Engendering Truth
The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a "heterosexual" or a "homosexual" and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1986
Pope Benedict XVI penned the above statement in a letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church over twenty years ago when he was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. At that time, gay marriage was not yet a civil reality, but the pressure on the Church and government authorities to define same sex attraction as a protected class was growing both in the United States and in Europe. One can read the Cardinal's entire letter here.
For two generations, the gay community supported by a liberal media, the entertainment industry, a goofy psychological profession, and an ever politically correct public education system, has attempted to force feed the idea that acting upon same sex attraction is not only perfectly normal, but actually worthy of protected class status. Anyone who dares to oppose such a notion quickly gets branded as ignorant and xenophobic at the least or gets labeled as a homophobic bigot. Such is the defensive language of intolerance to promote the "gay agenda" that ironically seeks tolerance for its subscribers.
The Catholic Church does not consider same sex attraction as a sin in and of itself. The Church rather goes deeper and looks at the dignity of the person and the deposit of truth so clearly defined in sacred scripture and tradition. Despite the culture's preference which ebbs and flows from one century to the next, the Church in her wisdom recognizes that the truth does not change. How can any faith claim authenticity when it allows itself to be ruled by the whimsies of current day public opinion?
There simply exists no getting around the truth revealed in sacred scripture. In Genesis, one reads about the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction the befell them because of their embracing homosexual behavior. Leviticus states clearly that those who engage in homosexual behavior are excluded from the People of God. St. Paul in his letters to the Corinthians and the Romans uses homosexuality as an example of moral excess that has blinded humanity. Christ himself defines in Mark's Gospel the things that defile a man. Included in His laundry list are fornication, which covers the heterosexual crowd, and licentiousness, which includes homosexual activity.
So when the Church takes a stand against what has been so clearly revealed as a disordered use of the gift of sexuality, it does so not from a throne from which condemnation is heaped down upon the sinner, but rather as an act of love and concern that all may experience the grace of Christ to enter into the beatific vision of God.
It was in this spirit that the Pope addressed the Roman Curia. The following excerpt (his entire address can be read here) has evoked a vitriolic response from the gay community.
Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.
For two generations, the gay community supported by a liberal media, the entertainment industry, a goofy psychological profession, and an ever politically correct public education system, has attempted to force feed the idea that acting upon same sex attraction is not only perfectly normal, but actually worthy of protected class status. Anyone who dares to oppose such a notion quickly gets branded as ignorant and xenophobic at the least or gets labeled as a homophobic bigot. Such is the defensive language of intolerance to promote the "gay agenda" that ironically seeks tolerance for its subscribers.
The Catholic Church does not consider same sex attraction as a sin in and of itself. The Church rather goes deeper and looks at the dignity of the person and the deposit of truth so clearly defined in sacred scripture and tradition. Despite the culture's preference which ebbs and flows from one century to the next, the Church in her wisdom recognizes that the truth does not change. How can any faith claim authenticity when it allows itself to be ruled by the whimsies of current day public opinion?
There simply exists no getting around the truth revealed in sacred scripture. In Genesis, one reads about the depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction the befell them because of their embracing homosexual behavior. Leviticus states clearly that those who engage in homosexual behavior are excluded from the People of God. St. Paul in his letters to the Corinthians and the Romans uses homosexuality as an example of moral excess that has blinded humanity. Christ himself defines in Mark's Gospel the things that defile a man. Included in His laundry list are fornication, which covers the heterosexual crowd, and licentiousness, which includes homosexual activity.
So when the Church takes a stand against what has been so clearly revealed as a disordered use of the gift of sexuality, it does so not from a throne from which condemnation is heaped down upon the sinner, but rather as an act of love and concern that all may experience the grace of Christ to enter into the beatific vision of God.
It was in this spirit that the Pope addressed the Roman Curia. The following excerpt (his entire address can be read here) has evoked a vitriolic response from the gay community.
Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.
Pope Benedict XVI
Address to Roman Curia, December 2008
Address to Roman Curia, December 2008
Pope accused of stoking homophobia after he equates homosexuality to climate change!
That was the headline of the London Times. Prodded by gay activists, this paper and many others in the mainstream media completely overlooked the entire address made by the Pope in favor of promoting "the agenda." That the Pope dared to touch on the new religion of secular humanity, global warming, was doubly sinful. What the paper fails to mention is that not once did the Pope refer specifically to homosexuals, gays, lesbians, or transgenders. He simply stated the truth and the gay community drew its own conclusions as the Pope's message conflicted with the reality of their own lives.
Christ hung out with the sinner, but He did not revel in their sins. He did not condone it, nor did he condemn. Rather he sacrificed himself so that all may have the opportunity to repent of their disordered and often evil ways that do come from man, and to be with Him in Heaven, the state where one spends nearly all of eternity, save the seven to ten decades one lives upon the earth.
Which should the Pope and Church be more concerned with; the expression of an ultimately self-indulgent behavior that has a limited life-span, or encouraging all of humanity to seek the ultimate fulfillment of one's purpose which is to spend an eternity with a loving God?
Christ hung out with the sinner, but He did not revel in their sins. He did not condone it, nor did he condemn. Rather he sacrificed himself so that all may have the opportunity to repent of their disordered and often evil ways that do come from man, and to be with Him in Heaven, the state where one spends nearly all of eternity, save the seven to ten decades one lives upon the earth.
Which should the Pope and Church be more concerned with; the expression of an ultimately self-indulgent behavior that has a limited life-span, or encouraging all of humanity to seek the ultimate fulfillment of one's purpose which is to spend an eternity with a loving God?
posted by David Jackson | 8:56 AM
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