LifeSite has a story about it. The Catholic Herald covered it. Jesuit run Amerika has the text – of course – of the talk of rampant homosexualist activist James Martin, SJ at the World Meeting For Families in Ireland.
I don’t believe that this is about trying to get Catholics to treat Catholics who are homosexual better.
Rather, this is part of a larger, concerted effort to normalize sodomy, which is a sin that “cries to heaven”.
When I began this post, I set out to offer examples from the talk with my own reactions. However, this is an example where there are too many points that would require too much space.
Suffice to say that Martin’s talk was a nightmare of manipulation and misdirection.
If you listen to or read it, be on the look out for the premises he simply wants you to accept. Be mindful of his slippery use of words, partial quotes. Watch how he sets you up with emotional anecdotes about how mean and homophobic people are (insinuation: if they believe and repeat what the Church teaches).
Among the most pernicious things was his stitching in references to “lived experience”. When you see from catholics the phrase “lived experience” be on your guard. They working to oppose, erode and replace the foundations of Catholic theology. Essentially, they use “lived experience” to justify whatever the hell they want.
How to respond?
Say the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.
Then you might go to read what I have written about homosexual attraction, etc. HERE
Included in that old post is…
[…]
I have such respect for “gays” … that I won’t lie about them.
…
Homosexual acts are clearly wrong. Our parts are intended by God to fit a certain way. They are ordered to each other in a complimentary way. God made us to live the human life in a properly ordered way, according to our human nature which He created. We can choose not to live that way. If we have inclinations not to live as God made us, that doesn’t mean that God made the aberrant inclination. God makes all people. People with disordered inclinations are, of course, people and, hence, God made them. But God didn’t make them to be people with disorders. God foresees and allows disorders, but that doesn’t make the disorders the norm. All human beings are intended to live the human life in a properly ordered way. Those who have some disorder have a harder time doing that.
We believe, however that overcoming that disorder, which will entail suffering, will bring them great merit and beautiful rewards in heaven, if not on earth.
Same-sex attraction is a disordered attraction. God doesn’t make disordered attraction. He foresees and permits disorders, according to His plan. But it is not part of the normal ordering of living the human life.
[…]
Christian charity dictates that we strive for what is truly the good of the other. That means, when our relationship merits or dictates, careful, kind and humble presentation of the truth. We must not treat anybody with cold cruelty. We should be ready with the spiritual and corporal works of mercy when required (which is more often than we sometimes acknowledge). But, in desiring to be kind, we must not call sin good.
If you fail in charity, say you are sorry, make amends, make changes so that vice doesn’t take root.
But don’t lie out of false mercy. That’s cruelty. That’s the blow upon the bruise.
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Fr Martin says, “For example, do you hold the L.G.B.T. community to the same standards as the straight community? … For example, even though Jesus condemns divorce outright, most parishes welcome divorced people. Do we treat L.G.B.T. people with the same understanding?”
I don’t think that the more conservative people in the Church, to whom the label homophobe is often applied, cannot be accused of double standards. If the kerfuffle about Amoris Laetitia and the Dubia cannot show the defense of indissolubility of marriage, then I don’t know what can.
Fr Martin says, “Notice how Jesus treated people on the margins: for example, how he treated the Samaritan woman. Does he castigate her for being married several times and living with someone? No.”
But Jesus was clear in saying, “not your husband”.
Fr Martin says, “Because for Jesus there is no “us” and “them.” There is only us.”
But when Jesus references sinners, he adds, “Do not be like them”. (“them”!) (Mat 6:8)
Fr Martin says, “Sadly, much of the spiritual life of L.G.B.T. Catholics and their families depends on where they happen to live. If you’re a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person trying to make sense of your relationship with God and the church or if you’re a parent of an L.G.B.T. person and you live in a big city with open-minded pastors, you’re in luck. But if you live in a less open-minded place or your pastor is homophobic, either silently or overtly, you’re out of luck. And the way that Catholics are welcomed or not welcomed in their parish heavily influences their outlook not only on the church but on their faith and on God. That’s the real scandal. Why should faith depend on where you live? Is that what God desires for the church? Did Jesus want people in Bethany to feel God’s love less than people in Bethsaida? Did Jesus want a woman in Jericho to feel less loved than a woman in Jerusalem?”
“Why should faith depend on where you live?” We can apply the same to the situation of the civilly remarried. Why is a sin in Philadelphia or Portland okay in San Diego or Malta?
Furthermore: Sadly, much of the spiritual life of traditional Catholics depends on where they happen to live.
I don’t hate homosexuals; just the opposite. I have a friend who is gay. I feel sorry for him because he has been suicidal. My problem is with the sin, not the sinner. We are all sinners. But my other problem is that homosexuality has been mainstreamed, even by schools, as “normal” behavior. Much of our youth today have been brainwashed into believing homosexuality is OK; it is not.
Typo: My first reply should read “can be accused”.
If moral theology is to take its lead from “lived experience” as a reference point toward which to develop, such development would be incredibly contrived and arbitrary which is founded upon the “lived experience” of those who give little adherence to morals as reflected by current moral theology. To propose lived experience as a reference point on the one hand and then completely divorce this lived experience from moral theology on the other, only to try and tie it back later in determining how moral theology has developed, makes for inorganic development. To suggest such development as a model shows how subjective and forced it would be to “update” moral theology according to “lived experience” at all.
The problem is priests who not only break their obligations to chastity but encourage others to do so andceven recruit seminarians specifically for the purpose. It is organised sin.
It happens to be mostly homosexual but if anyone uncovers a ring of priests who systematically introduce each other to loose or abusable women it would be as bad.
One distinction so sorely missing from the speech is the one between those who overcome temptation and those who fall prey to it – the word “gay” is used throughout. Some things that are true of a homosexual person only if he practices continence are given as generic statements without reference to chastity, hence a listener may think that those are true even of a practicing homosexual.
Another ambiguity is regard to mercy. St John Paul teaches:
“Conversion is the most concrete expression of the working of love and of the presence of mercy in the human world. The true and proper meaning of mercy does not consist only in looking, however penetratingly and compassionately, at moral, physical or material evil: mercy is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil existing in the world and in man.” (DiM 6)
“In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning as an outpouring of God’s eternal Wisdom, which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to the growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness.” (VS 95)
In the situation of double standards referred to in the speech “divorce yes, homosexuals/ homosexual acts no” – Fr Martin rightly recognizes that there is a problem; that divorce is against the plan of God. The proper response is to remedy that problem. However, Fr Martin proposes that the error in one field be spread to other fields too. If a child has a wound in his right hand, the nurse should clean and dress it – not wound the left hand as well.
Further to Mallu Jack’s point, does anyone have the slightest doubt that Amoris Laetitia is aimed at establishing the principle that Church teaching on sexual issues can be changed at will, because the real objective is to permit homosexuality and homosexual marriage?
Martin is a disgrace and a great vindication of my policy of avoiding Jesuit opinion like the plague.
That he is given a platform at such an event highlights the lack of discipline and general malaise in the Church, as well as the ongoing negligence and incompetence of its high leadership (taken as a whole).
In the Life Site article, Martin is quoted as saying we should not focus on the sexual morality of “LGBT” Catholics because we have “no idea what their sexual lives are like”.
But, hang on, if someone openly identifies as “LGBT” then they are obviously not in a normal, heterosexual, sacramental marriage – and thus, if a faithful Catholic, they should have no “sexual life” at all (just like all Catholics who are not in a normal, heterosexual, sacramental marriage).
I was going to call his argument here “sophistry” but sophistry refers to an argument which is clever but false – and Martin’s arguments are *not* clever. Rather they are insulting to the intelligence and threadbare. It is not hard to pick holes in them. Anyone with a functioning brain could drive a coach and horses through his waffle.
In addition to the great unfaithfulness of many modern Jesuits, what I dislike about them most is that they justify their lack of fidelity with the most banal drivel, as in this case.
What an absurd scene, a prominent priest undermining Catholic teaching on relationships and sexuality, at an event purported to be about families. Imagine the CEO of Ford saying “our cars are rubbish, don’t buy them” at the launch of a new model. What great PR eh, which will bring people flocking to hear more – NOT.
That Martin says “LGBT” Catholics should be given leadership roles in parishes, against the context of the never ending abuse revelations – which are, without fail, overwhelmingly cases of homosexual abuse and cover-up – makes his speech all the more distasteful.
The best advice “LGBT” Catholics could get is that same advice that we all could get – that we are all precious children of God who need to follow the teachings of His Church, if we want to spend eternity with Him in bliss.
The cherry-picking of certain categories of sinner for exemption from God’s laws is a great sign of the protestantisation of the Church (one of many). The protestants have gradually exempted themselves out of existence, by following secular morality to the stage where there is nothing left to reject in Christianity and Jesus Christ has become an embarrassment to them. Are we going to follow suit?
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David Prosen has a great rebuttal up today in Crisis https://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/what-fr-james-martin-should-have-said-in-ireland
The Jesuits seem to be the nest for homoheresy.
My litmus test of when the Church has truly decided to reform herself as a response to the sexual abuse crisis is when Fr. James Martin SJ is suppressed.
Maybe someone in Ireland will ask Fr. Martin to please give a demonstration.
No surprises so far. To those who must be in Dublin: wear rubber gloves and carry a black light.
Do I hold Catholics suffering from a disordered attraction to the same standards of those whose attraction is rightly ordered?
Yup, all are called to perfect chastity, all are called to love God perfectly, Father Martin is called to teach the Gospel, the whole Gospel and nothing but the Gospel. Needless to say he’s failing dismally.
There are two types of treason.
One that concerns the supernatural, opposing Revelation. And that is heresy.
One that concerns what is natural, opposing nature. And that is homosexuality.
This incessant push to legitimize sin and debunk objective moral truth is the entropic force wreaking havoc in the Church on Earth, um, I mean, “…to the Earth.”
Fr Martin says, “Sadly, much of the spiritual life of L.G.B.T. Catholics and their families depends on where they happen to live. If you’re a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person trying to make sense of your relationship with God and the church or if you’re a parent of an L.G.B.T. person and you live in a big city with open-minded pastors, you’re in luck. But if you live in a less open-minded place or your pastor is homophobic, either silently or overtly, you’re out of luck. And the way that Catholics are welcomed or not welcomed in their parish heavily influences their outlook not only on the church but on their faith and on God. That’s the real scandal. Why should faith depend on where you live? Is that what God desires for the church? Did Jesus want people in Bethany to feel God’s love less than people in Bethsaida? Did Jesus want a woman in Jericho to feel less loved than a woman in Jerusalem?”
While I do not know many gay Catholics, I have known a number of gay medical students and residents and physicians during my training. They have universally intimated to me that they would only live in a big city because that’s where all the other gays congregate and that’s where they can meet people to hook up. Sure there are other factors in deciding where to live, but the idea of taking a physician job in a smaller medium sized town without many other gays to hook up with was off the table. Not so much the “A man should go where he won’t be tempted” wisdom of St. Thomas More.
The fact that Father Martin, and his views on homosexuality are prominent in the Church, is a clear sign of decadence. The spreading of disease is a prominent part of unnatural sexual behavior, or have we forgotten the scourge of AIDS. Sadly it is still going on, and to the dismay of many AIDS victims, their life is circumscribed by a daily dose of strong drugs. There is no cure or remission. Elementary hygiene tells us to avoid fecal matter, yet homosexuals embrace it in a perverted way. Common sense is discarded, so that a terribly abnormal life style can be embraced.
There are a few things that you could add, Fr. Z. Maybe you have written about this elsewhere already. What follows is an assumption based off of common sense rather than lived experience.
It can probably be said that most, if not all, homosexually inclined persons do indeed bear moral responsibility for the beginnings of their disordered “inclinations”. Oftentimes people say that the “inclinations” or “attractions” came out of nowhere. That is because they do not notice what could be called the “primary” sins which then lead to the sins associated with homosexuality. This is not to say that homosexuality is less of a sin than the primary sin; instead, it is often the result of a few particular sins.
Somewhere St. Thomas Aquinas writes about what could be called secondary sins. I am not sure if he calls them specifically “secondary” sins – I cannot remember the exact word he calls them. That is what I am referring to here.
The root sins that probably lead to homosexual inclinations in many cases are jealousy and vanity. A male who is jealous of other males begins to look at and obsess over other males. A woman who is jealous of other women’s looks, bodies, etc., will spend her time observing and obsessing over other women. The jealous person spends much of their time focusing on the looks of same-sex persons. From there, the obsession becomes sexually disordered, too. What is thought to be an “attraction” is actually another set of sins which started with the sin of jealousy.
Another root sin that likely leads to the false belief that one is or was born “homosexual” is vanity with regards to one’s appearance. Vain males or females are often spending their times looking at themselves and looking at same-sex persons and comparing themselves to those same-sex persons. This obsession with their own looks and comparing it to others likely leads to confused thinking. The vain person spends inordinate amounts of time on the looks of same-sex persons, and that leads to disordered attractions. The sin of vanity then leads to other sins.
So, those with disordered inclinations in many cases can probably be blamed for their inclinations due to their consenting to jealousy of other’s looks and vanity of their own looks. Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Jealousy of others’ physical appearance and vanity of one’s own physical appearance leads the “heart” astray.
There are probably other factors which play into the equation. But in many cases jealousy and vanity are probably the cause if not a major contributing factor to disordered inclinations.
@Bellarmino – In each and every SSA person whom I have been able to have an in depth and honest conversation with, all shared one thing in common: abuse. “Recruitment” is absolutely vital to the LGBT movement. Secondarily, a weak, distant, or missing father is highly prevalant.
People who have repented of whatever kind of sexual sins should be welcome everywhere and not be made to feel like lepers, under special suspicion etc. There needs to be a recognition that a humble and contrite person is a person after God’s own heart. They are a blessing and a gift to the Church. People who have repented and decisively changed their behavior should not be always ever after regarded as a pervert, let alone people with same-sex attractions that they do not entertain fantasies about or act upon; who could live with that? “What God has made clean let no one call unclean”.
If people are not open to repentance that is different; Pope Francis makes a distinction between “sinners” and “the corrupt” who are ideologically justifying their sins and not open to repent. If there is such a thing as “gays” who think chastity is only for “straights” and they are entitled to their “sexual expression” in order to be “integrated” and “adult” this is corrupt. If there is such a thing as people who think chastity is only for “gays” because they are “gross” or something, that is similarly misguided. I understand that Fr Marten referred to the call to chastity that is for all, and that is right. There needs to be a deep level compassion that fornication, sodomy or homosexual acts, pornography, voluntary sexual fantasy and autoerotic behavior etc ARE actually serious and degrading harms to the person and to those close to them and especially children and this should be intolerable first of all because of their personal harmfulness. That should never be denied. Christ and the Church offer freedom. And unlike heroin or something, sexual sins are best quit cold turkey, not “tapering off”. If there is recidivism there is Confession. But there need never be. a person with mental illness might struggle more, but never make excuses.
Couples looking to get married in the Church need to be asked to be sincere with Christ as the foundation for the vocation they are entering into and if they have not been chaste then they need to separate and establish their personal chastity, with no excuses and with appropriate boundaries in regard to the fiancee, as a foundation of fidelity to their future spouse. Church marriage should be chaste and the bride’s dress and bridesmaids’ dresses should actually witness to that and be modest. It’s disgusting how people dress for weddings and it’s because people either do not understand chastity or do not understand protecting chastity. Nobody’s entitled to “unchastity pride” in the Church. N O B O D Y. We are Christ’s Body and need to act like it and make commitment to chastity both sincere and stable, and visible.
[the “gay” agenda doesn’t end at “acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle”. The next brass ring is the lowering of the age of consent.]-Father Z
Yes. This is it! The masterminds want every perversion eventually decriminalized, even pedophilia.
Father James Martin is the devil’s latest wind up toy. Pray for him.
Is it too much to hope that talks such as this will form the foundation for a future encyclical (Pascendi II?) and republishing the Syllabus Errorum?
I don’t understand how he can normalize sodomy when the Bible/Scriptures/Gospels speak so strongly against it!
All – we are at Spiritual War with the world. We must get back to basics.
@Elizabeth D…..”People who have repented of whatever kind of sexual sins should be welcome everywhere”
Chaste or not, repentant or not, homosexuality is not compatible with the priesthood…..
Pope (Emeritus) Benedict XVI, in his 2010 book, Light of the World, explains why the Church sees homosexuality as incompatible with the priesthood, even for those who live a chaste life, insofar as “…their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, i.e., from the intrinsic nature of priestly being.”
https://www.facebook.com/165171813503937/posts/1985212284833205/
Another good resource for understanding this is a talk by Dr. John Bergsma…The Crucifixion: A marital Act, A priestly Act
https://catholicproductions.com/collections/john-bergsma/products/the-crucifixion-a-marital-act-a-priestly-act?variant=&variant=16598499265
Whenever I read something that Fr. Martin has written or spoken, it always stands out that he makes the false equivalence between normative (“heterosexual”) acts and homosexual acts. That seems to be at the root of his heresy.
He has even objected to the Catechism referring to homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” (which of course, they are).
St Ignatius of Loyola, St, Francis Xavier, pray for us, and for the Jesuits!
Pope Francis tweeted today, “The #Family is an icon of God: the bond between a man and a woman generates life and communion.”
What doesn’t fr. martin s.j. understand?
How likely will this event be remembered?
Will it rank up there with John Paul II’s return to Poland in 1979 or Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK in 2010 (not being intimidated by atheist-inspired protests and threats to arrest him)?
Unlikely.
The problem with the homosexual debate is that it defines a person by their sexuality. Replace the word homosexual with philanderer. Would anyone find that acceptable?
Let me demonstrate. Here is and excerpt of Martin’s speech with the substitutions:
One of the more recent challenges for Catholic parishes is how to welcome PHILANDERERING. parishioners, as well as families with PHILANDERERING members. But that challenge is also where grace abounds because PHILANDERERING Catholics have felt excluded from the church for so long that any experience of welcome can be life-changing—a healing moment that can inspire them to go to Mass again, return them to the faith and even help them to believe in God again.
Over the past few years, I’ve heard the most appalling stories from PHILANDERERING Catholics who have been made to feel unwelcome in parishes. A 30-year-old autistic PHILANDERING man who came out to his family and was not in any sort of relationship told me that a pastoral associate said he could no longer receive Communion in church. Why? Because even saying he was a PHILANDERER was a scandal.
But cruelty doesn’t end at the doors of the church. Last year a woman contacted me to ask if I knew any “compassionate priests” in her archdiocese. Why? She was a nurse in a hospice where a Catholic patient was dying. But the local parish priest assigned to the hospice was refusing to anoint him—because he was a PHILANDERER.
Is it surprising that most PHILANDERING Catholics feel like lepers in the church?
This would not fly at all. What does fly is when people don’t identify themselves by their sexual practice. Also, I have difficulty with Martin’s story around any compassionate priests. If you persist in manifestly grave sin, and expect the sacraments of the church, you are not properly formed on how grace works. This is because the sacraments are not a prize to be won, rather, receiving them in an improper state heaps even greater sin on the person, and the Priest giving the sacraments to a known sinner is heaping sin upon themselves.
If one of Fr. Martin’s main beefs is that the Church preaches chastity to the LGBTQ community, while not doing so to non-married heteros ………. then why doesn’t he make it his life mission to call BOTH groups to chastity. Clearly, that would be a much better thing than what he’s doing now.
Crickets …….. all I’m hearing is crickets.
AL and Fr. Martin both make it really, really, hard for me not to become a sede… -.-
johnny s, I said everywhere, meaning geographical places, because Fr Martin was complaining that gays being accepted depends, according to him on where they live and what parish they attend. I have not only written against homosexuals being admitted to seminary or ordained in blog comments here, I once confronted a religious order priest, the novice master of his group, who described in a published source his ideology about how to form “gays” in religious life to accept, integrate and own their “gay” identity. He was furious, doubling down on his ideology, and I soon after seemed to pay a steep price for this, yet I have certainly never regretted it. That group happened to have as its major locations Milwaukee Archdiocese (where notorious corrupt homosexual Abp Weakland was for a long time) and Washington, DC (McCarrick). That group seems like it is getting to have less of a homosexual issue, perhaps partly due to better bishops, and seminaries getting cleaned up.
Dimitri_Cavalli: “How likely will this event be remembered?
Will it rank up there with John Paul II’s return to Poland in 1979…”
Nor St. John Paul II’s triumphal visit to Ireland in September 1979, when 1,000,000 were at the Mass in Dublin. Out of a population at that time of just over 4,000,000. North and South.
Tempora mutantur, et nos in illis mutamur. Eheu.
@Elizabeth D…..sorry for the misunderstanding.
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