“The Importance of Being Guy”

(Part 2)

We can be further enlightened by a recent study entitled Homosexuality and Hope by the Catholic Medical Association. In one point, the study says that “persons should not be identified with their emotional or developmental conflicts as though this were the essence of their identity.” As much as this stresses that people with emotional difficulties cannot simply resign themselves to giving in to their identity crisis; it also helps to understand why they cannot be simply labeled based on such identity conflicts. Thus, the same study partly concludes that “it is probably wise to avoid wherever possible using the words homosexual and heterosexual as nouns since such usage implies a fixed state and an equivalence between the natural state of man and woman as created by God and persons experiencing same sex attractions or behaviors.”

Secondly, this corporeal truth about man is further appreciated and reinforced by the profound truth of his origins: that is, his creational reality. It is something that points to the truth –without which man and woman’s purpose in life will not be complete or fulfilled– that God created us. This is, and has to be the very basis of the identity of man and woman. John Paul II, in his Letter to Families, says: “Man is created from the very beginning as male and female: the life of all humanity –whether of small communities or of society as a whole– marked by this primordial duality. From it there derive the ‘masculinity’ and the ‘femininity’ of individuals, just as from it every community draws its own unique richness in the mutual fulfillment of persons. (no. 6)” Thus, the identity of a man or a woman is not an arbitrary thing in the mind of God, but is in fact laden with a divine design for man and society’s perfection.

Disregarding the corporeal and creational dimensions of man’s identity will always lead towards the auto-rationalized abyss of one’s emotional and psychological states that dictate a false identity. This chosen artificial identity will eventually result to confusion, tension and depression because the person’s authentic corporeal and creational identities, which contain such human and spiritual wealth, will never allow themselves to be traded for by any easy emotional substitutes worn like badge. These original (i.e. originating from) dimensions in every man or woman will continue to bear witness from within, and in the process the person will never find respite unless he or she sincerely confronts and struggles to overcome his erratic psycho-emotional-sensible states. It is precisely through a personal human and spiritual struggle in placing these dimensions within their proper context that the person can find the meaning of life, retrace his steps back to God.

Given this wonderful truth, the person in the midst of emotional, sexual or psychological glitches ought to consider that God, who is his Father, has a reason for allowing such experiences. In fact, when such personal problems are realistically confronted they become an original expression of one’s personal struggle –with the help of God’s grace and a director– to gradually conform oneself with our creational identity. For this, one has to strive to find and establish one’s perfection –human and spiritual– according to the true identity given him by God.