Category Archives: Theology of the Body

Deadly Sins, Homosexuality, Sin, Theology of the Body

Pope has NOT blessed gay unions – bless the sinner, not the relationship


“If I had to summarize the new magisterial document on blessings I would say the document is about blessings FOR a same-sex couple but not OF the same-sex couple. The UNION cannot be blessed, but the PEOPLE in the disordered union can be blessed (and the blessing is not an approval, but is a petition to live a holier life). Also, such blessings are not to give in any way an appearance of blessing the union itself. That is the document in a nutshell.”
– Michael Lofton, PhD (cand)

Michael Lofton is a graduate of Christendom College Graduate School of Theology, where he received his Master of Arts in Theological Studies (Cum Laude) in 2018. He is currently working on a doctorate in Theology with Pontifex University and is writing a dissertation on the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Michael is the founder of Reason & Theology, where he has interviewed many of the leading figures in modern theology. He has also appeared on EWTN, Catholic Answers, SiriusXM Radio, and Radio Maria and has contributed frequently to various newspapers and websites.

Responsum – 3/15/2021
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2021/03/15/210315b.html

Fiducia Supplicans – 12/18/2023
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/0901/01963.html#en

“5. This is also the understanding of marriage that is offered by the Gospel. For this reason, when it comes to blessings, the Church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction or lead to confusion. Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (above), which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.”

“9. From a strictly liturgical point of view, a blessing requires that what is blessed be conformed to God’s will, as expressed in the teachings of the Church.”

“11. Basing itself on these considerations, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Explanatory Note to its 2021 Responsum recalls that when a blessing is invoked on certain human relationships by a special liturgical rite, it is necessary that what is blessed corresponds with God’s designs written in creation and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. For this reason, since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice. The Holy Father reiterated the substance of this Declaration in his Respuestas to the Dubia of two Cardinals.”

“20…One who asks for a blessing shows himself to be in need of God’s saving presence in his life…To seek a blessing in the Church is to acknowledge that the life of the Church springs from the womb of God’s mercy and helps us to move forward, to live better, and to respond to the Lord’s will.”

“21. …“when one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a petition for God’s assistance, a plea to live better, and confidence in a Father who can help us live better.”[12] This request should, in every way, be valued, accompanied, and received with gratitude. People who come spontaneously to ask for a blessing show by this request their sincere openness to transcendence, the confidence of their hearts that they do not trust in their own strength alone, their need for God, and their desire to break out of the narrow confines of this world, enclosed in its limitations.”

“31…a blessing that descends from God upon those who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit—what classical theology calls “actual grace”—so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love.”

“32. Indeed, the grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else. This grace can orient everything according to the mysterious and unpredictable designs of God. Therefore, with its untiring wisdom and motherly care, the Church welcomes all who approach God with humble hearts, accompanying them with those spiritual aids that enable everyone to understand and realize God’s will fully in their existence.[22]”

“34. The Church’s liturgy itself invites us to adopt this trusting attitude, even in the midst of our sins, lack of merits, weaknesses, and confusions, as witnessed by this beautiful Collect from the Roman Missal: “Almighty ever-living God, Who in the abundance of Your kindness surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat You, pour out Your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask” (Collect for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time). How often, through a pastor’s simple blessing, which does not claim to sanction or legitimize anything, can people experience the nearness of the Father, beyond all “merits” and “desires”?”

“38. For this reason, one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation. At the same time, one should not prevent or prohibit the Church’s closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God’s help through a simple blessing. In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill His will COMPLETELY (my emphasis).”

“39. In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding. The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple.”

“40…there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for His help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”

“43…even when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing…”

“44. Any blessing will be an opportunity for a renewed proclamation of the kerygma, an invitation to draw ever closer to the love of Christ…”

https://www.usccb.org/news/2023/bishop-barron-says-new-vatican-document-affirms-churchs-timeless-teaching-marriage

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/cardinal-fernandez-same-sex-blessing

Cardinal Fernández: Same-sex blessing ‘does not validate or justify anything’

by Edgar Beltrán
12/23/23


-Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

Church leaders have been in the grip of sharp debate this week, after the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published on Monday Fiducia supplicans, a declaration which offered a framework for clerical blessings of same-sex couples, and others living in relationships outside of marriage.

Some bishops’ conferences and dioceses which had already given a green light to such blessings, in Belgium and Germany especially, saw in the document a validation of their approach to the issue, with some promising to defy the document by publishing guidelines for the liturgical blessings of same-sex couples — a step prohibited by the DDF’s declaration.

But some bishops’ conferences in Africa and Asia pushed back on the document, with some prohibiting the implementation of Fiducia supplicans in their territory. One cardinal challenged the doctrinal orthodoxy of the document, while the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said the text does not apply to his congregation.

Amid a challenging week for the Church, The Pillar contacted Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with questions about the document, and the reactions it has generated.

Cardinal Fernandez, Fiducia supplicans says that it ‘remains firm on the traditional doctrine of the Church about marriage, not allowing any type of liturgical rite or blessing similar to a liturgical rite that can create confusion.’

It also states that the blessings it discusses ‘should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the sacrament of marriage,’ and that ‘these non-ritualized blessings never cease being simple gestures that provide an effective means of increasing trust in God on the part of the people who ask for them, careful that they should not become a liturgical or semi-liturgical act, similar to a sacrament.’

But various bishops’ conferences have approved rituals for blessings of couples in irregular situations.
Does that contradict the declaration?

The declaration is very clear in distinguishing the two forms of blessing: one with a liturgical-ritual format and the other proper to pastoral work — this is its specific contribution.

Some episcopates had advanced in ritualized forms of blessing irregular couples, and this is inadmissible. They should reformulate their proposal in that regard.

Fiducia supplicans says that: ‘In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.’

It adds that: ‘These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit—what classical theology calls ‘actual grace’—so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love.’

Do those passages mean that the primary motivation for giving such a blessing has to be that the couple in an ‘irregular situation’ conform their lives to the moral and doctrinal teachings of the Church?

These kinds of blessings are simply simple pastoral channels that help to express people’s faith, even if those people are great sinners.

Therefore, by giving this blessing to two people who spontaneously come forward to request it, one can legitimately ask God to grant them health, peace, prosperity—the things that we all ask for and that a sinner can also ask for.

At the same time, since one can think that in the daily lives of these two persons, not everything is sin, one can therefore pray for them [to receive] a spirit of dialogue, patience, mutual help.

But the declaration also mentions a request for help from the Holy Spirit so that this relationship, which is often unknown to the priest, may be purified of everything that does not respond to the Gospel and the will of God, and may mature along the lines of God’s plan.

As I was saying, sometimes the priest, on a pilgrimage, does not know that couple, and sometimes they are two very close friends who share good things, sometimes they had sexual relations in the past and now what remains is a strong sense of belonging and mutual help. As a parish priest, I have often met such couples, who are sometimes exemplary.

Therefore, since it is not a question of the sacrament of confession(!), but of a simple blessing, it is still asked that this friendship be purified, matured and lived in fidelity to the Gospel. And even if there was some kind of sexual relationship, known or not, the blessing made in this way does not validate or justify anything.

Actually the same thing happens whenever individuals are blessed, because that individual who asks for a blessing — not absolution — may be a great sinner, but we do not deny a blessing to him.

But clearly we have to grow in the conviction that non-ritualized blessings are not a consecration of the person, they are not a justification of all his actions, they are not a ratification of the life he leads. No. No. I do not know at what point we have so exalted this simple pastoral gesture that we have equated it with the reception of the Eucharist. That is why we want to set so many conditions for blessing.

The statement says that ‘beyond the guidance’ it provides, ‘no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type.’

Does that mean that there will not be any response, or reprimand, to episcopal conferences or dioceses which seek to regulate and ritualize these blessings — or to those which seek to prohibit them altogether?

No, it means that one should not expect a manual, a vademecum, or a guide for something so simple.

I know that in some dioceses, bishops in the past have established guidelines for these cases. For example, some have indicated to priests that when it is a matter of a couple well-known in the place or in cases where there could be some scandal, the blessing should be given in private, in an discreet place. But this declaration did not want to go into details or replace the local discernment of the bishops.

On the other hand, trying to interpret your question, we are currently discussing these issues with presidents of bishops’ conferences and with groups of bishops visiting the dicastery. Soon, a group of dicastery prefects will begin a journey of conversion and deepening with the German bishops and we will make all the necessary clarifications.

Moreover, I am planning a trip to Germany to have some conversations that I believe are important.

The declaration appeals to the ‘practical”’ and ‘prudent and fatherly’ discernment of priests to impart these blessings.

Does that approach diminish the authority of bishops to govern their diocese, as follows from the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council — especially its emphasis on the authority of diocesan bishops?

Are the bishops who have prohibited these blessings in their territories directly contradicting the declaration?

Each local bishop, by his own munus, has always had the function of discernment in loco, in that very concrete place that he knows more than others, because it is his flock.

We do not speak of the national [bishops’] conferences, and even less of the continental ones, because they cannot impose things to the bishops in their dioceses. Even if they can unify criteria, they cannot replace the unique place of the bishop incarnated in his local Church.

But we are in the Catholic Church, and there the Gospel shows us Peter.

Obviously, when there is a text signed by the pope, in order to interpret it broadly, the bishops must first study it in depth and without haste, and allow themselves to be enlightened and enriched by that text. Therefore, prudence and attention to local culture could admit different ways of application, but not a total denial of this step being asked of priests.

I well understand the concern of the bishops in some African or Asian countries, in places where being gay might put you in prison. It is an affront to human dignity that certainly distresses the bishops, and challenges them in their fatherhood. It is likely that the bishops do not want to expose homosexual persons to violence. They themselves refer to the “legislation” of their countries.

What is important is that these bishops’ conferences are not holding a doctrine different from that of the declaration signed by the pope, because it is the same doctrine as always, but rather they state the need for study and discernment, in order to act with pastoral prudence in this context.

I cannot say more than this because I recognize that the reception of these documents requires time, and a serene and prolonged reflection.

One interpretation that has been given to the declaration is that the blessings would be imparted on persons and not on their union specifically. However, the document clearly speaks in its third part of blessing ‘couples.’

Does this imply that the ‘irregular’ union of these persons is being blessed?

It is necessary to distinguish well, and the declaration makes this distinction. Couples are blessed. The union is not blessed, for the reasons that the declaration repeatedly explains about the true meaning of Christian marriage and sexual relations.

For those who read the text serenely and without ideological prejudices, it is clear that there is no change in the doctrine on marriage and on the objective valuation of sexual acts outside the only [kind of] marriage which exists — male-female, exclusive, indissoluble, naturally open to the generation of new life).

But this does not prevent us from making a gesture of paternity and closeness, otherwise we can become judges who condemn from a pedestal — when we consecrated men have much that humiliates us as a Church, we have given serious scandal to the simple ones with our behavior.

Besides, we all have our personal faults, we are not fully coherent with the whole Gospel, and our lapidary judgments sometimes do not take into account that the same measure we use for others will be used with us. I, who want to go to Heaven and be very happy with God eternally, try not to forget this warning of Jesus Christ.

Love and truth,
Matthew

Theology, Theology of the Body

Catholic disposition of human remains


-by Karlo Broussard

11/7/2016

‘Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.’
-Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3

““For the living know that they will die,” says the author of Ecclesiastes (Eccles. 9:5). This is a reality we all face. But the question of what to do with the body after death remains. May we cremate it? If so, may we scatter the ashes or must we preserve them? May we donate the body to science?

Such questions weigh heavy on the minds and hearts of many. Therefore, it’s important that we address the question of what we can and can’t do with the body after death.

To dust you shall return

Let’s take the cremation issue first.

In August, the Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith (CDF) addressed several pertinent questions concerning cremation in its instruction Ad resurgendum cum Christo (“To rise with Christ”) (ARC).The document makes clear that the Church is not opposed to cremation:

The Church raises no doctrinal objections to this practice, since cremation of the deceased’s body does not affect his or her soul, nor does it prevent God, in his omnipotence, from raising up the deceased body to new life. Thus cremation, in and of itself, objectively negates neither the Christian doctrine of the soul’s immortality nor that of the resurrection of the body. . . . Cremation is not prohibited, “unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine” (ARC 4).

It is important to note that the document doesn’t endorse the practice. It merely notes the Church is not opposed to it. This signals the Church’s strong preference for burial of the deceased, something the document makes clear: “The Church continues to prefer the practice of burying the bodies of the deceased, because this shows a greater esteem towards the deceased” (ARC 4).

Ashes abroad

The question that is asked most often is whether we can scatter the ashes of the deceased. The answer is no:

In order that every appearance of pantheism, naturalism or nihilism be avoided, it is not permitted to scatter the ashes of the faithful departed in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry, or other objects. These courses of action cannot be legitimized by an appeal to the sanitary, social, or economic motives that may have occasioned the choice of cremation (ARC 7).

Although the scene of Tom scattering the ashes of his son Daniel in the movie The Way may have been dramatic cinema, it was not Catholic.

Grandma on the mantle?

“Okay, maybe we can’t scatter the ashes,” you say, “so we’ll put Grandma’s ashes on the mantle in our home.” Though it may be a good sentiment, the Church doesn’t permit that either:

[T]he conservation of the ashes of the departed in a domestic residence is not permitted. Only in grave and exceptional cases dependent on cultural conditions of a localized nature, may the ordinary, in agreement with the Episcopal Conference or the Synod of Bishops of the Oriental Churches, concede permission for the conservation of the ashes of the departed in a domestic residence (ARC 6).

Now that we know what we can’t do, what can we do? The CDF specifies that the ashes must be preserved in a sacred place:

When, for legitimate motives, cremation of the body has been chosen, the ashes of the faithful must be laid to rest in a sacred place, that is, in a cemetery or, in certain cases, in a church or an area, which has been set aside for this purpose, and so dedicated by the competent ecclesial authority (ARC 5).

Why the sacred place?

The reasons for this can be found in the list of reasons the CDF gives for burying the dead in a sacred place.

  • It expresses the Church’s faith in the resurrection of the body (ARC 3).
  • It shows “the great dignity of the human body as an integral part of the human person whose body forms part of their identity” (ARC 3).
  • It “corresponds to the piety and respect owed to the bodies of the faithful departed who through baptism have become temples of the Holy Spirit” (ARC 3).
  • It “encourages family members and the whole Christian community to pray for and remember the dead” and upholds “the relationship between the living and the dead” and “has opposed any tendency to minimize, or relegate to the purely private sphere, the event of death and the meaning it has for Christians” (ARC 3).

What is mine is yours

What does the Church have to say about donating the body for the use of organs and/or medical research?

The Church permits it. With regard to organ donation after death, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity” (2296).

The Catechism is quick to warn, however, against those things that would render organ donation after death immoral:

It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons (CCC 2296).

One would think these instructions are common sense, but the Church has to make it clear, given the fact that so many have never developed the ability to reason to moral precepts.

Concerning donating the body of the deceased for scientific research, the Catechism answers “yes”: “Autopsies can be morally permitted for legal inquests or scientific research” (2301).

The above Church’s burial norms (sacred place, respect for body, etc.) would apply to the remains of the body after the research is completed.

Conclusion

Discussions about end-of-life issues often revolve around the topic of what constitutes ordinary and extraordinary means of prolonging life. Should we keep Grandma on the ventilator or not? When is it morally just to pull her feeding tube?

These are crucial questions, and they deserve Catholic answers. But the question of what to do with Grandma’s body after death is also an important end-of-life (or after-life) issue. Due to the Church’s clear teaching on this matter, Catholics have one less thing to stress over when dealing with death.”

Love,
Matthew

Apologetics, Chastity, Deadly Sins, Doctrine, Ecclesiology, Homosexuality, Lust, Pride, Sin, Theology of the Body

The dubia


Left to right: German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, and Chinese Cardinal Zen Ze-Kiun.

Listening to the Vatican, internal Catholic Church communication, is an art, requiring much experience and sensitivity to foreign languages and cultures. It is not an easy do.  I am the poorest and most ignorant example of one who tries.  However, here are some of the best sources I have come across in trying to understand.  I hope they prove useful to you as well.  The Vatican is a master of language.  I do not believe there is another human counterpart. It is about nuance, not soundbite.  Listen carefully, pray, let the Holy Spirit speak to you, have compassion and pray for all parties involved, sinners are we all.  It is incumbent upon the Catholic to constantly inform and educate their consciences, the highest authority in the Church and for the person.  Imagine the pressure and gravest of responsibilities to govern and helm the barque of Peter with the responsibility for ~1.8 billion souls with the mission to reunify and/or evangelize ~8 billion, and to show the compassion and love of Jesus Christ as well as the truth of His teachings for the last two thousand years.  Listening to soundbites and headlines is equivalent to ignorance, only more sinful.  Human beings, human politics, God help us!  He will.

-by LUKE COPPEN
October 2, 2023 . 7:39 AM

“A group of five cardinals asked Pope Francis this summer to answer five “dubia,” or doubts, related to the synod on synodality.

The request was made public on the eve of the long-awaited gathering in Rome, which Vatican watchers say could lead to far-reaching changes in the Church.

The five dubia, presented Aug. 21 to the pope and the Vatican’s doctrine czar, posed questions about doctrinal development, same-sex blessings, the status of the synod on synodality, women priests, and the conditions for sacramental absolution.

An initial draft of the five questions — signed by the German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, the U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, the Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, and Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen — was presented July 10 to Pope Francis and Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the then prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The pope reportedly replied the next day with an extensive letter in Spanish. But according to the Italian Catholic journalist Sandro Magister, the cardinals believed that it did not answer their questions.

“Although signed by Francis, the letter displayed the writing style of his trusted theologian, the Argentine Victor Manuel Fernández, who would soon take on the new role of prefect of the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith,” Magister wrote in an Oct. 2 post on his Settimo Cielo blog.

The five cardinals then sought to reformulate the questions so that they could only be answered “yes” or “no.”

Pope Francis has not responded to the rephrased dubia more than 40 days after they were submitted, Magister said.

But in an Oct. 1 report, Rome’s Il Messaggero newspaper quoted Fernández, who formally took up the role of doctrinal prefect in September, as saying that the cardinals “obviously always have doubts, it’s a constant, you have to respect their passions though, everyone has their passion.”

Fernández, who received the cardinal’s red hat Sept. 30, reportedly added: “The pope has the freedom to respond or not, to consider whether to close a question or discuss it as will also be done at the synod, freely.”

In an Oct. 2 “Notification to Christ’s Faithful,” the five cardinals said they had decided to publish their questions ahead of the Oct. 4-29 synod on synodality so that Catholics “may not be subject to confusion, error, and discouragement but rather may pray for the universal Church and, in particular, the Roman Pontiff, that the Gospel may be taught ever more clearly and followed ever more faithfully.”

The cardinals’ first question asked whether it was possible “for the Church today to teach doctrines contrary to those she has previously taught in matters of faith and morals, whether by the Pope ‘ex cathedra’, or in the definitions of an Ecumenical Council, or in the ordinary universal magisterium of the Bishops dispersed throughout the world”.

The second said: “Is it possible that in some circumstances a pastor could bless unions between homosexual persons, thus suggesting that homosexual behavior as such would not be contrary to God’s law and the person’s journey toward God?”

This was followed by a related question asking: “Does the teaching upheld by the universal ordinary magisterium, that every sexual act outside of marriage, and in particular homosexual acts, constitutes an objectively grave sin against God’s law, regardless of the circumstances in which it takes place and the intention with which it is carried out, continue to be valid?”

The third question was: “Will the Synod of Bishops to be held in Rome, and which includes only a chosen representation of pastors and faithful, exercise, in the doctrinal or pastoral matters on which it will be called to express itself, the Supreme Authority of the Church, which belongs exclusively to the Roman Pontiff and, ‘una cum capite suo’ [‘together with its head’], to the College of Bishops.”

The fourth asked: “Could the Church in the future have the faculty to confer priestly ordination on women, thus contradicting that the exclusive reservation of this sacrament to baptized males belongs to the very substance of the Sacrament of Orders, which the Church cannot change?”

The fifth and final question said: “Can a penitent who, while admitting a sin, refuses to make, in any way, the intention not to commit it again, validly receive sacramental absolution?”

The five dubia echo a set of five questions presented to Pope Francis in 2016 regarding the interpretation of Amoris laetitia, his apostolic exhortation on love in the family, which received no response.

The 2016 dubia were presented by two of the five cardinals who signed the 2023 request for clarification — Cardinal Brandmüller and Cardinal Burke — as well as the Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, who died in 2017, and the German Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who died the same year.

The Vatican released the pope’s eight-page response in Spanish to the initial dubia following their publication Oct. 2. An English translation of the reply was published on Cardinal Burke’s official website.

In the translation posted by the U.S. cardinal, Pope Francis said that the time of the synod on synodality, which is due to end in October 2024, was a period in which questions were being asked about the Church’s structure and mission.

“With great sincerity, I tell you that it is not very good to be afraid of these question marks and questions,” the pope wrote. “The Lord Jesus, who promised Peter and his successors indefectible assistance in the task of caring for the holy people of God, will help us, also thanks to this synod, to keep ourselves always more in constant dialogue with the men and women of our time and in total fidelity to the Holy Gospel.”

“However, although it does not always seem prudent to me to respond to the questions addressed directly to me (because it would be impossible to answer them all), in this case I think it is suitable to do so because of the closeness of the synod.”

The response addressed the five July dubia one by one, beginning with the first question, “about the claim that we should reinterpret Divine Revelation according to the cultural and anthropological changes in vogue.”

The pope offered an eight-part reply, which began: “The answer depends on the meaning you give to the word ‘reinterpret.’ If you mean ‘interpret better,’ the expression is valid.”

It continued, citing the Vatican II document Dei Verbum: “In this sense, the Second Vatican Council stated that it is necessary that the work of the exegetes — I would add of theologians — ‘may help the Church to form a firmer judgment.’”

In response to the second question, on “the claim that the widespread practice of the blessing of same-sex unions would be in accord with Revelation and the Magisterium,” the pope wrote: “The Church has a very clear conception of marriage: an exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children. She calls ‘marriage’ only such a union.”

He went on: “This is why the Church avoids any kind of rite or sacramental that could contradict this conviction and imply that something which is not marriage is recognized as marriage.”

“In dealing with persons, however, we must not lose the pastoral charity that must permeate all our decisions and attitudes. The defense of the objective truth is not the only expression of this charity which is also made of kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. Therefore, we cannot make ourselves into judges who only deny, reject, exclude.”

“Pastoral prudence must therefore properly discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or more people, that do not convey a misconception of marriage. Because, when a blessing is requested, it is a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better.”

Concluding his answer with reference to his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, the pope said: “Decisions that may be part of pastoral prudence in certain circumstances need not be transformed into a norm. In other words, it is not appropriate for a diocese, a conference of bishops, or any other ecclesial structure to authorize constantly and officially procedures or rules for every type of affair, since everything that ‘is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule’ since this ‘would … lead to an intolerable casuistry.’”

“Canon law should not and cannot cover everything, nor can conferences of bishops pretend to do so with their various documents and protocols, because the life of the Church runs through many channels besides the normative ones.”

Responding the third question, about whether synodality is a “constitutive element of the Church,” the pope wrote: “As you well recognize that the supreme and full authority of the Church is exercised either by the pope in virtue of his office or by the college of bishops together with its head, the Roman pontiff … nevertheless, with these dubia, you yourselves manifest your need to participate, to give freely your opinion and to collaborate, and thus claim some form of ‘synodality’ in the exercise of my ministry.”

He went on: “The Church is a ‘mystery of missionary communion,’ but this communion is not only affective or ethereal, but necessarily implies real participation: that not only the hierarchy, but all the People of God, in different ways and at different levels, can make their voices heard and feel part of the Church’s journey. In this sense we can indeed say that synodality, as a style and dynamism, is an essential dimension of the life of the Church.”

But he said this was this quite different from trying “to sacralize or impose a particular synodal methodology that one group likes, to make it the norm and the obligatory channel for all.”

Replying to the fourth question, about a belief among pastors and theologians that priestly ordination can be conferred on women as the Church’s theology has changed, the pope stressed that “when St. John Paul II taught that the impossibility of conferring priestly ordination on women must be affirmed ‘in a definitive manner,’ he was in no way denigrating women and giving a supreme power to men.”

Referring to Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Francis added: “On the other hand, to be rigorous, we should recognize that a clear and authoritative doctrine on the exact nature of a ‘definitive statement’ has not yet been fully developed. It is not a dogmatic definition and yet it must be complied with by all. No one can publicly contradict it and nevertheless it can be the object of study, as in the case of the validity of ordinations in the Anglican Communion.”

In answer to the fifth question, about whether repentance is a necessary condition for sacramental absolution, Pope Francis wrote: “Repentance is necessary for the validity of sacramental absolution and implies the intention not to sin. But there is no mathematics here, and once again I must remind you that the confessional is not a customs house.”

“We are not masters, but humble stewards of the sacraments that nourish the faithful, for these gifts of the Lord, rather than relics to be guarded, are aids of the Holy Spirit for the life of persons.”

“There are many ways of expressing repentance. Often, in people with a very wounded self-esteem, to declare themselves guilty is a cruel torture, but the very fact of approaching confession is a symbolic expression of repentance and of the search of divine help.”

-by JD FLYNN
October 3, 2023 . 3:51 AM

Pope Francis, the Church learned Monday, answered the dubia.

Not — to be clear — the questions posed to him after the 2016 publication of Amoris laetitia — questions so long unanswered that “answer the dubia” has become a meme in some Catholic circles.

But the pope answered this summer another set of dubia — questions asked and answered back in July, pertaining to the synod on synodality, and released Monday in a kind of piecemeal fashion, with two sets of questions asked by five cardinals first reported by Italian journalist Sandro Magister, and then the Vatican taking the unusual step of releasing the pope’s answers to the first set of questions.

When he did so, the pope set off international headlines — and a great deal of controversy — regarding the prospect that he might permit the liturgical blessing of same-sex couples.

Of course, it’s a matter of debate whether Francis actually said something to merit that speculation. But on this issue, it’s worth looking beyond what Francis has said, to what he has done, and what he has chosen not to do.

There is a lot contained in the pope’s dubia responsa, with the answers to five questions spread across eight pages in the original Spanish. And while much of what the pontiff said he has said before, there will be debate over several topics addressed in the text — and debate over the dubia themselves, and what exactly the cardinals meant to accomplish by asking the pontiff questions and then, unsatisfied with his answers, rephrasing the questions and asking them again.

But the biggest headline to emerge from the story is the notion — repeated in both the Catholic and secular press — that Pope Francis has approved the prospect of “blessing” same-sex couples, signaled “openness” on the subject, or, as one newspaper put it, “softened” the Church’s “ban” on the practice.

The story came from language in the pope’s July 11 letter, published by the Vatican. In response to a question about whether it is possible for the Church to consider same-sex unions as “possible goods,” the pope wrote several paragraphs which emphasized that there are relationships — presumably same-sex relationships among them — which are “not morally acceptable.”

The pope added that “the Church avoids any kind of rite or sacramental that could contradict” its doctrine regarding marriage, or “give the impression that something that is not marriage is recognized.”

Still, Pope Francis also allowed for the possibility that some kind of blessing could be conferred on one or more Catholics in “not-marriage” unions.

“Pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage. Because when a blessing is requested, one is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better.”

In short, the pope seemed to say, when people in an irregular union — perhaps a same-sex union — come to the parish for a blessing, it is worth discerning what they’re really asking for, and whether there is some way the Church can respond to that, even while avoiding the appearance of a nuptial blessing.

That idea got framed as a “softening” or an “openness” to the blessing of same-sex unions, and controversy erupted on Monday, across media outlets, among the commentariat, and across social media.

To some, the pope’s language is not entirely different from what the DDF said on the subject in 2021.

But some Catholics say the devil is in the differences — and that some small differences should be taken very seriously.

In 2021, the DDF, with Francis’ approval, clarified that it is not possible for the Church to bless same-sex unions, because God “does not and cannot bless sin.”

That clarification — which also came in response to a dubium — was widely seen as a surprisingly conservative move in the Francis papacy, hailed by many orthodox Catholics, and maligned by Catholics hoping that Francis would usher in change to the Church’s doctrine on homosexuality.

But while it prohibited liturgical blessings of same-sex couples, the DDF statement also affirmed that the prohibition on nuptial blessings did not preclude the possibility of “blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching.”

Some observers note that while the 2021 statement spoke about “individuals,” the 2023 responsa spoke about “one or more persons.”

And while the 2021 statement “declare[d] illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge [same-sex] unions as such,” the 2023 statement made no such proviso.

Still, some argue that Francis didn’t rescind the 2021 statement — which was published with his explicit approval — and that the 2023 statement, and its seemingly limitless possibilities, are actually curtailed by the DDF statement — that the 2023 text should be read in light of the earlier statement on the subject, which could be understood as a kind of limiting principle.

But for some Catholics, Francis seemed to be broadening the scope of possible blessing well beyond the 2021 statement, allowing for the possibility that self-identified gay couples might receive together a kind of blessing that would, in some ways, resemble marriage — despite the pope’s explicit prohibitions of that possibility.

One observer called such a possibility “nuclear,” and others have pointed out that Francis risks an actual schism — or at least a concerted pushback from bishops around the world — if he adopts even a semi-official “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the prospect of liturgical blessings for same-sex couples.

Except, by appearances, the pope already has — at least tacitly.

Of course, only time will tell what the pontiff means about same-sex blessings in principle — his July 11 answer can be read in more than one way, and, indeed, it has been.

But in practice, it’s worth noting that Belgian bishops published last year a text allowing for a ritual blessing of same-sex couples, and the pontiff has — to date — not yet intervened.

Even while the pope’s 2023 responsa said explicitly that episcopal conferences should not produce such ritual texts, the pope has not intervened to stop the Belgian bishops from publishing one, stepped in after a German bishop said last month that he would not penally sanction priests who offer liturgical blessings to gay couples, or addressed a kind of protest-blessing performed by priests for gay couples in the cathedral plaza in Cologne.

That might be the point on which everyone can agree — that regardless of whether the pope’s July 11 letter was permissive or restrictive on same-sex blessings in principle, the pontiff himself has already been at least passively permissive on the subject in practice, without any public response to the European dioceses where the practice is quickly becoming enshrined as a matter of course.

While Catholics argue over whether Francis made his policy of toleration explicit in the July letter, it might not actually matter much.

Despite the scandal of official tolerance, or published ritual texts, at the diocesan and episcopal conference level, Francis seems content to work behind the scenes on episcopal discipline — if he is working at all — with no public statement on the decisions in Belgium and Germany.

In fact, few serious observers in the Church have expected that any clarity will come on orthopraxy regarding same-sex liturgical blessings until after a future conclave — Pope Francis does not seem inclined to address the pragmatic realities of bishops who are ignoring Vatican directives on the subject.

After the dubia — and the responsa heard round the world — most Catholics will be looking to the synod on synodality, to see whether Pope Francis will signal again more openness to the prospect of liturgical blessings for same-sex couples.

The pope likely won’t. And while he might be asked about it on his next airplane trip, and he might offer more reflections, it’s not likely they’ll be concrete. It’s most likely that when he speaks about the subject, the pope will continue to focus on welcome, and pastoral discernment, without elaborating on the clear limits that might give definition to his reflections, but making some reference to the 2021 statement when pressed.

In short, his future reflections are most likely to be vague enough to be subject to broad interpretations.

It is not clear that the decisions of Belgian bishops, and the clergy in Germany, reflect what the pope actually thinks about the issue of liturgical blessings for same-sex couples. But the pontiff is more than a theologian — he is the governor of the universal Church. And some Catholics will be looking closely in the months to come at the parishes of Flanders, and the cathedral square in Cologne.

There, the question will be not what the pope chooses to say, but what he chooses to do — if anything.”

Love and truth,
Matthew

Apologetics, Chastity, Christology, Deadly Sins, Gender Identity, Heresy, Homosexuality, June, Lust, Pansexuality, Pride, Sacred Heart, Sin, Theology, Theology of the Body, Virtue, Wokeism

We are not sufficient unto ourselves to love


-by Corrado Giaquinto, “Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque Contemplating the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” c. 1765, oil on canvas, 171 cm (67.3 in); width: 123 cm (48.4 in), private collection, please click on the image for greater detail

“O Sacred Heart of Jesus, we place our trust in Thee!” -traditional added at the end of McCormick family grace

-by Dr Kody Cooper

“What is June for? The sixth month’s name derives from the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and goddess of marriage and fertility. June was a time for the seeds of new life: sowing crops, weddings, and the beginning of fruitful marriages. In short, June has long been associated with love. And indeed, in the late modern West, we are presented with two rival visions of love to celebrate in June, each with its own sexual ethic and account of the virtues: Pride, which contends “love is love,” and Humility, which proclaims “God is love.”

The denomination of June as a season of “pride” can be traced back to the Stonewall riots in June 1969, which followed upon a police raid of a gay bar. The following June, gay-rights activists organized a commemorative march and demonstration in New York City, and activists adopted the moniker “Gay Pride.” The man who takes credit for coining the term explained his reasoning: “The poison was shame, and the antidote is pride.”

Hence, Pride Month was born of a desire to combat shame within the gay community. This desire can be understood in light of the Christian sexual ethic that had informed American mores to a degree but had already been rejected by many American elites.

In the traditional Christian view, temperance is a cardinal virtue, and shamefacedness is an essential component of it. Temperance considers the pleasures of touch, particularly the pleasures of the table and the bed. The temperate person exercises moderation in these pleasures, avoiding both excess and deficiency. Integral to temperance is shamefacedness, a kind of fear, which is an aversion of desire away from some evil. Shamefacedness is the fear or recoiling from some action that is disgraceful.

The part of temperance that deals with sex is called “chastity,” and it is the virtue by which reason governs sexual desire. The traditional Christian understanding of sexual desire is teleological. It is a gift from God imbued with intrinsic meaning and purpose: to join man and woman in the special bond of marital friendship and that is typically generative of new life. In short, sex was understood to be unitive and procreative such that in the marital act, lovers fully gave of themselves to become “one flesh,” a unity that imaged Trinitarian Love. Chastity therefore meant checking desires for sex that strayed outside of this order, and the chaste person exercised virtue when he recoiled at—was ashamed of—such actions. On this view, heterosexual and non-heterosexual persons alike were required to govern their desires by the virtue of chastity.

While the intellectual and social seeds of the sexual revolution had long been germinating, the 1960s saw the Christian understanding of sex overthrown. In 1964, most American states had laws on the books that restricted access to contraception, for contraception thwarted the teleological purpose of sex. But in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down anti-contraception laws as violative of the Constitution, upending the classical Christian natural law logic that such laws presupposed. With the recently invented technology of the birth control pill now widely available, no longer was it presumed that sex was essentially tethered to procreation. Rather, sex became a form of recreation for the expressive self. And this, quite logically, led the gay community to wonder: Why should expressive individualism and recreation be restricted to married heterosexuals?

The promoters of Pride worked out socially and morally what was already implicit in the new legal order. The law is a tutor, and it taught that sex was no longer essentially unitive, procreative, and marital. Why then should homosexual sex be considered shameful? Of course, residual shamefacedness about gay sex remained ingrained in the mores of many Americans. But such attitudes, increasingly cut off from the Christian understanding of the meaning of sex—and the vibrant institutions that embody and sustain that vision—were readily redescribed as “poison.” The antidote was to call for a new virtue: “pride.” Pride functioned as a new sort of fortitude: the habit by which members of the gay community would individually and collectively come out of the closet with confident self-assurance and claim their equal rights in a transformed social order. The older shamefaced attitudes that had been parts of temperance would now increasingly appear as vices: the ignorant prejudice or animus of bigots.

Pride’s popular slogan “love is love” is thus a fitting shorthand for its sexual ethic. Because sex is not inherently a one flesh union of husband and wife, but rather an avenue for self-expression and recreation, no one form of romantic love has any moral superiority over any other. They are all equally “love” and therefore should be treated with absolute moral, social, and legal equality.

The contrasting vision of Christian Humility is “God is Love.” It is antithetical to love as conceived by expressive individualism because Love Itself calls the beloved not to self-expression, but to humble obedience—that is, to make a gift of oneself as an abode for Him to reign in our hearts (John 14:23-24). The Church proclaims this message to the world in the month of June in a special way that is deeply intertwined with the story of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the beloved disciple of Christ’s Sacred Heart.

Born on July 22, 1647 in France, Margaret Mary was still very young when she consecrated herself to God: “O my God, I consecrate to Thee my purity, and I make Thee a vow of perpetual chastity.” In offering up her sexuality as a gift to God, she was given the lifelong gift of chastity and an accompanying “horror” of “anything against purity”—and provided an example of holiness particularly relevant to all whose vocation is not to marriage.

Her Divine Suitor eventually directed her to join the Visitandines. Already extremely advanced in the spiritual life—she had had several visions of Our Lady and Our Lord—obedience was an ongoing drama. Our Lord asked of her various prayers, sacrifices, and penances, but they sometimes conflicted with the commands of her superiors. When the saint beseeched Christ for help, he replied to her that she should do nothing of what he had commanded her without her superiors’ consent: “I love obedience, and without it no one can please Me.”

Humble obedience and the sacrifice of the desires of the self are thematic in St. Margaret Mary’s life. She struggled interiorly to heed Christ’s commands and acknowledged her weakness and inability to do what He asked without His aid. She had entered the convent on one condition: that she could never be forced to eat cheese, to which she was extremely averse. When her Sovereign Master asked her to eat cheese at a meal, she resisted for three days, until in answer to her prayer the Lord said: “There must be no reserve in Love.” She ate the cheese, and recalled that “I never in my life felt so great a repugnance to anything.” Indeed, to conform her more perfectly to himself, Christ identified all that was most opposed to her predilections, and increasingly required her to act contrary to them.

This and many other sufferings conformed her to the crucified Christ and were the essential preconditions to the revelation of His Sacred Heart, which involved such ecstatic spiritual delights that she could not describe them. Christ revealed His Heart to be as a mighty furnace, a throne of flames shining like the sun, encircled by a crown of thorns with the Cross seated upon it. The saint was asked to honor His Sacred Heart with a feast day that would fall in June, in order to manifest to mankind anew His infinite love for them. This would ultimately be fulfilled two hundred years after St. Margaret Mary’s death, when Pope Leo XIII raised the feast to a Solemnity in 1889.

Christ’s Sacred Heart—as both His literal heart of flesh and the self-sacrificial gift of himself for the world that it symbolizes—burns with a love of charity by which he has a just claim on our hearts, on the obedience of our wills. Its radiant brilliance reminds us that God’s love radically extends to all persons, regardless of any predilections they might have that do not conform to His will. It is only through our free choice to nail the desires of the self upon the Cross that His Sacred Heart is permitted to be enthroned in each of our own.

While the contrasts of Humility’s vision with Pride’s are apparent, we should note that, for many, the celebration of Pride Month can be well intentioned. The desire to show compassion, as well as to be acknowledged, recognized, and affirmed, are healthy in their root because they stem from the fundamental human desire to be loved and cared for. Pride’s vision of love is fundamentally flawed, but not because persons who do not identify as heterosexual are of any lesser dignity. From the traditional Christian perspective, it is flawed in as much as it was built upon a rejection of the moral order that God established and the refusal of humble obedience to and reliance upon the One who sacrificed Himself to help us fulfill it. Pride’s vision of love must end in disappointment. For by His Sacred Heart, Jesus loves each of us infinitely more than any creature could, including ourselves. It is humbling to admit that we are not sufficient unto ourselves to love. But our Divine Lover promises a joy beyond anything worldly love promises, if only we will offer ourselves as gifts to Him, and allow Him to transform us into the beautiful creatures we were created to be.”

For the love of God and willing the good of others,
Matthew

Apologetics, Chastity, Deadly Sins, Gender Identity, Heresy, Homosexuality, June, Lust, Pansexuality, Pride, Relativism, Sin, Theology, Theology of the Body, Wokeism

The dark side of the rainbow

Whatever happened to sin?


-by Dr Matthew Petrusek

“The month of June is Pride Month. You may have noticed. For thirty days, corporations, universities, local businesses, community organizations, and government institutions take a break from their perennial praise of the LGBTQ+ movement to demonstrate (especially to those surveilling online) that they are really, really—really—committed to the cause. Although the symbol of Pride has struggled to keep up with the exponential growth of qualifying identities, celebrants communicate their fidelity in the form of rainbow-saturated company logos, sidewalk displays, oversize billboards, and even Pride-themed onesies, pick-up trucks, and ice-cream.

But what, precisely, is being celebrated? There are numerous bumper-sticker responses: “love is love,” “acceptance,” “being who you are,” and even, incongruously given the corresponding statistics, “joy.” But how does any of this relate to pride—pride in what exactly? Examining the assumptions and implications of the Pride movement leads to some unsettling conclusions.

Before digging deeper, it’s important to separate Pride ideology—a system of thought that seeks to advance specific cultural and political goals—from individuals who do not fit traditional sexual and gender categories. It’s likely you know someone, are related to someone, or maybe even a parent to someone who’s in this group. You likely love them very much and they may, indeed, be exceptionally lovable. You certainly don’t want to hurt them, and, in fact, that may be the reason you’ve hesitated to say anything about their professed identity. Setting aside the scurrilous knee-jerk accusations of “hatred” and “phobia” that inevitably accompany any skepticism, or even, ironically, curiosity about the meaning of the Pride movement, the search for clarity should recognize that addressing the topic honestly may cause real, even if unintended, pain to good people. And so it goes without saying, to draw on Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, that truth must never be separated from charity.

But who I am to say anything about the “truth” of Pride? Though this question is usually taken as a blow in defense of the movement (Who are you to judge?), it, in fact, opens the first line of critique: What separates Pride from traditional hetero-centric morality? In other words, what makes Pride ideology true, or at least truer, than competing worldviews in such a way that its advocates are not merely imposing their values on society because they have the power to do so?

It’s important to keep in mind that there are only two possible responses to the question of moral truth: either (a) it doesn’t exist (thus all truth is relative), or (b) it does exist, meaning that there are moral principles that are universally, objectively true. Pride ideology often finds itself in the first category, moral relativism, under the declarations, “This is my truth” or “This is our truth.” Those may sound like objective truth claims on the surface; however, if there is no “the truth” lying beneath “my/our truth,” then there is no way to distinguish it from an expression of emotive preference. If this is the case, then the whole Pride movement would be based on an irrational (or at least a-rational) imposition of will on those who disagree with it—which, in turn, would render it analogous, in both method and substance, to how tyrants and bullies operate (“Obey and celebrate me because I say so”).

To escape this assessment, the Pride movement must make the case that they are advocating for something that everyone ought to believe not because they are saying it but because it is, in fact, true. In this case, those who disagree with Pride ideology would be wrong to do so because they would be holding false beliefs. What might those truth claims look like and what implications would they have? Let’s return to some of the bumper-stickers.

“Love is Love”

It’s not clear what this statement means, but it seems to imply at least two things: (1) All individuals’ internal sexual attractions should be considered equally morally valid (if not praiseworthy), no matter who or what the object of desire is (if the movement were only advocating for non-sexual relationships then it would not find opposition, certainly not from traditional morality); (2) All individuals ought to be able to act on those internal attractions whenever and however they desire, provided there is mutual consent and no subjectively defined “harm” occurs—indeed, such sexual expression is to be encouraged and feted.

Are these two statements about love true? That’s a complex question, but let’s assume that Pride ideology affirms them as such. If that’s the case, however, then, given the variety of human beings’ empirically observed (which is not to say natural) sexual proclivities and behaviors, these conclusions necessarily follow: (1) Pride ideology believes that we should celebrate individuals’ freedom to engage in hetero- and homosexual relationships with immediate biological family members; (2) Pride ideology believes that we should celebrate individuals’ freedom to express their desires to have sexual relationships with children (now rebranded as “Minor Attracted Persons”), even if they are not currently free to act on those desires legally; and (3) Pride ideology believes that we should celebrate individuals’ freedom to have sexual relationships with non-human animals, provided they don’t violate anti-cruelty laws. These are the implications of believing “love is love” is true, even if we don’t see them represented on parade floats yet.

“Be who you are”

Drawing on the meaning of “love is love,” this claim implies that individuals’ subjective feelings morally authorize them to (attempt to) appear on “the outside” what they experience themselves to be on “the inside.” This tenet of Pride lies at the heart of transgenderism and, in general, being “queer,” which includes a justification (and celebration) of surgically slicing off healthy breast and genital tissue and forcing women to compete against men in sporting events. However, if it’s true that individuals should be celebrated for making their outside look like their inside—and everyone else must accommodate their wishes—then Pride must also affirm that we praise trans-abled individuals for snipping their healthy spinal cords, trans-species individuals (also known as “Furries”) for demanding societal respect for non-ironically donning animal costumes in public, and even trans-age individuals for dictating that they be cared for like infants, including while in prison. (It is crucial to note that once age, like biological sex, becomes subjective, the moral prohibition against practicing pedophilia dissolves). All this, too, follows from the ideology’s internal logic.

“Acceptance”

Though this word sounds especially innocuous, Pride ideology transforms its meaning into “Shut up and don’t ask questions, bigot.” To “accept” is not to tolerate; it is to recognize as normal. “Acceptance” thus mainstreams the movement’s definitions of the nature of the human body, the purpose of human sexuality, and the rights of individuals to do as they please according to the dictates of Pride’s principles. At the same time, and consequently, it both stigmatizes what was once considered normal as “abnormal” and marks anyone who critically questions the new normal as a bigot (for only a bigot would be against “acceptance”). In other words, “acceptance” is both the shield and weapon of Pride: it protects the movement from scrutiny by tarring all objections, a priori, as prejudiced.

Holding tight to the distinction between ideologies and individuals, it’s important to highlight that there are some people who, though they fall outside traditional gender and sexual typologies for various reasons (though most likely not genetic ones), are resisting elements of the Pride movement. (One such group is called “Gays against Groomers.”) Yet Pride ideology still remains dominant in the US and most of the West, despite the fact that, according to its own assertions, it is either (a) a subjective, relativistic morality that imposes itself on the Pride-nonconforming by the brute force of its cultural and political power, or (b) a putatively universal morality that, based on the logic of its own principles, permits and encourages incest, bodily mutilation (including of children), pedophiliac attraction (if not practice), bestiality, and the silencing of dissent.

In short, a candid assessment of Pride reveals it to be either dictatorially arbitrary or fiendishly depraved. There is no amount of kaleidoscopic fanfare, corporate-sponsored enthusiasm, or coercively moralizing legislation that can wish this conclusion away. To embrace the Rainbow!™ necessarily entails embracing its shadow. Pretending otherwise, fantasizing that we can dethrone heterosexuality and reality-based biology as natural and normative without letting the full panoply of Pandora’s Box of perversion out into the world, is, itself, to be bigoted—against reason and the evidence of our own eyes. ”

For the love of God and willing the good of others,
Matthew

Moral, Suffering, Theology of the Body

Suicide – Jn 11:25


-by Casey Chalk

“A new federal suicide prevention hotline has witnessed a significant increase in calls and texts, with 154,585 more calls, texts, and chat messages in November 2022 compared to the old national lifeline in November 2021, according to the Associated Press. This comes at a time when depression rates, overdose deaths, and suicide rates have all exploded.

When people think about Catholicism and suicide, it is often through lenses informed less by magisterial teaching and more by popular portrayals of how the Church has responded to those who take their own lives. I remember, for example, once seeing a cinematic portrayal of Vlad the Impaler (later mythologized into Dracula) that showed his first wife killing herself. Vlad’s realization that the woman cannot be buried in consecrated ground and that eternal damnation is her punishment drives him into darkness and evil. Alternatively, today, priests have been disciplined for even suggesting that hell might be the result of death by suicide, and many presume that all those who commit it must be mentally ill and those incapable of mortal sin.

Catholics (and all Americans) need a more coherent understanding of suicide—one that not only addresses the above misconceptions, but also takes full account of the human person and better protects those who are most vulnerable to being persuaded that death is the only or the best option for themselves. Thankfully, Catholic teaching offers quite a bit of clarity on the topic of suicide, prioritizing our dignity as persons, as well as our inescapable indebtedness to the divine—the “God factor,” as it were.

To properly contextualize this conversation, we need to start with God. For it is to God, not ourselves, that we owe our lives. Human life—pace atheists or transhumanists—is not solely our own, nor some sort of material product, to do with as we see fit. Yes, we possess freedom via our will. But our lives originate in the divine—indeed, even our wills are in certain senses circumscribed, because we are free to choose not anything, but only those things that our corporeal, intellectual, physical, economic, historical, and geographic circumstances allow.

It is God Who created us and sustains us, at every moment of our lives, in His omnipotence and omnipresence. We are entirely His, whether we believe it and act like it or not. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,

everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of (2280).

That idea runs counter to our increasingly post-Christian culture, which elevates autonomy as the greatest of all virtues. It’s also in tension with our culture’s acceptance of in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, which treat children not as gifts, but products. Parents can “produce” babies with preferred genetic traits and even declare fetuses faulty if they have some debilitating genetic defect. In that sense, our dystopian future is already upon us.

Yet if we can accept that our lives are first God’s, rather than our own, then the danger of suicide becomes more easily apparent. By taking our own life, we are destroying something that is not ours to destroy. Only God, in his infinite (if often obscure) wisdom and justice, has the right to take human life, or confer on his creatures that right (e.g., self-defense or just war).

There is more than this to the evil of suicide. Suicide, as St. John Paul II would say, encourages a “culture of death” that affects everyone. The Catechism explains:

Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God (2281).

It’s not just that suicide undermines love of God. It also undermines love of neighbor, the second greatest commandment. As Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper argued, each of us has obligations to one another, or pietas. We have obligations to parents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors, and fellow parishioners and citizens. We are obliged to love and serve them, and even communicate the love of Christ to them. In killing ourselves, we repudiate those duties.

To anticipate one likely objection, we should remember that this duty is reciprocal. In other words, our parents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners, and fellow citizens all have obligations to us, too. In destroying ourselves, we deny them the opportunity to love and serve us, especially when we are most in need of it. When we are depressed or diseased, or have some terrible, perhaps even terminal condition, that is precisely when those around us are most expected to exemplify both virtues on our behalf. If we are a burden, it is for their good.

It’s true that the Catholic Church has acknowledged that “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide” (§2282). Yet we should not allow that reality to persuade us into an indifference toward the dangerous threat posed by a culture that permits and even encourages suicide. The Catechism also teaches, “If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law” (2282). It is horrible indeed when some prominent figure or celebrity kills himself, inspiring their acolytes to consider the same fate.

Given the increasing frequency of suicide in our nation, readers may know someone, even a loved one, who has committed suicide. I know a few, including a close relative I never got to meet. It is a real possibility that such troubled persons are in hell, and that is a harrowing thought, indeed. But we cannot know the thoughts of the deceased, who may have repented even as they died, or may have lacked full knowledge of what they were doing. The Catechism itself gives us hope:

We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives (2283).

As serious (and evil) a thing as suicide may be, there remains reason to hope in a merciful God. Like so many other complicated areas of life, Catholic teaching navigates a middle path between unreserved contempt for those who kill themselves and, alternatively, eliding the real culpability we have for our decisions, even when there are mitigating circumstances.

Whether we have contemplated it ourselves or know someone who has, we must reject the lie that tells us our lives are solely our own, to keep or kill as we wish. It is a blessing, not a curse, that we are God’s from birth to death.”

Love, Jesus save me,
Matthew

Heresy, Theology of the Body

Quid sit homo? – the body & human composting


-by Sarah Cain

“With its recent legalization of “human composting,” the state of New York joined California, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont.

The process goes like this: the body of the deceased is placed in a metal vessel alongside wood chips, alfalfa, and other plant matter. A moderate heat is applied alongside extra oxygen to encourage microbial activity, and over a period of weeks, the human body breaks down into compost, which is then presented to the family. One cubic yard of dirt is given to them, or about three barrels full. Then, presumably, the family can get started with the cabbage patch they had been planning.

You wouldn’t be wrong to think that seems callous. Man as fertilizer cannot be an expression of man as one who shares in the nature of Christ.

Human composting is just one method of what are now being labeled “green burials.” Advocates boast that such methods “give back to nature.” Mushroom suits perform a similar function, wherein the deceased are placed in spore-ridden suits that will help to decompose them. “Alkaline hydrolysis” is all the rave in some (rather macabre) circles. That’s when the body is broken down in a chemical stew, to be disposed of like hazardous waste.

A vast array of disposal options might be helpful if you had a large, valueless item to get rid of. If the item was a broken refrigerator, there’s little to discuss regarding the morality of what happens after it is discarded. But this isn’t a discussion about refrigerators—it’s about human beings. By virtue of that knowledge, we must treat the body with respect, even reverence. Each person is made in the image and likeness of God; he bears a divine reflection. Even more so, by virtue of his baptism, a Christian is a member of the body of Christ. Human composting is a violation of the natural dignity of man and the supernatural dignity of the Christian.

Modern man has found himself back at an ancient question: quid sit homo? (What is man?) The answer that he has come to, if the actions are analyzed for what they imply, is “nothing.” Modernity asserts that man is nothing in his own right. He can and should be reduced to his utility. Thus, when he dies, he ceases to produce, and we can search for ways to use his body while making sure that it doesn’t take up too much space in the ground. It’s one last attempt to get another use out of it.

There’s an inherent shudder when most of us first hear of these ways of treating the dead. One of the consequences of living among (at least the ruins of) a Christian culture is that we “feel” that certain things are wrong even when we’ve lost the words to explain why. Part of the problem is that modern Catholics are too often divorced from the writings of the past to be able to answer the questions that man has long struggled with.

Our forebears knew, as we should, that man is different from animal. He has a higher nature. He has the capacity to reason. He has an immortal soul. He is made in the image and likeness of God, with a destiny to join in union with him. He matters enough to God for God to endure the Passion. Man is not trash, nor plant, nor mere animal, and he shouldn’t be disposed of as if he were. Man has dignity and value simply because of Who created him, Who willed him into being. The dignity that he holds is not contingent on how productive he is.

The secular understanding that deprives man of innate value leads down sinister roads. If he is defined by his output, what of those who are severely ill and thereby dependent? It naturally follows that the secular thesis deprives those people of their rightful protections and submits them to the whims of the capable—perhaps better labeled “the mob.” How about those with intellectual or developmental difficulties? Those still in the womb? All of these groups have little material output, and each has been targeted for termination by the secular world we inhabit, using a vast array of justifications.

Our respect for the totality of the human person necessitates that we treat the dead with dignity and charity. Further, it requires that we bury them in hope of the Resurrection. The act of burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy and recognition of the sacred nature of the body, which is “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19).

One of the ways that our faith is distinguished from paganism is in the elevated placement of man on earth. It might seem paradoxical at first: as Christians, we recognize man’s fallen nature, thus placing him in need of a Savior, but we also value him as higher than other life forms, as each child is made in God’s image. In various pagan sects, nature is of higher value than man, and man becomes merely a parasite, plundering nature’s resources. Nature becomes worshiped as a deity. For these people, “mother nature” is not just a colloquial phrase. Other pagans refer to this false god as Gaia. To deprive man of his dignity and inherent value is thus both paganistic and sacrilegious.

We must do better than the world around us, which reduces man to utility, as in secularism, or to leech, as in paganism. A baptized person is a child of God. Even when the Church permits cremation, he must be set to rest in consecrated ground and buried in hopes of the Resurrection. He is not placed on display in the home, nor scattered because someone believes the act to be pretty. Those of us who live today have a profound obligation to honor the dignity of the man who can no longer speak for himself—certainly not by composting him, but rather by praying for his soul.”

Love & truth,
Matthew

Modesty, Theology of the Body

Christian M-word


-by Christine Flynn

“As I walked out the door to meet my boyfriend’s parents for the first time, my mom called after me, “That skirt’s a little short, isn’t it?”

I stopped. A discussion on the appropriateness of dress had never occurred so this sudden mention, when I was eighteen years old, was surprising and confusing. “What does it matter?” I said, honestly curious.

At the time, I received an unsatisfactory answer to that question—“because!” But the way we dress and how we comport ourselves certainly does matter. Modesty is a virtue worth cultivating, most especially in the teenage years, when habits really dig their roots in, for better or for worse. This is true of everyday life, as well as during special events, such as homecoming dances and formals, when the norms of regular dress and behavior are often, in reality or expectation, stretched or broken.

It’s homecoming season now, which means many practical lessons in what makes a modest dress. But, perhaps surprisingly, modesty is not all about the clothes we wear. Fr. John Hardon writes in the Modern Catholic Dictionary that modesty is “the virtue that moderates all the internal and external movements and appearance of a person according to his or her endowments, possessions, and station in life.” This includes how we dress but also much more—our general behavior, anytime, at any occasion.

We aren’t modest for the sake of modesty, or to hold up some stodgy religious standard. Modesty goes beyond those things and plants itself in the love we have for our God-given dignity and in the love we bear for the mystical body of Christ, our Christian brothers and sisters who are striving for holiness. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity” (2521).

Appropriate clothing and behavior fall under this definition, though the Catechism mentions dress only in passing. Why? Because what we present outwardly reflects our inward disposition and how we respect and care for “the intimate center of the person.” Do we care interiorly that God has gifted us with bodies that, per His law, form sexual relationships within—and only within—the bounds of marriage? Do we care interiorly that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and that we ought to help lead souls to heaven , and thus guard those of the opposite sex who may be tempted to inappropriate thoughts or behavior by the way we dress and act? Do we believe that virtue is a habit worth cultivating, not something to work toward only when it is convenient?

The earnest person of faith would answer these questions in the affirmative. So how is modesty practically applied?

It is unnecessary to believe that modest dress must be somber, unattractive, or dowdy. And though modesty in dress and decorum certainly is not required only of girls, attire for girls breaks the bounds of modesty more regularly than clothing for boys. Rev. George Kelly’s advice in his 1959 book The Catholic Family Handbook still applies, more than a half century later: “A young girl need not walk about with stringy hair, a plain, pale face, or in the clothing of a widow; she can make herself attractive, using appropriate cosmetic aids and colorful fabrics. Above all, if she has a smiling, friendly disposition, it will be reflected in her appearance, and will make her more attractive than any product from the beautician’s laboratory.”

We cannot overlook the need to strike a balance in our dress—not wearing immodest clothing for our own vanity, nor seeking recognition or applause for how modest we are. As Dr. Brian Besong writes on modesty in An Introduction to Ethics, “we should restrain ourselves according to the circumstances of our culture and environment, not flouting social norms in order to stand out, or ignoring the social setting (such as who we are around) in choosing what to wear.” So if the social setting is a homecoming dance, girls can tend to their appearance with the care that the formal occasion demands, but not to the point of vanity or pride.

A proper understanding of modesty also brings us to true Christian charity, meaning that in all areas of our lives, we follow the two greatest commandments as outlined by Jesus: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. When it comes to loving our neighbors, we are to will their good, the greatest good being heaven. How we dress and behave can certainly assist our Christian brethren in their pursuit of the beatific vision . . . or hinder them. True, it is our own responsibility to practice purity and to avoid “voyeurism and illusion,” to paraphrase paragraph 2525 of the Catechism. But in that same paragraph, the Church advises the media to exercise respect and restraint. We should apply that advice to ourselves—what we do, how we behave, and yes, even what we wear.

If a person is enthusiastic about respecting and protecting our brothers and sisters in Christ, and yet still desires to dress immodestly, it’s worth getting to the root of why. Pride or vanity is probably playing a role. The same can be said if a young person “must” wear this or that style of clothing because she can’t bear what others will think of her if she is dressed modestly—or if she wants to feel sexual or elicit those thoughts in others. Running through a kind of “self-audit” to understand our inclinations over certain subjects, including clothing, can reveal things that we might not pay much mind to otherwise.

Simply answering “because!” doesn’t cut it in matters of faith. We need to pay attention—though not to the point of scrupulosity—to our human motivations and desires. Only then can we ascend beyond those factors and attain lasting happiness, far beyond the reaches of what we do or do not wear.”

Love & Christian modesty, Deo gratias,
Matthew

Theology of the Body, Yoga

Catholics & yoga?


-by Alexander Frank, a former US Army Ranger and a graduate of Yale Law Schoo, converted to the Catholic faith in 2019 from Kashmiri Shaivism, a sophisticated form of yoga and the origin of its modern form.

“Secular society adores yoga, and not a few Catholics are fond of it, too. Revenue for the yoga industry runs in the billions of dollars, according to Statista.com, and the number of participants is estimated to be in the tens of millions.

I myself dived into yoga, drawn to the idea of personal enhancement without ethical constraints. After years of studying yoga and its associated systems—mindfulness, Buddhism, magical shamanism—I had completed a teacher training retreat, spent three months in a Zen monastery, and studied under one of the best yoga spiritual directors in the United States. Over the course of my studies, and as my spiritual searching eventually led me to the Catholic Church, I learned that there is much more to yoga than Western pop culture implies.

In analyzing whether it is prudent for Catholics to practice yoga, the place to start is in determining what yoga is. The term yoga means “to yoke” in Sanskrit. This “yoking” connotes a spiritual unity, rooted in a kind of servitude. Now, Christ calls us to bear his yoke (Matt. 11:30), but what kind of yoke does yoga put on practitioners? Or in other words, what kind of servitude does yoga bind its practitioners to?

We can start by looking at the poses. Take some examples:

  • The three-part Warrior pose invokes the god Virabhadra, who was created by another god, Shiva, to murder Shiva’s father-in-law. The three poses imitate the sequence of the murder.
  • Matseyadrasana and Gorakshasana are named after Hindu gurus who founded the style that led to modern yoga. According to the foundation legend, they used their occult powers to commit theft, adultery, fraud, rape by deceit, corpse desecration, the murder of Matsyendra’s son, and cross-dressing.*
  • According to the founder of Rasa yoga, Sianna Sherman, Goddess pose “invokes” the dark goddess Kali, known for making clothes out of the body parts of slain enemies. Yoga devotees sacrifice children to her in India to this day.

What about the purpose of yoga? It goes beyond postures that honor problematic Hindu gods and gurus. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs says, “Yoga is essentially a spiritual discipline based on an extremely subtle science which focuses on bringing harmony between mind and body. . . . The practice of yoga leads to the union of individual consciousness with that of the Universal Consciousness.” So yoga is at its essence a spiritual discipline. That spiritual work is rooted in a belief that consciousness, or more simply awareness, is the vehicle to the divine. The ultimate goal is a dissolution of our individual identity and a realization of our “true Self,” to fuse our consciousness with a sort of hive mind.

Many other sources say similar things. Judith Lasater, perhaps the most prominent American yoga teacher, describes “the true essence of the practice” as enlightenment, to “experience reality not as our various parts, but as one unified being.” Anusha Wijeyakumar, another prominent yoga teacher and writer, says that “the ultimate goal of yoga . . . is samadhi—final union with god and divine consciousness. . . . Yoga is much more than asana [physical postures].”

One mantra, a Hindu prayer that accompanies the physical postures, is “I am what I say I am.” Considering how God identifies himself in Exodus 3:14, this looks very much like an attempt to make human beings into God. It is a radical philosophical claim that gives rise to a specific type of spirituality.

By contrast, St. John of the Cross describes how the soul in love with God will reflect God’s light to such an extent that it appears to be God, but it remains ontologically separate. Cardinal Ratzinger, examining forms of Christian meditation, wrote in 1989 that “all the aspirations which the prayer of other religions expresses are fulfilled in the reality of Christianity beyond all measure, without the personal self or the nature of a creature being dissolved or disappearing into the sea of the Absolute.” Union with the divine is a noble aspiration, but the Eastern paths diverge significantly from the Christian one.

Now, the most common argument in favor of yoga is to throw out the deeper “spiritual” side and zero in on the physical action of stretching. Catholic advocates for yoga insist that just doing “postures”—that honor morally questionable Hindu gods and have always been a Hindu spiritual practice—is good as long as we intend only to get exercise. But does this argument hold water?

To find out, let’s ask whether it is true that an act—say, striking a yoga pose—has no meaning beyond the intentions of the person committing that act. St. Thomas Aquinas argues that in fact, actions do have an objective meaning: “The goodness or malice which the external action has of itself . . . is not derived from the will, but rather from the reason” (ST I-II, q. 20, a. 1). Actions have their own nature: the quality of the external act is derived from rational inquiry rather than from the intent of the actor. Similarly, the Catechism teaches that, for an act to be good, it has to have a good moral object, which is intrinsic to its nature and independent of intent. “A good intention . . . does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered good or just” (1753).

Is the “behavior” of yogic stretching “intrinsically disordered”? What is the “moral object” of these poses? Yogis themselves point to it, even if they are not very forthright. The postures aim to awaken kundalini, energies of the soul, associated with the Hindu gods. That energy starts dormant at the base of the spine, depicted as a “sleeping serpent goddess.” Yoga practice sends the snake up the spine to take possession of the soul so that the practitioner can realize his “authentic Self,” yoking himself to those gods. Bikram Choudhury, the founder of one of the most common types of yoga, says what happens with his posture sequence is that “you awaken kundalini. You become Jesus Christ. Or Buddha. My yoga formula works for everybody.”

One of the main gurus to bring yoga to the west, BKS Iyengar, writes that a true yoga asana “is that in which the thought of [the Hindu supreme god] flows effortlessly and incessantly through the mind of the [practitioner].” Judith Lasater says that “the intrinsic nature of yoga is that you cannot separate the asanas from other aspects of practice.” Alexandria Crow, a prominent yoga “expert,” says, “The poses are really a vehicle to teach [yoga’s] philosophy.” According to a staff writer for Yoga Journal, the most prominent yoga source in the U.S. in terms of internet traffic, the reason for this is an innovation by the father of modern yoga, Krishnamacharya, who “made the postures an integral part of meditation instead of just a step leading toward it.”

Significantly, subjective intent has a way of conforming itself to the moral object through repeated practice. Two scientific surveys show that, although most people start yoga for the health benefits, many stick with it to attain this spiritual actualization. Fr. Joseph-Marie Verlinde, who went deep into yoga before converting, told his then-guru that Westerners mostly practice yoga for relaxation. The guru “laughed furiously” and then said, “That does not prevent yoga from having its effect.”

In short, it should be uncontroversial to say that the system that gave rise to yoga, including the poses, honors Hindu gods and aims to spiritually yoke the practitioner to them. Meanwhile, Scripture tells us that “all the gods of the Gentiles are idols” (Ps. 96:5—older translations read “devils” instead of “idols”), and the Church takes a strong stance against idolatry (Exod. 20:1-4; CCC 2110). It is unlikely that many Catholics would rush to a gym to perform the “Ba’al lunge,” yet the “idols” or “devils” of Hindu spiritual practice get a shrug of the shoulders.

But are we really opening a door to demons just by setting our bodies in certain poses, like in the satirical Babylon Bee article where the plumber accidentally gets possessed? Well, Norman Sjoman was a scholar who practiced under and studied the father of modern yoga, Krishnamacharya. He concluded that “what makes something yoga is not what is done, but how it is done.” And many poses in yoga come from Western gymnastics and are similar to postures in normal fitness. Similarly, eating a circular piece of bread outside Christian practice does nothing spiritually, but receiving the Eucharist in a Catholic Mass invokes works of grace (or divine condemnation) beyond the intent of the practitioner. So doing these poses in the context of yoga, as part of the practice of yoga, regardless of subjective intent, turns them into a way to further yoga’s spirituality. They become a sacrament, in the loose sense of the term—a visible sign of deeper spiritual work.

So yes, strictly speaking, the poses done in isolation are almost certainly fine. But my personal experience in the yoga world does not recommend participating in it, nor does the immense spiritual baggage associated with it. It is almost impossible to avoid participating in the spiritual parts of yoga, which are problematic if we are to stay away from honoring murderous gods and opening ourselves up to yoga’s spiritual beliefs.

There are many ways to get physically fit that do not carry that baggage, most notably Pietra fitness, that give the same fitness benefits while drawing practitioners into a relationship of love rooted in truth with God. Why choose yoga instead, when the risk is so high and the benefit so comparatively low?

* For the gruesome details, see Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition (Audible Audiobook Edition, 2016), ch. 100, 12:47:08; James Mallinson, The Khecarividya of Adinatha: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an Early Text of Hathayoga, (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 186, note 129; and David White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 236-237. (“Goraksha kills and skins the boy, scrubs his skin like a washerman to remove all its bodily impurities and hangs his skin on the roof to dry, like the hide of some skinned beast.”)”

Love & truth,
Matthew

Chastity, Deadly Sins, Gender Identity, Homosexuality, Moral, Pansexuality, Pride, Sin, Theology of the Body

Pride & the Rainbow – the Queen of sin


-by Christine Flynn

““Pride Month”—the entire month of June—is now barely in the rearview mirror, with “LGBT History Month” not so far away. This means that for two entire months every year, we are compelled to glorify what Pope St. Gregory the Great called “the queen of sin”—specifically, in this case, pride in a sexual orientation that is “objectively disordered” and inclines people to “acts of grave depravity” (CCC 2357). Pride, too, is intrinsically disordered; it is a capital sin that “seeks attention and honor and sets oneself in competition with God,” disordering and damaging our relationship with our Creator and Sustainer.

Pride’s antidote, humility, leads the Christian to acknowledging God as the author of all good. It is, in a sense, the acceptance of reality—that God is good, and truth is good. And the truth is that God created the universe according to certain rules and laws. He created humans to obey certain rules and laws—not just arbitrarily, but for our own flourishing and ultimately for heaven.

In being given this gift of flourishing, we do best when we recognize where we have failed and our fallen state, which is where our failures ultimately come from. This recognition is foundational to a life of poverty of spirit. It is not the imposition of a “vengeful, bearded Sky Daddy bent on eternal damnation for anyone struggling with [insert sin of choice here].” Rather, it is grounded in objective morality, based on our nature as humans.

To attempt to circumvent, disobey, or override the moral laws of God betrays a refusal, an anti-fiat toward Him Who created us, exemplifying pride in our ability to say “no thanks” to God and pursue a course that suits our own subjective sense of morality. We set ourselves above God this way.

That certainly does not sound like something to celebrate or take lightly.

But now we are to take the sin of sexual immorality lightly—with parades, drag shows, story hours, store discounts, fundraisers, colorful merchandise, and more . . . all pointing to a refusal of God’s laws, and a proud refusal at that.

The revelers may say, “That’s not the type of ‘pride’ we’re advocating for. It’s about being unapologetic about who we are and how we love ourselves and others!” Yet it is one thing to love ourselves for who we are, accepting how God created us, and bearing daily the crosses that come from our individual proclivities to sin. This is the path to holiness. It is something else entirely that “Pride” advocates promote. These advocates want us to celebrate not the heroic efforts of the people who experience non-heterosexual attractions and are doing their level best to live in accordance with God’s law, but the sin itself, which is as disordered as celebrating any other sin.

The “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay” mentality is patently false. God made each of us in His image and likeness, but we are not He. We are all broken and sinful, able only to reflect the good that God authored and is. God gave us sexual love—the parameters of which, far from being arbitrary, are set up for our flourishing. This love is a beautiful and fruitful thing. But sexual activity removed from that life-giving context becomes disordered. We can’t expect true happiness from these disordered activities—regardless of the fleeting biological or emotional satisfaction they may provide, regardless of how the culture pushes them—any more than we can expect happiness from eating thumbtacks. Some things are just really good for us, given our nature, and some things are really bad. Not even God can change that.

Rather than justify and celebrate behaviors and desires that go against God’s plans for us, we ought to be apologetic. Each of us has turned away from God. As the Confiteor goes: “I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.” That is what makes the sacrament of reconciliation such a stunning act of love: God fully restores us to Himself. He is the only one who can. None of our own attempts comes close.

This can be seen in one of the central emblems of the “Pride” movement: the rainbow. Biblically, the rainbow denotes God’s covenant with us—His promise that He will never again destroy creation with a great flood. He hung up His bow in the sky to show us that his “weapon” has been put to rest; He is at peace with us. God’s rainbow, too, signifies perfection: six days of creation and a seventh of rest. On the other hand, the colors in the “Pride” rainbow, as it stood for years, prior to its redesign in 2021, numbered only six—the “number of man,” a symbol of humanity’s attempts to create and work as God, but ultimately and always falling short of His perfection.

In the book of Joshua, we see man doing his own work, marching around the walls of Jericho for six days. Ultimately, it is the glory of God that makes those walls fall . . . on the seventh day (Joshua 6:1-20). In Genesis, we read that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh, blessing this seventh day and making it holy. As for us, we may labor and do all our work during the first six days of the week, but the day afterward is to be kept separate and holy—not through any effort on our own, but because of the Lord’s command (Exod. 8:8-10). On the sixth day, too, Jesus was crucified and buried. What terrible work of man in nailing the Creator of the universe to a cross! But even in man’s worst work, God was not defeated. Rather, He brought something infinitely more beautiful from it.

This is a word of caution to those who work to change God’s designs for human sexuality. As with all other attempts to effect change that isn’t in His plans, these, too, will ultimately fail.”

-Deut 30:19

Love & truth,
Matthew