contained in Books Two, Three and Four of Augustine’s Confessions, treating them not as biographical accounts, but as illustrations of Augustine’s philosophical ideas, namely, the fall of the soul and the role played in it by love. All those narratives seem to describe a homoerotic dimension of friendship. It is argued that making such homoerotic friendship, and not heterosexual devote between man and chick, an allegory of the fall of the heart enables Augustine to display better the mechanism of the fall, namely, its excessive intensity and the fact that it perverts a naturally good association of the soul with the whole of creation.

1 Introduction^¹

Since the fifties scholars have debated the notion of ‘autobiography’ and its relevance to the Confessions. John O’Meara claimed that “The Confessions is no autobiography, and not even a partial autobiography. It is the use of Augustine’s life and confession of faith in God as an illustration of his theory of man”.^²

What the Early Church Believed: Homosexuality

Justin Martyr

“[W]e have been taught that to display newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we contain been taught lest we should do anyone damage and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. . . . And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods” (First Apology 27 [A.D. ]).

Clement of Alexandria

“All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among th

Event

The Centre for Gender and Development Studies will host a Lunctime Seminar on Wednesday 16th April, from - p.m. in the Seminar Room. Dr. Geraldine Skeete will be presenting the seminar, "Unstifling a Spirituality/ Homosexuality at Bay in 'Spirits in the Dark'.

The following is the abstract for the seminar:

In the Christian worldview the metaphorization of homosexual acts as vile, sinful and unclean finds its genesis in Holy Scripture. The Church, therefore, has been a primary denouncer not of homosexuality per se, but of lgbtq+ acts, citing passages from both the Old and New Testaments. Ironically, in H. Nigel Thomas’s novel Spirits in the Dim the homosexual uses religion to achieve positive self-identification. The celibate protagonist, Jerome Quashee, initially harbours a strong rejection of mainstream Christianity,but eventually surrenders to a religion that embraces a syncretism of both Christian and African elements in order to uncover peace with his repressed homosexuality. He must ultimately undergo inner and outer resistance and struggles to