Fr. Z's Blog

I am astonished.  And I am not astonished.

At the site of the UK’s best Catholic weekly, the Catholic Herald, we learn that Jesuit homosexualist activist James Martin has been asked to speak at the upcoming World Meeting of Families.

This meeting takes place every three years.  Since 1994 it has been organized by what is now the Holy See’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. The last meeting was in Philadelphia. The 2018 meeting will be in August 2018.

Pope Francis will travel to Ireland for the meeting.

The official site is HERE.

I have to ask this.

When the family is under attack from every direction, is it a good idea to have a homosexualist activist speak at a Vatican sponsored meeting concerning the family?

Maybe it is.  Maybe it isn’t.

I can think of arguments both ways depending, of course, on the speaker.

In earlier preparations for this meeting, there had been some materials with images of same-sex “couples”. That drew some predictable resistance and the images were removed. Jesuit run Amerika Magazine has Martin lament this with a false lamentation, a straw man:

“Why wouldn’t we want to help baptized Catholics feel included in their own church? And the argument that they’re ‘sinful’ is beside the point because we’re all sinful. We need to see L.G.B.T. people as full members of the church, by virtue of their baptism. They need to know that God loves them and their church accepts them.”

Straw man, right?  Who doesn’t want to “help baptized Catholics feel included in their own church”?   The answer is clear: NOBODY.

But there’s more.

They need to know that God loves them and their church accepts them.

Okay!  Great!  But… accepts them as… what?  Fellow sinners?  Sinners with a past who are amending their lives?  Sinners who are sinning now and who don’t repent and amend?

Amerika goes on:

As to what organizers were trying to say by inviting a priest who has called on church leaders to be more welcoming to L.G.B.T. people, Father Martin said it is clear.

“The message to L.G.B.T. Catholics seems straightforward: you’re an important part of the church,” he said.

Whatever else it is, the “message” to homosexual Catholics is NOT straightforward.  And, once again, this is slippery: every Catholic is an “important part of the Church”.

It is never made clear by Martin whether homosexual Catholics are to be welcomed and valued etc etc etc because they are human beings and Catholics, or because of their homosexuality.  Put another way, is it their humanity and Catholicity that is being exalted and defended, or their same-sex attraction?

I have the strongest sense that, behind the rhetoric – and you can see how elusive it is – the real agenda is to normalize homosexual inclinations and, thereafter, acts.

He could, of course, clear that up pretty quickly.  Please correct me if I am wrong, but he hasn’t done so yet even though others also raise this question.

We can and should have focused outreach and concern and apostolates for specific types of sinners.  For example, we can have a special concern for alcoholics as alcoholics.  Do we condone abuse of alcohol?  No.  We understand that there is a lot of evidence about genetic tendencies to alcoholism.  Do we say that inclination is good?  No.

Alcohol and human sexuality are gifts from God.  Do we condone the abuse of alcohol and also the abuse of human sexuality?  Of course not.  Homosexual persons are inclined to desire to do things that are intrinsically evil.  Having a drink isn’t a sin (for most people).  Having way too much all the time is a sin, not because drinking alcohol is evil, but because too much is immoderate.  Too much of a good thing is too much.  Moving to sex, because too much of a good thing is too much, married couples having too much sex would be sinful.  Mirabile dictu.

However, same sex people having sex even once is sinful for more than one reason, which you ought to be able to rehearse.

God foresees and permits that some people will be sinfully inclined to A, B or C.  He doesn’t make them that way.  He offers them graces.  The inclinations can, in a mysterious turn and by God’s plan, wind up being the thorny path, rocky and steep, by which people get to heaven.  However, those who have whatever inclination to some sort of sin must persevere to resist the inclination.  They will, in doing so, suffer.  Their reward in heaven will be great.

Who will attempt to deny that some homosexuals – once their homosexuality was known – have been badly treated by some clergy?

Martin would have you believe that priests far and wide have be harsh toward homosexuals because they are homosexuals.  Somewhere some priests have been uncharitable towards some chaste, continent homosexuals trying to live holy lives.  That sort of priest fully qualifies as a jerk and SOB. But we must also ask the question, make a distinction.  Is it the person that priests have been harsh towards or the sins they have committed?  Were the sinners abounding or lacking in resolve to amend their lives?  That doesn’t justify being a jerk, of course, but the distinction is important.  Furthermore, there are, in fact, times when sternness is charity and pastoral.  Yes, you read that right.

Hence, I circle back to my previous questions. Will homosexualist activists like Martin explain more clearly what it is that we are supposed to welcome: the people as people, or the people as homosexuals, or … the homosexuality?

If his agenda is really to help us to be charitable toward fellow sinners who are struggling with grace and elbow grease towards heaven, GREAT! I am 1000% on board. If his point is that all people are made in God’s image and have dignity and they should be treated as such, then HECK YAH! I’ll help!  If he is going to stand up at the World Meeting and say that all people have dignity and must be treated with charity and that homosexuals must resist their inclinations and live continent, chaste lives and that they should avoid scandal, then… great!

If his agenda is really to shift people to think that homosexual inclinations and same-sex attraction is not any different from opposite-sex attraction, and that same-sex acts are not different from opposite sex acts, then, no, I am not on board. If his point is the main-streaming of same-sex sexuality and the legitimation of homosexual sex, then HECK NO! I’ll oppose it!

BTW… I know of another group of people who, in both the past and in the present, “often feel ignored, marginalized, excluded, insulted and even persecuted by their Church”. They have been treated like dirt by a lot of clergy because of how they self-identify and because of their “inclinations”.  All they want to be is “Catholic” and to be able to realize their “legitimate aspirations”, as Pope St. John Paul called them. All they want is something legitimate and sacred, part of the warp and weft of the Church for centuries.  All they want is to be welcomed and treated well.  They just want to be an active part of the Church.   More often than not, they are ignored and belittled.

But I digress.

In the case of the upcoming World Meeting of Families, I’m just asking if this it is a good idea to have Fr. Martin as a speaker, given that he will not provide clarifications for my points above.

If I have missed something, I sure would like to be corrected.