I’ve argued here that the homosexualist agenda has been patiently engaged for a long time and is still reaching for that brass ring.
The homosexualists have slowly been shifting the language about deviant same-sex acts and those who regularly commit them. Through the MSM and entertainment industry the image of homosexuality as something hidden and unclean was broken by replacing it with victim status during the flaming up of the AIDS epidemic in certain populations. Then the victim image had to be broken and replaced, which was accomplished through cool and with it characters in TV shows and other culture movers. Think of the absurdly high percentage of homosexuals in TV shows, increasing every year. I’ll bet you can’t turn on a TV series now and not find it filled with deviants. BUT! They are the cool and emotionally sensitive ones, who have answers for the dysfunctional and often less attractive “hetero” characters.
Fuse this culture shift with the rise of no-fault divorce and nearly universal contraception and we have the perfect deadly storm that can rip the sexual act conceptually away from marriage (what’s that?) and procreation (what’s that?).
Now that subcultures are multiplying like viruses, we are just about ready, I think, for the next stage of the assault on the human person and God’s plan. Not content for legalization of same-sex “marriage”, the next phase of the homosexualist agenda will soon be implemented: lowering of the age of consent (aka the aforementioned the brass ring).
With that horrific thought – and I’m right and you know it – I direct your gaze now to Catholic World Report where there is an important piece about the “bridge” building that Jesuit homosexualist activist James Martin wants to build instead of the bridge that the Church has and can build.
Remember, the agenda has its agents within the Church.
If you were the Devil, isn’t that where you would want your agents? Above all? When ever I write about any of this, they come out of the woodwork and send obscene emails as if after all these years that would in some way disturb me. For the record, you poor wretches, I grew up surrounded by cops. I spent my youth (when this sort of thing was still possible) in police stations looking at crime and homicide scene photos and hearing about the cases my folks and their colleagues investigated, raids they conducted. Some of it was really really bad, the stuff of nightmares, which I occasionally did have. And now I’ve been a priest with over a quarter of a century of hearing confessions under my belt. Priests hear it all. We hear it and hear it and don’t even blink, except to feel compassion and admiration for the courage of those making their confessions. I’ve heard it all. We see it all too, including things like bodies broken on train tracks and poor souls in burn units and mental health wards. And yet you wretched dopes think that sending hate mail with perversion is somehow going to be effective? You poor sick dupes. I pray for you. But… if you send a threat… I’ll pray for you too, but you’ll also have a whole new experience. But I digress.
Let’s have a good chunk of the CWR piece so you can get the sense before going over there and getting the rest. I’ll provide some signposts…
Re-Building a Bridge: The connection between contraception and the “LGBT community”
by Jim Russell [a deacon in the Archdiocese of St. Louis]We’ve arrived at the end of the road—and we stare into a massive, rippled fun-house mirror that shows us in its own twisted reflection the extent of the monumental destruction our journey really caused.
Let’s build a bridge. No—not that bridge. Not a warm, fuzzy, attention-getting bridge between the Church and the ‘LGBT Community,’ whose architects are misguided masters of error, ambiguity, confusion, and dissent. Don’t waste your time. Across the globe, we already have built more than a hundred bridges that actually lead to a Catholic sanctuary for those with same-sex attraction. It’s called the Courage apostolate, along with its companion apostolate for families of those with SSA, called EnCourage.
No, the bridge we really need to build right now is a replacement for the bridge that was burned and destroyed over the last century or more. [Did you get that? Over a quarter of a century or more. And this is what Fr. Murray wrote about the other day when he clearly described the pernicious agenda in the Jesuit writer’s book… which did not have an imprimi potest or imprimatur but which did have a nihil obstat from the Jesuit’s superior.] We need to come to terms with how we’ve wandered so far away from the truth of who we really are as human persons. We need to look back on the road we’ve traveled and find a way back to the smoldering ash and timber of the bridge we first crossed and then set ablaze long ago.
We need to rebuild that bridge so that we can get back home where we belong.
Here’s the problem: it’s been about 150 years since we were really “home,” [that’s more than a quarter of a century… right? What’s up with that?] and most folks alive today have no idea what that home looks like. Before we can go back, we need to rediscover what “home” really is and how we moved so far away from it.
From the beginning (two centuries ago) it was not so…
Many Catholics today already possess the intuition that there is a crucial link, so to speak, between Humanae Vitae and homosexuality. They can see how the severing of the unitive and procreative meanings of marital relations—and the reduction of marital relations to mere “sex”—paved the way for the ideologies of “orientation” and “gender” that generate so-called “sexual minorities” and “sexual identities.” [Yep. That’s what I’ve been saying.]
Yet, the genie was let out of the bottle so long ago that most of us can no longer see just how glaringly obvious this connection really is. To get a glimpse, one needs to go back to the beginning of the ideological roots that gave us “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” and spawned the chaos we have now.
[NB] A show of hands, please: How many of you know that the term “heterosexual” was originally used to describe a condition that was considered, in clinical terms, like the term “homosexual,” to be “morbid” or “pathological”?
That’s right. These terms were first brought into use in the last decades of the 19th-century by psychologists seeking to classify sexual attractions, emotions, and acts—not persons, not “identities”—associated with sexual abnormality. Of course, this begs the question—if even “heterosexual” was pathological, [QUAERITUR…] what was considered “normal” sexual attraction, emotion, and act?
Normal sexual desires and behaviors all had procreative sex as their focus. Acts and desires that directed a person toward procreative sexual activity (acts that properly could lead to procreation) were considered “normal.” Acts and desires reflecting a “morbid passion” for non-procreative sex acts with someone of the other sex were classified as “heterosexual.” Similarly, acts and desires reflecting a “morbid passion” for obviously non-procreative sex acts with someone of the same sex were classified as “homosexual.” How many people are aware of this?
The original thinking of those who popularized the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” was aligned with the natural-law truths upheld by the Catholic Church regarding God’s plan that the only normal and natural expression of sexual behavior is marital relations that are always open to procreation. Frustrating the procreative potential of sexual activity was always wrong. It is what so many psychologists of that late 19th century saw as “pathological.”
The seismic shift away from this thinking occurred mainly in the early 20th century—because of the birth control movement. The more socially acceptable birth control became, the greater the need to eliminate the procreative framework associated with categorizing non-procreative heterosexual behavior as “abnormal.” The “Roaring” 1920s reflect that transition, with some medical dictionaries by 1923 still referring to “heterosexuality” as “morbid passion,” while by the end of the decade, the first mainline Christian denomination (the now infamous Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930) allowed the use of contraception by its members.
And so the new “normal” emerged [Isn’t there a TV show by that name?] —the term “heterosexual” was untethered from its “morbid” status and “procreative sex” fell by the wayside as a norm. A new norm began to emerge: the bright line between normal and abnormal was no longer whether your acts were procreative or non-procreative, but was instead about “who” your sex partner was. [See what’s happening?]
The ironic twist here is that normalizing heterosexuality [If you are just joining us here, go back a few paragraphs and read what went before!] by accepting contraception effectively escalated the stigma associated with having homosexual tendencies. The “we-they” divide, so to speak, focused mostly, and more overtly, on whether your partner was same-sex or not.
Society had stepped firmly upon this bridge that led away from home, and promptly struck the first spark that would ultimately set the whole structure ablaze.
From acts to “identity”
Meanwhile, another evolution in thinking was underway. While the psychological distinction that saw homosexuality as a mental disorder held sway, more radical thinkers were thinking that, if this is the “kind” of person who commits these pathological sex acts, then maybe the prevalent view that “heterosexuality” was the mark of sexual maturity wasn’t quite right. Non-heterosexuality in all its forms was viewed basically as some form of sexual “immaturity” that could be overcome with treatments intended to direct a person to heterosexual maturity. But maybe people who committed homosexual acts were a different “kind” of person altogether, some theorized. [This is the “made that way” idea that the Jesuit writer is pushing along with the twisted notion “by God”. If homosexuals and same-sex attraction is also made by God, then what can be wrong with normalizing their behaviors and even calling them “good”? Remember: the next phase, or brass ring, is the lowering of the age of consent.]
If homosexual attraction were somehow innate and fixed, then no amount of intervention would likely alter the homosexual inclination. Further, then homosexual activity could be said to constitute acts “proper” to this kind of person. It could be said that the homosexual inclination represented this person’s identity—they didn’t merely “have” these attractions or “do” homosexual acts. These people actually “were” homosexuals.
[…]
This is an important essay to read, and keep close by for reference. He has brought an interesting new dimension to this discussion, at a good moment in time.
From the wikipedia entry for the TV show The New Normal with some edits and notes:
Bryan and David are a happy gay couple[they’re so gay together!] living in Los Angeles, [where else] with successful careers. [they’re gay and successful!] The only thing missing in their relationship is a baby. [Right? That’s what’s missing!] They meet Goldie Clemmons, a single mother and waitress from Ohio. [Uh ohhhh… not so successful, are you Goldie?] Goldie left her adulterous husband[sounds kinda dysfunctional] and moved to L.A. with her 9-year-old daughter Shania to escape their former life and start over. [Yep, a gal with a few problems. If only there were someone cool and successful to help her?] Jane, Goldie’s conservative grandmother, [OH NO! She’s CONSERVATIVE?]follows them to the city against Goldie’s wishes, [More dysfunction, right?] thus causing havoc for her granddaughter and the couple. [Remember them? They happy gays with successful careers who only want a baby?] Goldie decides to become Bryan and David’s gestational surrogate, [what the hell is THAT?] and naturally, [“naturally”… my God how twisted are the minds that write this] her family gets involved. [And quirky hijinx ensues in which the conservative grandmother – I’ll bet – I haven’t seen it – gets in the occasion good point, but is generally thwarted by the happy successful gays who generally have the sensitive solutions and help everyone just get along. Is that about right?]
And then there’s Modern Family:
Modern Family revolves around three different types of families (nuclear, step- and same-sex) living in the Los Angeles area [again] who are interrelated through Jay Pritchett and his children, Claire Dunphy (née Pritchett) and Mitchell Pritchett. Patriarch Jay is remarried to a much younger woman, Gloria Delgado Pritchett (née Ramirez), a passionate Colombian [are there any other kind?] with whom he has an infant son, Fulgencio (Joe) Pritchett, and a son from Gloria’s previous marriage, Manny Delgado. Jay’s daughter Claire was a homemaker, but has returned to the business world; she is married to Phil Dunphy, a realtor and self-professed “cool Dad”. They have three children: Haley Dunphy, a stereotypical ditzy teenage girl; Alex Dunphy, a nerdy, smart middle child; and Luke Dunphy, the off-beat only son. Jay’s lawyer son Mitchell and his husband Cameron Tucker have an adopted Vietnamese daughter, Lily Tucker-Pritchett. As the name suggests, this family represents a modern-day family and episodes are comically based on situations which many families encounter in real life. [REAL life. Even if people in this earthly vale have complicated situations like that, is that real? I am reminded of Plato’s analogy of reality and the cave.]
And then there’s Transparent:
The story revolves around a Los Angeles [what a surprise] family and their lives following the discovery that the person they knew as their father Mort (Jeffrey Tambor) is transgender.
The moderation queue is ON. Of course.
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Add to the confusion: a child just born has their sex listed on the birth certificate as “U” which translate undersigned. Why? Because the child’s birthing unit did not what to burden the child with a M or F label. Why again? Because the birthing units own parents had its sex listed on their certificate, and that label caused such distress. I guess “U” is a legally official gender. How weird can this society get?
U is unassigned. Spell check gets me again.
Well, so long as we Christians and other humans are plugged into the propaganda, we are going to be propagandized. For my money, the truly effective way to fight back (on this issue and many others) is to work energetically to expand the pool of the unplugged, and therefore the unpropagandized.
We haven’t got the ink or the electrons to fight the family destroyers on their own terms with counter-programming, counter-articles, counter-propaganda over every issue they are launching. Besides, the audience we need to reach is narcotized between the ears watching televised sports. As difficult as it may seem, getting the people of our time to unplug would be FAR easier than getting them to follow an argument that runs counter to all that they have been absorbing and on every subject that needs to be addressed.
The answer to this, of course, is that people would never unplug. Well, does not leadership consist in getting people to do what they otherwise would not do? Personally, I am convinced that people have been more than ready for this sort of leadership for a very long time, leadership that demands real sacrifice and that is exemplified by the leaders.
The Church meantime is fighting back issue by issue ( abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, transgenderism, divorce, etc. ) and is getting swamped. We are fighting the enemy on his own terms and so long as we do so, we have no hope whatever of prevailing. Change the rules of engagement and it becomes a different battle altogether.
The difficult but massively effective strategy would be to pry the mass media out of the Catholic/Christian/humanist home and create therein a counter-culture.
As long as it’s being discussed, I would like to share a pet peeve with you, because misery loves company.
Here is an amazing factoid, I know it has to be fact, because I have observed this for years and noticed it time and time again.
Does anybody else notice how OFTEN Elton John (probably THE reigning homosexual of the free world) gets played on the radio? Countless times I am in a store, doesn’t matter what kind, and, there is good old Elton John playing, and if it’s not him, it’s Michael Jackson (homosexual pedophile) and if it’s not them it’s George Michael or Boy George with Culture Club. Occasionally it’s Cindi Lauper or Melissa Etheridge, but not as often. Watch how many times you hear them. How does the word get out that these homosexuals must be played so often in the rotation, and very often in retail stores! I can’t not hear music, so I’m telling you, it’s a lot, and tells us how pervasive and determined an effort this is.
Fr. Z., the age of consent IS the thing, you are right, and all I know is, we better all be prepared to fight like maniacs when it comes, because it doesn’t matter if we have little children anymore, we must all fight for any child or young person, because they have the right NOT to be molested by disgusting perverts of any species, who want to corrupt them. God help us, truly, all of us, if we do not get involved when it comes, and never give up, never. It is far easier to work to keep something, than it is to turn it back. Once these people have the children, they will never let go of them. We have to be just as determined. God help us, the kind of hellish environment we are living in, when we have to even think about this. That’s where we are.
It just amazes me that those who are LGBT want acceptance of whatever lifestyle they are living. But those of us who are NOT LGBT or live anything near that lifestyle are considered the uptight, over judging, critical ones. Our beliefs don’t warrant acceptance. We are hating the sinner as well as the sin. If we as conservatives and especially Catholics don’t completely 100% bow down and accept their lifestyle we are mean and hateful. I was asked once how does a gay couples’ “marriage” (STUPID cause there is no such thing) hurt your marriage. I got a bit high spirited and told this person that my marriage was a Sacrament and it was in the eyes of God. They had NO right to call what they are in a marriage. Call it a union, call it a partnership, call it a whatever but it’s not a marriage. Only one man and one woman can be united in marriage. You can pervert anything but it doesn’t make it right. You can eat mud but it doesn’t make it filet mignon. I pray for them that some way they can come back to the Lord and live right.
Regarding expectations of us accepting the LGBT lifestyle, this just happened to me: I sell used things on eBay, a man contacted me about some used skateboarding style shoes asking me if they were from an active guy and had his scent in them because that is what he likes. He wants me to cooperate with his homosexual shoe fetish in exchange for money–an eBay sale? Um, no. I said: “I don’t know, but if you are implying that you experience same-sex attraction please know that you do not need to dwell on thoughts of that nature nor use your senses in pursuit of lusts, nor engage in acts contrary to chastity and dignity. No, that is not the way of peace or true freedom. It is a pair of shoes, that’s all.”
John Paul’s “theology of the body” and Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae both, in my very humble opinion, were unnecessarily modernist and – to a fault – flattering to those lucky enough to be in a Christian marriage. (That is, Humanae Vitae was too liberal in that it treated the possibility of contraception, in a non-Biblical way, as an existential possibility, worthy of serious discussion, albeit a sin, because modern married people should not be expected to readily understand Christian standards of love; and the “theology of the body”, looked at from some points of view, unnecessarily took the risk of elevating the common condition of wanting to be a lucky spouse with a good husband or a good wife, without more, into the equivalent of wanting a special Christian vocation). Jesus described Christian love in a marriage as being free of lust, and while nobody should think that a saint, offered champagne, should not be grateful , the fact remains that Jesus – to a greater degree than John Paul and Paul VI seems to have done – considered marriage to be something a person does, not a vocation and not a heaven on earth in any different way than not being married. Many Christian writers today (with lots of exceptions, of course) celebrate marriage, in a worldly way, as some sort of potential heaven on earth. Of course Christian marriage is a terrestrial good and a heavenly good and, as such something more beautiful than anyone reading this can comprehend. But marriage is not a special vocation, and it is not a reward for being good: it is a gift from God, which like every other worldly good can be used well, in our free will, or badly. If we as Christians – in particular the enthusiastic supporters of contraception – show a little more repentance for our modernist semi-deification of marriages and the people in marriages (to whom so many theologians want to give the power of life and death over their unborn children), and if those who have been too flattering of “ordinary married people” as the paradigm of people living “a good and holy life”, show a little repentance too, perhaps the critics with their anti-Christian anti-marriage agenda might, in their heart of hearts, in some place where they are willing to try to see us as Jesus sees us, be a little less angry and a little less confused. (I am not a scholar on these things but I think that writers like Garrigou-Lagrange and even Chesterton are better guides to the reasons contraception is wrong than Blessed Paul VI, and writers like Balthasar, whose book on vocations is amazing, are better guides to what type of vocation marriage is and is not than the very busy (so he has an excuse for being wrong about something important) Saint John Paul. ) Sorry for the long comment: but this is an important subject. If something I said makes you angry or makes you think I am ignorant, please read again: I may have phrased something wrong, but I was trying to be as truthful as possible.
SJW and the other acronym seem to be overplaying their hand. Their fiction stinks of judgemental ideology as opposed to engaging authenticity. All this is doing is making it clearer to folks who are normally tuned out that there is a choice to be made.
I pray to You, Holy Spirit, please inspire in mankind a fervent love for truth and then discipline to pursue truth.
Yup.
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Thank you for a wonderfully informative article about the history of the language-trap being sprung.
I’ve often wondered why the Lambeth Conference made its decision in 1930….. now I have a plausible explanation.
It has always puzzled me how powerful the LGBT community is – they represent about 1 1/2 percent of the population. By contrast people in the Autism Spectrum also represent about 1 to 1 1/2 percent of the population, but we do not see TV shows featuring people on the Autism Spectrum, nor are there “Autism Friendly” parishes, nor do they get to parade on St. Patrick’s Day.
Wow. The devil is remarkably clever and has been at this a long time. Excellent article Father! Thank you.
Pray the rosary.
Save the Liturgy, save the world.
Go to confession.
This article shows the enemy’s plan to destroy the family is not something concocted in the 70’s film “Future Shock”, but a much older, much bigger, much farther reaching operation to win countless souls, and it appears this plan is gaining momentum. How can we possibly win? Take heart. Do not despair. Our Mother Mary is Queen of Heaven and Earth. She crushes the devil’s head. Invoke her help for the gifts you need to win back one soul. Pray the rosary, as she asked us to at Fatima. Ask her to help you find strength in the rosary if you don’t have it now. It’s a very powerful weapon.
Most (97%) of the young adults under 30 I know have left the Church, or only attend Mass now because they live with their parents. It’s staggering. For one thing, they don’t agree with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. (I think they don’t understand it.) How do you identify a counterfeit? You study the real thing. What is The Real Thing for Catholics? St. Teresa of Avila said, “prayer is the elevation of our soul toward God to render Him our homage.” The highest form of prayer a Catholic has is the Mass. The traditional Mass is truly God centered. Every aspect of its design helps elevate your mind to God. The Novus Ordo contemporary Mass I attended Sunday was human centered. In this spiritual warfare in which we are engaged now, do we arm ourselves with a spiritual machine gun or a fluffy feather duster? The devil does not want us to know God. The devil wants us to know, love and serve ourselves, to take our focus away from God. We need The Real Thing, so we know counterfeit (counterfeit theology, teaching, reason, love) when we see it. Save the Liturgy.
Fasten your seatbelts and go to confession! Things are escalating in this 100th year of Fatima.
Pray for all our Priests, especially Father Z.
“We are hating the sinner as well as the sin. ”
I hope it’s understood that I didn’t mean I feel that way or conservatives feel that way. I meant that’s what most of the LGBT people thinks we believe.
In my struggles with SSA I’ve just started to learn that the well-formed conscience isn’t a bully but a lifeguard. Now I’m in a little better position to get the deacon’s point that ANY sexual obsession is not a healthy thing. As always thank you for this post and your prayers.
Dear Stephen C.
A good comment, but I have a few questions.
” Jesus described Christian love in a marriage as being free of lust, and while nobody should think that a saint, offered champagne, should not be grateful , the fact remains that Jesus – to a greater degree than John Paul and Paul VI seems to have done – considered marriage to be something a person does, not a vocation and not a heaven on earth in any different way than not being married.”
Nowhere in Scripture can I find a passage where Jesus defines, “Christian love in marriage as being free from lust.” That is a general admonition for all people, both inside and outside of marriage, where lust is properly understood not to include those feelings towards one’s spouse. Could you explain?
“But marriage is not a special vocation, and it is not a reward for being good: it is a gift from God, which like every other worldly good can be used well, in our free will, or badly.”
Marriage is a sacrament and all sacraments are, by their nature, reserved. The word derives from the Latin, sacr?mentum, which is, itself, derived from sacrare, meaning to consecrate or make holy, to set apart. This, in turn is a translation of the Greek, mysterion, meaning mystery, so sacraments are, “holy mysteries.” Can a sacrament also be a vocation? Of course. Holy Orders is both a sacrament and a vocation. Is marriage a vocation? The word, vocation comes from the Latin, voc?ti?, meaning summons, call, invitation. Now, Jesus says, in Matthew 10:9, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Ven. Fulton Sheen wrote a book called, Three to get Married, in which he explained that it takes three persons, the husband, the wife, and God, to get married. It is God who accepts or ratifies the marriage from the invitation extended to the woman by the man. As far as I can see, this matches the requirements for a vocation.
Please, where does Chesterton say that marriage is not a vocation? I cannot find it.
The Chicken
One thing that bothers me as a layperson and Catholic man is between 2002 and 2008, three now former priests in my diocese came out of the closet. One is now a massage therapist, another is a counselor, and one “married” his partner in Canada. (Yes, Sgt. Friday, these incidents are true). Two of these former priests served our diocese for twenty years, and I can’t help thinking that funds that were spent educating these former priests could have been spent on more fruitful pursuits. [Yes, that can be frustrating. However, God writes “straight” with crooked lines. First, I hope that those men were, while in ministry, not vicious. Second, we believe that sacraments work ex opere operato because of Christ’s action and holiness, not because of the holiness of priests. We can imagine that, in the time they were in active ministry, they also did some good. That said, if they weren’t dedicated to the vocation, I’m glad they are out. Perhaps they will find their way to heaven despite their lack of fidelity. And to those who are like them, don’t let the door hit you, etc., but good luck to you in your state of spiritual peril. Ponder the fact that you are going to die, much was given to you, and you will account for what you have done. Go to confession and don’t screw up.]
“Christian love in marriage as being free from lust”
When anyone lusts after anyone else it means they are USING the other person as an OBJECT to fulfill their desires and satisfy their lustful wants (whether it’s seeing, touching or hearing the other person). They don’t CARE about how the other person feels or even what happens to the other person. It’s all about their own wants.
Even in Christian marriage a husband or wife should not lust after their spouse because that just means they want to satisfy their physical wants. If they just lust after the spouse and constantly take from the other spouse without caring for him/her and nurturing him/her they are treating them as an OBJECT, just someone to give them what they want when they want it. But if they love their spouse then they care about how the spouse feels, is treated, is thought of and even how their love affects the spouse. They will care if the spouse is hurting, sad, uncomfortable or just not “fully” with them at that time. When it’s only about the “ACT” and satisfying a physical desire it leaves the other person truly out of the whole thing. Love is wanting what is best for the other person as well as yourself. Lust is just wanting what you want when you want it.
“It has always puzzled me how powerful the LGBT community is – they represent about 1 1/2 percent of the population. By contrast people in the Autism Spectrum also represent about 1 to 1 1/2 percent of the population, but we do not see TV shows featuring people on the Autism Spectrum, nor are there “Autism Friendly” parishes, nor do they get to parade on St. Patrick’s Day.”
THANK YOU for that information because it is so true.
Loving someone does NOT mean we have to agree with or accept what they do. We can love without going along with the flow just to make them comfortable and happy.
Some notes on the Lambeth Conference from Wikipedia (the conferences started in 1867 and are celebrated every 10 years):
From the infamous 1930 Conference:
” Resolution 15 allowed “in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles.” The vote for this Resolution was 193 for it, 67 against it, and 47 not voting. This was the only Resolution for which a record of the numbers voting was required.[22]
The London Times of June 30, 1930, predicted that the Lambeth Conference would change the “social and moral life” of humanity. This was done by the Conference’s Resolution 15 in which in contradiction to earlier Resolutions (1908 Resolution 41 and 1920 Resolution 66) allowed the use of contraception in marriage.[23]
William Carey, Bishop of Bloemfontein, withdrew from the Conference in protest and even sent a petition to the King on the subject.[24]
Resolution 16 expressed “abhorrence of the sinful practice of abortion.”
Resolution 18 reckoned “sexual intercourse between persons who are not legally married” to be “a grievous sin.”
Amazingly, just ten years earlier, at the 1920 Lambeth Conference, they concluded:
“The conference’s uncompromising and unqualified rejection of all forms of artificial contraception, even within marriage, was contained in Resolution 68, which said, in part:
We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers – physical, moral and religious – thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion, encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control. [17].”
What happened between 1920 and 1930? The 1920 Conference represented attitudes up to 1920, that is, just after WWI and before the European youth movement began. Attitudes were, still, largely, conservative, being those of the Edwardian and Victorian Eras. The 1930 Conference reflected the seismic shift that occurred in attitudes between 1920 and 1930. remember that Margaret Sanger fled the United States to avoid prison in 1914, at the outbreak of WWI, and her influence was felt by many of the young women after their husbands returned from the War. It was a time of infiltration by both Socialist and Communist parties, as well as anarchists. It was a time of a rising youth movement and extreme social experimentation. During the 1920’s, the divorce rate began to rapidly climb and technology, especially, the rise of mass production techniques. lead to a growing materialism, which coincided with the Marxist focus on the material dialectic.
The Catholic Church was buffered against these influences because of its staunch stance against Modernism, especially after the 1907 publication of Pascendi dominici gregis by Pope Pius X, as well as the Oath against Modernism and the establishment of the informal, Sodalitium Pianum, which reported any suspicious activity among priests. That is not to say that the Church did not take notice of the trends in European society and not to say that there wasn’t an underground movement of clergy and laity, but the outright influence was shielded from the life of the everyday catholic until the 1960’s.
Although Russia seems like a very small influence on the the world stage at the present, back in the 1920’s, Russia was the only country, at the time, to have undergone a Marxist revolution, so all eyes were on Russia. The anti-Bolshevik movement in the United States (The First Red Scare) was in full swing, comparable to that of the Macarthy era thirty years, later (The Second Red Scare), so that communism was a bit latter to develop to full bloom in the United States as a political philosophy. From 1920 to 1940, most of the Communist activity in the U. S. was concerned with labor movements, although the ideology did influence the more radical Left, which would have serious consequences in the 1960’s.
It was from studying the failure of the Russian Communist Movement to spread to Europe that the members of the Frankfurt School in Germany, starting in 1923, developed their Critical Theory, which was the pre-cursor to Post-modernism and the modern Cultural Marxism, from which the sexual revolution developed.
In regards to the family, it was from Russia that the West adopted no-fault divorce. Russia has been influential in the current problems of the family in the West since WWI, at least in the background, which is one reason why Our Lady, at Fatima, warned against Russia’s influence.
Of course, it is impossible to argue with the LGTB movement, rationally, because they are not committed to rationality. They suffer from the notion that all truth is culturally determined. Since they do not recognize an Absolute Truth, their appeal to right and wrong amounts to nothing more than a will to power. Unfortunately, in such a state, true liberty cannot flourish. Hence, one is left with what, then, Cardinal Ratzinger called, “the dictatorship of relativism.”
How can one hold onto water? How can one overcome these trends? That is the crisis the world now faces.
The Chicken
“When anyone lusts after anyone else it means they are USING the other person as an OBJECT to fulfill their desires and satisfy their lustful wants (whether it’s seeing, touching or hearing the other person).”
That is not the Biblical use of the term, which is more nuanced. It comes from the Greek, epithyme?, which means, more generally, “to set the heart upon, i.e. long for (rightfully or otherwise):—covet, desire, would fain, lust (after). [c.f. Strong 1937]. Thus, there can be a lawful sense of lust.
The Chicken
And Fr. Martin can predict for us how the real life versions of these TV dramas can be expected to turn out: everyone, feeling the warm and welcoming embrace of the new Church under Pope Francis, will convert to Catholicism, then see the errors of their ways and repent, and start to advocate chastity and preach the Gospel of Life. Right Fr. Martin?
I may write a short comment for a change.
Terminological reminder.
When the Bible or traditional moralists say “lust”, they do not mean what they would technically term “sensual pleasure” or even “venereal pleasure”.
They mean “inordinate venereal pleasure”.
Hence,
1. inordinate
2. venereal
3. pleasure.
Only on number 3 there does not seem to be dispute. No. 2 means that, say, a kiss, as long it remains a kiss and is not connected with a thought to do more than kissing, is “sensual” and may of course be sinful under the one or the other count (prudence… necessary self-mistrust… scandal… incompatibility with the married state…), but it is not “lust” properly so-called. This is not my chief point, though:
It must be inordinate to qualify as lust. It’s not the feeling that makes the thing wrong. It’s the situation which makes the thing wrong that also makes the feeling wrong.
End of terminological reminder.
Dear Stephen C,
it seems to me that when you describe Pope St. John Paul II going too much into the one direction – and at least the well-known preachers of his theology of the body do go too far into some direction, I do not know about himself – then you yourself go too much into the other direction.
I agree that marriage is nowise a vocation in the same sense that priesthood or that religious life is a vocation. It may be a bit get on our nerves when we always hear of marriage as a vocation, not least because they who say so play particularly on the notion that vocations are an elitist thing, and it doesn’t matter if few actually have that vocation. (The reason probably being that, well, in that case you can dismiss questions “why do I have to do all that” more easily rather than having to answer them.) The idea that marriage – other than priesthood and religious orders – is in principle (though not necessary in any society in actual reality) the vocation for the mass of mankind is somewhat lost in the process.
But all the same it is simply wrong to say that it is not a vocation, given that even being a car-mechanic is a vocation (in a sense).
And likewise, a Sacrament is not simply “a worldly good”, and yes, a vocation of a distinctly higher order than being a car-mechanic, though (considered as a vocation) of a lower one than priesthood or religious life.
—
As for Bl. Paul VI,
I do not agree to our assessment. First, we Catholics dignify even the most dangerous questions with answers. Second, Paul VI’s “additional argument”, if contraception were allowed states would enforce it (and surely all readers would have a horror at least of that perspective) was insightful and persuasive. Third, he cleared in the meantime the open question about NFP relieving good and loving Catholic couples of an unnecessary burden in their conscience. Fourth, there were arguments brought forward which may not have had much value in themselves, but certainly the names of the subscribers were of such nature that the ordinary Catholic would trust their expertise (Cardinals and so on). These, as it were, dubia required a reply from the Pope, and he did give one.
Of course, a contested doctrine traditional but not hitherto dogmatized would have been an almost classical opportunity for a dogma. That the blessed Pope did not issue that may have been too little, but otherwise I find nothing possibly to blame in HV.
And now the time for mourning has come. There is a new group that has emerged:Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA). These are people who are attracted sexually to family members: fathers with daughters, mothers with sons, and sibling with sibling. Some have “married,” without legal sanctions. There are many support sites to help these people. They may be on the road to legalization. (1 Cor. 5: 1-2)
I agree. Furthermore, I seem to remember JP2 changing the order of the purpose of marriage. Originally procreation was first, & mutual help, comfort, etc., was second. He flipped the order & we’ve had nothing but grief since.
[He didn’t cancel it.]
Reflecting on earlier comments about “unplugging”–I think this is the answer as far as we are able. Living in rural Tennessee, the day-to-day in-your-face talk of the above issues is easier to keep out of our home. We do not watch TV (our TV is only used for an occasional decent movie). We do not subscribe to newspapers or magazines or read “news” online (I get my news from FR. Z–he tells me all I need to know). Our family rises early; my husband and I meet for morning prayer; my teenagers get up and we have breakfast, then we pray the Rosary together along with the Mass readings for the day. Then we go outside to work in our vegetable garden and do yard work (we have a lovely Mary garden), take care of the chickens, and so the day goes. The teens do schoolwork in afternoon or work on other enterprises. On Saturdays, we take our extra produce, yarn crafts and baked goods to the farmer’s market, make a little money and have a wonderful time with people who are close to the land. Sundays are days for God, rest and enjoying each other’s company; we often play games or go to the local nursing home where my teens plays music for the residents.
“Unplugging” from all that is harmful to our family is intentional. We do not have smartphones, just a landline and a couple simple cell phones to takes on trips. It can be done. We’re really normal people. You’d probably like us if you met us.
Father Z,
Could you please clarify what you mean by “He didn’t cancel it.” [Exactly what I said]
My two cents is that it was, indeed, changed and it is, indeed, in error and needs to be reversed. It is part of the way overboard and abusive personalism.
Karl
[You are in over your head here.]
When I hear the born that way defense I am reminded of a conversation I had with a coworker in the late 1980s. She told me that she had taken the pill when it was introduced in the 1960s. At some point she had gone on a long weekend with her husband but forgot to take her pills with her. When she returned from the trip she took 4 at once to catch up. When she shared what she had done to her doctor, he was aghast. He had been studying the research available on the pill and told her that had she conceived during those days, the baby’s sex would have been changed by the hormones from taking 4 pills at once. It is not beyond reasonable to conclude that many young women over the years may have done the same. Born that way? Perhaps but not conceived that way.
Like others here, I am puzzled by the “born that way” argument regarding people with same-sex attraction, as if being “born that way” makes any given person’s characteristics (a) normal; (b) morally acceptable.
People with haemophilia and cystic fibrosis are “born that way,” too. Yet, no one would present as “normal” a *hereditary* condition whereby the person’s blood refuses to clot, so that the person may die of a hemorrhage brought on by the merest scratch or bruise. But haemophiliacs were “born that way.” And people with cystic fibrosis are also “born that way;” from infancy, the secretions which the human body naturally produces are unusually viscous, so that these children cough incessantly, and may experience injury to their lungs and develop pneumonia, even when very young. “Born that way,” but yet not “normal”!
Because people with these and many other genetic diseases are “born that way,” should their symptoms be embraced, even celebrated? Should there be Sickle-Cell Anemia Pride parades? And should medical researchers treating hereditary neurofibromatosis as a disease be cited for bigotry against people with that conditions? Indeed, if it’s a sign of bigotry and intolerance to refuse to accept as normal the homosexual lifestyle, even though some people are sure they are “born that way,” is it also a sign of bigotry and intolerance to refuse to accept as normal the hereditary diseases mentioned earlier, because, after all, some people are “born that way” ?
What an interesting article. Thank you for posting about it.
No one is born gay. Period. God has declared it a sin that cries to heaven, one of the few things that really ticks Him off…He would therefore not create someone that way. God doesn’t create people to hate. This is why one can say with confidence that scientists will NEVER find, nor be able to engineer a ‘gay gene’.
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masked chicken – thanks for reading my comment. Sorry for the delay, I just do not have the heart to log onto the internet every day. Chesterton wrote an essay or two against contraception, and I remember his arguments as being more human and persuasive than the discussions in Humanae Vitae, which seem to me to be too respectful of modernism (compared to the better arguments that could have been made). Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I remember it. I said “even Chesterton” because, while I admire and cherish his memory, I do not respect him very much, although I of course hope and pray he is in Heaven: he spoke the truth well and converted many souls, but he was unkind (as a “socialist” and an “English patriot” – poor guy, there is no way most English people wanted to listen to him no matter what he said, they humored him at best) to certain groups of gentle people: and with all the gifts God gave him, avoiding unkindness to gentle people was the least he could do out of gratitude, and he did not do that. (He was like Luther that way). (Chesterton was a friend of Belloc, a great-hearted Christian but a man with lamentably vicious hatred in his heart, I believe — and Chesterton was a better friend of Belloc than of Jesus when it came to trying to frighten some of the weak. This is a sad world. They both need our prayers, as do the people they so often insulted. Our century is very very bad but the earlier century was in many ways worse). Hans Urs von Balthasar is often considered a great (and negative) liberal influence on the church but his book on vocations clearly set forth the difference between a vocation to marriage (I have no problem calling it a vocation, in the non-technical sense – so many married people are going to heaven , after all – and marriage is a wonderful and beautiful thing that even the best of poets have failed to accurately describe), which is a worldly vocation, and vocations to God – I apologize for failing to explain this well, but when God calls a person to a wonderful marriage that person, no matter how much suffering ensues due to having experienced real love, i.e., the greatest of gifts, for another (and real love in the context of a sacrament, albeit a sacrament only available to the elite of this world – if you have an autistic child you know what I am talking about, this world is full of non-elites who will never have the opportunity for a sacramental marriage – or for ordination, for that matter, although everybody can be called to a life of prayer), can never say to God that he or she gave up everything for the Lord: those with a real vocation can say that, and every day of their life should be spent in a state of gratitude (and any regret for not being in a marriage to a person in this world should be considered in light of the promises that Jesus gave to those who followed him – I do not need to repeat the blessings he promised – blessings that also are given to those called to marry in this world, but – and I only say this because I am old and not healthy – those blessings sometimes, before we die, misleadingly appear rather finite, and the blessings of those who gave up everything for the Lord should never appear anything but endless. God knows what he is doing). So I agree with Balthasar that marriage is not a vocation in the true sense of vocation, but there is more to an individual person than their vocation in this world… . Maybe I am just dense. As far as explaining what Jesus said about no lust in a marriage, there is nothing I can say you do not already know, he said do not approach your wife with lust in your heart, and he said people do not “marry” and are not “taken in marriage” in heaven. Of course he wanted people to be happy and enjoy life, and his first recorded miracle was at a wedding – but there is a passage in a novel of another cold-hearted Englishman (Waugh, this time) where the younger sister of a beautiful woman realizes that her older sister is in love – a once in a lifetime love, a deep love – with a friend of the family. The way that Waugh understood the world – and I think he was right in this – was to describe the younger sister (who was on her way to becoming a nun, a Bride of Christ) as feeling sad at the limitations that her older sister, and the friend of the family, had put on their possibilities for love (it was adulterous love in the context of the novel, but the married love the older sister had was also extremely limited in another way… it is a very sad novel in that way). She had hoped for better, in that particular instance. Anyway, thanks for reading, you probably understand these things better than I do. A thousand years from now, assuming the perpetually averted Apocalypse has not occurred (and I think it has been averted in our days, God would not leave us in the last days with the type of spiritual leadership so many people now see, I think we are in a lull before the end times), almost all of our children will be children (descendants) of people like me who have a deep and rational aversion to the nastiness of contraception. (Back to Chesterton – he described that nastiness well. I hate to call it that because so many otherwise good people practice it, but it is what it is.)
Justalurkingfool,
The long story short is that traditionally the procreative end of sex was presented as the primary purpose of the act. This is basically just an extrapolation from its natural purpose: sex exists in nature/animals in order to generate offspring. From the Thomistic point of view, its use needs to be aimed in this direction to be fully rational. Many would be very surprised to read what he considers sinful.
However, the act also has secondary purposes. One of the more important is the unitive. The pleasure associated with the marital act brings the spouses together, and this was understood as part of God’s purpose for the act. As an analogy, meals are fundamentally about sustenance, but they also tend towards building community.
At some point in the twentieth century, as theology became less Aristotelian and more Personalist, theologians including JPII began to talk of “unitive” aspect as a co-primary purpose. They did not see any reason to subjugate one of God’s intentions for the act to the other, and as a rational creature giving itself in sacrificial love (very differnt than how St. Paul or AUgustine thought of the act), its unitive purpose deserved co-equal status.
The more interesting move, though, has been to elevate the marital act–as opposed to marriage–to mystical status, often conflating the act with the sacrament of marriage more generally. You can see a touch of that in the comments here. Many a theologian that slide dangerously close to describing the marital act, rather than the marriage itself as the sacrament, and to describe the marital act in very spiritual/theological terms (for example, as a picture of Trinitarian love (father/mother/baby)). In that way, at least, I think many have gone too far.
But regarding the idea that the unitive purpose is co-equal… it certainly does strain a lot of previous theology and reflection on marriage–the opinion of many Church fathers is simply irrelevant and almost scandalous from our perspective. NOT WOKE.
It also led to a lot of confusion with NFP, because people get used to justifying sex during infertile periods as a pursuit of the unitive. Such thinking can collapse very easily into justification for birth control. The actual teaching is closer to something like: the Church does not judge the licitness of the marital act between spouses as long as it is non-contraceptive. But this isn’t because its is necessarily unitive. It may not be at all. St. Thomas and company would have been much more likely to say that the non-procreative purposes of the spouse could render it sinful.
That is a 1-inch deep primer.