A Wholesome, Virile, and Sanctifying Same-sex Love

My primary goal in life is to deepen and strengthen my love for Jesus Christ, my Savior, Lord, Captain, Brother, Friend and God. Since He and I are both males, this love can accurately be described as a same-sex, or homosexual, love, although a chaste, non-erotic one. This decision for communion with Him finds many paths: prayer, sacraments, marriage, family, and work. An important one for me is the development of strong, holy, intimate friendships with other men. Much of my life is taken up with relating with women: wife and family and the women I work with at our residence for women, Magnificat Home. My goal here is to relate to each, (and every relationship is specific and rich and unique) in freedom, reverence, care, sensitivity, appreciation, generosity, purity, and a gentle/tender strength. I have become convinced that the pathway to such wholesome, holy relationships with women is my relationships with men: primarily with our Lord Jesus Himself, but also with a rich network of friends and family. I need love. I need fatherly and brotherly love. When I receive, abundantly, such love, my life overflows with goodness and generosity. The health, vitality, purity and fertility of my heterosexuality rests upon a more primal, foundational love that is male-to-male: my filial love for my heavenly Father, my fraternal love for my Lord, and my friendships with male family members and friends. Especially when I receive Holy Communion, I know that I am imbibing Our Lord Himself and His own love for women, a love that is exquisitely sensitive and appreciative, ecstatic, heroic, reverent, generous, and sacrificial unto death. Infused with the uber-virility of our Lord, I am able to cherish and revere each woman with whom I relate. It is a good thing for us to speak about homosexual love in this deeper manner: non-erotic but intimate, virile, strengthening and sanctifying.

The Gift of Stability

It is no wonder that Rome is called the "Eternal City!" The Churches, the cobblestone streets, the buildings, the masterpieces, the bones of the martyrs, the clergy and papacy...everything professes stability, permanence, fidelity, reliability, and endurance. This is awe-inspiring; especially for one coming from a culture of pervasive, relentless technological change. Consider: a humble mason laid this cobblestone 800 years ago and since then Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius Loyola and today I myself tread on the same stone. It is easy to believe in the Incarnation in Rome; it seems obvious that the Eternal has entered and self-expressed in time and matter. My nephew was ordained a deacon in St. Peter's Basilica, just feet away from the place where St. Peter's bones lay. This is what Pope Benedict calls "communion between the generations." This is Tradition. It causes me to question: What am I leaving as a legacy for future generations and for my own descendants? Have I absorbed my own heritage and expressed in in a form, however modest, that will transcend time and history and endure into the ages?