Sacrilege (from Latin "sacer" or sacred and "legere" to sieze) is a sin against God, often in defilement of a person, place or thing that is holy. Erotic-sacrilege is a neologism, a new word, designed here to describe a recent, novel, demonic form afflicting our Church: profaning of the human body joined with perverse use of the sacred. It is a double sacrilege: against the masculine/feminine body; and against some sacred dimension of the Church. It is far more than sexual immorality as it desecrates what is consecrated to God.
Modesty is discretion, self-restrain, protection of the dignity, sacredness, and innocence of one's sexuality, feminine or masculine. It is an interior quality of spirit that manifests in a style of action, speech, dress, manner, viewing and thinking.
It is an aspect of chastity, which is itself integral to purity of heart, the interior simplicity and goodness that opens us to God.
It is associated with quiet elegance, graciousness, humility, nobility. The Immaculate Virgin Mary is the icon and epitome of such modesty, chastity and purity.
It requires clarity of intellect, vision, conscience; even as it enhances the same.
It is imperative from two directions. First, the intimacies between husband and wife are private, confidential, sacrosanct, exclusive as they involve an incomparable union of body and soul as well as the creation of a new person with an eternal soul. Second, the temptations, weaknesses and disorders which we all suffer in our sexuality as a result of original sin (concupiscence) are themselves exquisitely delicate and vulnerable and so must be shielded tenderly.
We veil and protect our sexual feelings, not because they are evil, but because they are sacred and precious, tender, vulnerable to shame and harm. We do not parade them to the public. Prudently, however, we share, as appropriate and needed, with confessor, psychologist, or trusted confidant.
Modesty is a natural quality that emerges spontaneously, by age three, with self-consciousness and emotional intelligence. It is cultivated by a society that is wholesome and appreciative of the good, the true, the beautiful.
It has suffered, in our society, a fierce, diabolical assault, starting in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, in the forms of: pornography, degradation of language, indecent dress, promiscuity, militant feminism and homosexuality, objectivization of women, a pervasive loss of reverence, and a contagious decadence across entertainment/media/academia and more.
Case 1: Cardinal Mueller, arguably the most authoritative Catholic theologian in the world, who was Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith under Popes Benedict and Francis, has strongly condemned, as a violation of modesty, a statue called "The Crowning", of our Blessed Mother giving birth to her son. Sitting in a Cathedral in Austria, it is scandalously graphic, depicting Mary with legs apart, the head of the infant starting to emerge. It is being defended as a liberation of the woman's body. It is blasphemous!
Case 2: Jean Vanier, famous founder of L'Arche and among the most respected Catholics in the world for his work with disabled adults, was found to have been part of a secret sect which seduced adult women, in the context of spiritual direction. He himself violated at least 25 women over 60 years from 1952 to 2019. The belief was that they were mystically reenacting the incest between Jesus and Mary. Not only were they sinning sexually, but they attributed a mystical goodness to the sin. This is at once perversity, blasphemy and deception with an unthinkable gravity.
Case 3. Fr. James Martin S.J. for Pride Month a few weeks ago preached in a Church next to a statue of the Blessed Mother draped in the LGBTQ flag. In this, he engaged Catholic devotion to the Immaculate Mary to advance his advocacy of the goodness of homosexual acts.
The moral question of homosexual activity is simple: it is good or bad. For over three thousand years the Judaic-Christian tradition sees such as sinful: sterile, non-unitive, biologically toxic, and contrary to the moral order and God's will. Gay militancy sees this judgment as homophobic and hateful, declaring that the acts can be affectionate and respectful. Catholic practice and the LGBTQ agenda are contradictory of each other. Fr. Martin, highly favored by Pope Francis and esteemed in the Jesuit order, is undeniably the premier advocate for this cause within the Church.
These three cases vary, of course, but they all involve a double sacrilege: violation of the dignity of the human body and a perverse implication of Mary, our Mother and Immaculate Virgin, in the disorder.
Concupiscence of the Intellect The word "concupiscence" normally refers to disorder of the will in which powerful, destructive passions and desires (especially sexual) overwhelm a weak will. We recall St. Paul who did what he did not want to do. In such cases, the intellect/conscience is in tact and knows right from wrong but the will is feeble and succumbs to temptation. There remains a guilty conscience, a hope for eventual repentance.
But in the cases above, we have something more unsettling: a disordered intellect. The sculptor, Vanier and Martin suffer no qualm of conscience or contrition; they are self-righteous. They are confident that their motives are loving. Rather, to their minds, it is the prude, the misogynist or judgmental homophobe that is hateful.
It is incumbent upon us to NOT judge their intentions or will: It is for God to judge. It is incumbent upon us to judge their judgements: are they right or wrong about the statue, the mystic-eroticism, and "gay" sex.
Respectful Privacy
I, like most of us today, enjoy warm, close relationships...family, friends, co-workers...with many who live the homosexual lifestyle. It is not a problem for us. It is private. We don't talk about it. "Live and let live." "Don't ask, don't tell!" "I sweep my own sidewalk; take my own inventory." "Mind your own business." "Stay in your own lane, soldier!" In such cases I do not know and do not want to know about someone else's sexuality: it is private and precious. This is a hard boundary.
The problem comes with the gay crusade: parades, pride month, social media, podcasts, tee shirts, corporate marketing, bumper stickers. We don't want to know but this stuff is pushed in our face.
Example: the recent Vatican statement allowing for blessings of homosexual couples specified that it be done in private, not public. The very next day Fr. Martin was photographed blessing such a couple and the picture was in the NY Times and seen by millions. This is a lack of modesty. It is an attack upon modesty.
Fr. Martin's argument is that the Catholic disapproval of same-sex actions is homophobic and cruel. He brings his charm, intelligence and prestige to a subtle, sophisticated argument. Additionally, he engages the Blessed Mother, his own holy orders in regard to priestly blessings, as well as the status of the Society of Jesus in support of his case. If he is right, then the Catholic Church...of the fathers, doctors, virgins, martyrs...is now and has been objectively hateful in this regard. If he is wrong, and the Church is right, he is indulging erotic-sacrilege, desecrating the holy things of our faith to support, enable, encourage mortal sin.
This is a hard judgment: not against the person, heart, soul, intellect, and will of Fr. Martin; we leave tha to God alone. It is a judgement against the judgment he has made against the Church in its teaching on sexuality. A Catholic does not sit in judgment against the Church. Rather, in filial trust and loyalty a Catholic is judged by the voice of Christ heard within the Church. We would be remiss as Catholics and catechists ("echoers of the Word") if we did not witness against erotic-sacrilege on behalf of modesty and our faith.
New Catholic Erotic Sacrilege
The three cases above are not exceptional, but representational of a novel form of perversity-sacrilege that is afflicting our Church. Human weakness, sin and moral decadence have always been with us...and will be until Christ returns. What is new and scandalizing is that our Catholic faith is itself used to normalize, justify and even "sanctify" grave sin.
- President Joe Biden basically abandoned and disowned his now-5-year-old granddaughter, his own blood. He is the most powerful and energetic advocate of abortion in the world. He mandates that biological males can compete athletically with women. He self-presents as a pious, practicing Catholic, receiving Communion every Sunday with the implicit approval of Cardinal Gregory. He enjoys the endorsement of close to 50% of American Catholics.
- (Father) Ted McCarrick abused boys and apparently violated the sacrament of confession. He was shielded for decades by connections in the Vatican and was allowed freedoms by Pope Francis years after Pope Benedict directed him to live quietly in repentance.
- Accusations of sexual abuse of about 30 religious women by then Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik were first made in 1993. He is among the most widely esteemed Catholic artists in the world. He incurred the automatic excommunication for absolving a sexual partner in confession, but that was almost immediately lifted by the consent of Pope Francis. He was protected for decades by the Jesuit order and the Vatican as his adult women religious victims persisted in the accusations. He was finally expelled from the order but is not yet laicized. In the 2024 Vatican directory he is an official in the Dicastery for Worship and in recent years has personally visited the Pope and even preached a retreat for the papal household.
- One of the first actions of Cardinal Joseph Tobin as Archbishop of Newark was to host in Sacred Heart Basilica an LGBTQ Eucharist. The holy sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood was offered in the name of sinful actions, assuming a (sincere, no doubt, but misguided) posture of compassion and love.
- We now have Vatican approved "blessings" for homosexual relationships.
The pattern is evident and deeply troubling: not only mortal sins against chastity, but the perversion of our religion to normalize and even idealize the evil; and then stigmatize the Tradition that disapproves of the disorders. Again, a double sacrilege: against the holiness of the body and of the sacraments and religion. Not to mention the contempt for our faith legacy and the moral order.
Note also that this pattern is religious and spiritual, not secular, atheistic or materialistic. The participants clearly believe in the sacred: priestly blessing, sacrament, our Blessed Mother, and so forth. The Catholic sacramental or sacrament is reconfigured to sanctify the sexual disorder. This recalls the pagan fertility cults of the ancient world, antagonists of Israel, in which priestesses and temple prostitutes mimicked the sexual intercourse of the fertility gods. The underlying demonic paradigm is striking: priestesses, abortion as sacrifice of the innocent, and sanctification of unchastity along with a nature mysticism which denies creation as the work of a transcendent Creator.
"Gay" as Anti-Modesty
The homosexual inclination, for the Catholic, is a cross, an affliction to be suffered graciously, generously, chastely and fruitfully. It becomes a charism, a blessing carrying many gifts. It resembles other vocations involving sacrifice: consecrated, hermit, martyr. This is a hard word. He never said it would be easy. It is the Catholic way: always was and always will be.
In an alternate direction, the attraction, under the weight of concupiscence, can be accompanied by other psychological afflictions and take on a compulsivity that can express in a hidden, double life of promiscuity. That brings all the toxicities of shame and secrecy but does respect the modesty of sexuality and implicitly the moral order.
A third group choses homosexual engagement but in a quiet, modest fashion: perhaps faithful to a single partner; abstaining from the moral crusade against Christian tradition. There abides a peace: Live and let live!
By contrast, "gay" as identity, culture and religion is an aggressive elaboration of indulgence, alleged victimization, and narcissism. The flamboyance, histrionics, militancy and melodrama camouflage an inner void and sadness, a desperation for approval. It combats shame, both the toxic social form as homophobia as well as the wholesome form as modesty, through a public shamelessness, a posture of defiant anti-modesty on display in parade and pride month.
"Gay affirmation" (as in LGTBQ groups in Catholic schools) is well-intended as compassion for the deep suffering, but it is misguided and sentimental as it deepens and aggravates the core affliction. It is enablement and encouragement in sin and error; it is untrue and unjust and therefore unloving.
Praying for the Enemy
Our Lord directs us to love the enemy. The greatest enemies of the Church today are those within. We do well to invoke God's mercy for Jean Vanier; and ask for the graces of conversion for McCarrick, Rupnik, Martin, Biden, and many in positions of power in our Church and society.
Conclusion
Modesty is a challenge for all of us today. Each of us suffers a specific concupiscence of the flesh. All of us are surrounded by a pornographic world, obsessed with sex. The devil is in the midst of it all. It requires strength of will, calming of the passions, and clarity of the intellect. The clouding of the conscience, evident in the above cases, is one of the great triumphs of the Deceiver in our Church today. But with the help of the Holy Spirit and our mutual encouragement, we can see clearly and become modest, chaste, pure.
Modesty is purity of the gaze. It requires, as it enhances clarity of vision and intellect. It is graciousness and dignity in speech. It is elegance and taste in dress. It is inner serenity. It is contemplation of the other as good, true, beautiful. It is femininity and masculinity as generosity.
Mary our Mother, we place ourselves under the mantle of your holiness, your purity, your tenderness, your beauty and your love.
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