“It is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.” — Aidan Nichols, OP1
By the triumph of the therapeutic mentality, indeed therapeutic way of life, I mean a gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences. This therapeutic way of life is pervasive throughout the domain of, for example, homosexual sexual experiences in which “no criteria of validity [for those experiences is offered] other than the therapeutic experience of conviction.”2
In response to the question—by what standards are these experiences to be judged?—the therapeutic mentality presupposes that a person’s life experience is self-validating. Experience is granted an authority that sometimes even for Christians trumps the Bible’s own moral authority;3 indeed, an individual’s experience is taken to be “a final arbiter of truth and falsehood in the Church.”4 But I shall argue that this turn to individual experience as self-validating or authenticating is “no more acceptable that any of the other historically recurring attempts to make of private inspiration a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel.”5
In the epigraph to this article, Aidan Nichols correctly affirms, “It is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”A good example of the therapeutic mentality is found throughout the recent book by James Martin, SJ, titled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (hereafter, BB).6 Significantly, Fr. Martin does not argue for the authority of experience as self-justifying; rather, it is a presupposition of his work. There are two other presuppositions that play an important role in Fr. Martin’s work: his understandings of dialogue and of respect.
Experience, Dialogue, and Respect
Against the background of the presupposition of the therapeutic mentality that grants such authority to experience that it renders it self-justifying, we can understand why Fr. Martin does not argue but implicitly presupposes that “same-sex” attraction is good from the order of creation and even finds justification for this in scripture. That is, a homosexual qua homosexual is “wonderfully made” (Psalm 139), as Martin suggests in asking a same-sex attracted person to reflect on himself and his experience in light of that psalm (BB, 134-137). In this connection, it follows that Martin holds it to be legitimate to ground human identity in so-called homosexual orientation, which encompasses an individual’s personal and social identity. How does Fr. Martin justify the legitimacy of the self-description of a person’s identity, indeed, insisting on it? The only criterion that he suggests legitimizes it is individual experience. Individual experience becomes a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel, the teachings of the Church. This leads him to the conclusion that a person’s homosexuality is a creational given rather than being in itself inherently disordered, a sign of brokenness, an expression of man’s fallen condition. For example, Fr. Martin portrays the fact that persons with same-sex attraction find happiness in their same-sex attracted relationships, and can be caring and loving to each other as self-justifying experiences; that is, because they find their same-sex sexual relationships satisfying in many ways, they must be good. But since God is the source and end of all blessings, the anthropological question regarding the particularity of God’s will and purpose in creating man as male and female arises here (Gen 1:27; 2:24), regarding the question whether individual experience legitimizes same-sex attraction.
No, it doesn’t. The creation of male and female receives the judgment of goodness by God, which is his blessing. The Church has always understood same-sex intercourse to be inconsistent with Scripture, tradition, natural law reasoning – and, in particular, with Christian anthropology, which teaches sexual morality and hence marriage to be an intrinsically male-female union. Martin holds that there are “goods” in same-sex relationships – “love,” “commitment,” “fidelity,” “mutuality.” But we must not treat them as neutral goods abstracted from particular sexual behavior, which the Church unequivocally rejects, and from the larger culture of homosexuality – to say nothing of the worldview (the sexual revolution!) underpinning the interpretation of these goods.
In contrast to Fr. Martin, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2357; hereafter, CCC) teaches: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered’.” Martin comments on the phrase found in CCC, no. 2358, namely, the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered:” “The phrase relates to the orientation, not the person, but it is still, as countless LGBT people have told me, needlessly hurtful to them. . . . So to call a person’s sexuality ‘objectively disordered’ is to tell a person that all of his or her love, even the most chaste, is disordered. For many LGBT Catholics, that seems unnecessarily cruel” (BB, 73-74).
Fr. Martin does not say that the problem with the term “objectively disordered” is solely with the language used that otherwise correctly describes the homosexual condition. Indeed, if that were the problem, he would just suggest a change in the language used to describe an expression of human brokenness because of man’s fallen state. Fr. Martin, however, does not consider the individual in the homosexual condition to be in a fallen state. Thus, he does not consider whether the term is true to reality and hence morally right about homosexual practice; or even whether it is, however inadequately, getting at the reality of the homosexual condition. Rather, he only considers how the term leaves the individual feeling about himself, hurt or abused verbally. That is it.
Again, Fr. Martin does not just object to the formulation of the homosexual condition as “objectively disordered.” If that were solely it, he would acknowledge the distinction between the normative order of creation and the order of the fall, followed by the order of redemption. One would then take as normative the truth that God made man, our created nature, as male and female for each other (Genesis 1:27), and that this nature is savagely wounded by sin, broken, but, thanks be to God, it is redeemed in Christ through his atoning work. It is not Fr. Martin’s view to convey the Church’s understanding of same-sex attraction; rather, he is concerned solely with the feelings of those who experience same-sex attraction.
In Fr. Martin’s view, causing a person to feel hurt or abused verbally shows a lack of respect. One can hardly disagree with that but Fr. Martin means something more. On Martin’s view, what is respect? He says this about respect: “respect means, at the very least, recognizing that the LGBT community exists, and extending to it the same recognition that any community desires and deserves because of its presence among us” (BB, 32). What exactly is involved in respect other than the recognition of a community’s existence? Fr. Martin seems to be suggesting something more than merely tolerating this community’s existence, for that is certainly unproblematic.
But he seems to want people to “respect” the same-sex desires of people with same-sex attraction and the concomitant beliefs they hold that their desires are innate and good. But it is wrong to ask people to express respect for what they think is immoral, false, and harmful. As Simon Blackburn puts it:
We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. . . But once we are convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot respect in any thicker sense those who hold it—not on account of their holding it. We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one. We would prefer them to change their minds.7
Hence, the old adage, “Love the sinner but hate the sin.” Of course, all men deserve respect in a more specific sense.
It seems to me that Fr. Martin confuses two things in his understanding of respect: how we relate to people, on the one hand, and evaluating their beliefs and practices on the other. The former relation should be ethical: honoring the dignity of a person qua person, relating to that person in the context of “encounter, accompaniment, and friendship” (BB, 64). But the latter relation calls us to assessment, critical judgment, discerning the difference between good and evil, embracing the former and rejecting the latter (Rom 12: 9; 1 Thess 5: 21-22). This distinction between relating to people and evaluating their beliefs and practices is affirmed by Vatican II:
But it is necessary to distinguish error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he flawed by false or inadequate religious [or moral] notions” (Gaudium et spes, no. 28). This distinction is lost to Fr. Martin. He wants the Church to make “an unabashedly positive statement” about people with SSA “without including a critique.8
But critics, such as Fr. Martin, of this distinction raise the following objection. On the one hand, the Church teaches that the individual who experiences same-sex attraction is a person of dignity, created in God’s image, and that he should be shown respect, compassion, and sensitivity. On the other hand, if my sexual identity is at the core of my personal identity—as these critics of the Church’s position claim—how then can my dignity be honored if that core is objectively disordered, and is regarded as an objective evil? Isn’t then the affirmation of being in God’s image just an abstraction that is undercut, as one objector put it, “if not by logic, then by psychological experience [?].”9
This objection is hard to fathom. The fall into sin—original sin—has corrupted the image of God in all men. CCC teaches (no. 400):
The harmony . . . thanks to original [holiness and] justice is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.
And so the same question could be asked, indeed, has been asked throughout the history of the Church and Christian theology: does the fallen human nature of every person undercut the imago Dei and, if so, in what sense? Put differently, how are we to understand the central question of man’s humanity in his sinfulness? Does the Fall literally dehumanize man, depriving him of his essential nature?
The brief, but nonetheless correct, answer to this question must be no. On the one hand, there is the Church’s biblical teaching that the heart of sin is the alienation from God that produces spiritual death, that manifests itself in “hardness and impenitent heart” (Rom 2: 5), in “ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom 1: 18), in “vanity and darkness” (Rom 1: 21), and “foolishness and uncleanness (Rom 1: 22, 24). Clearly, this biblical perspective undercuts Fr. Martin’s presupposition regarding the justification of self-authenticating experiences, for some of our experiences are clearly the result of our inherited sinfulness, disorderedness, and brokenness.
On the other hand, however, the Church also teaches that in this alienation from God, man still remains man: man’s nature, his fundamental identity, has not been annihilated or extinguished by sin, and since all substantializing of sin is rejected, man’s nature after the Fall is still the work and creature of God, intrinsically religious, that is, intrinsically ordered to the knowledge of God, and hence the deepest foundation of human nature is still what God made it. We find this distinction expressed, for example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
According to faith the disorder [in marriage] we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman” (no.1607).
So, the essential feature of human nature remains the same, being substantial, or primary, and hence sin is a secondary element such that it is accidental to human nature. What has been called the Augustinian Principle affirms that the nature of man persists in the regime of man’s fallen state. Augustine writes, “The natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature but by healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved.”10
The good news is that Jesus Christ renews and regenerates the fallen man from sin, reconciling him to God the Father, in Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit. The restorative and saving grace of God, through the saving death and resurrection of Christ, renews the meaning of God’s creation, breaks the power of sin, cancels our moral guilt, and offers us new life in Christ as a gift.
The key evidence for my contention that Fr. Martin is confused about what respect involves is, then, that he nowhere presents the so-called LGBT community with the Church’s life-giving teaching toward homosexuality. Fr. Martin ignores the following principle:
There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith. (CCC, no. 89)
In this connection, it is important to see that his view of dialogue is almost exclusively about listening. In the words of the Congregation for Education: “The Church, mother and teacher, does more than simply listen. Remaining rooted in her original mission [of proclaiming the gospel], and at the same time always open to the contribution of reason, she puts herself at the service of the community of peoples, offering it a way of living.”11
In addition, the methodology in mind is based on three guiding principles seen as best suited to meet the needs of both individuals and communities: to listen, to reason and to propose. In fact, listening carefully to the needs of the other, combined with an understanding of the true diversity of conditions, can lead to a shared set of rational elements in an argument, and can prepare one for a Christian education rooted in faith that “throws a new light on everything, manifests God’s design for man’s total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions which are fully human.”12
Fr. Martin makes a disclaimer he believes absolves himself from presenting the Church’s teaching. His book is “not a treatise on moral theology, nor is it a reflection on the sexual morality of LGBT people. . . . This is a book primarily about dialogue and prayer” (BB, 6). But what are we engaged in dialogue about if not the beliefs and allegedly self-authenticating desires of people in a homosexual condition? John Paul II is correct, “Dialogue is a means of seeking after truth and sharing it with others. For truth is light, newness, and strength.”13
Furthermore, Martin implies that Catholics who experience same-sex attraction know what the Church teaches and hence there is no need to present that teaching. But do they understand the rationality of the Church’s teaching? Fr. Martin leaves us with the impression that their rejection of the Church’s teaching—on same-sex attraction, blessings, and marriage—is responsible and justified. He makes no mention of the kind of reasoning that led them to hold these false beliefs, for example, negligent reasoning, ideological rationalization, or wishful thinking.
Except for the phrase, “respect, compassion, sensitivity” (CCC, no. 2358), being the sole basis on which he builds his position, Fr. Martin completely ignores the entire normative context of Christian anthropology that is the prolegomena in the Church’s teaching on the sixth commandment (CCC, nos, 2331-2336), the vocation of the human person 14 that follows from that anthropology (nos. 2337-2347), and the sexual morality of man’s vocation to chastity (nos. 2348-2356). Having ignored that normative context, he never discusses the teaching of the Church regarding the relationship between chastity and homosexual practice (CCC, no. 2357).
Authority?
Fr. Martin might respond by saying that he instructs the members of the so-called LGBT community to respect the authority of the Church’s teaching, but, he is quick to add, “As Catholics, we believe in various levels of teaching authority in our church (BB, 99), and hence not all [teachings] have equal authority” (BB, 100; also, 78). As a general principle, this is of course correct. Still, Fr. Martin gives no examples of which teachings are authoritative, and in what sense. He never tells the so-called LGBT community which teachings, in respect to same-sex issues, are binding in faith, on what grounds, and to what extent.
Why binding in faith? “Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself” (CCC, no. 1812). A call for some vague “respect” doesn’t approximate what the assent of faith requires when we are speaking of teachings that are irreversible, definitive, indeed, infallible and hence possessing the highest degree of certainty—such as the teachings in CCC, nos. 2331-2359—and which therefore require the assent of faith, meaning thereby that they should be held to be true. Furthermore, even those truths that the Church teaches authoritatively but non-definitively require more than just respect. The assent here, too, is intrinsic to the logic of faith such that “the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent,” which is a “religious submission of mind and will” (Lumen gentium, no. 25).
Is Fr. Martin suggesting that the Christian anthropology (Gen 1:27) that is the prolegomena to the Church’s teaching on the sixth commandment (CCC, nos, 2331-2336), the vocation of the human person that follows from that anthropology (nos. 2337-2347), and the sexual morality of man’s vocation to chastity (nos. 2348-2356), are non-definitive teaching? Yes, he says, “Catholics must prayerfully consider what [the Church is] teaching. To do that, we are called to listen. Their teaching deserves our respect” (BB, 78). This means, he adds, “LGBT Catholics are invited to challenge themselves to listen closely. . . . [to] consider, pray, and of course use their informed consciences as they discern how to lead their lives” (BB, 79). This advice falls far short of informing them that faith requires them to accept the Church’s teaching on sexuality.
You would think in a book dealing with the Church’s stance toward homosexuality, Fr. Martin would make a real effort to inform the members of the so-called LGBT community of the Church’s teaching on the sixth commandment and all its implications for sexual morality and the moral life in Christ (CCC, nos, 2331-2359). But he never does. No, not one word in this book.
In sum, homosexual practice is morally unacceptable, because not only are such sexual acts not open to life but also, because sexual differentiation is a fundamental prerequisite for the two-in-one-flesh union between a man and a woman, they cannot realize unity. As Robert R. Reilly puts it, “only a unitive act can be generative, and only a generative act can be unitive—in that only it makes two ‘one flesh’.”15
This one-flesh union is not just posited by ecclesiastical law. Rather, Jesus calls us back to the law of creation (Mk 10:6-7). “Law must therefore be considered an expression of divine wisdom: by submitting to the law, freedom submits to the truth of creation” (Veritatis Splendor, no. 41). This law of creation grounds an inextricable nexus of permanence, twoness, and sexual differentiation for marriage. In particular, marriage is such that it requires sexual difference, the bodily-sexual act, as a foundational prerequisite, indeed, as intrinsic to a one-flesh union of man and woman. “So then they are no longer two but one flesh” (Mk 10:8).
Elsewhere, CCC explains, “In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning. . . . By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, [Jesus] himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God” (nos. 1614-1615).
Endnotes:
1 “Reviving Doctrinal Consciousness,” in Christendom Awake: On Reenergizing the Church in Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 41-52 and at 41.
2 Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 40th Anniversary Edition (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006 [1966]), 98.
3 Fr. James Martin, SJ, suggested in a tweet (citing a recent remark posted by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, which cites a passage from a book by the late Methodist writer Walter Wink) that there exists an analogy between slavery and homosexuality vis-á-vis the moral authority of Scripture. He seemed to imply that not unlike the view of Christians who came to reject Scripture’s stance on slavery so too we now may possibly do the same with its stance on homosexual practice: “Interesting: “Where the Bible mentions [same-sex sexual] behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well and nowhere attacked it as unjust. . . . Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified?” Now, this is all implied but it is clear what he wants to say. Since we are not prepared to justify the biblical stance on slavery, so too let us consider rejecting the Bible’s stance on homosexuality. I refute this argument in my article, “No, @JamesMartinSJ, the analogy between slavery and homosexuality does not hold,” Catholic World Report, October 26, 2019
4 Aidan Nichols, “Reviving Doctrinal Consciousness,” 41.
5 Ibid.
6 Revised and Expanded (New York: HarperOne, 2017; 2018). This article is a revised and expanded version of my June 16, 2017 article, “Fr. James Martin, “bridges,” and the triumph of the therapeutic mentality,” Catholic World Report.
7 Simon Blackburn, “Religion and Respect,” in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise M. Anthony (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 180.
8 Fr. Martin’s tweet of May 2013 as cited by Michael O’Loughlin on Fr. James Martin & Others Are #SayingSomethingPositive – New Ways Ministry.
9 Stephen Pope, “The Vatican’s Blunt Instrument,” The Tablet (August 9, 2003).
10 Augustine, City of God, book 14, chapter 11. Online: CHURCH FATHERS: City of God, Book XIV (St. Augustine) (newadvent.org).
11 Congregation for Catholic Education, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (Vatican City, 2019), no. 30.
12 Ibid., no. 5.
13 John Paul II, “On the Occasion of Meeting with the Exponents of Non-Christian Religions,” February 5, 1986, Madras, India.
14 Fr. Martin claims that his position “builds on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and is well within church teaching” (BB, 9). Neither claim is true: he ignores not only the full teaching of the Church, its Christian anthropology and its corresponding sexual ethics, but also proceeds from the assumption that homosexual orientation grounds human identity, and this strategy is contrary to the Church’s anthropology. I refute his claims in my article, “Mercy and Truth: Pastoral Care of Individuals in Spiritually and Morally Problematic Relationships,” Clerical Sexual Misconduct: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, Edited by Jane F. Adolphe and Ronald J. Rychlak (Providence: Rhode Island: CLUNY Media, 2020), 365-381, 477-480.
15 Making Gay Okay, How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2014), 36.
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Thank you, Professor Echeverria and CWR, for this clear and systematic dismantling of Fr. Martin’s attempt to distract and obfuscate.
Sorry, Fr. Marin. Charity does not require us to accept sin and death as normal.
In fact, it requires us *not* to.
Agreed brineyman. And thank you, Professor Echeverria and CWR. Even if Fr. Martin and this papacy succeed in not technically tripping the wire of doctrinal heresy, they obstinately promote pastoral heresies, teaching us how to stay in our sins. Where is the love that leads to union with the Perfect God, that wants to obey God’s commands so as not to be separated from the Beloved? Why baptize, confess (or any Sacrament) if God wants us to act on our sinful inclinations? Why did Christ die on the Cross? Pastoral heresies enable sin, destroying the path to Heaven. Such “compassion” masks despair of God’s grace and His healing peace beyond all understanding. Pastoral heresies are lies that lead others to the “second death.”
What sexual practice could NOT be justified by applying Martin’s self-justifying criteria? Anyone? Anyone?
Same question raised to Tony Kosnik and his HUMAN SEXUALITY co-authors in 1977. The whole revisionist sexual ethics project in Catholic morality ALWAYS stumbles on that question.
With all due respect to either Ann Landers or Dear Abby – Fr. Martin, you do have a point, BUT – if you keep your hat on, maybe no one will notice.
This excellent piece might have been entitled “the Pastoral Apostasy”. This holds that in the name of ministry, no Catholic Truth holds true. This Apostasy simply inverts Jesus’ command to the unstoned woman to go and sin no more.
James Martin’s satanic inversion states that sin is good, and that the good is out of date. That this rainbow-flag Apostasy is supported by the Argentinian validates nothing!
https://www.colbertnewshub.com/2013/09/25/september-24-2013-metallica/
Scroll down to see the photo of Martin introducing the music group Metallica…
I wonder why the Church allows herself to be distracted by the likes of James Martin. Responding to him takes time and energy away from the very mission of the Church which is the conversion of the world to Christ through repentence and reform of one’s life by grace. But I guess that if members of the Church were not aware of the many faces of Satan in the culture, they wouldn’t see the obstacles placed in the way of fulfilling the Church’s mission.
Because James Martin represents Satan in the world and in the church. They are already taking over, should we shut our eyes and ignore it all?
Samton, that’s the same conlusion I’ve reached with regard to all the attrntion he’s paid.
Because, dear deacon, he is deceived by the wolf who is intent on destroying and scattering the sheep. If we who assist the Good Shepherd do not apply the salve of truth to the hearts and minds of those wounded by this deception, they will writhe in pain from their sin, remaining trapped in it and blaming others for their pain, and see no reason to repent. Compassion demands honesty and right-minded accompaniment of these beleaguered souls.
.”A gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences.”
I was thinking about something like this earlier, though in a far more simplistic way. A fair number of the people I have known for years seem to follow this gospel of personal happiness (these are not practicing Catholics by the way, but largely drifted away from whatever religious background they may have had). Their understanding of happiness runs along these lines:
I am a good person,
Therefore what I want is good,
Because I am a good person.
If you start at a different point, for instance, “I am a sinner in need of God’s mercy,” you will not be able to make the second assertion “Therefore what I want is good.” Starting with the assumption of self-justifying intrinsic “goodness” pushes God out of the frame. I suppose they could add “God made me good” just to get Him in there somewhere, but finally they make a circular statement revolving around themselves.
very good
This is the “culture warrior”/editorial problem I was referring to earlier. The decision to publish an article like this.
This author writes: “No, it doesn’t. The creation of male and female receives the judgment of goodness by God, which is his blessing. The Church has always understood same-sex intercourse to be inconsistent with Scripture, tradition, natural law reasoning – and, in particular, with Christian anthropology, which teaches sexual morality and hence marriage to be an intrinsically male-female union.”
You don’t think Father Martin knows this? You think he’s talking about sexual intercourse? This article by Father Martin explains his position:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/04/06/what-official-church-teaching-homosexuality-responding-commonly-asked-question
This is so pathetic! You are so desperate to write an article against Father Martin that you won’t even take the time to really think about what he’s saying, but instead will come up with this extremely contrived piece of intellectual gymnastic nonsense. This is the problem with CWR. You should not have paid any attention to this article, but sent it to the dust bin.
Fr Martin askes: “What can we say to gay or lesbian Catholics who feel that their own church has rejected them?”
I wonder how those gay or lesbian Catholics feel being rejected by the Church if that Church has such a huge number of the homosexual and bisexual clergy, some openly so? Also, what do they mean by “rejection?” How the Church should “accept” them?
Instead of commenting on the old (2018) article by Fr Martin I decided to give an Eastern Orthodox answer to this question for comparison of the spirit and approach (from the Orthodox Church in the US):
“WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “ACCEPT” SOMEONE WHO IS LGBTQ+?
Naturally, there are several definitions of the word accept. The LGBTQ+ movement tends to view acceptance as approval. In other words, in order to accept someone who is LGBTQ+, we must regard his/her actions as proper and/or normal. In fact, if we do not consider changing the Church’s dogma to accommodate his/her lifestyle, this makes us homophobic.
The rest of society – and the Orthodox Church in particular – use an entirely different definition. Outside the LGBTQ+ movement, accept means to receive willingly. The Orthodox Church will accept you in that sense, welcoming you home into the Body of Christ. However, this kind of acceptance does not (and should never) mean approval of the person’s actions.”
And further:
“CAN SOMEONE WHO IS LGBTQ+ BE AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN?
If an LGBTQ+ individual intends to follow Christ in the Orthodox Church, he/she will need to face the issue of his/her sexuality. While Christ welcomes us as we are, He does not want us to stay in that same condition. Instead, He wants us to become Him. In the process of becoming like Christ, we must confront our sins and repent and turn away from them, turning instead toward a chaste lifestyle that honors God. Our priest and community of faithful in our local parish are there to help us do this, through prayer, counseling, and emotional support.”
My comment:
Anyone who comes to the Orthodox Church with a repentant heart that acknowledges the sin of homosexual behavior will be lovingly accepted. LGBTQ+ individuals who instead insist on their right to such behavior and choose to live an actively sinful lifestyle without repentance, voluntarily remove themselves from communion with the rest of the Body of Christ.”
(From the website of Saint John the Evangelist Orthodox Church, Beaver County, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.)
Sorry, the words “my comment” got into the text accidentally. Below them is the quote continued.
The jesuit approach to sodomy is pretty much the same as its approach to contraception, which is this: Sex is primarily about sharing pleasures. In the final analysis, it is at once a personal and social suicide pact, as it encourages addiction and sterility.
Please don’t broadbrush the Jesuits.
They broadbrush themselves. When is the last time you read an article describing the discord in the Society? They are all of a piece…even those who might have a slightly more moderate perspective. The Society comes first before everything. If I am wrong I trust the CWR will provide a probative article on the resistance within the Society to everything that undermines the perennial Magisterium of the Church. I suspect they might come up with a few paragraphs listing the men who have fled rather than be a part of the systematic deconstruction of Roman Catholicism. The operation is before our eyes in living color in the Jesuit occupation of the Chair of Saint Peter. Bergoglio’s critics are not undermining the papacy, it is he himself and his cartel.
The holy fathers of the Society of Jesus roll in their graves.
Cardinal Fernandez approves your message.
Echeverria BEGINS by quoting Nichols (“the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition”) and Reiff (“the therapeutic way of life”).
In the first instance, we either believe what we do, or do what we believe. In the second instance, when inclusive synodality excludes (!) testimony from members of Courage, it is unavoidably clear that part of the therapeutic way of life is the synodal way of “walking together.”
In both cases, how to break the circle of self-betrayal which is perceived as the “justification of self-authenticating experience”? Does the personal “AHA MOMENT” come from quoting Scripture, or Tradition, or the Catechism? Surely sometimes, but what actually ignites the interior spark for the enslaved who like things the way things are?
Yours truly points to a remark the late Dr. NICOLOSI (NOT Nichols, above) delivered at the second annual meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists (SCSS) at Franciscan University, in 1994–before the sexually betrayed and self-betrayed had even invented LGBTQA tribalism or gone on crusade to convert the state (from civil unions to gay marriage), society (e.g., 2003, below), and now even the Church (guru James Martin and his enablers).
….In 2003, we already had THIS from Paul Ettelbrick, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Director: “Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society” (reported in Kurtz, Stanley, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4 – August 11, 2003, Vol. 8, No. 45).
Alternatively, and about the late psychiatrist NICOLOSI (not Nichols, above)–who had worked successfully with hundreds of homosexuals who wanted to escape their bubble of self-authenticating experience–he reported that the way his clients THEMSELVES described the “aha moment” was like a card game. Paraphrasing: “It’s as if you’re in a card game and betting on your hand. And then you suddenly are surprised to find that you’ve been betting on two cards that are stuck together (!), and that you’ve been betting on the wrong card. and, that you, yourself, want to bet on the right card.”
QUESTION: Nicolosi reported that the path is still long, but that the beginning is the “aha moment” of simply wanting out of the bubble.
So, instead of Martin’s bubble-bath “theology,” or Fernandez’s word-game duplicity in Fiducia Supplicans…how instead, for Synod 2024 to outgrow complicity in the card trick and further betrayal of “the fabric of society”?
Surely, the theological “experts” and vanguard “study groups” are working hard on this.
Fr Martin’s major premise, isolated by Prof Echeverria is that homosexual orientation, the attraction is a gift from God who created us, that “homosexuality is a creational given rather than being in itself inherently disordered, a sign of brokenness”. That Martin says is affirmed by the sense of fulfillment in the same sex relationship. According to this reasoning commentator Sandra in response to this article suggests, any form of sexual impropriety may be affirmed as good.
An indication that homosexual attraction is more a choice of behavior rather than an inborn feature is the success Catholic mental health specialists have had in restoring persons, especially the young [prior to behavior becoming ingrained] to a normal male female orientation. Fr Martin is a protege of Pope Francis who has promoted Martin as a spokesman for the Church, to wit, for his own leanings on the issue.
FIRST, about becoming “ingrained,” we have this from a biographer to the conflicted bi-sexual Andre Gide:
“[Gide] emphatically protests that he has not a word to say against marriage and reproduction (but then) suggests that it would be of benefit to an adolescent, before his desires are fixed, to have a love affair with an older man, instead of with a woman. . . the general principle admitted by Gide, elsewhere in his treatise, that sexual practice tends to stabilize [ingrained, locked-in] in the direction where it has first found satisfaction; to inoculate a youth with homosexual tastes seems an odd way to prepare him for matrimony” (Harold March, Gide and the Hound of Heaven, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952).
SECOND, about “restoration”:
Of what is not genetic in origin (as proved by gnome research, and despite the pope’s voodoo science), we have the research finding that addictions produce corresponding neuro-chemical and possibly cellular changes in the brain itself, e.g., dopamine which is responsible for reward-driven behavior. A recent study completed at University College London and using MRI technology (magnetic resonance imagery) strongly implies that a habit of lying, for example, tends to suppress the part of the brain (the amygdala) that responds emotionally to a “slippery slope” pattern of small and then larger lies (Neil Garrett, Dan Ariely and Stephanie Laxxaro, Nature Neuroscience Journal, October 24, 2016; reported by Erica Goode, New York Times, October 25, 2016).
THIRD, one of the “larger lies” is to seduce the state into validating the gay lifestyle by redefining marriage and society, and holding public flagpoles hostage.
And, then to claim self-referential feelings of exclusion when rational elements of the violated society and the Church, both, vomit in the direction not of persons, but in the direction of the grooming and manipulation, and guru James Martin’s monologue, and Tucho Fernandez’s double-speak.
Yes, a good commentary. “We have the research finding that addictions produce corresponding neuro-chemical and possibly cellular changes in the brain itself”, is important to recognize. The chemical modifications from ‘ingrained’ behavior compounds the difficulty of recovery. Faith is essential. Why AA recommends a higher power for recovery.
Perhaps too much attention is being spent on the homosexual phenomenon and too little on sexuality in general. Sexual morality is general and applicable to all. Lust is a problem which we must all deal with. We all experience sexual attraction, which a a God given good and necessary for procreation and the very survival of the human race. Sexual morality deals with how we deal with this innate sexual attraction. Wrong thoughts and actions become sin for both the homosexual and heterosexual and we become accountable for them. Education is necessary in conscience formation. We become culpable to the extent that we recognize and accept the moral good. The Church needs better teaching of sexual ethics. Our world is saturated with sex as perhaps never before. Almost everyone in the world possesses a cell phone. Most can access pornography at the press of a button. Two clicks from a rosary is nudity. Where is our religious teaching on dealing with all of this? How can we expect to form a conscience without teaching? The Church is the problem, not the James Martins. I believe people are starving for definitive teaching, meat instead of pablum. Homosexuality is only the tip of the iceberg.
Please don’t broad-brush the Church. If we want the truth of Christ, we have to look no further than the last several, saintly pontificates for all the catechetics we need on this subject. No, the James Martins of this pontificate are destroyers of saintly teachers like Popes Paul VI, JPII amd BXVI.
“Perhaps too much attention is being spent on the homosexual phenomenon and too little on sexuality in general.”
Perhaps not. The sexual abuse crisis in the church was not about sexuality, it was about gay sexual predator “priests” harming young people. I’m wondering why you feel the need to defend a homosexualist priest who is both deceived and is deceiving others?
Mostly yes, especially to your iceberg. More below. First, homosexuality and binary sexuality (linguistically “heterosexuality”) are not even on the same plane for comparison…
But, second and as for “education,” a good read is John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.” Shorter is the Catechism. The shortest version is the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. And of course there’s Humanae Vitae (1968), of which JP II’s later work serves as the supportive, awaited, and richer exposition.
But, now, the hidden ninety-percent of your iceberg…
This might be that nothing even has been said about lust from most pulpits ever since Humanae Vitae (1968). Why is that? Partly because dissent went uncorrected (called by critics the “Truce of 1968”: https://eppc.org/publication/the-truce-of-1968-once-again/ ), and partly because so many homosexuals (celibate or not) were admitted into the seminaries in those years. A good place to escape the Draft? Not much interest then in covering moral theology, and in many cases an infiltrated faculty quite willing to substitute the one-course meal of social justice. The Scandal of 2002 was part of the result; the rest is the ongoing great silence and probably, too, the fetid atmosphere that even today enables James Martin et al to smother the Catholic laity like a mushroom crop feeding on horse manure in the dark.
So it’s not so much about missing educational material as it is, first, about subversion, corruption, intimidation and sometimes blackmail, and absentee leadership. And confusion. Even the link above uses the misleading term “artificial contraception” when the correct and moral term is “artificial birth control.” Non-artificial Natural Family Planning is not contraceptive.
Peter I’ve wondered about the 1968 ‘Truce’ when Archbishop O’Boyle Wash DC sanctioned priests who refused to implement Humanae Vitae, then was advised by the Vatican to withhold sanctioning. At the time Paul VI feared a schismatic break with the American Church. Cardinal O’Boyle [he was elevated to cardinal by Paul VI 1967] was true to the Church but the Vatican, by pulling back its support, left a deleterious message to all US bishops and clergy. It seemed that the threat of schism was very real, the outcry against the prohibition of the contraceptive pill was great.
Now in retrospect it appears Vatican backing of O’Boyle would have been better. That, similar to what my bishop had encouraged me when in opposition to a questionable medical decision to withdraw any form of life support for a visibly responsive patient with, “Peter, stick to your guns”. It seems based on the immense tide of immoral behavior that followed from the pill’s acceptance a make or break stand would have been the right decision. Germany, and the damage that the Synodale Weg is a similar example. Unfortunately the Vatican pull back from support of O’Boyle left the message that formal doctrinal prohibitions have no teeth. That hierarchy are paper tigers who issue paper doctrines. Recovery for our Church will require plenty of tough love.
Have you ever heard of lust, greed, pride being among the seven deadly sins? Ring a bell with you at all? Also, I believe there is a long tradition of moral theology and philosophy in the Church. Sound familiar to you?
We only have the same old problems, reappearing in new forms. Actually, some of the forms aren’t even new. Pornography has been around for a long, long time. Pornography is much easier to access now because of electronic technology, and that increases the likelihood of getting addicted to it, but the essential nature doesn’t seem to have changed much.
A bigger problem is that many contemporary Catholics decided they don’t like moral theology and the moral teachings of the Church because having to follow them restricts their “free self expression” and “self-exploration,” and doesn’t allow them to do what they want. And after all, they regard themselves as more on an equal footing with Jesus Christ, more like a partner. No amount of training in “ethics,” sexual or otherwise, will address that problem.
A gay man who is celibate can be a good Catholic. I have heard some conservatives advocate “conversion therapy” to become straight, but I doubt this really works. Celibacy is a better alternative. Also, such a person needs our support and help.
Anyone who suffers a disordered attraction can be a good Catholic, Will. Whether we’re attracted by avarice, power, gluttony, lust, etc. the answer lies in not acting upon it & seeking forgiveness for the times when we fall. That applies to us all. Each of us has a weakness towards some vice or pattern of omissions that we need to confess. That’s just a consequence of our human nature.
The older you get it seems the more omissions you confess. It becomes more about what we should have done. A Granny’s opportunities for vice are less frequent. Well, at least that’s how it appears to me. My personal failings are sloth & procrastination.
🙂
There is a problem of language here.
A celebate man could have unwanted homosexual attractions.
A gay is a practising sodomite.
Until the Argentinian, no pope ever used the vulgar G word.
Confusing the two terms “Gay” and “homosexual attraction” is rainbow ideology. The former suffers from the latter. The latter does not necessarily mean the former. The former is a sin crying Vengeance. The latter is temptation.
Many same sex attraction men struggle with this weakness. It is a cross to bear. Some fall into bad behavior but others struggle to do the right thing. They need our support.
Yes, but if men (or women) with same-sex attraction are seriously committed to living chastely as a follower of Jesus Christ, they aren’t going to be taking advice from Father James Martin or New Ways Ministry, nor will they try to get others to accept “that persons with same-sex attraction find happiness in their same-sex attracted relationships, and can be caring and loving to each other.” However difficult it is, they cling to Christ, despite setbacks. They will pick themselves up, repent and start fresh.
On the other hand, if If they are following Father Martin et al, or looking for some level of acceptance that same-sex romantic relationships can be good, then I assume that what they are really looking for the “affirmation” that he is pushing for. Because they can’t have it both ways. Their commitment needs to be to Christ and His Church, and in that case, others will be more willing to support them.
Thanks Doc! Very Helpful.
The perfect article now that Sexual Perversity Month is being celebrated.
This article applies not allow to the likes of Martin but to the “homosexual friends” movement, espoused by the likes of Eve Tushnet, Leah Libresco, and others: as long as people don’t engage in the behavior, it’s okay; SSA are supposedly still good in themselves and can be fostered via a “friendship,” “relationship,” “partnership,” as long as it refrains from certain behavior. This take is even more insidious than Martin’s, for it may appear fine at first glance. In fact, even otherwise (seemingly) orthodox institutions and people have been taken in by this view, e.g. Franciscan U. of Steubenville has adopted a “catechetical-type program for those with SSA written by Tushnet, while her “ministry”/work has been promoted by Catholic News Agency and the Pillar.
Demons said to have ‘pleasure’ when they try to opress/ afflict us, for the suffering it brings to The Lord – who in The Passion has undone every evil thought deed and word at a great price – esp. the interior sorrow – the 24 hours of Passion narrating how one fiber of His Heart suffered more than all the exterior sufferings combined .
Its fruits given us in The Eucharist to free us , strengthen us !
https://www.ltdw.org/other-publications.html –
The ‘spiritual worldliness’ that the Holy Father brings up often enough as a root of the issues – from denial of such a truth –
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/spiritual-worldliness-a-forgotten-bergoglioism/#:~:text=It%20is%20within%20this%20context,judge%20its%20activity%20on%20naturalistic%2C
Church holds up celibacy as a grace and privilege that moves hearts closer to Life of heaven – experiencing Love of God more deeply, to love others in an ever wider deeper level with His Love ..
marriage too – as a gift to practice same as chastity to help each other unto holiness – has wondered if the changes at the Pontifical Academy for life not too long ago was to inculcate more of such a stance instead of the excesses / even errors in the TOB interpretations .
The Church , esp. the laity leaders promoting such an attitude – the value given for chastity -the ‘salt’ needed to prevent / cure the corruption through media and other influenecs !
‘Mankind would not have peace until it turns to My mercy ‘ – Lord’s words to St.Faustina – yet , many not grasping that His mercy is the deep forgiveness He extends to each for the many evils each has committed against Him …meditating on The Passion to help remove the thick walls around hearts – to grow in gratitude, its dignity – may the month of June of Sacred Heart see the fruits of the marriage of the deep compassion of the Two Hearts flow unto all,to free lives from despair to joy in trusting in The Lord to bring healing and deliverance ! Mercy !
I find homosexuality repulsive…sorry…I do think it is objectively disordered…queers in the priesthood are the Legions of the Prince of the World. Not that the effeminate momma boys are a whole lot better.
Let your yes be your yes and your no be your no.
Who are the “effeminate momma’s boys” that you reference? Perhaps we should recruit Navy SEALs and Army Rangers for the priesthood?
In his fixation on self-justifying experiences, it’s amusing and even tragic to notice how guru James Martin—like all who disdain backwardism—are themselves stuck in the fallacies of 16th-century Lutheran theology…
An upside-down and seductive premise of Melanchthon’s “Augsburg Confession” (A.D. 1530) was that it reduced the dogmas of revelation and Tradition to the level of mere “custom,” and therefore capable of redefinition under whatever new custom wanders onto the stage of history:
“It is fitting (‘convenit’) for the Christian assembly to observe such ordinances for the sake of love and peace,…but in such a way that consciences are not burdened, that no one believes…he has committed sin if he breaks them…” (AC, XXVIII 55). Ratzinger examines the Augsburg Confession (“Confessio Augustana” or CA, in part of his broader exploration of ecumenism, “Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology,” Ignatius, 1987, specifically pp. 218-237).
In the current century, enter stage left: the customary homosexual lifestyle! And, as the Melanchthon Marionette, the backwardist James Martin.
Fr. Martin’s question, “What can we say to gay or lesbian Catholics who feel that their own church has rejected them?” has a very simple answer:
“Dear SSA brother or sister, you are so much more than just the sum of your sins. Repent and confess your sins and return to your Father in grace.”
Fr. Martin’s views appear to place our wishes and desires in the driver’s seat. Desire was a major component of Original Sin and the Fall of Man. Are we supposed to attribute Original Sin and the desires behind it to the impulses of the Holy Spirit? Adam and Eve were created with free will. Did having free will in any way justify Adam and Eve giving into their temptations and desires in eating of the forbidden fruit? After the Fall Adam and Eve didn’t take responsibility for their actions. Adam went so far as to try to pass the buck onto Eve and God for having given him Eve. The more things change the more they stay the same. Adam is said to be the priest of Eden, and to keep, protect, it. He failed in his priestly duties.
It’s not the “therapeutic mentality” that is problematic – after all, Jesus’ own mission was based on Isaiah 61 – and the central theme of that message is HEALING. He incarnated into our likeness to heal and restore a broken world – to transmute the effects of Original sin so that we could become once again sharers and partakers in the Original God-given purpose & place in the sacred order of things mapped out for us by God at the beginning of creation.
And sure, because it is we, (who by being descended from our first parents who took it upon themselves to sever that glorious tie by their disobedience) that now have to a certain degree a definitive part in responsibility-terms to assist with the outworking of our own salvation, not that this undoes or discredits anything that Jesus has done for us, but more that we simply have to do our own part in actively helping to bring about the restoration our world sorely needs, the major theme nevertheless plays out as one of “healing the damage done” – so in that sense, it is “therapeutic”.
But that said, it is a therapeutic necessity which counters the so-called therapeutic modalities of the secular world, which btw, tend often more towards escapism through indulgence in vain meaningless pass-times than a radical daring to confront the brokenness in our world with a true zeal for bringing love and compassion into the realms of that brokenness for the sake of being active sharers in sowing the Harvest of God’s Kingdom, which is btw, all about sowing into our world, the seeds of God’s Kingdom, one founded upon none other than love and compassion. True love and compassion bears none of the cold objectivity of scientific rationalism for that is kowtowing to nihilism, even if it is dressed in religious garb. That said, true love and compassion has moral integrity and lives it out in the advocating of those values that uphold the culture of life while vehemently following in the footsteps of St Paul by hating that which is evil. This can present too, many dilemmas as to how exactly to go about our witness so that we are not rudely and haughtily doing, albeit naiively and somewhat well-meaningly, a grave disservice to the intentions of our mission. Therefore, it would be wise to meditate upon the story of the Woman at the Well and reflect upon how Jesus would have used that opportunity to bring health and wellbeing, indeed true restoration unto the life of that Samaritan woman.
labelling is a grave error we give ourselves… eg “a gay catholic” “a lesbian catholic” the list goes on. i have always believed we should label things , never people. We are called by name, title. This is our dignity, we are giving ourselves indignity when we label in such desecrating ways. a community is described, not as a political/social/sexual revolutionary moment. we have procedured ourselves to death. We have labelled ourselves right out of our own truths. what is genuine cannot be so relatively rationalized.