Early Teachings on Homosexuality
Some argue that neither the Bible nor apostolic
tradition condemns the practice of homosexuality. Passages such as Leviticus
18:22–30, Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and Jude 7 serve as ample
proof that Scripture indeed condemns homosexuality. Below is ample proof
from tradition. The Fathers are especially harsh against the practice of
pederasty, the homosexual corruption of boys by men.
The Didache
"You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit
adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication,
you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice
witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one that
has been born" (Didache 2:2 [A.D. 70]).
Justin Martyr
"[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born
children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we
should do anyone harm 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 anyone
who uses such persons, besides the godless and infamous and impure intercourse,
may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or
brother. 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. 151]).
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 the Greeks, and a teacher of the
disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians" (Exhortation to
the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190]).
"[According to Greek myth] Baubo [a female native
of Eleusis] having received [the goddess] Demeter hospitably, reached to
her a refreshing draught; and on her refusing it, not having any inclination
to drink (for she was very sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, thinking
herself slighted, uncovered her shame, and exhibited her nudity to the
goddess. Demeter is delighted with the sight—pleased, I repeat, at the
spectacle. These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; these Orpheus
records" (ibid.).
"It is not, then, without reason that the poets
call him [Hercules] a cruel wretch and a nefarious scoundrel. It were tedious
to recount his adulteries of all sorts, and debauching of boys. For your
gods did not even abstain from boys, one having loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus,
another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let such gods as
these be worshipped by your wives, and let them pray that their husbands
be such as these—so temperate; that, emulating them in the same practices,
they may be like the gods. Such gods let your boys be trained to worship,
that they may grow up to be men with the accursed likeness of fornication
on them received from the gods" (ibid.).
...
"In accordance with these remarks, conversation
about deeds of wickedness is appropriately termed filthy [shameful] speaking,
as talk about adultery and pederasty and the like" (The Instructor
6, ca. A.D. 193).
"The fate of the Sodomites was judgment to those
who had done wrong, instruction to those who hear. The Sodomites having,
through much luxury, fallen into uncleanness, practicing adultery shamelessly,
and burning with insane love for boys; the All-seeing Word, whose notice
those who commit impieties cannot escape, cast his eye on them. Nor did
the sleepless guard of humanity observe their licentiousness in silence;
but dissuading us from the imitation of them, and training us up to his
own temperance, and falling on some sinners, lest lust being unavenged,
should break loose from all the restraints of fear, ordered Sodom to be
burned,
pouring forth a little of the sagacious fire on
licentiousness; lest lust, through want of punishment, should throw wide
the gates to those that were rushing into voluptuousness. Accordingly,
the just punishment of the Sodomites became to men an image of the salvation
which is well calculated for men. For those who have not committed like
sins with those who are punished, will never receive a like punishment"
(ibid., 8).
Tertullian
"[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed
the laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the
sexes, we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all shelter
of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities" (Modesty
4 [A.D. 220]).
Novatian
"[God forbade the Jews to eat certain foods for
symbolic reasons:] For that in fishes the roughness of scales is regarded
as constituting their cleanness; rough, and rugged, and unpolished, and
substantial, and grave manners are approved in men; while those that are
without scales are unclean, because trifling, and fickle, and faithless,
and effeminate manners are disapproved. Moreover, what does the law mean
when it . . . forbids the swine to be taken for food? It assuredly reproves
a life filthy and dirty, and delighting in the garbage of vice. . . . Or
when it forbids the hare? It rebukes men deformed into women" (The Jewish
Foods 3 [A.D. 250]).
Cyprian of Carthage
"[T]urn your looks to the abominations, not less
to be deplored, of another kind of spectacle. . . . Men are emasculated,
and all the pride and vigor of their sex is effeminated in the disgrace
of their enervated body; and he is more pleasing there who has most completely
broken down the man into the woman. He grows into praise by virtue of his
crime; and the more he is degraded, the more skillful he is considered
to be. Such a one is looked upon—oh shame!—and looked upon with pleasure.
. . . Nor is there wanting authority for the enticing abomination . . .
that Jupiter of theirs [is] not more supreme in dominion than in vice,
inflamed with earthly love in the midst of his own thunders . . . now breaking
forth by the help of birds to violate the purity of boys. And now put the
question: Can he who looks upon such things be healthy-minded or modest?
Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their
crimes become their religion" (Letters 1:8 [A.D. 253]).
"Oh, if placed on that lofty watchtower, you could
gaze into the secret places—if you could open the closed doors of sleeping
chambers and recall their dark recesses to the perception of sight—you
would behold things done by immodest persons which no chaste eye could
look upon; you would see what even to see is a crime; you would see what
people embruted with the madness of vice deny that they have done, and
yet hasten to do—men with frenzied lusts rushing upon men, doing things
which afford no gratification even to those who do them" (ibid., 1:9).
Arnobius
"[T]he mother of the gods loved [the boy Attis]
exceedingly, because he was of most surpassing beauty; and Acdestis [the
son of Jupiter] who was his companion, as he grew up fondling him, and
bound to him by wicked compliance with his lust. . . . Afterwards, under
the influence of wine, he [Attis] admits that he is . . . loved by Acdestis.
. . . Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to withdraw the youth from
so disgraceful an intimacy, resolves to give him his own daughter in marriage.
. . . Acdestis, bursting with rage because of the boy’s being torn from
himself and brought to seek a wife, fills all the guests with frenzied
madness; the Phrygians shriek, panic-stricken at the appearance of the
gods. . . . [Attis] too, now filled with furious passion, raving frantically
and tossed about, throws himself down at last, and under a pine tree mutilates
himself, saying, ‘Take these, Acdestis, for which you have stirred up so
great and terribly perilous commotions’" (Against the Pagans 5:6–7
[A.D. 305]).
Eusebius of Caesarea
"[H]aving forbidden all unlawful marriage, and
all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men,
he [God] adds: ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for
in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive out before
you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed [their] iniquity
upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell upon it’ [Lev. 18:24–25]"
(Proof of the Gospel 4:10 [A.D. 319]).
Basil the Great
"He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will
be under discipline for the same time as adulterers" (Letters 217:62
[A.D. 367]).
"If you [O, monk] are young in either body or mind,
shun the companionship of other young men and avoid them as you would a
flame. For through them the enemy has kindled the desires of many and then
handed them over to eternal fire, hurling them into the vile pit of the
five cities under the pretense of spiritual love. . . . At meals take a
seat far from other young men. In lying down to sleep let not their clothes
be near yours, but rather have an old man between you. When a young man
converses with you, or sings psalms facing you, answer him with eyes cast
down, lest perhaps by gazing at his face you receive a seed of desire sown
by the enemy and reap sheaves of corruption and ruin. Whether in the house
or in a place where there is no one to see your actions, be not found in
his company under the pretense either of studying the divine oracles or
of any other business whatsoever, however necessary" (The Renunciation
of the World [A.D. 373]).
John Chrysostom
"[The pagans] were addicted to the love of boys,
and one of their wise men made a law that pederasty . . . should not be
allowed to slaves, as if it was an honorable thing; and they had houses
for this purpose, in which it was openly practiced. And if all that was
done among them was related, it would be seen that they openly outraged
nature, and there was none to restrain them. . . . As for their passion
for boys, whom they called their paedica, it is not fit to be named"
(Homilies on Titus 5 [A.D. 390]).
"[Certain men in church] come in gazing about at
the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys. After
this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from heaven],
and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations? For worthy
both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but God, who
is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath, calling
you to repentance and amendment" (Homilies on Matthew 3:3 [A.D.
391]).
"All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26–27] . . .
were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the
sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases" (Homilies
on Romans 4 [A.D. 391]).
"[The men] have done an insult to nature itself.
And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women
seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men" (ibid.).
"And sundry other books of the philosophers one may
see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say that the thing was
made lawful, but that they who received this law were pitiable, and objects
for many tears. For these are treated in the same way as women that play
the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable. For in the case of
the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet according to nature; but
this is contrary both to law and nature. For even if there were no hell,
and no punishment had been threatened, this would be worse than any punishment"
(ibid.).
Augustine
"[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as
were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and
punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty
of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they
should use one another in this way" (Confessions 3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).
The Apostolic Constitutions
"[Christians] abhor all unlawful mixtures, and
that which is practiced by some contrary to nature, as wicked and impious"
(Apostolic Constitutions 6:11 [A.D. 400]).
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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