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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

WTF? If he was hired to teach Catholicism, isn't he supposed to tell the students what the Catholic Church's tenets are? He even stated his own position differing from the church, which I don't think was necessary, but certainly permissible.

Catholic Church has a long history of teaching hate. It did not start with gays. It even existed with the very first human organ transplant because transplants vilolate Natural Moral Laws.

This professor apparently does have bias against gays. He also condemns planned parenthood and the reason why (in 1970) you could not trust anyone over 30 - ie the sexual revolution. That revolution really only took sex out of the closet.

Read an e-mail he sent to his students. Whereas his biases are obvious, what he is teaching is not. One can easily come to two different conclusions from the same text:

It turns out that our discussion of homosexuality brings up the issue of utilitarianism. ... In other words, by what criteria should we judge whether a given act is right or wrong?

Before looking at the issue of criteria, however, we have to remind ourselves of the ever-present tendency in all of us to judge morality by emotion. The most frequent reason I hear people supporting same-sex marriage is that they know some gay couples or individuals. Empathy is a noble human quality but right or wrong does not depend on who is doing the action or on how I feel about those people, just as judging an action wrong should not depend on disliking someone. ...

So, then, by what criterion should we judge whether sexual acts are right or wrong? This is where utilitarianism comes in. ...

I think it's fair to say that many, maybe most Americans employ some type of utilitarianism in their moral decision making. ... The natural law theory that I expounded in class assumes that human acts have an inherent meaning.

One of the most common applications of utilitarianism to sexual morality is the criterion of mutual consent. It is said that any sexual act is okay if the two or more people involved agree. ...

But the more significant problem has to do with the fact that the consent criterion is not related in any way to the NATURE of the act itself. This is where Natural Moral Law (NML) objects. NML says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act. Consent is important but there is more than consent needed.

One example applicable to homosexual acts illustrates the problem. To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the "woman" while the other acts as the "man." In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. ...

Now recall that I mentioned in class the importance of gaining wisdom from the past. One part of wisdom we gain from such knowledge is how people today came to think of their bodies. I won't go into details here but a survey of the last few centuries reveals that we have gradually been separating our sexual natures (reality) from our moral decisions. Thus, people tend to think that we can use our bodies sexually in whatever ways we choose without regard to their actual structure and meaning. This is also what lies behind the idea of sex change operations. We can manipulate our bodies to be whatever we want them to be.

If what I just said is true, then this disassociation of morality and sexual reality did not begin with homosexuality. It began long ago. But it took a huge leap forward in the wide spread use of artificial contraceptives. What this use allowed was for people to disassociate procreation and children from sexual activity. ...

Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.

I know this doesn't answer all the questions in many of your minds. All I ask as your teacher is that you approach these questions as a thinking adult. That implies questioning what you have heard around you. Unless you have done extensive research into homosexuality and are cognizant of the history of moral thought, you are not ready to make judgments about moral truth in this matter. All I encourage is to make informed decisions. As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don't arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.

Nobody can judge from that e-mail. Necessary details do not exist. He is obviously teaching that Natural Moral Laws must be the basis for informed decisions - when those Natural Moral Laws are a reason for so much hate from the Catholic Church. As xoxoxoBruce notes, his task is to teach it. A fine line between teaching it and proselytizing. From his e-mail, he could have been proselytizing. Nobody knows how much. Nobody has enough detail to know if he had clearly and fully crossed the line. I suspect he did not. But then I also know that one had to be there to have the ‘necessary and not provided’ details.

One factor that clearly is problematic is this Catholic Church nonsense about Natural Moral Law. Propaganda that should not be part of a public discussion of how people act. Natural Moral Law is a concept that is fundamental to Church teachings. Has promoted hate while condoning pedophilia.

His teachings promote Natural Moral Law. Without details, we don't know if he criticized the church for that teaching that has been used to promote hate. Those necessary details are not provided.