Editor’s Note: Commenting on the Bruce Jenner fiasco in his usually perceptive way, Fr. George Rutler of the Church of St. Michael in New York City said in a recent bulletin:
“Anyone who can remain awake listening to the conversations of sedentary former athletes on ESPN is perhaps unable to think clearly on any subject of significance, but the declaration that a man is a woman must astonish alert minds, including the Olympic judges who awarded him [Jenner] a medal under the impression he was a man. . . .
“In 1965, the Johns Hopkins Hospital pioneered sex-change surgery. Since ‘gender’ is a grammatical term with no proper application to biology, the term ‘transgenderism’ had not yet been coined. Such surgery has been stopped there, and Dr. Paul R. McHugh, Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains that sex change is ‘biologically impossible,’ that those who want it are mentally ill, and that those who promote ‘sex-reassignment surgery’ are promoting mental disorder. Women make excellent women, but men do not. The imitation is bound to caricature feminine grace, as if the ideal woman were Mae West on steroids.
“Pope Francis compared the destructiveness of gender confusion and its consequent mutilation to the effects of nuclear annihilation, adding: ‘Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory that does not recognize the order of creation’.”
Q. What’s the status of the Vatican investigation into Medjugorje? It’s been several years since the investigation began. — J.C., North Carolina.
A. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith set up a commission in 2010 to investigate reports that the Blessed Virgin has been appearing to six persons from the village of Medjugorje since 1981. Following a recent trip to Bosnia, which did not include a stop in Medjugorje, Pope Francis said that a report on the reported visions will be issued soon. “We are at the point of making decisions,” the Holy Father told reporters, “and then they will be announced.” He also said that “some guidelines will be given to bishops on the lines they will take.”
At a Mass on June 9, the Pontiff cautioned against basing one’s faith on alleged visions rather than on Christ Himself. He said that there are those “who always need novelty of Christian identity” and who promote “these Christian spiritualities that are a little ethereal.” He said that those who talk about “the letter that the Madonna will send us at four in the afternoon” have lost their sense of “Christian identity” since “the ultimate word of God is named ‘Jesus,’ nothing more.”
Q. In Luke, chapter 9, it says that Jesus “summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” But His divine foreknowledge must have informed Him that one of the Twelve, Judas, a liar and a traitor, couldn’t possibly be trusted with such a mission. Why would Jesus include Judas in this mission? — P.P., State Unknown.
A. Yes, Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray Him, but He wanted to give the traitor every opportunity to choose good instead of evil. Recall that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus even called Judas “friend” after he had kissed the Lord on the cheek to indicate to the soldiers whom they were to arrest. This overture, however, was not enough to turn the heart of Judas away from Satan.
Jesus gives all of us many chances to follow Him and to reject Satan, knowing full well what our choices will ultimately be, so no one can ever say that our fate was predetermined and that we had no control over it.
Q. I heard a speaker say recently that the apostles were not the only ones at the Last Supper, but that the Blessed Mother and other disciples were there also. Is that true? — K.R., Connecticut.
A. Not according to the Gospels. Matthew (26:20) says that “when it was evening, he [Jesus] reclined at table with the Twelve” and then instituted the Eucharist. Mark (14:17) says that “when it was evening, he came with the Twelve” and then instituted the Eucharist. Luke (22:14) says that “when the hour came, he took his place at table with the apostles” and then instituted the Eucharist.
Q. As a Jesuit-educated (when they were orthodox), normal Catholic, I have been completely floored by the evil homosexual intrusion into our faith, even to the higher positions of our Church. This has been documented by the book Amchurch Comes Out by Paul Likoudis, a book I would not recommend to fringe Catholics because it is so disturbing. Now I recognize why readings at Mass have eliminated the more descriptive homosexual passages regarding Sodom and Gomorrah. Has our Church at least started to correct some of these demonic abuses? — R.B.K., Virginia.
A. Not that we can see. In fact, there are some scary signs all around us not only of the failure of some Church leaders to tell the truth about homosexuality, but of bishops and priests seeking to normalize same-sex relations. For example, the overwhelming vote in Ireland recently to legalize same-sex “marriage” was a consequence of poor catechesis about the Church’s teachings on sexuality and of some bishops and priests actually urging their flock to vote yes on the referendum.
There have also been reports of a “shadow council” that met in Rome in May to promote a change in Church teaching on marriage and sexual immorality at the Synod on the Family in October. Responding to an invitation from the bishops’ conferences of Germany, France, and Switzerland, some 50 bishops, priests, theologians, and media types heard participants at the closed-door meeting call for giving Communion to persons who are divorced and remarried and for providing a welcoming atmosphere to same-sex couples without any suggestion of living chastely.
According to Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register, speakers called for replacement of Pope St. John Paul’s “theology of the body” with a “theology of love.” To do so, said Pentin, would create “an abstract interpretation that separates sex from procreation, thereby allowing forms of extramarital unions and same-sex attractions based simply on emotions rather than biological reality.”
The correct attitude toward those with a homosexual inclination was set forth in 2003 by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s document Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons. Among other things, the document (n. 4) said that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while 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’ [Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2357]. Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts ‘as a serious depravity’ (cf. Romans 1:24-27; 1 Cor. 6:10; 1 Tim. 1:10).”
In its concluding paragraph, the document (n. 11) said:
“The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote, and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.
“The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.”
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