Suppose you have a kid who tells you he is “gay”

In that case, explains Notre Dame professor John Cavadini, you would benefit from having in your parish someone who identifies himself as gay and lives and advocates the Church’s teaching about sexuality and marriage. Writing the Cardinal Newman Society, he asks what parents could do with a child who says he is gay, won’t accept your explanation that he’s really “struggling with same-sex attraction,” and is going to leave the Church because it’s “anti-gay.”

What if there were someone in the parish, self-identified as “gay,” and was public about agreeing with Church teaching on marriage. I would, if it were my kid, immediately send him to talk to this person. Someone like this person, who apparently has resources for defending Church teaching and can provide support and advice for someone, showing that it is possible for people to be this way and live this way faithfully in the Church, that there are options here, including the option of marriage (meaning as the Church understands it), and including the option of not running your life as though your sexual orientation was in fact your whole identity.

I think that such a person, self-identified as “gay,” and also equally self-identified as defending Church teaching, has something to offer, a gift, and I wonder if the Church is very good at receiving this gift. It seems that this is a way of helping someone who “struggles with same-sex attraction,” if by “helping” you mean, helps them to live according to Church teaching.

Update: Having already gotten one snarling and unhelpful response, I’ve closed the comments. This is a subject on which homosexual apologists, at least the ones who comment here, seem unable to speak decently.

Update 2: I should add that the anti-homosexual polemicists can be equally unable to speak decently. I don’t see any reason to let the comment section be a place where the two groups yell at each other.