папата даде благослов, од Полска дојде контра.. еве интересни мислења од еден хрват
Luka Trkanjec
Philosoraptor & Polymath
11h
Why is Pope Francis approving the blessings of same-sex unions? If I read about Sodom & Gomorrah correctly (and I did), that's approving sodomy, and it's an affront to God.
Other answers here have already explained how the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has little to do with homosexuality, or really any sexuality at all. So I’ll hijack this question to ramble about another Biblical story, which I think tells a lot more about what Christian attitudes toward sexual minorities should be, but which rarely gets mentioned in the screaming matches of modern-day culture wars. I’m talking about the story of the story of Ethiopian eunuch, and his baptism.
So in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, we read that after Jesus ascended into Heaven, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the very first Christian community in Jerusalem, Apostle Philip was soon inspired to go into Gaza, and meet a very important person there:
Then the angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and head south along the road that leads from Jerusalem down to Gaza, the desert road.” Therefore, he got up and set out. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, an official at the court of the Candace, that is, the queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was now returning home. As he sat in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join that chariot.” When Philip ran up, he heard him reading from the prophet Isaiah, and he asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless I have someone to instruct me?” Then he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. This was the Scripture passage he had been reading:
“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter;
like a lamb that is silent before its shearer
he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who will be able to speak of his posterity?
For his life on earth has been taken away.”
Then the eunuch said to Philip, “Please tell me, about whom is the prophet speaking—about himself or someone else?” And so Philip, starting with this text of Scripture, proceeded to explain to him the good news of Jesus. As they were traveling along the road, they came to some water. The eunuch said, “Look, here is some water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” [And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” The eunuch said in reply, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”] Then he ordered the chariot to stop, and Philip and the eunuch both went down into the water, and he baptized him.
Now, as the pious Christian paintings like the one above try to assure us, nothing funny nor… queer… is going on here: just two ripped nude men, jumping into the first pool of water they find, splashing at each other and getting all wet in a moment of ecstatic joy. Except, of course, that one of them isn’t really a man, is he? The eunuch, as the modern field of gender studies teaches, is a non-binary; a person who has undergone some archaic form of gender-altering surgery. And while Bible doesn’t tell us anything about his (hers? its? theirs?) sexual orientation, it doesn’t take a particularly dirty mind to figure out what eunuchs of 1st century AD were mostly used for in that regard. That he is specifically named as an official of the Ethiopian queen, in charge of her treasury (which in the ancient world meant stuff like wardrobe, jewelry, shoes, perfumes, etc.) furthers this enduring stereotype of an effeminate homosexual dandy. So in short, one of the very first converts to Christianity - and a future saint according to the lore of older churches - was a transgender gay black African.
And this is important for two reasons. For one, it makes a point that, as soon as Christianity began to spread from its original circle of Jesus’ immediate disciples and kinsfolk, it began to accept persons as radically different from them as imaginable. Ethiopians were seen as people from the farthest ends of the earth by the Greco-Roman world, to which Judea also belonged at the time (Aithiops really meant “Black-face” in Ancient Greek, and originally included Indians and all such dark-skinned nations living in the faraway tropics); and eunuchs were likewise seen as a complete cultural Other to the heteronormative patriarchal Jewish society, out of which Jesus and his followers sprang. In fact, Torah specifically pairs up eunuchs and foreigners as two types of people to be excluded from community of believers:
No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting can enter the assembly of the Lord. No one who is illegitimate [i.e., who has a foregin parent] can enter the assembly of the Lord, nor can his descendants to the tenth generation enter the assembly of the Lord.
This rule in Deuteronomy (which, after all, means “Repeated Law” in Greek) was obviously derived from the well-known “no-homo” law of Leviticus 18:22 (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.…”), to which quite a few contemporary Christians still cling on for dear life. The assumption was that eunuchs and foreginers, not being “real men” like the pure ancient Hebrews, were most prone to all that forbidden emasculating sex; hence, it was best to preemptively exclude them from community altogether, lest they corrupt everyone with their sensual effeminate ways (really, it’s amazing how homophobia was always all about suppressed homosexuality).
This kind of sanctimonious discrimination, however, was already protested by some of the more humane Old Testament prophets, namely Isaiah. One of his prophecies reads almost like a rebuke of this law in Deuteronomy, telling how in the Messianic age to come, no one should even think about excluding eunuchs and foreigners from “the assembly of the Lord”:
Let no foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say: “The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.” Permit no eunuch to believe: “I am nothing but a dried-up tree.”
For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who observe my Sabbaths, who choose to do my will and hold fast to my covenant,
I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will never be effaced.
The foreigners who pledge their allegiance to the Lord, who minister to him, who love the name of the Lord and become his servants, who keep the Sabbath and do not profane and who hold fast to my covenant:
All these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
Earliest Christianity was to the largest degree based on Isaiah’s messianic ideas, and indeed the entire story of the Ethiopian eunuch can be understood as the fulfillment of this very prophecy. That is why another one of Isaiah’s prophecies plays a central role in the eunuch’s conversion; after understanding that Messiah has finally come, the eunuch basically asks “What is to prevent me from now joining the assembly of the Lord as an equal?” And the Apostle Philip doesn’t tell him he first has to undergo a gay conversion therapy, or admit before God there are only two biological genders, or pray to Jesus to miraculously regrow him a new pair; no, he accepts the eunuch as he is, and baptizes him (in other words: blesses him!) solely because of his faith.
The second reason why this story is important is because it appears in the book of Acts immediately after, and indeed as a counterpoint to the story of Simon the Magus. Now, Simon the Magus was described as a cult leader from Samaria who, upon seeing the “works of Spirit” performed by the Apostles, decided to become a Christian himself - but not out of any honest desire, but just so he could gain access to this new magical power:
When Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed by the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power too so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought that you could obtain God’s gift with money. You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not upright in the eyes of God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours and beg the Lord that if possible you may be forgiven for devising your evil scheme. I see that you are engulfed in the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness.”
That’s a pretty harsh rebuke for a seemingly absurd, almost comical proposition about buying spiritual forces; and the infamy which Simon’s name gained in later Church - simony became a term for blatant corruption among clergy - as well as the revulsion by which he was remembered in early Christianity - practically every early heresy, sect or schism was somehow attributed to his teachings - all point that something deeper than mere “money for power” was at issue here. Essentially, what Simon proposed was to “privatize” the Spirit of God, so he could control how it was dispensed, and thus mantain himself in power as a cult leader. That was completely contrary to what the Apostles at the time were doing, bestowing Spirit left and right upon anyone who needed or asked; but very much like, say, to what certain contemporary Christian leaders want to do, by deciding themselves who gets to be blessed or not, and withholding divine grace from people or couples whose lifestyles they disaprove (and I’ll add, it’s indicative how modern-day Christians most up in arms about how gayness will corrupt Church’s “moral teachings”, are rarely bothered about money doing the same).
So immediately after Simon the Magus is practically cursed by Simon the Peter - the first pope, nota bene - for even suggesting that spiritual gifts should be dispensed more… discriminately, the narrative of Acts then shifts to Spirit of God guiding Philip the Apostle, to find and baptize a ballless black queer guy - just to make it clear how this new religious community ought to be “a house of prayer for all peoples”, where no one can be excluded because of someone’s “gall of bitterness and chains of wickedness.”
^ Simon Peter, casting dispel on Simon Magus’ flight spell, in their last legendary confrontation before the Roman throne. The first pope and the first heresiarch became kinda entwined in later Christian tradition (especially Western one), and a lot of pious fanfiction was added to their brief encounter as recorded in the Acts.
So if I read these Biblical stories correctly - and I do! - I’d say Pope Francis is doing Lord’s work, by finally allowing people in same-sex unions to recieve blessings (and also divorced and remaried couples, or anyone else living “iregular lifestyle”, according to the standards of sanctimonious hypocrisy); as well as by putting modern-day Simoniacs back into their place (that is, back on earth from how high they’ve lifted themselves in their moral superiority). The desire of such folks to turn the theological clock all the way back to Leviticus 18:22, just so they can keep telling LGBTQ+ people “You’re nothing but a dried-up tree!”, seems to me as the only real affront to God in this matter. And the conservative idea of a two-tiered Church, with “morally upright believers” lording over “people openly living in sin”, is frankly one of the most un-Christian things I can think of. Thankfully, something of the original Spirit of God still animates the bureacratic mastodon that the Catholic Church has become, as this current pope yet demonstrates: it ain’t much, but it’s honest work at least on his part!
So with all that being said, I’ll conclude this answer by wishing you all a very gay (gay as in: merry, giddy, joyful) Christmas and happy holidays, together with this fitting (and completly orthodox, mind you!) greeting-card featuring the Holy Martrys Sergius and Bacchus
