The Pink Elephant in the Church

As a Catholic priest, I have an investment in issues that affect the Church and the people of God. And, as a Christian, I have an obligation to speak out. So let me make the following points as clearly as I can:

1) Most of the scandals and evils we see in the Church today are brought about primarily by homosexuality. Homosexuality is an objective moral disorder and unacceptable in the priesthood! For nearly two thousand years the teachings of the scripture, the magisterium, and Tradition—the three sources of revelation which give us truth—have all agreed: homosexuality as an “abomination”! Only recently have Phil and Oprah and a few TV sitcoms disagreed. But God doesn’t change, and Phil and Oprah won’t be on the throne to judge us!

2) Even though Church documents forbid the acceptance of homosexuals into the seminary and, quite obviously, their ordination to the priesthood, those in authority have for years looked the other way, (don’t ask, don’t tell) and homosexuals have flocked into the Church. Now they have positions of authority! They use this authority to protect and promote one another, creating a distinct subculture that is rapidly becoming dominant. This sub-culture is the ideal homosexual environment. As a priest no one questions why you aren’t married. You get respect that you don’t necessarily earn. You have a target-rich environment, especially if you have a school, and, if you slip up and get caught, the civil authorities will not want to prosecute you because you’re a priest and, as we have seen, the Church will cover you, defend you, and may set you up in another parish or even another diocese so you can continue to prey on God’s people.

A homosexual predator could not hope to find a more friendly and supportive environment than priesthood in the American Catholic Church!

3) The fact that the leadership of the Church so obviously refuses to deal honestly with homosexuality in its midst is a proof of its very powerful presence and authority. The effort expended to avoid the obvious truth is evidence that gross ignorance cannot explain this blindness, only a conscious and premeditated effort to avoid what is so clear! Because it is done with awareness, it crosses the line from human weakness to genuine malignant evil!

4) To those who try to avoid the truth and hide behind some phony facade such as “addiction” or claim the answer will be found in a good workshop on chastity are either fools or liars. Get a few old diocesan directories and a magic marker and go through them: How many heterosexual priests died of AIDS? How many heterosexual priests have been pedophiles? How many heterosexual priests have been sources of sex scandals? (Only a small percentage of which ever reach the newspapers!) How much money have heterosexual priests cost the Church in lawsuits, pay-offs and cover-ups?

5) Many priests are aware of homosexuals in the priesthood but they do not have the spirituality or the courage to confront the issue, so they lapse into a false charity that is nothing more than an excuse for doing nothing. (This is a response that Jesus certainly did not allow!) Or they try to wash their hands of anything outside their parish boundaries. (Also not allowed!) Worst of all are those priests who know that evil is occurring, do nothing, and actually console themselves with the absurd idea that they are serving the Church. They have been formed by a seminary system that is designed to produce “churchmen,” not saints. These neo-Pharisees have confused the “means” with the “end” and have made the Church an idol! They have been perfectly willing to sacrifice truth, innocence and even the souls of Gods children as long as they keep up the facade. It is a sick and perverted illusion of love that would allow a priest to stand by silently while his brother destroys his own soul and the souls of others! These people must surely tremble at the thought of God’s judgment!

6) Yes, as we must love all sinners, we love homosexuals! If they can carry the cross they have been given they can become great saints. But they have no place in the priesthood! Weak and evil leaders have sat around patting themselves on the back at how “enlightened” and “charitable” they have been in that stirring “Cor ad cor” they had with “Father” regarding his little problem. While “Father” has a whole new target-rich environment in another parish or another diocese! (After a little counseling of course!) And while the warmth of false charity fills them, more children are destroyed!

The people are asking “When will it end?” It won’t! As long as we ignore the “elephant in the room”, as long as we prefer the comfort of false charity and absolutely refuse to deal with the truth, the scandal and the destruction of faith will continue. It will, in fact, get much worse! The “vocation crisis” is due in large part to the rise of the homosexual subculture in the Church. They have such power that Fr. Andrew Greeley has labeled them the “Lavender Mafia”! (A very appropriate term since the RICO laws are now being used against the Bishops of the Church!)

Many young men who have stood up against the homosexual agenda in the seminaries have been labeled “homophobes” and “rigid” and treated as though they are the sick ones. If they somehow manage to get ordained and then discover the truth, they experience terrible frustration. They realize that they have no place to go to get the problem “fixed”! It does no good to go to the bishop when the bishop is the problem! The chancery staff, the Monsignori, were appointed by him. For example, right now there is a young man in the seminary in St. Louis who will be ordained a priest soon. His picture and his story were front page news in the “Illinois Times.” He was the president of a gay and lesbian organization in Springfield, Illinois. Current Church teaching is that he should not have been admitted to the seminary and should not be ordained. His religious superior and the appropriate bishops are well aware of his orientation yet, in complete contradiction to Church directives from Rome, he continues and those who objected were labeled by his superior as “whiners”! The Rev. Charles Bouchard, president of the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis said: “I think straight priests and seminarians shouldn’t be whining. I just don’t think it’s a big deal.”

The few priests foolish enough to speak openly about the scandal of homosexuality in the priesthood have soon learned that they will receive no help or support from anyone. The people don’t want to believe it. The newspapers won’t print it. The district attorney won’t prosecute, after all, his is an elected position, and the only thing more pointless than writing to the bishop is writing to “Rome”! Only in the area of pedophilia have we been able to enlist the aid of lawyers and multi-million dollar lawsuits to help keep some children a little safer.

Only when they got hit in the purse did these bishops have a sudden attack of morality. The bishop of Dallas took in a pervert from New England in the “pervert trades” and, as a child was violated, the pervert-priest was moved from one parish to another. The day after a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed, the chancellor of the diocese began an investigation in all the parishes where this pervert had been assigned to “surface these poor damaged children”! Everyone, including a jury, was very aware that these men who supposedly stand “in persona Christi” didn’t give a damn about the “poor damaged children” until 180 million dollars got mentioned!

The truth is, a few money-grubbing lawyers have done more to keep our children safe than the entire NCCB and all its committees! People simply don’t want to believe!

I was once relating some information I had been given by two male prostitutes concerning their clergy clientele. The person I was speaking to said: “How could you believe them if their prostitutes?” I explained that people didn’t go to Douglas Park late at night to pick up saints! I have always found more honesty in sinners than in false shepherds!

Now the priesthood has come to be considered the primary “gay profession.” We are the butt of jokes and presented as a pathetic caricature in the media. If the new document from Rome on homosexuality soon to be released leaves it up to the bishops or leaves loopholes in dealing with such a “complex issue”, then the floodgates will swing wide. Heterosexual priests will not want to send fine young men from good families to the seminary. Priests will need to know with clarity their bishops policy on homosexuals in the seminary and the priesthood and be allowed to incardinate in a diocese where they can minister in obedience and good conscience. This could well be the issue that reveals the schism in the Church.

So the real issue is – HOMOSEXUALS IN THE PRIESTHOOD! The solution is – GET THEM OUT!

For those interested -some links to documents and some excerpts. Take note of item #6 -seems self explanatory to me...

Catholic documents and teaching on subject of homosexuality:

The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education within the Family

104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.
Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".

Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics

VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.
A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. 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 and can in no case be approved of.

Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons

10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.
But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.

Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on Non-discrimination of Homosexual Persons

II. Applications
10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.

Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons

4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.
7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.

Religiosorum Institutio

30. Those To Be Excluded; Practical Directives
Advantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.

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