Letters From a Young Catholic

My reflections as a Catholic young adult passionate about the Faith, seeking to grow in knowledge and understanding of God and discerning the will of the Lord in my life.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Homosexuality Resources

Someone was asking me the other day if I knew of any good resources on the hot-topic of homosexuality. I've done some researching and come up with some resources, yet haven't had time to go through them in depth, therefore I'm putting up a disclaimer that I haven't thoroughly examined these resources.

The first thing I came across was an article from First Things called Homosexuality and Truth. This article contains a review of several resources on homosexuality from a variety of Christian authors. Here's the list of the books they recommend:

Strangers and Friends. By Michael Vasey.
Homosexuality and the Poligics of Truth. By John F. Harvey.
Straight and Narrow? By Thomas E. Schmidt.
Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far. By Charles W. Socarides.
Unwanted Harvest? By Mona Riley and Brad Sargent.
Craving for Love. By Briar Whitehead.

You can view the full text of the article reviewing these books by clicking on the above link.

Of these texts, I was only previously familiar with The Truth about Homosexuality by Fr. John Harvey. Fr. Harvey is a Roman Catholic priest and the author of another book called The Homosexual Person. He founded Courage, a steadily growing support group for Roman Catholic homosexuals which focuses on abstinence (rather than changing sexual orientation), prayer, Catholic Spirituality, and places a strong emphasis on spiritual direction.

Other books that I've tracked down and browsed include:
Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. By Jeffrey Satinover.
Beyond Gay. By David Morrison.

Beyond Gay is worthy of particular note as, in the words of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, it describes "a powerful statement of a truly Christian struggle to deal with homosexual attraction." It is written by a former gay rights activists who converted to christianity, and through God's grace, made the decision to live with his same-sex attraction while refusing to be defined by it or act upon it.

While I know the issue of homosexuality is getting a lot of attention right now and is a touchy subject for some people, I will refrain from commenting further on the topic for the time being until I have done some more reading and have educated myself a bit on the issue. I invite you to do the same so that we can have an intelligent discussion on the topic at a later date.