The Hull Faith Forum talks are pitched for young people of secondary school age. They are held on Monday Evenings at 7.30pm at the Endsleigh Centre, Beverley Road, Hull.

Monday 29th September
Philip Neri
Fr Richard Whinder (Priest of Southwark Diocese)

Monday 13th October
Edmund Campion
Michael Turner (Head of History, Stonyhurst)

Monday 27th October
Blessed Giorgio Frassati
Fr John Paul Leonard (Middlesbrough Diocesan Youth Service)

Monday 10th November
Catherine Labouré
Sr Brenda Matherson (Hull Evangelisation Project)

Monday 24th November
Maria Goretti
Fr Colman Ryan (Parish Priest of All Saints, Thirsk)

Mark wanted, most sensibly, to arrive at the place where he was to give his talk 45 minutes early. To give him time to lay out his books, limber up and get ready. We got him there about 30 seconds late. Welcome to the world of the Preece family. Fr Massie made the unprecedented move of allowing somebody to sell books in the place where he usually sells Faith Magazine. Nobody tell Fr Hugh.

Mark kicked off with his 101 reasons not to be Catholic which is really entertaining, you can get some of the gist of it here. He then went on to talk about "Who do you say I am?" and the various (limited) options for explaining Jesus Christ of which only one really makes any sense. I didn't hear too much myself because I had Phil Cunnah sat to my left laughing rediculously. Although I've pretty much heard the whole talk before in Mark's Sheavings, Blog and Books (as well as Chesterton and Lewis books) it was still great fun and he does it really well.

After the talk we all headed to the Old Grey Mare pub (as is the tradition) and had beer and guiness while we caught up with Phil. We got home late and went to bed later after a long discussion about the price of flying heavy cases of books to Ireland (Ryanair are swines). Tomorrow we are leaving Mark in Michelle's capable hands while we head off to a funeral. It's been great having him around. I hope it all goes well for hin in Ireland and he has a safe journey there and eventually back home to Seattle.

Tonights Hull Faith Forum talk was on the rather controversial subject of the Catholic Churches stance on Homosexuality. To my mind it's a simple enough problem that is complicated by two factors.

Firstly, there are at least eight different definitions for the words "homosexual", "disorder", "orientation", "persons", "sexuality", "nature" and of course people have different combinations so it's 8x8x8x8x8x8. That means you have a one in 2097152 chance of being understood.

Secondly, homosexuality has been assigned a magic minority trump card. Nobody can say anything negative about homosexuality. If you say something obvious like "gay sex can't make babies" you have said something against gays and are instantly classified homophobic. Everything you say from then on is heard as "blah blah blah blah blah".

These two factors combined create an atmosphere anything but conducive to genuine truth seeking debate.

This evening Fr. Dominic Rolls talk began with the following points:

• Homo comes from Greek 'same' not Roman 'man'.
• We need to distinguish between homosexual acts and homosexual persons.
• Act can be wrong and disordered, but...
• All persons regardless of orientation are orientated to Christ.

He then ran through a basic argument from nature using very Faith Movement language. Everything has a nature and a resulting 'life law' which is bound up with it's thriving/diminishing/destruction. E.g. the nature of a plant leads to it's life law that if it goes without water it dies. Same goes for fish.

Humans too have a nature, but we are special, we have a physical nature (without water we die) and a spiritual nature because of the soul. Fr. Dominic said: Through the spiritual soul God becomes the life law of man. Therefore God can never be an optional extra. We need God like the plant/fish needs water if we are to thrive.

The long and the short of it was that homosexual acts are contrary to our 'life law' and therefore damaging to our physical and spiritual lives.

To be honest, I didn't find the argument entirely convincing. The leap from 'humans have a nature' to 'this is what the nature is' was a little lacking in evidence for me. The questions filled a lot of the gaps but I was still left feeling something was missed out somewhere.

At the end of the day the homosexuality question is in that category of things that makes no sense on it's own. God didn't create the world so that homosexuality could be wrong. He didn't become man so as to allow sex in certain circumstances and not in others.

Like many of the big 'NO' issues (contraception, sex before marriage, drugs, etc) the Churches teaching on homosexuality makes much more sense in the context of creation. God is Love. God creates. The whole of creation is an expression of God's love. God loved us even when we did not exist so much so that he creates existence itself for us to exist in. He loves us so much that he wants to share everything, he even wants us to share in the act of creation so he gives us the ability to procreate.

Our whole lives are part of this creation. This building of human life and this lifting it up to God in communion.

In this context homosexual sex makes no sense. It is like a builder who given sand and cement to make concrete asks why he should not just mix sand and sand. The only rational answer is "because it doesn't work, you just get the sand you started with, you were given the sand and cement to make concrete". Similarly, the rational response to homosexual sex is "it doesn't work, it doesn't create anything, you were given sex to make children with" but as I said above, this comes across as baseless assertion.

Of course, I have now stated something negative about homosexual sex. Namely, that the act of sexual intercourse with someone of the same gender is inherently not creative. In accord with my second point above this whole blog entry will be read as "blah blah blah" by many people (as if 'many people' read this blog).

For more info On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons written by the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (and co.) and signed by JP2 is worth a read.

Let me end by quoting Fr. Dominic again:

All persons regardless of orientation are orientated to Christ.

No matter how disordered it may be to have sex with a person of the same gender, there are worse things that can be done. I have done some of them. God forgives. Thanks be to God!