By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
“And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them” (Gen. 5:2). “A man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Eph. 5:31). “Go forth and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28).
For millennia the Church has received these and all of the Scriptures together, under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, to lead us “into all truth.” In doing so, as Mater and Magistra, Mother and Teacher, the Church unfailingly communicates the love and plan of our true Father in Heaven.
Thus the Church teaches that marriage is always and only between one man and one woman, whose role is primarily to procreate new life together with God out of the love and the home they make and share together according to His holy plan. That’s the easy part.
Church Tradition offers a solid and cohesive plan of life, now and eternally. How we live now determines how we will live after this very brief earthly sojourn, whether eternally blessed with God or condemned with the loveless and Godless to Hell forever.
Love is the hard part. Not God’s love, which so evidently comes to us through the truth, creation, and in so many other ways. Everything revealed about God is brought together above all in Jesus Christ, who is the “perfect Revelation of the Father.”
Love for human beings is ever a challenge because of our ever-present propensity for sin. The culture rejects the truth about our wounded nature. Having gotten that fundamental fact wrong, society and the so-called intelligentsia, and those who desire to be widely accepted as such, are simply “the blind leading the blind,” and as a result many are falling into the predictable “pit” about which our Lord lovingly warned us (Matt. 15:14).
Having gotten the wounded part wrong, those who tell the rest of us how we should think are also unfortunately telling more and more men of the Church how to think. And these men of the Church are listening to them and, rather than correcting them as is proper to their role, and are then aping the falsehoods they hear. Rather than consulting Church moral teaching and Scripture, these Church leaders are falling in the pit themselves and inviting the rest of us to jump in with them.
Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich and Reinhard Cardinal Marx are only two among the many who are teaching error in regard to human sexuality. They are creating scandal by suggesting that revealed truths can be changed for those who claim to be Catholic. Cheerleading is provided by America Magazine, with LGBTQ agitator James Martin at the lead. There, we read the following headline, “Top European cardinal: Church teaching on gay people ‘no longer correct’,” following which: “‘I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct,’ Cardinal Hollerich told KNA. He said it was time for a fundamental revision, and the way Pope Francis had spoken about homosexuality in the past could lead to a change in doctrine.”
Cardinal Marx, one of the prelates misleading the “Synodal Way” in process in Germany, recently led a rainbow flag-draped mockery of Holy Mass in that tragically confused country. In the Tablet we read that, at that liturgy: “The archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, has apologized for the Church’s discrimination against homosexuals at a festive Mass on the 20th anniversary of services for self-identified ‘queer’ LGBT Catholics at St. Paul’s church in Munich.
“After Mass on Sunday, March 13, Marx thanked those who attended ‘for their patience.’ He admitted that in his early years as archbishop, from 2007 onwards, the services for LGBT Catholics ‘were merely tolerated rather than officially appreciated.’ The services were initiated by a group of volunteers and a pastoral assistant in 2002.”
Cardinal Marx disapproves of merely “tolerating” sin, now he says, we must “appreciate” it.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly teaches, homosexuality is incompatible with the Christian life. The Catechism treats the issue of homosexuality under the subject of chastity, the virtue necessary for every Christian in every vocation. Chastity within marriage is a relationship exclusive to the two spouses, husband and wife. For all of those who are not married, chastity takes the form of celibacy, or continence, for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, ‘where there is no marrying nor giving in marriage’” (Matt. 22:30).
The Catechism says the following about same-sex attraction: “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. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They 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” (CCC, n. 2357).
Cardinals Hollerich and Marx, and the legions of Fr. Martin followers, do not have the power to change the truth upon which Church teaching is based. And thus, they do not possess the power or wherewithal to change Church teaching.
What they and we are called to is love, the love based on the truth which begins Heaven for us now through grace and which will be eternal one day for us in the beatific vision of God. The difficult calling to love those in error is the heroism so tragically rejected by the many today who, parents, teachers, priests, bishops and cardinals, have abandoned the weak and erring to the wiles of Satan and his earthly minions.
Every good is difficult to achieve. This is a fact into which we are ever bound by our human condition. God, the greatest good, is the most difficult for us to reach. Our hope in Christ is to embrace and live with Him forever when this earthly life is through. In our weakness and proclivity to sin, we have an answer in Christ. St. Paul experienced this same weakness and described for us how we become strong in Christ through the life of the Church and the gift of grace which Christ thus confers. He encourages us, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).
LGBTQ is not Catholic. Only the truth can set us free from sin, and this is the truth. There is not now and never has there been any such thing as hyphenated Christianity or Catholicism. We are either Christian and Catholic or we are not. Christ is not satisfied with half-measures or compromises with evil, which the attempt to approve homosexual behavior certainly is. To those who chant tautologically, “Love is love” we respond with the truth that “God is love.”
Love between man and woman is intended by God to bring forth new life. Only in marriage is His will and plan for sexuality honored in a holy way. Those who are not called to marriage must live the perpetual chastity of celibacy according to our Lord’s command.
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