Angela Markas has Francis' ear...

We already know that Francis ignores faithful Catholics whom he labels as "rigid."  But look who has his ear.  As this article notes:

"Francis..heard some tough talk from Angela Markas, 22, of Australia. 'There is a tendency in the Church to avoid matters that are not-so-easy to talk about. This includes same-sex marriage, our sexuality, and also, the role of women in the Church,' she told the pope."

Today, the family is under violent attack. Primarily through abortion and the push for same-sex "marriage." Those within the Church who seek to redefine marriage have rejected Christ as the institutor of the sacraments and, in their revolution against God the Author of the Sacraments, are preparing the way for the Man of Sin, who will bring man his own ersatz "sacraments" which will be signified by lying and homicide.

We ignore the teaching of Pope John Paul II to our own peril:

"Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and "being at peace with oneself", so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment.

As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 32).

The "Supreme Court's" ruling "legalizing" same-sex "marriage" has no basis in the Constitution

Our Founding Fathers had a healthy respect for Divine Revelation and Natural Law. Homosexual acts were viewed as crimes against nature. Since the Natural Law is immutable, or unchangeable, they still are.

Which is why, as "Supreme Court" Chief Justice John Roberts stressed in his dissenting view over the court's 5-4 ruling "legalizing" same-sex "marriage," "The majority's decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court's precedent.."

Roberts added in his dissent. "Just who do we think we are?"  See here.

Precisely.

"It can be safely said that the attitude of the Founders on the subject of homosexuality was precisely that given by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws--the basis of legal jurisprudence in America and heartily endorsed by numbers of significant Founders. In addressing sodomy (homosexuality), he found the subject so reprehensible that he was ashamed even to discuss it. Nonetheless, he noted:

'What has been here observed . . . [the fact that the punishment fit the crime] ought to be the more clear in proportion as the crime is the more detestable, may be applied to another offence of a still deeper malignity; the infamous crime against nature committed either with man or beast. A crime which ought to be strictly and impartially proved and then as strictly and impartially punished. . . . I will not act so disagreeable part to my readers as well as myself as to dwell any longer upon a subject the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature [sodomy]. It will be more eligible to imitate in this respect the delicacy of our English law which treats it in its very indictments as a crime not fit to be named; "peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum" (that horrible crime not to be named among Christians). A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: "ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, jubemus insurgere leges, armari jura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt, vel qui futuri sunt, rei" (where that crime is found, which is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments).'" (Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1769, Vol. IV, pp. 215-216).

"Because of the nature of the crime, the penalties for the act of sodomy were often severe. For example, Thomas Jefferson indicated that in his home state of Virginia, "dismemberment" of the offensive organ was the penalty for sodomy. In fact, Jefferson himself authored a bill penalizing sodomy by castration. The laws of the other states showed similar or even more severe penalties:

That the detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] . . . shall be from henceforth adjudged felony . . . and that every person being thereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall be hanged by the neck until he or she shall be dead.

NEW YORK

That if any man shall lie with mankind as he lieth with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they both shall be put to death.

CONNECTICUT

Sodomy . . . shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labour in the penitentiary during the natural life or lives of the person or persons convicted of th[is] detestable crime.

GEORGIA

That if any man shall commit the crime against nature with a man or male child . . . every such offender, being duly convicted thereof in the Supreme Judicial Court, shall be punished by solitary imprisonment for such term not exceeding one year and by confinement afterwards to hard labor for such term not exceeding ten years.

MAINE

That if any person or persons shall commit sodomy . . . he or they so offending or committing any of the said crimes within this province, their counsellors, aiders, comforters, and abettors, being convicted thereof as above said, shall suffer as felons. [And] shall forfeit to the Commonwealth all and singular the lands and tenements, goods and chattels, whereof he or she was seized or possessed at the time . . . at the discretion of the court passing the sentence, not exceeding ten years, in the public gaol or house of correction of the county or city in which the offence shall have been committed and be kept at such labor.

PENNSYLVANIA

[T]he detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] . . . be from henceforth adjudged felony . . . and that the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their goods.

SOUTH CAROLINA

That if any man lieth with mankind as he lieth with a woman, they both shall suffer death."

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.

Terence Weldon's "Queering the Church" Website Continues to Blaspheme Against Christ

At his latest Blog post, radical homosexual activist and propagandist Terence Weldon insists that he is not guilty of blasphemy.  An individual purporting to be a Catholic priest and calling himself smply "FrJohnQ," left a comment at this post defending Mr. Weldon while criticizing me.  He writes:

"What's really telling to me about the attack on Terence as a 'blasphemer' is the definition of blasphemy that Paul Anthony Melanson uses: 'It consists in uttering against God...words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name' (Catholic Catechism). Melanson assumes that by speculating that Jesus might have had a same-sex inclination Terence is being hateful, reproachful, and disrespectful toward God. My question is: Why? Why is it hateful to suggest that Jesus might have been what we now term "gay"? Why is it disrespectful? It's only so if you believe that being gay is a bad thing. Terence clearly does not, and neither do I, and neither, frankly, does God.

In my own prayer life I have a sense of a Jesus who was not gay, but perhaps this is simply a failure of my own imagination. Jesus was, as Terence points out, fully human; this means that he was (and is) a sexual being and that he loved, though selflessly. To make Jesus sexless is to deny his humanity. In any case, if someone labels me as gay--which I am--I do not take this as a gesture of disrespect, hatred, or reproach. I take it as an accurate estimation and as a compliment.

Why would God be offended by being associated with gay people? He socialized during his time on earth with others seen by many as outcast and inferior--prostitutes, tax collectors, etc. Would he not now sit down for a fabulous banquet with the gays? Why not? God loves us."

Now, I never said that Jesus would not associate with persons who suffer from a homosexual inclination.  So "Father John Q" is being dishonest here.  But it is blasphemous to suggest that Jesus may have been a homosexual.  One would think that a Catholic priest (if this individual is indeed a Catholic priest) would understand that.

Let's let Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J., explain: "Our Lord Jesus Christ is both God and man.  The union of his human nature and his divine nature is effected in the Person of the Word, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  Because of the Hypostatic Union, Christ's human nature is said to be substantially holy.  The reason for this is that the Word of God, who is uncreated holiness itself, imparts a special holiness to his own created human nature.  Since the relationship between Jesus' human nature and the Word of God is in the substantial order by virtue of the Hypostatic Union, then it is legitimate to say that his humanity is endowed with substantial sanctity or holiness.  For, it is impossible to have a more intimate union between a creature and God than the Hypostatic Union in Jesus Christ.  A suggestion of Jesus' substantial holiness is given in Luke 1:35, 'And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.'..

In addition to the special 'grace of union,' as the above is called, Christ's soul is also holy by reason of the fullness of sanctifying grace with which it is endowed.  By 'sanctifying grace' here is meant the created habitual grace that inheres in the soul of the justified.  Jesus possesses the fullness of that grace.  Thus Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical letter on the Mystical Body in 1943: 'In Him (Christ) dwells the Holy Spirit with such a fullness of grace that greater cannot be conceived.'  Basing their opinion on the Gospel of St. John, all theologians ascribe sanctifying grace in its fullness to the human soul of Christ: 'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us...full of grace and truth....And of his fullness we have all received, grace for grace' (John 1: 14, 16).  In Acts 10: 38 we read that 'God annointed him with the Holy Spirit'; in St. Luke we find that Jesus was 'filled with the Holy Spirit' (4: 1); he also quoted Isaiah and said, 'The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has annointed me.' (4: 18).

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica III, q. 7, art. I), bases the sanctification of Jesus' humanity through sanctifying grace on three facts: 1) on the Hypostatic Union which demands the fullness of grace in Christ's soul according to the principle, 'The nearer an effect is to its cause, the more it partakes of its influence';  2) on the nobility of Christ's soul which enjoys the immediate  vision of God;  3)  on the relationship of Christ to all men since he is the Head and source of their grace." (Fundamentals of Catholicism, Volume II, pp. 260-261).

The Council of Constantinople II condemned those who defended the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia who asserted that Christ "was troubled by the sufferings of the soul and the longings of the flesh" and declared such people anathema (excommunicated).  To suggest that Jesus may have had a homosexual inclination is blasphemy because Jesus is perfect in both His natures - divine and human, He is the Head and source of all grace.  The Magisterium of the Church teaches authoritatively that, "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, No. 3).

Deacon Nick Donnelly has noted in one of his Blog posts over at Protect the Pope that Mr. Weldon is an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist.  Now an individual purporting to be a Catholic priest is standing with him in blaspheming against the Lord Jesus.

The Bishops need to address this most serious matter immediately.

Homosexual propaganda blog "MassResistance Watch" gets it wrong

LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that, "A leading authority on the clerical sex abuse crisis has criticized those who conclude that new data has ruled out homosexuality as a significant cause in the scandal - even though the vast majority of priest abuse was perpetrated against adolescent males.


Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a top psychiatrist and expert in handling sexually abusive priests, says criminologists 'crossed a line' by pronouncing on the psychological causes behind the data released May 18.

'Analysis of the research demonstrates clearly that the major cause of the crisis was the homosexual abuse of males,' said Fitzgibbons in an interview with the Catholic News Agency.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/critics-say-new-study-misses-real-reasons-for-priest-abuse-crisis/

The new study, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and commissioned by the U.S. Bishops, shows that nearly 80 percent of victims were post-pubescent and adolescent males. However, the study concludes that available data 'do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity ... are significantly more likely to sexually abuse.'

The report marks the third such effort by U.S. Bishops to address the causes and manifestations of the clerical sex abuse scandal since it first erupted publicly in 2002.

The data also shows that less than 5 percent of abuse involved prepubescent children, contravening rumor that the scandal largely manifested as acts of pedophilia. But homosexuality, according to Fitzgibbons, was clearly the primary sexual aberration driving the bulk of abuse.

'One can conclude that these priests have strong same-sex attraction,' said Fitzgibbons. 'When an adult is involved with homosexual behavior with an adolescent male, he clearly has a major problem in the area of homosexuality.'

The psychologist said that, while the college has done good work collecting data, criminologists 'lack the professional expertise to comment on causes of sexual abuse.'

'If the (U.S. bishops) conference wanted an analysis of the causes of complex sexual behavior with adolescents, don’t turn to criminologists,' said Fitzgibbons. 'They are not trained to understand those causes - that training is given to mental health professionals.'" (Article here).

It didn't take long for a homosexual propaganda blog called "MassResistance Watch" to jump on the faulty conclusions of criminologists who lack the expertise to comment upon the root causes of complex sexual behavior.  In a post authored by a troubled soul who refers to himself as "Boston Bud," we read, "Researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, who spent five years conducting the most expensive and extensive study of sexual abuse in the Catholic church to date, concluded that homosexual priests were no more likely to abuse than heterosexual priests...If you recall Santorum and the anti-gay loonies were blaming gay priests for all the molestation."  See here.

Who better to write about "loonies" than an individual referring to himself as "Boston Bud" who believes that homosexuality is somehow healthy.  Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. See here. Dr. Aardweg notes that, "The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).


No, most of the abuse within the Church was committed by sick men suffering from the psychopathology of homosexuality.  Crippled in personality, these homosexual men acted out sexually against adolescent males.  There is no way around this.  Nor should this really come as a surprise.  The Father of so-called "Gay Rights," Harry Hay, was a pervert who was fully supportive of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a group which advocates for the legalization of sex between men and boys.  See here.  Talk about "loonies."

Sex between men and boys has long been a part of homosexual culture and history as documented by openly homosexual history professor William Armstrong Percy III in his book entitled "Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece." See here.  Of course, propagandists for the Homosexual Hate Movement - like "Boston Bud" - will never admit to this.

But the facts of history tell the real story.

Does the Constitution on the Church lack credibility for Father J. Bryan Hehir?

Father J. Bryan Hehir of the Boston Archdiocese believes the Catholic Church has lost credibility because a small percentage of her priests have engaged in sexual abuse.  His solution?  In an interview which may be found here,  the dissident priest whose "social justice conference" has raised many eyebrows, asks, "..what do we do to regain credibility" and then proceeds to answer his own question: "..my view is, as a kind of simple principle, that we've got to treat adults as adults in the Church. We now have in the United States the most educated laity the Catholic Church has confronted in 2,000 years of history. You can't have a situation where men and women are in charge of their lives, treated as adults in corporations, universities, and politics, and are not treated as adults inside the Church....


The question of how to mobilize discussion among the leadership comes partly from laity who understand what a significant strategic role they are now in. A hundred years ago, this discussion would have been inconceivable in American Catholicism--that you would have this kind of room, at this kind of university, on this kind of topic. I'm not calling for revolution. I don't think that works in the Catholic Church. I do think that there's a range of definable, discussible issues on which the laity need to say at the parish level and every other level, we simply won't accept anything except adult conversation."

The idea that the laity are not treated as adults within the Church is both insulting and wrong.  Vatican II, in its Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church (Ad Gentes), has this to say: "The Church has not been really founded and is not yet fully alive, nor is it a perfect sign of Christ among men, unless there is a laity worthy of the name working along with the hierarchy.  For the Gospel cannot be deeply grounded in the abilities, life and work of any people without the active presence of laymen.  Therefore, even at the very founding of a chrch, great attention is to be paid to establishing a mature, Christian laity.  For the lay faithful fully belong at one and the same time both to the People of God and to civil society...They also belong to Christ, because they were regenerated in the Church by faith and by Baptism, so that they are Christ's in newness of life and work (cf. 1 Cor 15: 23), in order that in Christ, all things may be made subject to God, and finally God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15: 28)." (Ad Gentes, No. 21).

What exactly is Fr. Hehir talking about when he speaks of "adult conversation"?  What he means - what he is really proposing - is indeed a revolution in the Church.  Which is why he says, "A hundred years ago, this discussion [the push for a "democratic church" where the laity vote for Bishops and decide Church teaching by majority consensus - which is what VOTF means by "structural change"] would have been inconceivable in American Catholicism."

Why would it have been inconceivable?  Because the push for such "structural change" is really a push for apostasy from the Mystical Body of Christ.  The laity of 100 years ago were too strong in faith (fortes in fide) to be propagandized into revolution.  Now that the Church has been undermined from within and so many of the "educated laity" are really poorly educated as to what the Church actually teaches, they are more malleable.

The same Vatican II which called for a "mature Christian laity" also teaches that, "Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.  In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.  This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra.." (Lumen Gentium, No. 25).

What Father Hehir is really advocating is a sort of ersatz "magisterium" where the laity express their demands to the Church's hierarchy and a majority vote in the Church overrides the hierarchy.  This is euphemistically referred to as "adult conversation."  Pope John Paul II warned in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) that, "While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend upon respect for a process: indeed, it is no way established by following the rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy.  Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God." (No. 113).

The Church is hierarchical in nature.  This is what so angers the proponents of revolution in the Church.  And Father Hehir is no exception.  But the Fathers of Vatican II speak clearly:

"..the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on,  has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), No. 10).

Related reading here.

And here.

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.

Related reading: Vatican says abuse crisis homosexual in nature.