Prologue

Again, thanks to Columcille for starting this thread. I'm hopeful about this opportunity to articulate and refine my thoughts. I'm always glad for the occasion to learn and to teach. (I try to always be open to both.)

Before I really dig in to the worldview ***umptions that have led me to full support of ****sexuality, I wanted to make a couple preliminary observations.

It's clear that we're not even starting on the same foot with regard to the sources of divine authority. I wanted to ask you about this statement:

Quote Originally Posted by Columcille View Post
If we are to ***ume each has equal authority in determining what God has to say as asdf has stated, I myself only adher to Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition; reasoning and experience without God's revelation is only man's reasoning and man's experience.
There's a lot of discussion in epistemological foundations that we'd need to delve into to really get to the bottom of where we disagree, but I'll try to shortcut that for now in the effort to get to the point. It seems to me that Experience and Reason are necessary for claiming to know anything about Scripture or Tradition. Scripture must be interpreted, right? We use the filters of Experience and Reason when we practice hermeneutics, when we research the culture, language, literary genres, etc, used by the biblical writers. Likewise, we temper our understanding of Tradition by the knowledge that even the greatest saint is a mere human, and to some degree a product of his/her time. Because they were a fallible human being, they inevitably had some areas of doctrine or praxis that failed to live up to perfection.

This does not negate the reliability of Scripture or Tradition as sources of authority, but simply to say that they don't come as simple, pre-packaged soundbytes of Truth-with-a-capital-T. They must be interpreted.

Now, I understand that at this point we could easily devolve into a Catholic-vs-Protestant debate, but I believe I can make my point without having to go there. I forsee the counterargument that for a Catholic, individuals do not have to make interpretive decisions - that the Church is the arbiter of Truth, thus the Church herself makes decisions about meaning and interpretation. However, that doesn't eliminate the "problem" of interpretation, it simply shifts it to the heirarchy of the Church instead of to the individual. Interpretive decisions still need to be made, and they are still subject to revision and clarification based on new evidence and new cultural understandings - in other words, fallible humans, of which the Church Universal is composed, still must employ Reason and Experience as valid sources of authority - if not on a primary level (what has God said?), then on a secondary level (how do we make sense of what God has said?).

William James speaks about the mystical experience being nontransferable. To say that I experienced God in a ****sexual act or to say I experienced God in a heterosexual act is mere opinion based on a perception of the individual. However, I believe life is an act of God, so in a heterosexual act where a baby is born... I believe such experience as shared by other parents attests to the miracle of life and from God...
This is odd to me, as it appears that you self-refute. Where you say "I believe...", is that not mere opinion based on your own perception?

****sexual couples do not get this from their unions. Hence experientially, they are defunct in this act.
Again, that is an argument based on your perception, which you just claimed was unreliable.

It is also defunct, because Tradition in the Catholic and Orthodox Church, view marriage as a Sacrament. ****sexuals have always been denied marriage in the Christian Tradition until some Protestant sects deny Tradition, deny Scripture (or reinterpret it).
Yes, well, we'll get there. Eventually.