Sunday, April 11, 2010

Homosexuality as psychopathology...




In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, Cardinal Ratzinger summarized the biblical teaching on homosexuality and explained why the Church's teaching on this subject follows necessarily from her teaching on the nature and purpose of sexuality:

"The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and life-giving union of men and women in the Sacrament of Marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally. To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent. As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood."

Homosexual activity is both self-indulgent and narcissistic. Gianfrancesco Zuanazzi, Professor of Psychology and Psychopathology for the John Paul II Institute for Studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, explains that, "The homosexual condition is difficult, sometimes tragic, and not only because of the obstacles it can still encounter in society and the injustices of which it can be the victim, but also because of its narcissistic quality. This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at 'self-recovery' and in searching for the 'better self' or the 'missing self' in another person. The homosexual approach is really one of identification and possession. According to Miller, it is easier for two homosexuals to regard each other as narcissistic extensions of themselves than to be involved in a mutual exchange. Socarides says without hesitation that in a homosexual relationship each partner plays his role, ignoring the complementarity of a sexual union, as if the act were consummated in "splendid isolation" from the other individual, simply as a stratagem for portraying a one-sided emotional conflict. Every homosexual encounter is primarily concerned with disarming the partner by means of seduction, prayer, power, prestige, effeminacy or masculinity, in order to derive satisfaction then from the loser.

Homosexual, like heterosexual, relationships exhibit forms of uplifting tenderness or mere genital expression, but whatever the approach, it always seems that the subjects use each other to fulfil themselves and, at the same time, to defend themselves from one another in a reciprocal way. Even if at the present time, dominated by the fear of AIDS, a couple's relations are not exceptional, as a rule they are unstable, unfaithful, strewn with jealousy and bitterness, marked by possessive love and demands that will never be satisfied. Very often homosexual relationships do not bind the two parties, but reveal that typical self-isolation which is an expression of complete autoerotism. The absence of complementarity, which stems from the radical difference between masculine and feminine identification, prevents the genuine dynamic of a couple. 'There is always something false", Marcel Eck notes, "and deeply painful in these loves which cannot experience reciprocity'. The problem of being, the title of a work by Jean Cocteau, who wrote from direct experience, is precisely the problem of being together.

Hans Giese rightly stresses that the 'foreground' of the homosexual syndrome comes from 'clinging to the self'. The move towards the other is not completed, while the move towards one's own sex is shorter, less costly, simpler; but, since one fears the risk of failure, to take this step involves a new risk, that of egotism. Bergler also maintains that the dominant note is always emotional detachment from the other and the focusing of interest on mere sexual gratification. Kardiner notes that the majority of these experiences are due to casual encounters and are 'one-night stands', i.e., the essential element is the value the experience has for the imagination and not the lasting human relationship. This easily leads to the desire for arousal for its own sake, to repetition and finally to anonymity, the discovery of the other not being worth the effort. Then the body is truly reduced to something corporeal: Pier Paolo Pasolini's posthumous work Petrolio exemplifies this eventuality as amply as it does monotonously. In short, for the homosexual there is the proximate danger of failing into such anonymous, repetitive and ever more demanding sexual behaviour that it becomes a kind of addiction. But this promiscuity or 'tricking', which is so frequent in the gay world, is sometimes praised by those involved as the best of relationships." (See here).


It is noteworthy that most of the sexual abuse which has taken place within the Church (somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of reported cases) has been homosexual in nature. As indicated by the John Jay Study and others (see here). And yet, there are those within the Church who either refuse to examine this fact and its implications for the Church or who even continue to suggest that homosexual men should still be ordained or that the disordered inclination need not be considered an impediment for Holy Orders.


But this is a problem which must be dealt with across the entire Church. A homosexual priesthood has inflicted so much damage to so many young lives and to the Church as a whole. The Church is in need of cleansing. Orthodox heterosexual men are often discouraged in their vocations by dioceses which have become breeding grounds for illicit homosexual activity and hotbeds of dissent from Church teaching, especially in the area of sexual morality.

4 comments:

Paul Anthony Melanson said...

As I said the other day on Facebook, the liberal media (for the most part) are not really concerned about the abuse of children - if they were they would oppose abortion, the worst form of child abuse. If they were, they would examine the abuse of children which has taken place in the public schools - and still is taking place. If they were really concerned about the abuse of minors, they would truthfully report on the homosexual dimension of this crisis.

But the liberal meia is not (for the most part) concerned with the abuse of children. Only with attacking the Church with broad generalizations and patent falsehoods and advancing an anti-life, anti-family agenda.

Stewart said...

Priests with a homosexual inclination have inflicted damage in the Worcester Diocese. One priest who headed the Diaconate training program was arrested in Las Vegas for lewd conduct. As you posted here...

http://lasalettejourney.blogspot.com/2005/10/still-more-on-fr-aquino-courtesy-of.html

ShrewsburyCatholic said...

"One of the main contributors to the plague of sodomy which has infected the modern world is the claim that sexual union is allowed before marriage. This erroneous opinion is not only contrary to Christian morality, it opens the door to the claim that two people can have mutual sexual experience independent of the purpose for which God created the two genders of men and women. The desecration of the sexual powers outside of marriage opens the door to the degeneration of homosexuality." - Father John Hardon, S.J.

Father Hardon refers to sodomy as a "plague." And yet, the "Catholic" Free Press - Diocese of Worcester - refers to opposition to homosexuality as "homophobia."

A diocese in spiritual meltdown.

Derek said...

Ann Coulter article - sodomites cause sodomy:

http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2002/03/21/should_gay_priests_adopt

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