By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The readings in the Breviarium Romanum for Septuagesima take us each year in the tradition of the Church all the way back again to the beginning of our story, to Adam and Eve, and their sin in the Garden. Thus began the myth of necessity, the lie which turns our wants into needs, and which serves to deceive still today.
The myth of necessity is big business these days. The Devil is hard at work, prowling around to devour souls still. Even the spectacle of the Olympic Games provides a parable to unlock once again for us the mystery of sin, how it began, and how it continues to afflict each of us and all of humanity. It is the perpetuation of the myth of necessity.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church shares from our tradition the customary word for this phenomenon of confusion between having God or being like God, and attempting the latter by transforming wants into needs, as “concupiscence.”
Turning our wants into needs is at the root of the glorification of sodomy or the “gay” agenda. How dare we judge, is the refrain. And we’re lectured that because some persons feel the need to know sexual actions between others of the same sex, then they have must have them. But this is a want. Unlike food, which is a need, human beings can live without sexual activity.
In the course of the Olympics we sometimes see new media darlings born as they are embraced by the millions of viewers. In the past this was because of talent with some mixture of looks and personality thrown in. Now it is because of sexuality.
Adam Rippon is youthful and appealing, sound and sleek, as well as a medal winner, with a photogenic readiness to engage the camera. But wait, there’s more: He’s obviously effeminate and a proudly self-proclaimed practitioner of same-sex activity. Or, at least he has been so in the past or is anticipating such in the future — privacy being what it is that we have to include disclaimers.
He fits the ideal mold of the media overlords. They have predictably been fawning all over him. Perhaps the shadow of sexual abuse which has been hanging like doom over the industry can be expiated by this love fest for a paragon of the oppressed victim class. For these reasons he was quickly embraced as a possible TV personality and immediately offered a job, but he rejected the possibility in order to finish the games as an Olympian. Taking the media role would have removed the Olympian status.
On camera, he began to reveal his story. One aspect of it gave me pause, however. He shared that, in order to excel as a skater he had at one time imposed a punishing discipline upon himself: that of limiting his food to three slices of bread a day. In order to get what he wanted, the form and ability to skate like a winner, he was willing to punish himself by imposing what was undoubtedly a painful experience for one so young and athletic.
As I heard this, my thoughts quickly turned to his role in the same-sex agenda promotion effort and I was confronted with a paradox. The same person who was willing to impose pain upon himself in order to deny his want for food claims that he is completely powerless over his sexual attraction for other men? These are both wants, that for food and for sex, and yet we are asked to believe that the response to them must be different. Once again the myth of necessity at play.
I tweeted my thoughts: “An Olympic athlete who, by sheer force of iron will, refuses himself all food but bread in order to win a gold medal that won’t last, by that same power is capable of refusing same-sex activity in order to win the everlasting golden crown of heavenly life forever with God.”
The response was enormous, with many comments, retweets and likes. Michael O’Loughlin, of SSA-advocating America magazine, sounded the dog whistle with a subsequent tweet quote. I had questioned the unthinking worship of the “golden calf,” and therefore must be subjected to vile and despicable behavior on Twitter. In our superficial world today we have even managed to render martyrdom virtual.
O’Loughlin’s damning tweet dripped with the unctuous worship of the SSA pantheon, to whose ranks the “demigod” Adam Rippon had only just been inducted:
“Imagine mocking someone about an eating disorder in order to make a snide comment about his sexuality? And from someone who presents himself as a Catholic priest, with a not-insignificant following. The cruelty and callousness of it blows my mind.”
How dare I, as a priest and responsible for “compassion,” refuse to throw incense? It didn’t matter that his indictment was false, as several commenters attempted to point out. O’Loughlin’s shallow and superficial approach to Catholic teaching typically leaves matters on the level of emotion.
There are a few Catholics yet who refuse to bow to the homosexualist agenda “for fellowship’s sake,” because there remain just a few who distinguish wants from needs, refusing myth for the sake of truth, and yearning for the fellowship of Heaven.
Idolatry is precisely this: replacing the unreplaceable, falling for the illogical fallacy that the unique can be replicated. Knowing good and evil is something we are, tragically, capable of doing, as the serpent enticed Adam and Eve. But it doesn’t make us like God, only sinners. The tragedy of all humanity from that day down to this is encapsulated in Gen. 3:8, the Lord so close to Adam and Eve as to be their Friend but they refuse His friendship.
The sense of shame following upon sin is common to every human person. The way out, however, is to bust wide open the myth of necessity that ensnares us, just as it did our first parents. We do not need to know good and evil. We need only know God, and He is all good.
The only thing necessary is God, and we don’t have to, and can never, be like Him; we need to embrace the freedom to love Him. Freedom comes at the cost of refusing to confuse our wants with our needs. God is the one thing necessary; now we need only, with His divine assistance, to turn this “need” into a “want.”
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress