To preface this, there's no denying that Thomas is brilliant and one of the deepest Christian philosophers that one could possibly read. He's had a profound influence on the modern church in many positive ways, but that doesn't mean his word is gospel or that he's always right.
In the Cardinal Virtues, in the section on temperance, he discusses sexual ethics and places different sexual sins into different categories, and places them in a hierarchy of greater and lesser transgressions. The general categories are: simple fornication, seduction of a virgin, rape, adultery, incest, sacrilege, and sins contrary to nature. The specific sins he places under this last category are bestiality, homosexuality, and "use of an improper instrument or other beastly ways of copitulating [being kinky, essentially]." Now, we could debate whether or not homosexuality is a sin or which kinds should be considered unnatural and thus sinful, but that's not the problem here. The problem comes with degree of sin that he assigns to them. Here's the exact paragraph:
"Human beings in sexual sins contrary to nature transgress what nature prescribes about the use of sex, and so such sins are the most serious sexual sins. Incest is the next most serious because it is contrary to the respect one owes to one's relatives. The next most serious sexual sins involve injury to another (adultery, seduction of a virgin, and rape). Simple fornication is the least species of sexual lust."
Does anyone see a problem with this? He's placed homosexuality and kinks as a more serious transgression than rape. Does this not seem wrong to anyone else? Thomas' ideas and writings certainly cannot be dismissed lightly or without careful thought but this is one instance where I'm perfectly comfortable with simply saying Thomas is wrong. Though I'd certainly hope that most if not all would agree that consensual gay sex or kinky sex are not possibly worse than forced intercourse though violence or some other coercive means, I do wonder how much this kind of sentiment still exists in the church, even if it's subtle and seldom if ever admitted. I'm not really looking to get into any specific political debate because I don't think that's the root of this but we can ask, do we spend more time railing against homosexuality or promiscuity than we do fighting far worse injustices like rape, human trafficking, etc. What do you think? Is there some historical context to what he's saying that I'm not aware of and would make more sense of the idea? Has this sentiment survived to this day or have we moved past this?
Submitted January 13, 2017 at 03:55PM by Unknown
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