A simple no-yes question: Is homosexual intercourse, as sterile and non-unitive, inherently sinful?
This is a binary question: no need for nuance, sophistication, erudition. It is yes or no. If the answer is "yes" than the Catholic Church is loving in truth by teaching this and the progressive gay-affirming agenda is enabling and affirming of sin. If the answer is "no" than the Church of millennia, the saints and doctors and popes, have been systemically homophobic, hateful, exclusionary, and judgmental.
We have here two contradictory religions: traditional Catholicism and woke, gay-affirming progressivism. They are like oil and water: incompatible. They repel each other. They combat each other.
This month of June we are saturated, at least here in blue-woke-NJ, with gay pride. In this same month we Catholics honor the Sacred Heart of Christ and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is not possible to synthesize the two: they renounce each other. One must choose.
In the Archdiocese of Newark, three parishes publicly advertised and will hosted this past Sunday Pride Masses. This is an incoherence. A scandal and a sacrilege. A grave dereliction of duty on the part of our Cardinal.
The Evil Nature of the Acts
Creation is infused by the Creator with purpose, form, meaning. For example, the eating of food is for the nourishment of the body and for the communion of persons, family and friends. A person who binges, in loneliness, and then purges, and then binges again, in loneliness, and then purges is doing an act of eating that contradicts its purpose. This becomes habitual, a vice; damages the throat; becomes a pathology; and unchecked kills. The act of speech is to witness to the truth. One who abuses this faculty, indifferent to truth, to advance selfish concerns (think Biden or Trump) violates his own dignity, destroys trust, and corrupts the social order.
The spousal act of sexual intercourse is intended for the faithful union of life between man and woman and the begetting of children. Contradictions of this are grave sins: pornography, masturbation, cohabitation, contraception, adultery.
The sins approved by the gay ideology are not evil because they are homosexual; they are equally, arguably more sinful practiced by heterosexuals. We will be candid here: oral, manual and anal sex are basically non-spousal acts of mutual masturbation. They are extrinsic, not unitive. They are sterile, not fruitful. They are oppressive, lacking the face-to-face intimate personalism of normal, wholesome intercourse. There is an indignity, a shamelessness to them. One of the two partipants, especially for men, is the dominant, the "upper," the oppressor.
Performed by a married man and woman they are arguably more sinful because they defile the spousal union itself. Between homosexuals or unmarried heterosexuals they are entirely non-spousal, masturbatory and mutually abusive, however consensual.
With the current, largely unrecognized, pandemic of additive pornography/masturbation we have young marriages destroyed as the husband has been infected with obsession with perverse sexual acts and disgusts his innocent wife with such indignity. This tragedy, for me, is greater than that of homosexual intercourse.
Privacy or Pride?
For Catholics sexuality is sacred and therefore private. The spousal love between husband and wife...faithful, fruitful, chaste, exclusive, free, generous and generative, final...is the most iconic expression (save for the Eucharist) of Triune Love in the created, physical world.
Its location within marriage resembles the Sacred Host in the tabernacle: precious, holy, protected, to be revered. Therefore it is surrounded with privacy, confidentiality, reserve, and a shy innocence.
Another reason for this reserve and privacy is that it is also the seat of our deepest wounds, longings, disorders, and sins. Due to The Fall and the presence of concupiscence, each of us carries interiorly the infectious disorder that especially inhabits our sexual inclinations.
John Paul, in his insightful consideration of "shame" showed that the dignity of the human body, wounded but not destroyed by sin, must be protected. For this reason, a reasonable, honorable sense of dignity and "shame" has us protect our sexuality by covering our most delicate body parts and exhibiting modesty in dress, language and deportment. Thereby we protect ourselves and others from lust, covetousness, and degradation.
Normally, we reserve sharing our intimate, sexual feelings for our spouse...and our spouse alone. It would be unthinkable for an honorable man or woman to talk openly with others about spousal intimacies. There are exceptions, of course: confession, therapy, spiritual direction, and more rarely the confidence of a trusted friend or specialized support group (the 12 steps of Sexaholics Anonymous or Courage, the Catholic group for the same-sex-attracted seeking chastity.) So there is a "don't ask, don't tell" quality, a wholesome, holy secrecy inherent to sexuality.
Gay ideology, an outgrowth of the Sexual Revolution, denies the sacred, iconic, spousal (unitive/ procreative) nature of sexuality. It trivializes it into self-fulfillment, the release of inexorable energies, or delusional romance. It desecrates it.
Worse yet: it publicizes it, shamelessly. You cannot go to a baseball game, see a Disney movie, drink a lite beer, or walk into a florist without being bombarded with pride, rainbows, parades. The menu of the little greasy spoon diner in which I meet friends for breakfast insists that choice of a BLT sandwich must be accompanied but LGTBQ sympathies. Can't I just get my eggs and bacon without the sexual ideology?
Clearly, the "pride" of June is indeed "pride" as the capital sin: arrogance before Christ, his Church, the moral order, the iconic and delicate splendor of sexuality. It is dishonorable: a loss of dignity, innocence, purity, modesty and humility. It is a grave sin of the intellect to affirm a "gay identity."
We honor and love those with this attraction by recognizing the suffering, the longing, the splendor of their persons and inviting them to work with us towards purity and holiness.
Lord Jesus, Bridegroom of the Church, draw all of us...in all the disorder of our longings...to you in holiness, purity, truth and compassion. Amen!
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