Fr. Z's Blog

My good friend Fr. Gerald Murray hit for six today at The Catholic Thing.   He tackled the dreadful  reaction of the ultra-liberal Bishop of Antwerp, Johan Bonny to the CDF document which clearly states that the unions of same-sex couples may not, cannot, must not receive a blessing from the Church.    In effect, Bonny rejected the CDF statement.

Fr. Murray gives examples of the shameful things Bonny said in the the secular De Standaard (cited in English here and here).  These include, I am not making this up:

“I feel ashamed for my Church. I mainly feel intellectual and moral incomprehension.”

“I would like to apologise to all for whom this responsum is painful and incomprehensible. Their pain for the Church is mine today.”

Fr. Murray concludes:

[…]

Bishop Bonny did not decide to reject Church teaching on the day that the Holy See issued the Responsum. His comments reveal a longtime practical acceptance of homosexual activity as a moral good that should be respected and approved of by the faithful.

At the time of his installation as the Bishop of Antwerp he publicly swore the required Oath of Fidelity that includes the following: “I promise that in my words and actions I shall always preserve communion with the Catholic Church. . . .I shall hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it. . . .So help me God.”

Bishop Bonny faces a decision if he is to remain true to God and the words he solemnly swore on the Bible: recant his rejection of the Church’s teaching and faithfully proclaim that teaching within his diocese. If he cannot do that, he should immediately resign.

For the good of his soul and of the souls of his flock, I pray he recants. If he refuses and also refuses to resign, he should be removed by Pope Francis as a stumbling block, a true scandal to the faithful.

The rapid rise of the homosexualist agenda in the Church didn’t just accidently happen.  This has been in preparation through decades and decades of infiltration and patient cold-blooded careerism, promotion among their own and persecution of the straight and faithful.

Dear readers, do penance.  Make acts of reparation.

And let’s be clear about the horror of same sex acts.

St. Catherine of Siena, no less than a Doctrix of the Church, says in her Dialogues (ch 124), her conversations with God, that the Enemy, demons, incite people to unnatural sins (homosexual acts) but that they don’t stick around to see it happen, because it is too repulsive even for them.   Those acts are so contrary to nature that they offend their angelic intellect, even though they are fallen and apostate.

Io ti fo a sapere, carissima figliuola, che tanta purità richieggio a voi e a loro in questo sacramento, quanta è possibile a uomo in questa vita; in quanto dalla parte vostra e loro ve ne dovete ingiegniare d’aquistarla continuamente. Voi dovete pensare che, se possibile fusse che la natura angelica si purificasse, a questo misterio sarebbe bisogno che ella si purificasse; ma non è possibile, perché non à bisogno d’essere purificata, perché in loro non può cadere veleno di peccato. Questo ti dico perché tu vegga quanta purità Io richieggio da voi e da loro in questo sacramento, e singularmente da loro. Ma il contrario mi fanno, però che tutti immondi, e non tanto della immondizia e fragilità alla quale sete inchinevoli naturalmente (118v) per fragile natura vostra – bene che la ragione, quando il libero arbitrio vuole, fa stare queta la sua rebellione – ma i miseri, non tanto che raffrenino questa fragilità, ma essi fanno peggio, commettendo quello maladetto peccato contra natura. E come ciechi e stolti, offuscato il lume de l’intelletto loro, non cognoscono la puzza e la miseria nella quale essi sono: che non tanto che ella puta a me che so’ somma eterna purità – ed èmmi tanto abominevole che per questo solo peccato profondaro cinque città (Gn 19,24-25Sg 10,6) per divino mio giudicio, non volendo più sostenere la divina mia giustizia, tanto mi dispiacque, questo abominevole peccato – ma non tanto a me, come detto t’ò, ma alle dimonia, le quali dimonia i miseri s’ànno fatti signori, lo’ dispiace. Non che lo’ dispiaccia il male perché lo’ piaccia alcuno bene, ma perché la natura loro fu natura angelica, e però quella natura schifa di non vedere né di stare a vedere commettere quello enorme peccato attualmente. Àgli bene inanzi gittata la saetta avelenata del veleno della concupiscenzia, ma giognendo a l’atto del peccato egli si va via, per la cagione e per lo modo che detto t’ò.

“I wish thee to know, dearest daughter, that I require in this Sacrament from you and from them as great purity as it is possible for man to have in this life. On your side you ought to endeavour to acquire it continually. You should think that were it possible that the angelic nature should be purified, such purification would be necessary with regard to this mystery, but this is not possible, for angels need no purification, since the poison of sin cannot infect them. I say this to thee in order that thou mayest see how great a purity I require from you and from them in this Sacrament, and particularly from them. But they act in a contrary way, for they come full of impurity to this mystery, and not only of that impurity to which, through the fragility of your weak nature, you are all naturally inclined (although reason when free-will permits, can quiet the rebellion of nature), but these wretches not only do not bridle this fragility, but do worse, committing that accursed sin against nature, and as blind and fools with the light of their intellect darkened, they do not know the stench and misery in which they are. It is not only that this sin stinks before Me, Who am the Supreme and Eternal Truth, it does indeed displease Me so much and I hold it in such abomination that for it alone I buried five cities by a Divine judgment, My Divine justice being no longer able to endure it. This sin not only displeases Me as I have said, [NB:] but also the devils whom these wretches have made their masters. Not that the evil displeases them because they like anything good, but because their nature was originally angelic, and their angelic nature causes them to loathe the sight of the actual commission of this enormous sin. They truly enough hurl the arrow poisoned with the venom of concupiscence, but when their victim proceeds to the actual commission of the sin, they depart for the reason and in the manner that I have said. Thou rememberest that I manifested to thee before the plague how displeasing this sin was to Me, and how deeply the world was corrupted by it; so I lifted thee with holy desire and elevation of mind above thyself, and showed thee the whole world and, as it were, the nations thereof, and thou sawest this terrible sin and the devils fleeing as I have told thee, and thou rememberest that so great was the pain that thou didst receive, and the stench of this sin, that thou didst seem to thyself to see no refuge on this side of death, in which thou and My other servants could hide so as not to be attacked by this leprosy. Thou didst see that thou couldest not remain among men, for neither small nor great, nor old nor young, nor clerics nor religious, nor prelates, nor lords, nor subjects, were uncontaminated in body or mind by this curse.

The CDF document, which was a response to a dubium, said, in effect that the Church cannot bless sin.

St. Catherine makes it pretty clear what God thinks of sodomy and all the other unnatural acts that fall into that fell category.   So hideous, so offensive are those sins that even demons who provoke them won’t stick around while they are being committed.  Demons can, however, and will, stick around the places where those acts were committed.