Il Blog di Costanza
Miriano
September 1, 2018
James Martin’s article*
in his finest disguise – as victim –
obliges me to reflect somewhat on this agonizing McCarrick affair; the Jesuit
priest is increasingly more explicit in his “homosexual” militancy. Here he is
complaining about the witch-hunt against “homosexual” priests in an article
re-tweeted by Spadaro, who, also, I supposed, was “very loyal” to that Pope who
says that at the least suspicion, homosexuals,
must not even enter the seminary. Unfortunately,
complaining and victimhood are the hobbyhorses of these militants (no
coincidence often feminine personality traits
more than masculine). By means of this complaining and victimhood, by means of this talk about discrimination
and non-acceptance, homosexual people, on the contrary, have imposed their
agenda at all levels with extreme aggressiveness and ideological violence.
First they
succeeded with quite a few governments, by imposing their ‘road-map’ i.e. blocking
parliaments for months, betraying real priorities, inventing a world where
homosexual people are victims of nastiness and violence on a daily basis and ‘it
is very urgent in the name of civil rights to deal with this issue’, much more
urgent than poverty, education and unemployment. But, as Bret Easton Ellis says, they are not
asking not to be discriminated
against, they want to command. An agenda presumably dictated by ‘a higher
direction’ I’m not able to decipher, but whose effects are glaring (how
otherwise for example, can the parting-words of Gentiloni’s **political
hereditary be explained: “I’m proud to
have led a government which passed DAT (Advanced Healthcare Directives) and to
belong to a party that passed “civil union” laws.
Now they are
doing the same thing in the Church – by occupying centre-stage obscuring the
rest – with the result that, at present, many men of holy faith and very sound
doctrine, no longer have the courage to tell the truth about homosexuality:
that it is a disorder, that homosexual relations are sins. Or perhaps they say
it, but during the Anti-Homophobia Day, they then bend to the diktat of an
agenda imposed on the Church from the outside and totally unreal with respect
to the real needs of the faithful (I need someone to remind me that my problem
is myself, not others who treat me badly).
As usual the Church ‘gets it’ when
everything is over. Even as homosexual priests become consultants in Ministries,
running courses that teach ‘homosexual fidelity’, and climbing, bit by bit,
working their way up to manage real estate, money and cardinalships and dictating the agenda for the newspapers,
the Church seems still to believe the hoax that they are suffering because they
don’t feel accepted. Perhaps some [priests] really believe it but they don’t
know what’s actually going on. People with
same-sex attraction suffer because they suffer, not because they are not
accepted, something increasingly, evidently false (I’m still waiting for them
to tell us a true story about this, of someone badly-treated in the Church
because of their inclinations). The Magisterium remains their only hope of
exiting from their suffering, which will not pass if everyone pats them on the
back. It will not pass until it is faced head on.
The Pope
mentioned this on the flight home[from Ireland], that when children are small a
psychiatrist can intervene. He then added “ but no longer after 20” , However, I know a lot of people who have faced and won
this battle even at much later than 20, as they had at their side someone who
told them the truth. A Catholic. The work of a doctor alone is not enough,
spiritual work is also needed.
The Vatican
Press Official Bulletin then corrected the Pope’s statement, by writing: “many
things can be done” removing the word psychiatrist. The indefatigable Martin,
grabbing at straws, scrambling, made haste to explain to us that the Pope meant
to say that the children needed a psychiatrist because they feel discriminated.
After twenty then, dear Martin, is there
no longer any discrimination? Well, all this stuff then about homophobia is false? Choose. Admit that the Pope said what he said
– psychiatrist (we have the recording) expressly
because he meant to address the issue of treatment or admit that homophobia doesn’t
exist and therefore, as you say, there is no longer any need for the
psychiatrist the children needed.
I don’t know the
why of this correction and I don’t know why all this is happening – I’m not
good at the conspiracy thing. Perhaps the Pope in his mea culpa for the abuses in Pennsylvania didn’t say the word
homosexuality, specifically not to offend, not to let anyone feel unaccepted,
not to rub salt in the wound of homosexuality already hurt by self-infliction.
Perhaps he only wanted to speak about the abuses and not the plague in the
Church, as certainly not all homosexuals commit abuses, and perhaps he wanted
to avoid the risk of identifying the two phenomena.
Certainly, not
all homosexuals commit abuses, but the overwhelming majority of the abuses are
committed by homosexuals. And homosexual
practice among adult-consenting priests is
an abomination, independent of the consensus. It is an abomination first of all
for he who commits it and the father of those priests must condemn it, for the
good of their souls, for their eternal salvation and for their life here on
earth. If, as we believe and say, homosexuality is a disorder, this influences
the entire life of the priest.
We are not male
and female only in bed, we are in the way we look at the world, in our
judgments, in our emotions, in the way we love others. The priest is called to a virility even
greater than that of the layman, the married man. The priest in the confessional needs a great
deal of testosterone and also in dying to himself for the sake of the faithful,
the way Jesus fulfilled the call of being profoundly man.
A homosexual priest who doesn’t fight
his inclinations cannot be a good priest and the Church must not be afraid to
say this, and indeed the Pope says it: they must not even enter the seminary.
It is not that homosexuals are not virile, it is that they feel wounded in
their virility, and ought to be helped to become proud of being real men,
whatever wounds they have suffered. True
acceptance is to tell the truth with gentleness.
We are all on a path
of constant conversion. We are all sinners and all of us are confronted with a disorder
(hopefully only one!). Our disorders
stop us from being united to the Lord and living our lives in a fruitful and
ordered way. For example when one lives in circumstances of adultery, one’s
entire life enters into a sort of schizophrenia, and one is unable to do the
normal things [in life] with an undivided heart. All of life becomes adulterous, since
affectivity is our center, and the Church guards this with great wisdom. For this reason we have the Sixth
Commandment, for this we have Humanae
Vitae, for this we have indissolubility.
I don’t know the
why of all this cautiousness, but if it is about not distancing people, to make
everyone feel accepted, not to be divided, perhaps it would be worthwhile
looking at what has happened recently to all the “homosexual-friendly”
governments. Almost all of them have been cancelled, swept away, gone. A very
slight minority won by engulfing the scene, the majority did not see it as a
priority and as a consequence went along with it. However, whatever the
thinking, what is clear in common opinion is that the homosexual cause cannot
impose itself in this ideological and false manner. Therefore, if consensus is
the objective, it seems to me what is happening in the Church is what has
happened in the political scenarios of many countries: Hollande, Cameron,
Renzi, Zapatero, Hillary Clinton, had all the mass-media in their favor, but
the common opinion was very far from their
narration imposed from ‘above’.
We cannot vote
in the Church and Her true children will remain loving to this Mother however
dirty Her garments are. Nonetheless, many are going through a time of
disorientation and suffering: many very clear, good words have been said, but
perhaps some actions have created confusion.
Why, for
example, didn’t Fr. Mike Schmitz*** go to speak in Dublin instead of Martin? Fr
Schmitz, who wrote a marvelous book about same-sex attraction, filled with intelligence,
comprehension and delicacy but in line with the Magisterium. This is a priest
who gives courses to men on virility****, how to be real Christian men and who
is well-loved and followed by many. He knows how to inflame hearts with the
pride of belonging to Christ, without, however, attacking anyone. Plus, as a
bonus he made two “Ironmen”. For me many priests are superheroes, but if they
swim for 4 kilometers, pedal for 180 and then run a marathon, well then, they
are even more so! *https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/30/witch-hunt-gay-priests
** Paolo
Gentiloni, former Italian Prime Minster
of the Democratic Party
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
