I'm Not Sorry.

The world is changing so we must find a way to reach an accommodation with the world.

This seems to be the message I see pouring forth from my computer screen since the SCOTUS decision in America about Same Sex "Marriage". I feel deflated and suddenly very old at the way in which society seems to be moving in a direction I just do not understand, no matter how hard I try.

This is a good example. It is an honest attempt to employ a different tone when approaching homosexuality, a tone which presents authentic teaching whilst demonstrating love rather than condemnation.

The author believes that, as a Church, have failed to be true witnesses of life, chastity, marriage, love, and especially the Gospel. Thus, we have failed to help the world and we need to acknowledge our communal sins, repent, and do better. He believes that God can do something great in our humility. He can take our sins and, like Peter, make us into a nation of saints and evangelists, who do something with our failures.

I'm not so sure this approach will do any good. The movement is one towards hedonism, towards selfish interest, towards the "I want it now" ideology of a fast-food culture which has a tendency to bawl like a spoilt child if anyone is impetuous enough to deny it its latest craving. Are they interested in what Catholics have to say? They have rejected us and our culture utterly, do we really think they are interested in our opinion on this?

Meanwhile, I can't help but feel the rest of the world is looking at the decadent West with disgust as we writhe about in our own mess and congratulate ourselves on how "progressive" and "tolerant" we are, while babies starve to death, or are slaughtered wholesale in abortion clinics, our families are fatherless, our society worships at the altar of consumerism, and pornography poisons the minds of whole generations of people. "Gay Pride" are you serious?

What is my problem? If two people love each other, why is that any of my business? Well this could be just about the most ignorant line of reasoning imaginable. It is fundamentally flawed, because we live in a society where everything we do effects each other, especially so when what we believe is enshrined in law.

I am concerned that something so fundamental to society as Marriage, the very building block of our society, can see such radical change in such a short timescale.

I'm uncomfortable about the repercussions for schools. Asked to draft a letter on behalf of our Secondary School to our MP asking what the future held, and the answer we got back from the Dept for Education was that sex ed classes will need to include details of same-sex practices, related problems (i.e. diseases and means of preventing them) and necessary precautions.

I often wonder how happy all the Facebookers with rainbow profile pictures will be when their children, or grandchildren start identifying as "gender-fluid"?

I also worry about the commodification of children and the way that children's rights to parents and their own heritage are made irrelevant and secondary to the rights of adults to "own" or "purchase" a child.

The real repercussions of this change in the institution of Marriage will mean that human bonds splinter and fragment into a myriad component parts. Society is changing so that we can have sex without reproduction (birth control) and reproduction without sex (cloning, IVF, artificial insemination). We can have both without love, love without companionship, and children without responsibility for their nurture. Each of these elements can be further fragmented, so that even basic biological facts of parenthood become a complex set of options: genetic mother, host mother, commissioning mother, genetic father, mother's partner, same-sex partners and so on. Ultimately this leads to a commodification of children, genetically designed to order.

Aside from these real repercussions, I also have to oppose SSM because I have made a personal commitment to Christ, to be His disciple. To accept & condone homosexual acts is fundamentally at odds with the whole of Christian Tradition. This is unequivocal and is traced by the CDF in the context of homosexuality thus:

Providing a basic plan for understanding this entire discussion of homosexuality is the theology of creation we find in Genesis. God, in his infinite wisdom and love, brings into existence all of reality as a reflection of his goodness. He fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator. They do this in a striking way in their cooperation with him in the transmission of life by a mutual donation of the self to the other.

In Genesis 3, we find that this truth about persons being an image of God has been obscured by original sin. There inevitably follows a loss of awareness of the covenantal character of the union these persons had with God and with each other. The human body retains its "spousal significance" but this is now clouded by sin. Thus, in Genesis 19:1-11, the deterioration due to sin continues in the story of the men of Sodom. There can be no doubt of the moral judgement made there against homosexual relations. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, in the course of describing the conditions necessary for belonging to the Chosen People, the author excludes from the People of God those who behave in a homosexual fashion.

Against the background of this exposition of theocratic law, an eschatological perspective is developed by St. Paul when, in I Cor 6:9, he proposes the same doctrine and lists those who behave in a homosexual fashion among those who shall not enter the Kingdom of God.

In Romans 1:18-32, still building on the moral traditions of his forebears, but in the new context of the confrontation between Christianity and the pagan society of his day, Paul uses homosexual behaviour as an example of the blindness which has overcome humankind. Instead of the original harmony between Creator and creatures, the acute distortion of idolatry has led to all kinds of moral excess. Paul is at a loss to find a clearer example of this disharmony than homosexual relations. Finally, 1 Tim. 1, in full continuity with the Biblical position, singles out those who spread wrong doctrine and in v. 10 explicitly names as sinners those who engage in homosexual acts.

7. The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behaviour therefore acts immorally.

To chose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.
As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.

8. Thus, the Church's teaching today is in organic continuity with the Scriptural perspective and with her own constant Tradition. Though today's world is in many ways quite new, the Christian community senses the profound and lasting bonds which join us to those generations who have gone before us, "marked with the sign of faith".

Again, here:

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity... (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10). This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.(5) This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries(6) and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.

If we can even go so far as to say homosexuality is good in some way, are we not contradicting what has always been held and taught? And if that Tradition is inspired by the Holy Spirit, if it is Apostolic in its foundation, if it is deposited by God, are we not in a situation that is deeply concerning? It is the assertion of that reality which is important, the assertion of the "truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives." (Source)

When it gets like this, I feel like retreating into my Catholic world and shutting out all the noise. I know I don't "hate" anyone because of their sexuality. My vocation as a Catholic is to love and care for everyone, to love life to the fullest and love people, all people, with compassion for their personal circumstances and hope for the gift of salvation which God has bestowed on all of us. But that doesn't mean saying something that isn't alright is alright, or trying to find a way to circumnavigate what the Church has always held and taught to fit in with the current position. We have a duty to oppose this as the Church teaches us to:

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty." CDF, 2003

As opposed to Marcel, whose article I linked to at the beginning of this article, I am not sorry. Well, I am sorry that we have leaders that confuse us by supporting "gay" outreach rather than reiterating Catholic truth. I am sorry that Catholics don't know the faith anymore. I am sorry that no one has explained all this well enough that the Catholic voice was heard in this debate.

This is a peculiar summer, with IS on the rampage and British holiday makers being mown down on the beaches of Tunisia, there seems to be a lot of bad news at the moment.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. 5 As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry. 2 Tim 4:3