[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland: Why do Church leaders keep supporting LGBT agenda?

Certainly Scripture condemns pride, injustice, and the neglect of the poor. The prophets make that abundantly clear. But Sacred Scripture also plainly presents Sodom as a city that had rejected God’s design for human sexuality and had embraced grave sexual immorality.

For 2,000 years the Church has understood that lesson. The word “sodomy” comes from the city of Sodom and the story in the Book of Genesis. In the story two angels visit Lot, who is in Sodom, and when the men surround Lot’s house and demand that he hand over the male visitors, it is made clear that they wished to sexually violate them. For this, God destroys Sodom and the neighboring city of Gomorrah with fire and sulfur.

Why do so many in the Church, even in the highest offices, refuse to name this sin, instead dressing it up in words like “hospitality”? And why does the Church today especially avoid speaking plainly about homosexual acts? The Church has never taught that God’s moral law changes with the culture. She has consistently proclaimed that marriage is the sacred union of one man and one woman and that every form of sexual activity outside that covenant is contrary to God’s plan. Those teachings are not ours to rewrite. They belong to Christ. Yet today we see growing confusion within the Church herself. We see voices in the Church associating themselves more and more with LGBTQ advocacy. We hear voices that seem to speak with uncertainty where the Church has always spoken with clarity.

These concerns cannot simply be ignored. Shepherds have a sacred duty to teach with clarity. The faithful have a right to hear the Gospel in its fullness — not a Gospel reshaped by the preference of the culture, but the Gospel handed down by Christ through His Church. This is not about pointing to one particular group of sinners. Every one of us must stand before the Cross and acknowledge our own sins: pride, greed, lust, adultery, pornography, contraception, fornication, homosexual acts. Every grave sin separates us from God if we knowingly and deliberately embrace it without repentance. The Church does not name these sins because she hates sinners. She names them because she loves souls. If a physician refused to name a deadly disease for fear of offending the patient, we would call that negligence, not compassion.

The Church is called to something far greater: she is called to speak the truth in love, even when that truth is difficult to hear. What makes this moment especially alarming is that much of the confusion is no longer coming only from the culture — it is now coming from within the Church herself. Instead of hearing a clear proclamation of the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage and sexual morality, we encounter messages and actions that appear to suggest something very different.

For example, we now have a document permitting certain blessings for couples in irregular situations, including same-sex “couples.” There have been Masses and ministries associated with “LGBTQ-identifying” people that create confusion rather than clarity. Prominent voices within the Church have urged new pastoral approaches that blur the distinction between welcoming every person and affirming conduct that the Church has consistently taught as contrary to God’s plan.

These developments have left many Catholics asking a painful question: has the Church changed her teaching? The answer must be no. The Church does not have the authority to change what God has revealed. Divine truth does not evolve with public opinion. “Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” (Heb 13:8) What the Church has always taught about marriage and sexual morality remains true today because it comes not from changing human opinion, but from the unchanging wisdom of God.

That is why clarity is so important. When souls are at stake, ambiguity is not an act of charity. People deserve to hear the truth in its fullness because only the truth sets us free. Every one of us is called to conversion. Every one of us is called to holiness. And every one of us needs both the mercy of Christ and the courage to turn away from whatever separates us from Him.

What makes this moment so very troubling is that this confusion has arisen at the very time when faithful Catholics have seen a push by the hierarchy of the Church away from the Church’s own traditions. For some time now, Catholics attached to the Church’s traditional liturgy, devotions, and perennial teachings have watched increasing restrictions being placed upon the Traditional Latin Mass. They have witnessed repeated calls to embrace a new ecclesial vision, a Synodal Church, which has led to those who simply desire to preserve what generations of Catholics believed and practiced to be viewed as suspicious. Many faithful Catholics ask why such energy is devoted to limiting traditional expressions of the faith, while so much confusion surrounds fundamental moral teachings and appears to go uncorrected.

This is why this is all so alarming. At the very time when our culture desperately needs an unmistakable proclamation of God’s plan for marriage, the family, and sexual morality, the faithful see only uncertainty where they long for conviction and ambiguity, where they long for truth.

Having just come back from Quito, Ecuador, the sight of the messages from Our Lady of Good Success, I am reminded of what she said in those messages.

Speaking to Mother Mariana centuries ago, Our Lady warned of an age beginning in our time when faith would grow weak, confusion would enter the Church, and impurity would be rampant. She spoke of a time when many souls would be in danger because error would become widespread and courage would be in short supply.

Yet hers was a message of hope. She promised that when the darkness seemed deepest, renewal would come about. Not by abandoning the faith once delivered to the saints, but by returning to it with greater fervor, greater purity, and greater trust in God’s grace.

But the Church has never renewed herself by becoming more like the world. Every great renewal in her history has come to a return to Christ, a return to holiness, and a return to the fullness of the faith handed down by the apostles. If this truly is the final battle over marriage and the family, then now is not the time to soften the Gospel. Now is the time to proclaim it with greater clarity and greater fidelity than ever before. And yet we see Rome, in many cases, moving against those who cling to Sacred Tradition while leaving untouched those who proclaim a worldview that is totally incompatible with the Sacred Tradition of the Church.

This is not simply a question of liturgy or pastoral style. It is a question of whether the Church will continue to proclaim, without hesitation or apology, the truths that Christ entrusted to her. Every age has its defining battle. If the Blessed Mother warned that the final battle would concern marriage and the family, then surely this is not the time for uncertainty. It is the time for courage.

What makes this moment so very troubling is that this confusion has arisen at the very time when faithful Catholics have seen a push by the hierarchy of the Church away from the Church’s own traditions. For some time now, Catholics attached to the Church’s traditional liturgy, devotions, and perennial teachings have watched increasing restrictions being placed upon the Traditional Latin Mass. They have witnessed repeated calls to embrace a new ecclesial vision, a Synodal Church, which has led to those who simply desire to preserve what generations of Catholics believed and practiced to be viewed as suspicious. Many faithful Catholics ask why such energy is devoted to limiting traditional expressions of the faith, while so much confusion surrounds fundamental moral teachings and appears to go uncorrected.

Why? Because God has given us over to abounding sin. Romans 1:18-32. BTW this is not so that we would go to hell but rather so that we might realize how sinful we are and come to TRUST in Jesus Christ.
Also, 1 Timothy 4:1-4 Forbidding to marry is a doctrine of demons... That belief (whether telling one they cannot marry, or having ‘false’ marriages [man with man and woman with woman]) opens an individual or organization to demonic oppression.

Pope Leo to celebrate Mass for anniversary of ‘Amoris laetitia'

Pope Leo XIV will preside at a celebration of the Holy Mass on Wednesday, 14 October, at the conclusion of the Meeting marking the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, on love in the family....and adultery outside the family.

I USED TO GO TO ALANON MEETINGS IN A BUILDING ON THE WOODED CAMPIUS
of local Catholic university. Always felt creepy when I passed a certain building. Turned out it housed defrocked gay priests. Nice building, happy occupants.

Never went backk to that meeting. Even after living in SanFran for manyyears and having lots of gay friends. Some were fun, some were nutcases, but none were defrocked priests.

That’s okay. Plenty of good Catholic sources have stated similar, and not just Jesuits. The Jesuits would not have that much direct influence on non-Jesuit seminaries (indirect influence through textbooks, setting trends publications like “America”). Schools like Georgetown would certainly be a school ruined by the Jesuits.

There are some “good” Jesuits still. I think of Father Joseph Fessio, who founded Ignatius Press, for instance. But Notre Dame (Congregation of the Holy Cross) went bad about the same time, as did dozens of other non-Jesuit schools. The bishops in general, the bishop’s conferences, and lack of good guidance from Rome have to bear the brunt of it. Perhaps Catholics would have still drifted away due to the times, we won’t know in this life. There was no need for the institutional Church to become complicit.

“ Why do so many in the Church, even in the highest offices, refuse to name this sin, instead dressing it up in words like “hospitality”? And why does the Church today especially avoid speaking plainly about homosexual acts?”

I think the correct answer is the obvious one.

Try just try using logic. Islam is not tolerant of LGBT. In fact in Moslem ruled countries gays face the death penalty for sodomy. So it is rather unlikely that the answer to Church leaders propping up the LGBT agenda is that they are somehow secretly Moslem.

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[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland: Why do Church leaders keep supporting LGBT agenda?

Why do so many in the Church, even in the highest offices, refuse to name the sin of sodomy, instead dressing it up in words like 'hospitality'?

Pope Leo to celebrate Mass for anniversary of ‘Amoris laetitia'