Pope Francis, isn't concern for the protection of nature incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Pope Francis, in Laudato Si, insists that, “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion.” And “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?” See here.

And what of the homosexual question? Isn't it also true that concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Today so many, even within the Church, seek to justify homosexual acts.  But, as the Roman barrister and statesman Cicero reminded us, "right is based, not upon men’s opinions, but upon Nature. This fact will immediately be plain if you once get a clear conception of man’s fellowship and union with his fellow-men. For no single thing is so like another, so exactly its counterpart, as all of us are to one another…And so, however we may define man, a single definition will apply to all.” [Laws I x 28-30]

Cicero goes on later to draw two conclusions of critical importance, namely that laws exist for the common good, and laws that deny fundamental human rights are not valid laws at all: “It is agreed, of course, that laws were invented for the safety of citizens, the preservation of States, and the tranquillity and happiness of human life, and that those who first put statutes of this kind in force convinced their people that it was their intention to write down and put into effect such rules as, once accepted and adopted, would make possible for them an honourable and happy life; and when such rules were drawn up and put in force, it is clear that men called them ‘laws’. It may thus be clear that in the very definition of the term ‘law’ there inheres the idea and principle of choosing what is just and true.”

Vatican II stressed that the moral goodness of the acts proper to conjugal life, ordered according to true human dignity, "does take only the good intentions and the evaluation of motives into account; objective criteria must be used, criteria drawn from the nature of the human person and of his acts, criteria which respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love" (Gaudium et spes, n. 51).

This teaching is emphasized in the Declaration Persona humana: "The use of the sexual function has its true meaning and moral rectitude only in true marriage" (n. 5).

Homosexuality is objectively incapable of achieving "the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation". In this regard the above-mentioned Declaration Persona humana says: "According to the objective moral order [Natural Law], homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality" (n. 8).

May we not say that concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Of course. So why doesn't Pope Francis say this in his Encyclical?

Related reading here.

Pope Francis: The Homosexual Disorder is not a concern, only a commitment to Tradition

Pope Francis has admitted that he has "some nerve problems" which require treatment as well as various neuroses. See here. A neuroses is defined as, "A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress such as depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior and hypochondria."

Now, I would never make light of another person's mental illness or disorder.  There but for the grace of God go I as Saint Philip Neri once said.  I have been through exhaustive psychological exams and screenings both for the United States Air Force (to obtain a security clearance above top secret) and for a religious community which determined that I was "too devoted to Magisterial teaching" (whatever that means). In both cases, I was given a clean bill of psychological health and determined to be free of any and all pathologies, neuroses etc.

But I find it alarming that a self-admitted neurotic with "nerve problems" would request religious communities to refuse orthodox candidates on the grounds that such people are mentally ill and " might not be suited for religious life."

What happened to "Who am I to judge?" Oh that's right, that rule only applies to those with a homosexual inclination. Pope Francis has no problem with priests who suffer from the INTRINSICALLY DISORDERED" homosexual inclination, he only has a problem with candidates to the priesthood and religious life who are deemed "rigid" because of their commitment to truth, order and structure.

Frank Walker over at Pewsitter explains:


At the Radical Catholic there's no reason to start glossing over the Pope's naked contempt for the Faithful.  It's not like it's going to stop.

The great Vatican II is the Church in entirety!  Those Catholics who retain beliefs from the prior Church must be branded insane - and this in the Year of Mercy.

Doubling down on Cardinal João Braz de Aviz' warning to religious vocations directors from around the world about the consequences of distancing oneself from the "great lines" of the Second Vatican Council, the following day Pope Francis gave the same group a short list of warning signs that a young person might not be suited for religious life.*

Given the state of the Church, one might be tempted to expect such a list to include, say, active homosexuality, pedophilia, theological and/or pastoral dissent, careerism, inordinate fondness of polyester pantsuits, etc. But I suspect that even considering such things as being potentially harmful to religious vocations is to have already distanced oneself from Vatican II - perhaps irreparably so. No, the real threat to religious vocations is to be found elsewhere: deep in the Freudian Unconscious. Pope Francis explains:

All the people who know the human personality - may they be psychologists, spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers - tell us that young people who unconsciously feel they have something unbalanced or some problem of mental imbalance or deviation unconsciously seek strong structures that protect them, to protect themselves.

Faithful Catholics, people who are conservative, grounded, Christian; they are unbalanced.  Ask anyone who knows the 'human personality' like a psychologist.  Nothing trendy about psychology, no.  It trumps all.

While insinuating mental imbalance in one who seeks structure is somewhat new - I mention only in passing his description of Christian ideology as a "serious illness" - decrying the threefold evil of 'structures, rules and habits' is an established trope of Pope Francis' personal magisterium. As he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium (§49):

More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: "Give them something to eat."

Again, is there any doubt as to who is meant here? And could the modus operandi of setting up false dichotomies be any clearer?

Why is it that every aspect of the 1970s church, which produced, among other things, the endless sex abuse lawsuits and scandals, has to be replicated today?  How many faithful vocations were subjected to these psychological screening attacks back then?

Personally I find little encouraging in the fact there are about a hundred more ordinations in the U.S. this year.  It's still a miniscule number for a country with over 300 million people.  I know Pope Francis says he's all about quality, but I can't help but thinking they've probably become more lax in at least one key area.  After all, they'd probably have thousands of vocations if they really wanted them, not hundreds.

At his core, the place where there should be Faith and wisdom, doesn't something seem deeply twisted in the mind of Pope Francis?  It's almost a crushing hatred for those who obstruct his goals, a determination to succeed at their expense.  It's the kind of force which drove the Protestant Reformation: a deranged (ideological?) mind at the helm with all the powerful establishment lined up behind him.

I hate to say it, but I don't know what else to call it.

Can we trust the Sentinel & Enterprise to cover the Catholic Church or issues which concern Catholics?

Professor James Hitchcock has said that many in the media belong to a "self-defined 'enlightened' class who claim the right to judge other people's beliefs, even when they do not understand those beliefs, a claim which clearly contradicts the same enlightened class's constant sermons about 'respect' and 'understanding.' Their favorite cause is 'sexual freedom' and nothing sets off their alarm bells faster than the suggestion that chastity may have some value...Religious believers are continually accused of trying to impose their beliefs on others, which in reality means resisting having secular beliefs imposed on them...The enlightened class obviously does not understand Catholic teachings about many things, nor does it wish to, and it gives itself license to trash those teachings..." (See here).

Just last month the "enlightened class" over at the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise provided anti-Catholic bigot Bill Press the opportunity to trash the Catholic Bishops, accusing them of being deceitful with regard to the Obama administration's contraception mandate and of advancing a teaching which is appallingly "medieval."  Mr. Press wrote, "I love protests, and have taken part in many. But there are real protests and there are phony protests. And one of the phoniest we've ever seen is today's protest by Catholic bishops against the Obama administration's new rules on insurance coverage of contraception.


Here's the truth. On Jan. 20, the Health and Human Services Agency, under Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, issued a new rule that insurance policies, as part of their basic package, must offer contraceptive services with no deductible or co-pay. An exception was made for 335,000 churches, missions, or other places of worship where all employees were Catholic or members of any religion which opposed contraception as a matter of faith.

The new ruling does not require Catholic hospitals or clinics to provide birth control pills or devices. It does not force Catholics to practice contraception. It does not interfere with anyone's religion. It does not prevent priests and bishops from continuing their appalling medieval and widely ignored attempts to convince Catholics that contraception is sinful. It simply says that there can no longer be two kinds of health insurance policies: those that cover contraception and those that don't.

Catholic bishops are being dishonest. They accuse the president of infringing on religious liberty. Yet they fail to acknowledge, for example, that not everybody who works in a Catholic hospital or university is a Catholic."  (February 13, 2012 edition of the Sentinel & Enterprise).

Even non-Catholics of good will can see through Mr. Press' nonsense.  But to label the Church's teaching on artificial contraception "medieval" is just hateful and proves Archbishop Fulton Sheen was correct when he said that, "There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing."

This ignorance as to what the Church is and what she teaches pervades most of our secular media.  The Sentinel & Enterprise routinely publishes opinion pieces which are just wrong on the facts.  Not only is Catholic teaching often misrepresented but the newspaper fails to get even basic facts correct.  For example, in an article which may be found here, the newspaper reports on more than 25 protesters and their children who stood outside St. Anna's Parish on Lancaster Street in Leominster to show their opposition to the Obama adminstration's contraception mandate.  The article says that one protester is from St. Camilla's Church in Fitchburg.  The problem?  The parish referred to is dedicated not to St. Camilla but rather to St. Camillus de Lellis, who was actually my father's patron saint.*

Now before you say, "Well that's an honest mistake," consider that this Catholic parish is in the Sentinel & Enterprises' very own city!  And they still managed to get it wrong!  But hey, why should the "enlightened class" worry about such matters?  After all, the Church and her teaching are merely "medieval throwbacks" to a "superstitious time" right?

I wrote the editor of the newspaper a while back offering to cover the Church and Church-related issues.  I didn't get a response.  But the newspaper did publish this gem on Easter Sunday.

Can we trust the Sentinel & Enterprise to cover the Catholic Church and issues which concern Catholics with fairness, accuracy and objectivity?  What do you think?

*  More accurately, the parish is now St. Bernard's at St. Camillus.