Lucifer: His Intentions and Tactics (1 of 3): Letter 25 to Teen Grandchildren

 Lucifer is a real person, a spirit with will and intelligence, but no body. He is not a symbol. His is the greatest intelligence ever created. His will is purposeful, focused and powerful. Freely he rejected his status as a creature and determined to self-invent and lead an autonomous kingdom of darkness against God. His purpose: to draw us into that dark world and away from God. He is quintessentially The Liar or The Deceiver. His tactics are: possession, oppression, obsession, temptation, and deception. He has significant influence over the entire world and substantial control over many. His primary deception in our secular world is that he does not exist. This allows him to anonymously take control of our souls. 

The good news: Christ has defeated Satan and his armies on the Cross. The victory is definite. But by God's permissive will he continues to reign powerfully in the world as we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit, within the Church, to wage war against him and complete the victory of Christ. "The gates of hell will not prevail" against the Church, we hear from Jesus. This means that our offense will overcome the grip of evil. Since Calvary, Lucifer is on the defensive. We are the aggressors. We have and will, in Christ, triumph over evil. Even if it doesn't seem that way sometimes. 

It is for us to be alert, vigilant, knowledgeable about the tactics of Satan as to protect ourselves, but then go on the offensive on behalf of the Kingdom of God, with Jesus, Mary, St. Michael the Archangel, all the angels and Church(militant, suffering and triumphant). 

Possession

In this first of three letters we will consider possession.

It is real, but very rare in our largely secular world. It is more common in Africa and less sophisticated cultures as it was in the ancient world of Jesus. Is this because those societies are less scientific and mistake psychotic conditions for demonic activity? That is probably true to some extent. Surely Judaism at the time of Jesus and large areas of Africa are unfamiliar with schizophrenia, bipolarity and other diagnoses. But that is not an adequate explanation. The recognized cases of possession in our scientific world are always clearly evaluated by psychiatrists who rule out such psychological diagnoses. Only after such thorough examinations does the Church consider an exorcism. It is similar to the miracles involved in canonization of a saint: copious scientific evidence must determine that there was not possibility of a natural explanation for the cure.

My theory: Lucifer realizes that he gets more work done, in our non-believing world, anonymously and covertly, by convincing us that he does not exist. He is the Great Deceiver and this may be his greatest single deception since he talked with Eve about the fruit of the Tree in the Garden. In primitive societies, where there remains a sense of the supernatural, he gets more mileage out of possession as he torments, intimidates, discourages and overwhelms. But in our world he works secretly.

As you know from the movies, in possession the demon takes control of the personality and acts out, often in obscene, dramatic ways: cursing, speaking foreign languages, vomiting, showing unnatural strength, and demonstrating supernatural powers. I have myself never seen a possession but have spoken to people who have: exorcists and even rational, skeptical people who would be inclined to disparage such reports.

The person possessed, for example a child, may be innocent of sin and entirely a victim. In that sense, possession, despite its horror to us, is actually less grave than mortal sin. We really have no clue as to why the demons afflict certain people: if there is a logic or strategy, it is opaque to us. However exorcists and those in deliverance ministry identify the primary paths the demons take into the soul. These might be practiced by others, such as parents or family, rather than the victim.

1. The Occult. Any intentional evoking of spirits (outside of prayer and liturgy of course) opens a door into which demons happily enter. This includes: ouija boards, fortune telling, astrology, tarot cards, and communication with ghosts or demons. So, for example, if a family member is practicing this an innocent child might become the target of a devil. Even seemingly harmless practices like having your palm read or playing with a ouija board can be openings to the demonic. Therefore these practices are absolutely forbidden. Any use of such must be confessed as soon as possible. Some worry about the popularity of things like Harry Potter in its positive portrayal of magic. These concerns are not irrational but my view is that if used simply as entertainment they are not objectionable.

2. Mortal Sin.  This also can open a door to the diabolical. Sexual sin is particularly vulnerable since such intercourse for the human is never merely physical but an opening of one soul to another. Therefore, a sinful interchange, outside of marriage, is an opening of the soul to the evil of the partner. Sex as conjugal love within marriage is a holy act; outside of that, it is gravely evil, however good the intentions of the participants.

3. Trauma. As the devil is a coward, he attacks always the one who is weak. When a person is traumatized, she is vulnerable, wounded and defenseless. It is at that point the demon takes advantage and attacks. This can be possession, obsession or oppression (which we will discus in the next letter.) So, if a young person is abused and violated, almost certainly there is legion of demons ready to pounce on one without protection and remain there to torment her forever.

4. Family Tree. We inherit from our parents and ancestors, not only our biological DNA and cultural/ethnic history, but a spiritual legacy, for better and for worse. Serious patterns and events of sin from past generations are passed onto us unconsciously, much like our DNA. So we often see in families ongoing generational patterns, some of which are not overtly taught or intended: abuse, addiction, infidelity, violence. suicide, instability, and hatred of the Church. I have read, for example, that in the aftermath of an abortion, even when hidden and unknown, an innocent adolescent is vulnerable to the eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia) that directly attack especially the female body. There is evidence that certain sins, in the family line, bear fruit in particular physical maladies, just as we know that uncontrolled rage, anxiety or depression affect the body in specific ways.  This is, of course, inconceivable and ridiculous to a materialist mindset. The good news: these family curses can be broken, especially if identified and specifically renounced in prayer. Also good news: if we inherit the bad, we do the same for the good!

In the Catholic Church, only priests designated by the bishop are allowed to do exorcisms. There are several fine, fascinating books by exorcists, especially those by the now deceased exorcist of Rome, Fr. Amorth. Normally the identity of the exorcist is not made public, probably to shield him from frequent, unwarranted petitions. As noted above, exorcists work closely with psychiatrists to differentiate real possession from psychiatric disorders. Fr. Amorth reported some years ago that he is flooded with requests from all over Europe because many bishops do not authorize an exorcist as they are obviously weak in their understanding of the demonic. Evangelical and Pentecostal (charismatic) Protestants often have a stronger sense of spiritual combat and engage the demonic but we will address that(in the next letter) as "deliverance" which is a less intense battle against "obsession" and "oppression."

At a birthday party an exorcist from another diocese told me of a possession. He had a group helping him and singing songs of praise and praying. The devil was resistant. He asked: "When did you enter her?" (I don't know if such conversation is "best practices". The Vatican holds training sessions for hundreds of exorcists-in-training regularly.) The demon answered "At age 12." Eventually the demon was cast out. He asked the woman: "What happened to you at age 12?" She answered:  "I had my first period. My mother had wanted a son and hated that I was a girl. She cursed me terribly." In this case, the trauma seems to have been the occasion for the possession.

In the mid 1970s, my wife and I were at home in Jersey City with out infant daughter when we got a phone call from friends in our Catholic Charismatic Prayer group: Hispanic brother and sister in West NY. The sister's description of her brother I took to be classic symptoms of the demonic. I called our pastor  who was experienced in spiritual combat, deliverance but not full-blown exorcism, from his jail ministry. Got no answer. I knew a fine pastor in West New York near my friends. He was chaplain at the county psychiatric hospital so he was familiar with psychosis. Lots of common sense. He of course was skeptical of supernatural activity but consented to visit them. We prayed five decades of the rosary. Later I learned what happened. Our pastor got our message and went to the home with oils, crucifix, prayer book. The other priest arrived first and was horrified by what he saw: unlike any mental illness he had seen. Our pastor did an exorcism. Both priests agreed this was the supernatural. 

In college, my friend John Harper was absolutely the leader of the class: mature, wise beyond his years, kind, extremely competent and gifted. The most fun and funny man I ever knew! After his ordination he was immediately put in leadership in Maryknoll. He studied theology in the 1970s and said he learned nothing about the demonic. In those years, theology became very interested in psychology and political justice with the supernatural downplayed, but not denied. It was ignored in many ways. This contrasted of course, with the non-academic but spiritual formation I was getting in the Charismatic Renewal. He described to me an incident he did not expect. He was counseling a woman who started to manifest demonic activity. He did not understand. He did remember, however, from the seminary, that an exorcism is basically a command to the devil: "In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone!" He did that several times. The demon departed. He was dumbfounded. Theologically unprepared for the encounter. 

I was myself exorcised. It was only a simple, not the solemn rite used in possession. I have no grotesque manifestations to report. Previously, I had read about, attended conferences and observed as a trainee deliverance sessions. I had learned to practice renunciation of demons in my own combat. But I was on a personal retreat at the Franciscan Friary in Newark and telling the Friar about a persistent pattern of temptation and sin. He offered me a simple exorcism. He was practiced and authorized by the bishop, but not the official exorcist (as far as I know.) I accepted. He prayed an Church formula from an official prayer book. It felt like about 20 minutes. Very quiet, no drama. Invocation of St. Michael, the saints, etc. What you would expect.  Did it work? I think so.

You were also exorcised. At baptism, exorcism is part of the rite. The demons are expelled. This is a great thing. But of course, they come back. They are out to get you. They will never tire. But you need not worry much about possession. It is highly unlikely. If it happens, we get the exorcist. That's all. 

Next letter we treat obsession and deliverance. Much more pertinent to you and me.

Seeing FORM in a Formless World: Letter 24 to Teen Grandchildren

Our cultural, religious crisis is the failure to see the FORM. A profound spiritual/moral blindness!

Form is the interior, active, unifying principle of a reality. It is a spiritual interiority that makes the thing what it is: the "tree-ness" of the tree; the "cat-ness" of the cat; the soul of the human being.

Embryo from its conception is a living, growing human person. What else could it be? As it grows and absorbs nutrients it's path of growth is guided by its form or soul. It is destined to be a full person. The pro-abortion movement is a failure or refusal to see the form; it sees waste material that can be destroyed and discarded. 

Masculinity/Femininity are the binary forms intended by God in our creation by which we bond with each other in marriage and open ourselves to new persons. This binary gender idea is announced to us in the very beginning of the Bible as God's plan. In the LGBTQ and "trans" movements these primary, created forms are denied and replaced by an alphabet soup of subjective, cultural, constructed or fabricated "forms" that are not real but ideological myths.

Eucharist, for the Catholic, is actually the body and blood of Christ. Just like your nose is your body, so this is the body of Christ. Most Protestants do not believe this; they see here a symbol, a reminder, a memorial of Christ, like the picture a man has on his desk of his family. Some believe in "the real presence" but not in transubstantiation. It is not actually Christ's body, but it is temporarily a temple in which Christ abides to come to us. That is not Catholic belief.

This past week Fr. Thomas Reese S.J. wrote that he believes in the Real Presence but not in transubstantiation because he does not believe in "substantial forms." He does not see in the Eucharist the actual body of Christ. But this is defined Catholic belief by the Council of Trent. For the Catholic, after the consecration of the mass, we are not dealing with bread and wine, but with the actual body and blood of Christ.  The materials become "trans-formed" so that the appearance remains but the form or substance or essence is different. That is why we are so reverent: we are silent; we genuflect; we protect and revere; we adore; we visit Church; we cross ourselves when passing a Church. Fr. Reese and many progressive Catholics do not see the FORM: they do not see the reality here. 

Marriage, as a sacrament, is a form, it is a indissoluble bond between a man and a woman. If it is a valid form it cannot be broken, not by any human agent, not even the pope. If a couple divorce and remarry civilly, they remain bonded to each other until the death of one of them. This is invisible, it is spiritual, it is real. This is sheer nonsense to most people in our society as they cannot see the form.

Lethal Force is not only allowed but required to be used by the state to protect innocent life and the common good and deter real violence. It is used in warfare, police work and capital punishment. It should not be used unless necessary. It is a prudential decision. There is a widespread, but not complete, consensus in the Church and the West that our society no longer requires use of the death penalty. However as a form capital punishment is not intrinsically evil; its moral status depends upon practical circumstances, intentions and consequences. Pope Francis wrote in the Catholic Catechism that it is "never allowable." This is a mistake in "form": it is not only allowable but obligatory if circumstances require it for the protection of innocent life. 

Intrinsically Evil acts are those which are evil in their very form, cannot ever be done, whatever the good intentions or circumstances. These include: intentional killing of the innocent, torture, blasphemy, sacrilege, adultery, fornication, prostitution, etc. There are other obviously "wrong" acts which are not evil in form and may be required in some circumstances with proper intentions: stealing (from the rich to feed the starving), lying (to protect Jews hiding from Nazis).  

Our Catholic tradition believes (with St. Thomas Aquinas) that the forms of reality were intended and created by God and that we are endowed with intelligence to see these forms. This is realism. Our progressive, elite, woke culture does not believe in Creation, or forms, or the dignity of human intelligence in knowing the Real. What does it believe in? 

A materialism in which reality is just microscopic atoms which combine in random fashion without interior form, beauty, goodness of purpose. A scientism that believes only what can be measured numerically and disparages moral, religious, and aesthetic knowing as just emotions. A subjectivity in which the individual can determine his own truth. A Darwinism that all life comes from the random mechanism of natural selection without any guiding intelligence or purpose. A Marxism in which the powerful (white, rich, males, heterosexuals, privileged) are always oppressing the others. A sexual jungle which pulls that iconic mystery from the safety, holiness, wholesomeness, intimacy and fruitfulness of marriage and family. Theirs is a drab, sterile, hopeless, futile world, without forms, full of incoherent, senseless feelings.

By contrast, what do we Catholics believe? In an extravagantly generous, loving, expansive, three-person-communal, eventful God who shares with us His splendor, goodness and truth in a Creation radiant with forms in all their preciousness and wonder, here on earth now and forever in heaven!

Concupiscence and the Actual Binaries of Sexual Orientation, A Catholic Perspective (Letter 24 to Grandchildren)

Concupiscence:  The sexual and affectional disorders that we all (except Jesus and Mary) suffer as a result of Original Sin. Many of the saints, for example, were tormented by lustful longings. A certain chaos in our sexuality and emotions is normal for humans after the Fall. We all deal with this.

Binary:  A hard either-or between two contraries with no in-between and no other options. For example: one is alive or dead; pregnant or not; the light switch is on or off; will you marry me?

Orientation: The position and direction of someone relative to other realities. A human orientation is the direction of one's life, always a moral position. 

From a Catholic perspective, we consider four real binaries regarding sexual orientation: masculinity/femininity; chastity/impurity; the vocational vows of marriage/priesthood-religious life; and conjugal/extra-marital sex.

Masculinity/Femininity. As created by God, the human person is inherently binary. The masculine and feminine are oriented to each other in Providence. This is reflected physically: the male has an x and a y chromosome; the female has two x chromosomes. By virtue of DNA, each human person is biologically male or female. No exceptions. No other options. No middle course. With that said, there are universes of elaborations, disorders, developments, deprivations in sexuality and gender. All of us, in a fallen world, are in distinctive ways wounded in our femininity and masculinity. 

Chastity/Impurity. This is the foundational moral/spiritual decision we all face. In various ways, we are tempted by Satan to impurity. It can be pure physical lust or emotional/psychological covetousness. This is a lifetime battle. Our lives are directed (oriented) to God in holiness and purity or away into sin.

While this is a hard binary, in experience it is confused and opaque. Feelings, attractions, passions and longings are NOT in themselves good or bad. They are unavoidable. They cannot be avoided or repressed. But we are rational (thinking) and volitional (willing) by nature so we receive each feeling, evaluate, and decide what to do with it. So, however powerful a disordered desire might be, we have, with God's grace, the ability to see it for what it is and reject it. The witness of the saints is that they were tormented with powerful urges but refused to surrender to them.

Vocation and Vow.  In our Catholic economy there are two distinct calls from God: to marriage/family and to the priesthood or religious life. As Christ gave his life for us, he offers us two paths to reciprocate with the gift of our own lives. Both involve a total, exclusive, free, fruitful, permanent gift of the self. Both involve a lifetime of fidelity: to spouse, or priestly service of the Bridal Church, or spousal-chaste intimacy with Christ in the evangelical life. 

The two vocations or orientations both involve chastity: the one as fidelity to ones present-or-future spouse; the other to one present-or-future vow of celibacy, intimacy with Christ. 

This is a clear binary, obvious to the Catholic mind, non-intelligible to the non-Catholic. But in real life things are very complicated and confusing. What do we make of the single life? What about divorce, annulment, remarriage, dispensation from vows, laicization of a priest? What of the married diaconate? What about the many saints who raised families, lost their spouse, and went on to the religious life? Real life is complicated, messy, and confusing. But the basic reality is clear: each of us, whatever our current state of life, is called to chastity as fidelity to spouse or sexual abstinence.

Conjugal and Non-Marital Sex. For the Catholic, sexual intercourse is a spousal or conjugal act, by its very nature. It expresses a union that is free, permanent, exclusive and fruitful (open to life.) Any sexual act outside of that wholesome, grace-filled, holy context is a violation of the very nature of sex. Even within a marriage, then, certain acts (contraception, mutual masturbation, anal or oral intercourse) are non-spousal and gravely sinful. 

This is a clear, hard binary. Adultery, fornication, pornography, prostitution, contraception, masturbation are always, inherently grave sins. No exceptions!

Here again, however, in real life there are areas of confusion. For example, imagine a young couple who are committed to each other, possibly even engaged to marry, and have every intention to love each other forever. Short of full intercourse, are they forbidden any and all expressions of erotic affection? This is the perennial question in high school religion class: "How far can we go?" A prudent, mature response will involve honest discussion and will err on the side of mutual restrain as to protect each others purity and the integrity of the relationship.

Homosexuality, for a Catholic, is NOT an orientation. It is not the direction of one's life. It is not an identity, a destiny, a lifestyle. It is an attraction, physical and emotional. It is a suffering, a grave suffering, as it is a longing for physical-romantic union that cannot be morally satisfied. It is a temptation. It is a call to heroic chastity, continence and sacrifice. It is an embrace of the cross.

In a Catholic perspective, homosexuality is a type of concupiscence. It is no better or worse than the many other forms. And all of us have this in some form. In a Catholic perspective, active homosexuality is seriously sinful but it is also a sin of weakness, of the flesh, and the Church is quick to give pardon in confession. In a Catholic perspective, one cannot affirm the "gay identity" because that would be to encourage one in an erroneous identity and possibly a state of sin.

Homosexuality/heterosexuality is not a real binary. Many people experience both attractions and are referred to as "bisexual." The female lesbian attraction seems to be more fluid and changeable as we observe women changing their lifestyle. In contrast to the animal whose sexual drives are fixed at birth ("born that way"), the human is highly fluid and impressionable: all the experience preceding puberty (at around 12 years old) influence one's sexuality. This includes especially relationship to mom and dad but other dynamics as well. For example, a little discussed reality is that boys who have wholesome, affectionate relationships with one or more sisters are less likely to objectify and abuse women. This is not to say that boys without sisters are doomed to become predators; but they will benefit immensely from sister-like relationships of tenderness and reverence with friends, cousins, neighbors and classmates well before romance and sex enter the picture. 

A Catholic perspective knows that we are are weak, wounded, tempted, and sinful. All of us. At the foot of the Cross we stand on level ground. We do not judge each other. We love each other in our weakness and our sins. We love each other, all of us, as called to purity of heart and fidelity to our vow and vocation.

Cheap Mercy: the Defining Flaw of the Francis Papacy

Heresy is the exaggeration of some aspect of our faith and the denial of countervailing realities and so violation of the integrity of Catholicism in its symphonic, mysterious complexity and depth. What we have received over the last decade in this pontificate is a mercy that is corrupt and degraded because it is bereft of judgment, repentance, justice, wrath, truth, and the war with evil. In the last few weeks:

1. Pope Francis is reported to have advocated unconditional absolution on two occasions, recently to seminarians in Barcelona and a few months ago to rectors of seminaries. He stated that the right to absolution, even of the unrepentant, is absolute and that a priest may never deny absolution. This is a clear contradiction of Catholic practice: contrition is required for absolution. It is inherent to the rite: the penitent always makes an act of contrition. The initial proclamation of the Gospel by Jesus was  a call to conversion: "Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!" The priest in confession is first judge: that this is sin and that the sinner is contrite. Only after that judgement does he dispense mercy. I understand that it is extremely rare for one to come to confession without some contrition. Nevertheless, contrition is intrinsic to the form of the sacrament. Imagine a married man confesses the sin of adultery; says he enjoys it, has no contrition and intends to continue it; but demands absolution so he can receive at his child's first communion without the additional sin of sacrilege! Were the priest to grant unconditional absolution, a la Francis, he would collaborate in and enable both the adultery and the blasphemy; the priest is obliged to refuse absolution. The comments of Pope Francis (as reported) are heretical, sacrilegious, and a perfect expression of cheap, decadent mercy.

2. Fr. Marko Rupnik S.J., a celebrity-artist-priest, is accused of sexual violations with adult women going back decades. Recently he received the automatic excommunication for having absolved, in confession, a woman with whom he sinned sexually. That excommunication was almost immediately lifted as he repented. Note: he repented. That means he acknowledged the sin. This is not a mere sin of the flesh. He has a long history of abuse of his position of authority, of sexual sin, of violation of his vows. But the violation of the sacrament of confession is one of inconceivable gravity: a sacrilege against the sacrament, against the woman, against his own ordination and vow of celibacy. Meanwhile, in 2022 he preached the Lenten meditation for priests working in the Curia including the Pope himself, he created the logo for the 2022 World Meeting of Families, he met privately with Pope Francis, and continues his glamorous life as a clerical, artist celebrity. This is not an exceptional case: Pope Francis has sheltered three or four high profile priest predators that we know of. And this is from the crusader against clerical privilege! This is more than cheap mercy: it is scandalous and sacrilegious!

3. In an interview last week, the Pope spoke of his conversation with Cardinal Zen, the 91-year-old saintly, heroic prelate who is being prosecuted by the Chinese Communists. He is the world's premier opponent of the Communist take-over of the Catholic Church. He goes every day into a prison as a chaplain. He vigorously opposes the Vatican's concordat with the Chinese Communist government. He may be our greatest living saint and hero. The Pope laughed patronizingly: "Of course he is charming. All the Chinese are charming." He then went on to diminish the prosecution by likening it to a traffic ticket. His dismissive tone is deplorable. More substantial however is that this shows his indulgent, really delusional attitude to the Chinese Communist Party into whose diabolical hands he has surrendered the suffering Catholics of China. "All Chinese are charming." He actually said this. Does he find Xi charming? How about the genocide of the Uyghurs? How about the crackdown in Hong Kong? How about the threatened invasion of Taiwan? About the ambitions to world domination? How about the millions of forced abortions with the 0ne-baby policy? What about the Covid-cover-up? All of this is charming? This is more than cheap mercy, it is if not dementia a form of moral pathology.

This theme of cheap mercy runs through his entire pontificate. The redefinition of capital punishment as no longer a prudential judgement involving protection, deterrence and retribution. The simplistic, broad-brush disparagement of national boundaries. The relaxation of sexual mores upholding chastity and conjugal fidelity that culminated in the destruction of the John Paul Institute of the Family in Rome. And more.

My Encounter with Divine Mercy

In 1980, John Paul released his encyclical Dives in Misericordia. He brought God's Mercy into the heart of the Catholic faith. I was deeply impressed in reading it. Shortly after that our family suffered a tragedy: death by suicide of my wife's brother Al. He was a superb person. A dear friend to me. An unspeakably sad funeral. But the outpouring of compassion and mercy from hundreds of people...friends, family, Church...was even more overwhelming. I had only one thought, a thought that has directed my life ever since:  If all of these are so merciful, how much more must our merciful God receive warmly into his Kingdom this good man that suffered so!

God's Initiative of Mercy

I believe that the most significant action of God in our world in the 20th century was this initiative of Divine Mercy through the revelations to Saint Faustina, the papacy of John Paul, and a myriad of saints like Maximilian Kolbe, Mother Theresa, Solanus Casey, Brother Andre, Dorothy Day, Adrienne Speyr, Catherine Dougherty, Edith Stein and a litany of others. Yes, this initiative is more important than the Vatican Council or all my beloved lay renewal movements or the downfall of the Soviet Empire or any combination of such political events. 

The classic and contemporary devotion to Mercy (as in the Sacred Heart) is always in tension with the wrath and judgement of God against sin and evil. For example, Saint Theresa of Lisieux prayed passionately for the conversion of triple murderer Henri Pranzini whom she called "my first child." She prayed that he be spared hell. She later learned that seconds before he died, he took the crucifix from the priest and kissed the wounds of Jesus three times. Likewise, the writings of St. Faustina are full of an awareness of hell and the horror of sin.

A mercy that is not in tension with evil, wrath, judgement, repentance, truth and holiness becomes insipid, sentimental, saccharine and effete. 

A Satanic Strategy

Lucifer, the greatest intellect in Creation, saw what was happening and developed a brilliant strategy. He would coopt mercy, corrupt it, and use it for his purpose of leading the gullible into sin by way of deception. And so he inspired a "paradigm shift." Rather than "hate the sin, love the sinner" he proposed "love the sinner in his sin." And so now we have the ideal of "accompanying" others into sin: enabling the abortion, affirming the "gay identity," welcoming everyone and anyone, whatever their beliefs and practices, to the Eucharist. This is a far cry from the authentic apostles of Mercy like the Little Flower, St. Faustina and St. Maximillian, who engaged fiercely with evil and suffering. We know that the Holy Spirit is guiding our hierarchy. We also know that Lucifer and his legions are working frantically on them. They have been doing a good job lately!

The Clerical Ogre of Bergoglio and His Generation

What is the psychic source of this compulsion of Pope Francis and his coterie to cheapen mercy by the dismissal of repentance, truth, wrath and holiness? I suggest it is the "clerical ogre", the clergyman as arrogant, privileged, distant, moralistic, rigid, formalistic, dogmatic, and lacking in compassion. In so much of what the Holy Father says there is the threat of this horrific figure. Clearly, in his mind, he is fighting this terrible monster. More than anything, the Pope seems to despise the clerical ogre. This would explain, for example, his dismissal of contrition from confession. 

Now we do have in the Church a problem with rigidity, moralism, arrogance and the failure of charity on the part of the clergy. But it is not on the scale it seems to take in the papal imagination. I would argue that over the last decades our Church has suffered more from the opposite extremes: sentimental, soft, "nice guy," bourgeois accommodation. In other words, the Vatican is kicking a dead horse, is fighting the last war, is Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

This derangement is common, I have noticed, among his generation of priests, at least here in the USA, the "silent generation" born between 1928 and 1945. Is it that they have all been traumatized by cruel priests in confession? Possible. But I see a sociological cause as well. Their formative teen and early adult years, 1945-62, were a period of profound change in the American Church. It was a Camelot period of post-war revival, confidence, expansion, building, prosperity and exuberance. But in those years, steadily and incrementally, a new paradigm of the Church was replacing an old one. The Council itself was not an "event-out-of-nowhere." It was the culmination of powerful trends developing in the post-war years. As a child in that era, I grew up in what was basically a Vatican II Church. Already we were ecumenical as we swam at the YMCA. We had an open, positive attitude to Protestants and those of other faiths. There was awareness of the role of the laity in the Church. The liturgical and Scripture movements were all cooking with gas. There was reverence for the Jews and sorrow for the Holocaust. There was a preference for informality, democracy, liberality, inclusion. 

As the new paradigm was anonymously, undramatically, but inexorably replacing the old, it was inevitable that the more extreme expressions of the now-receding model would become despised. Recall that in the 1930s Fr. Coughlin was rejected in his anti-Semitism and in the 1950s Fr. Feeney was disciplined for his narrow ecclesiology. My suggestion is that the generation of seminarians of the 1950s, just prior to the Council, were already imbibing the values of that Council and unconsciously developing an aversion for a caricature of the cranky old traditional Church. Priests now in their 90s and 80s have no use for the Latin mass; they dislike the conservatism of the younger priests; and they share this horror of the clerical ogre. They are much like Pope Francis.

We are, all of us, desperate for God's Mercy. A Mercy that is wrathful to sin, just, true, holy.

Let your Mercy be upon us as we place our trust in You!

 

   

Thoughts on Integralism

In "No to Neo-Integralism" (National Review),   James Patterson gives us what we would expect from that bulwark of mainstream Catholic conservatism (economic "neo-liberalism"): a firm rejection of the small but emergent Catholic "New Right" and integralism.  A Culture War within Catholic conservatism is engaged! I wish I knew this in detail and depth, but I have followed it enough to have a viewpoint.

1.  To start: EVERY political order in fact implements and imposes an underlying metaphysics and religion: a belief in what is real, true, and good. Even when this is unconscious. In that sense, every society is integralist. Our society rejects polygamy and accepts abortion and gay marriage; Sharia law does the opposite. Both are in their opposing ways integralist. Everyone is an integralist of some flavor.

2. What is integralism? It is a reversion to the Catholic political philosophy which prevailed through the middle ages right up to the Vatican Council in 1962: a distinction between Church and state (unlike Sharia law) but the belief that the political order, notwithstanding a certain autonomy, is obliged to serve the common good by supporting the moral-spiritual order as elucidated by the Church. 

3.What is liberalism? Patterson rightly begins his essay by attacking Patrick Dineen's pivotal Why Liberalism Failed.  I deeply regret that a beautiful word, Liberal,  has taken on new meaning in the course of my lifetime. Nevertheless, in the context of this post-liberal debate, liberalism is a bad word: First, the elevation of the isolated, solitary individual as the primary reality. Secondly, a historical narrative in which the freedom of the individual is progressively achieved by release from tradition, religion, authority, and family by the dominance of secular rationalism. Thirdly, this locomotive progression is propelled by a science and technology unrestrained by any moral order. Fourthly, all communal bonds (family, religion, locality tradition, voluntarism, etc.) are dissolved leaving the individual naked in a global market economy and ever-expanding State. Fifthly, this underlying philosophy takes different, even contradictory expressions: the cultural-sexual, libertine individualism of the Left vs. the economic, libertarian individualism of the Right. Lastly, in its various configurations liberalism blends the "Masters of Suspicion" (Marx, Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, Locke, Friedman, Marcuse, etc.) in a frontal assault on the classical Catholic understanding of the human person, community, family/sexuality/gender, and the Real.

4. Patterson subsumes under the umbrella of "integralism" distinct schools of thought which do not all see themselves in that concept. However, he is basically correct in that all share a novel,  hardcore Catholic conservatism and a ferocious animus against liberalism, including the mainstream, fusionist, three-pillared (economic libertarianism, cultural conservatism, and muscular military and foreign policy) "neo-liberal conservatism" of the National Review. It will help to consider different approaches represented in three journals.

 The Josias is pure, undiluted, theological integralism edited by a Cistercian monk, Edmund Waldstein. It is narrowly, passionately old-school Catholic, without apologies. It appeals to a very small niche of "weird Catholics" and has no pretensions about broader political impact.

Compact, led by the energetic, talented Sohrab Ahmari, is altogether different: a serious, activist proposal of a conservatism populist both culturally and economically and therefore very Catholic-friendly. It is practical, not academic, and ambitions to reconfigure the Republican Party around the Evangelical-Catholic moral alliance and the economic insecurities of the alienated working class. It is Trumpism-without-Trump. If inflamed by a charismatic leader (J.D. Vance?) it could grab the Republican Party from the wealthy, business class. Small wonder National Review is so negative!

New Polity, out of the Catholic oasis of Franciscan University of Steubenville, is harder to classify. Like the Josias it is academic, not immediately practical. It is headed by medievalist Andrew Willard Jones and largely inspired by decades of work by the John Paul II Institute school of the David Schindlers and Michael Hanby as well as that of John Milbank. I don't think they describe themselves as integralist, but I would describe them as soft integralist. They are as fiercely, deeply Catholic but also draw from John Paul and Benedict, as well as Vatican II, an appreciation for freedom of conscience and pluralism and an aversion to coercion. They do not advocate a confessional state, but a more subtle, nuanced influence of the Church in politics. Patrick Dineen seems to be broadly in their school. They offer no practical politics but their logic would lead to the localism (of the Benedict Option). I recall David L. Schindler (of happy memory) saying "All institutions are fragmented, except the two invented by God himself, the family and the Church."

5. Constitution and the Founding. Patterson argues that integralism conflates liberalism with constitutional republicanism. My reading: the Founding and Constitution are not rejected, but criticized as flawed in that they partially (not completely) draw upon Enlightenment and liberal thought and therefore are not in themselves an adequate foundation for society. Catholics have never shared the Evangelical (eg. Hillsdale College) veneration for the Founding as a sacred event. We do not forget the Masonic, anti-Papist prejudices of almost all of our founders. Surely there is no thought here of getting rid of rule of law, due process, democracy, balance of powers and the rest. Rather, Adrian Vermule has suggested we move beyond "originalism" as an overly narrow constitutional approach toward a "common good" viewpoint. I would agree that a just society must lean upon a moral-metaphysical order, beyond the empowerment of the competent individual. We do need a more profound, comprehensive constitution.

6. Strong State and Labor Unions. Integralist Vermule and Compact's Ahmari surprisingly agree on the value of a strong state and unions and here they directly contradict accepted conservative wisdom. This is a return to the New Deal: worker-friendly and embracive of the direction of Catholic thought in morality (conservative) and economics (critical of the unrestrained market). It is not clear to me that the third school, New Polity, is on board with this.

7. Isolationist Foreign Policy. The view here is critical of the Pax Americana as largely liberal, materialistic, technocratic, imperialist and over-extended. J.D. Vance, for example, opposes the bi-partisan American support for the Ukraine. This is, in my opinion, the greatest error in these emerging schools of thought.

8. The Jews. Patterson gives attention to the Jews and the infamous Mortara incident recalled by Fr. Cessario in First Things 2018. A Jewish boy living in the Papal States was given an emergency baptism by a Catholic housekeeper; his family declined to raise him Catholic; he was taken by the Vatican and raised Catholic. Eventually, he ended up as a happy Catholic priest. For the contemporary mind this is an obscene violation of family rights and religious freedom. To the Catholic mind of 1850 this was saving his soul. My own view is that we need not defend or condemn such an act done in such a different context. The Vatican was surely doing what they thought was right. Were I talking with a Jew I would acknowledge wrong-doing and ask forgiveness for that and an entire history of such violence. In any case, Patterson's concern for the Jews is welcome.

9. Fascist? Patterson finishes his article by arguing a strong affinity of integralism for fascism and authoritarianism. This reminded me of a personal anecdote. Just two months before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine my own pastor returned from a priests conference where he was troubled by Ralph Martin (a favorite of mine) who repeatedly quoted Putin on the moral decline of the West. I am sure that Martin's intention was not to endorse Putin but to reinforce the critique of Western decadence. Nevertheless, this raises very good questions. Is the new Catholic Right flirting with fascism and authoritarianism? This question must be faced honestly. Politics is a messy business; alliances and cooperation with unsavory players are unavoidable. It is also true that liberals configure any offense to the sovereignty of the competent individual as fascist as less discriminating conservatives have often dismissed everything on the Left as "communism." For sure the movement beyond liberalism is a path with many dangers.

10. Impractical? Perhaps the strongest argument against integralism is its impracticality. It is a realistic possibility in very few, Catholic-majority countries (Poland, Philippines). Our country is about 25% Catholic but most are not serious in their Catholic beliefs. Surely no more than 5% of our population could even consider a Catholic nation. Pluralism and secularism define Western civilization. 

This argument is cogent, but not dispositive. In working toward the Good, all of us...even and especially in the face of intractable resistance...are moving towards an ideal, however distant and difficult. Therefore, we need always to have in mind the Good we seek. Furthermore, Vermule pointed out recently that history presents many unanticipated twists and oftentimes they are triggered by zealous minorities. He asked: Who anticipated the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Empire? The victory of Donald Trump? The sudden, overwhelming shift in opinion on gay marriage? The rise of the trans-movement? We do well to resist premature capitulation to "so-called-reality" and persist in our deepest values.

 Lastly, notes toward a Catholic-inspired, ecumenical Constitution. David L. Schindler about 15 years ago in NYC highlighted three propositions from Pope Benedict as constitutive of a just social order:  

First, respect for every human life, however small or incompetent. 

Second, reverence for the traditional family and the understanding of sex and gender supporting it. 

Third, protection of religious freedom and the sense of the Transcendent.

What we find here is not a Catholic confessionalism, but the outline of a good social order that would be welcomed by many non-Catholics. We see here he gives high priority to freedom of conscience, which is one of the challenges to the emergent integralism

I myself would add others: solidarity with the poor, suffering, marginalized;  a subsidiarity that favors the small and limits the cancerous growth of state and market; restraints on technology and social media; the strengthening of international networks that protect peace and endangered minorities.

With the evident, even catastrophic collapse of both our political parties, this is an exiting time to be Catholic and interested in the political order.

Contempt: Underrated

A God without wrath is bringing a people without sin into a kingdom without judgement by a Christ without the cross.     Richard Niebuhr

Hate the sin. Love the sinner.   My mother taught me this.

Contempt gets a bad rap. But it has its place. It is a combination of anger and disgust. It is analogous to physical disgust as when one retreats from a foul smell. On the moral level it is aversion to evil, sin, decadence. As such it is a wholesome response.

Psychology.  Psychology doesn't like contempt. Marriage counselors will tell you that the number one predictor of divorce is contempt. Anger, disagreement, hurt, disappointment, criticism...are all fine. But contempt for the spouse is a no-no. One might say that psychologists have contempt for contempt.

Politics. The binary polarization in our society and Church have moved many sound moral voices...Arthur Brooks, Charlie Camosy, Johnathan Haidt...to call for civility, dialogue, listening, openness and a transcendence of the warfare. I am not so sure.

\Case Study 1.  Imagine: your neighbor, a wealthy business man, father of a large family, is a vicious misogynist, racist, homophobe and anti-Semite. He physically and emotionally abuses his wife and children. He sexually abuses poor, teenage women who work for him. You hold him in contempt. Should you overcome this with open-mindedness, civility, and love? No way Jose! First of all you want to shun him, keep your kids away from him. Second you may want to help his wife legally get the separation, divorce, restraining order, child care payments and custody of the kids. Thirdly, you want to help the young women file complaints. This guy needs to go to jail. And, if he doesn't change, to hell. 

Case Study 2. Wouldn't it have been so much better if the bishops and vicars, on hearing the very first reports of priestly abuse of teen boys, had gotten sick to their stomach and run to the bathroom and vomited? And then, indignantly, demanded full investigation! It was a failing of the bishops/vicars that they were deficient in moral contempt!

Wrath and Contempt.  God in holiness and truth is wrathful in the face of evil: absolutely intolerant. He destroys it. Completely. He is not vulnerable to contempt as that is flesh-based in its disgust. We as sinners do not share in his wrath. But the response of contempt to evil is a good thing. Imagine a man is considering adultery. The best thing for him would be to surge with contempt:  That is disgusting!

Problem with Contempt is twofold: it can poison the soul as it might target the sinner as well as the sin.

Contempt, like anxiety-resentment-jealousy, is a negativity, an immune response of the psyche, an inflammation against a pathogen that can itself poison the spirit. It can feed on itself and intensify and thereby deplete the soul of joy, peace and love. It has a role to play, but it must move the person (to shun, confront, combat) but then must recede and allow the soul to return to serenity and rest. 

The problem is the failure to distinguish the sin and the sinner. This is essential. We must hate the sin but love the sinner. There is an identification of the sin and sinner; but it is not absolute. At the AA meeting one hears: "I am Matt. I am an alcoholic." This is a profound, paradoxical statement. Matt is saying "I am an alcoholic; but I am distinguishing myself from this addiction; I am hear to share and listen and work my program and get free." He is saying he is NOT his alcoholism. So it is with every sinner. God looks with wrath upon the sin but mercy upon the sinner. We need to emulate that. So we despise the moral evil; but have compassion upon the person bound by sin.

What to do with Contempt?

Like every emotion, contempt cannot be repressed, ignored, avoided or transcended. It must first be accepted, recognized, and appropriately expressed. After consideration, if the aversion is rational and reality-based, the offender must be shunned, confronted, and combatted as prudence dictates. However further steps are required, lest the person be objectified and oneself poisoned with inflammation. These steps seem prudent: First, a detachment from the object. Secondly, and most important of all, the turn to prayer about the situation and the offender. This applies to any aversion or attraction: the turn to God has automatic efficacy as ones attention is drawn away from the object and toward the All-Good. Human consciousness is structured such that we can attend directly to only one object: If I am praying, praising, thanking, imploring, confessing then the grip of the obsessive object is broken immediately. Thirdly, we pray for the offender, seeking a space within him/her of possibility and receptivity and thereby we express love and free ourselves from the negative obsession. Fourthly, we pray out of our own weakness, sin, arrogance and need for God's mercy. Thereby we establish a certain solidarity, in sin, with the offender and a shared need for Divine assistance. Lastly, it is important that the void left by the fleeing contempt be filled with things that are holy, true and beautiful so further prayer, liturgy, friendship, reading, singing and such are used to further heal and strengthen the soul. 

Conclusion.  There is no shortcut or escape from moral contempt. In the battle with evil it is the required first step. Without it one surrenders feebly to sin. But the proper channeling of it is an arduous task: acceptance,  detachment, confrontation, combat, prayer as intercession and self-confession, and final strengthening. 

Performative Persona and The LGBTQ Theatre

Persona in ancient Greek drama was the mask of the actor indicating the role or character he was performing. Strangely, our understanding of person developed out of the theological reflections and conflicts of the early Church about the Trinity in which the decision was that there are three "persons" in one God. So today persona refers to a social role, a mask, a facade. On the internet, for example, it is possible to invent and present a fictional persona.

When my grandson Paul was 3 years old he would spend much of his day in the persona of Batman. I would enjoy joining him for a while in this imaginary caper. If I pressed him if he was really Batman or pretend Batman he would say pretend. But why press him? It was fun, normal and wholesome. 

The male psyche is inclined to the performative persona because the masculine vocation is always to represent what he is not: the heavenly Father and the crucified Bridegroom. This is why men love to wear uniforms, play roles, take on missions...in fantasy and reality both. The male cannot just "be himself;" he has to serve a greater purpose. The mission of masculinity is to image God. His own personality must disappear in humility to unveil the authentic Father. By contrast, the woman does no such representation: she is herself as virgin, bride, mother. The feminine is always authentic; the masculine always representational.

Consider the Drag Queen: a male masquerading as female. It is ironic, comical, transgressive., Very powerful! In the seminary a staple of our "Gaudeamus" celebrations were such performances. They were a riot! There is something primal, hysterical, cathartic about a man acting the female! Recall Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, or Mrs. Doubtfire! How about a woman masquerading as a male? It does not happen. It is not funny. Not ironic. Not even imaginable. 

For us Catholics, the priest acts always in Persona Christi. Like John the Baptist, he must decrease so Christ can increase. Narcissism is a big problem for a priest...and for any man. A woman does not perform such a role. Narcissism is a bigger problem for men than for women. Humility is a tougher task for men than for women.

A hot, summer afternoon I was reading in our living room when my teenage son walked in the door, in a dress, glanced at me and then away with a slight smile. I was extremely agitated. Seeing my son in a dress bothered me...a lot. I sat there disturbed. I had no reason to think he was actually homosexual or a cross-dresser as no prior behavior had suggested this. Cognitively I realized he was pranking, teasing me. It was a mind game. He has a sense of humor. But that didn't calm me. I sat there troubled. To assume indifference was not possible: I was too agitated. I could not return to my book. But to engage him seemed futile: argumentation or even conversation seemed pointless and would play into his ploy. After a while the light bulb lit up: I went upstairs to our bedroom and put on my wife's dress. With padded breasts of course. I looked ridiculous! When John saw me he burst into laughter. As did I. We thoroughly enjoyed an exercise in "camp"  as transgressive, grotesque, ridiculous, hilarious. 

Camp, as famously described by Susan Sontag and Darel Paul (see "Drag Queens" in First Things, February 2023), is:  "a taste for artifice...love of the unnatural and things being what they are not...being as playing a role...stylization, theatricality, exaggeration, flamboyance, abnormality, even the grotesque understood precisely as a form or appearance incongruous with nature." 

In his incisive article, Darel Paul describes the Drag Queen as camp: a male masquerading in an exaggerated, really grotesque femininity. It is deconstructive of masculinity, but at the same time it is more covertly contemptuous of femininity in a hidden misogyny. He shows that this has been championed by prominent liberal, feminist politicians (AOC, Pelosi, Gillibrand, Warren, Kamala) as an assault upon toxic masculinity on behalf of a liberated progressive feminism. Generally the Drag Queen phenomena is popular among white, liberal women. The story time is sponsored by the American Librarian Association which is overwhelmingly feminine and liberal.

A moderate degree of such behavior...in childhood play, drama, comedy, parody, etc...is playful, wholesome and recreational. But beyond a limit such performance becomes dysfunctional and toxic. The Netflix series Inventing Anna tells the true story of a fraudster who masqueraded as a wealthy heiress. Her entire life was pure performance, a fiction, a masquerade. Nothing about her is real. In Catch Me If You Can Leonardo De Caprio plays the allegedly true story of a preternaturally talented con man who pulls off successful frauds before his 19th birthday. In The Talented Mr. Ripley Matt Damon plays Ripley who entirely assumes, as a persona, the identity of his wealthy friend whom he has killed. My maternal uncle Bill Gallagher was a decorated WWII hero who worked in army intelligence his entire adult life but never told anyone in the family. As a teenager he caddied but pretended he couldn't speak English so as to eliminate all conversation with the golfers. He adopted a performative persona. We see this dynamic throughout literature, cinema and real life. It is part of the human reality.

Likewise, Donald Trump as a serious narcissist is a performance. He is a reality show, not real. He is performing for the public. Very little of him seems to be genuine or real. As chronicled by Yuval Levin, much of our national politics is no longer about policy or even power, but purely performative in a desperation to gain public recognition and status. Darel Paul associates the surge in drag queen popularity with the Trump presidency as a reaction to his toxic masculinity. Trump himself, however, is best understood as a camp character. He is a grotesque caricature of exaggerated, deviant masculinity: big, strong, aggressive and egotistical, lustful, greedy and devoid of humility, compassion, conscience or the faintest sense of truth. He is straight out of Gotham City and would hold his own with the Joker, the Riddler and all the other perverts. As such a character he is immensely entertaining, at least for those who applaud his defiance of our liberal elites. His mass appeal is precisely because, with Steve Bannon and the Joker, he is nihilist and anarchistic: his is a rage to tear down, not to build up. His "MAGA" is itself a facade expressing incoherent rage, indignation and fury. The more rational Republicans who supported him reluctantly as the lesser evil...and those like Pence who served his administration loyally...had to suffer a dissonance in conscience that has only worsened with time and events.  

The performative persona as childhood fantasy and play, tongue-in-cheek comedy, camp and entertainment is wholesome and fun. When it loses its sense of irony and becomes serious, it is dangerous. 

Star Wars is fun because there is a soft sense of camp or irony. By contrast, Lord of the Rings is a more serious, straightforward drama. Contrast Jack Nicholson's Joker with that of Heath Ledger: the former is entirely comedic; the later has crossed the line into seriousness and is deeply troubling, and probably fatal for that actor. We know that Nicholson warned Leger to beware of the character.

Marie is schizophrenic, very bright, and open with me. She would tell me there is a little man living in her ear. She would beckon me to observe how she could move the sun across the sky. She was, in effect, a performative persona when she was in this state of mind. I would not affirm her; but not challenge her either. Mostly, I would quietly receive her narrations. Sometimes I would suggest that she was in symptoms and at times she would seem to agree. What mattered most was that I received her (but not her narratives) warmly. It seemed to help her to just talk about it. 

Veronica was one of the most impressive applicants I interviewed for our woman's residence. Tall, staturesque, glamorous; had a good job as evaluator of real estate; got good references from Rabbi and others; spoke affectionately about nephew's basketball game suggesting healthy family life. I happily checked all the boxes. A few days later the young woman in room adjacent to Veronica's burst into my office in a rage:" Why did you accept that man?" Veronica was exercising and manifested clearly the masculine genitalia in the underpants. This became an interesting experience. I liked Veronica. I enjoyed her. The entire interaction with Veronica was performative, imaginative, theatrical, and recreational. It was fun. It was not real. I was not dealing with an actual person, male or female. I was dealing with an imaginative, playful-but-serious performative persona. It was all pretend. 

My friend Danny, a troubled personality, told me that he was to become the first layman pope. He was not a steadfast Catholic nor a stable personality, so this was a complete delusion. But I merely received this communication. Futile to challenge it; but worse to affirm it.

Anorexics who weigh under 100 pounds can be entirely convinced that they are obscenely obese. Again: futile to disagree. Their performative persona is in charge. 

Homosexuality as an romantic-physical attraction, action and relationship is real. But the entire gay edifice is not. It is a performative persona. A cultural construct. It is an artifice. It is a fictional, fabricated identity not unlike that of Batman, the drag queen, the "obese" anorexic or Marie moving the sun across the sky.

Homosexuality has been with us forever but the gay identity and culture is a recent invention. It is the epitome of the cultural-sexual revolution of the 1960s: individualistic, libertarian, libertine, indulgent, narcissistic, histrionic and therapeutic.

Homosexuality as desire is an affliction, a terrible suffering, a cross. It is a temptation. It is, with God's grace, an occasion for heroic patience and sacrifice, nobility of character, and holiness of life. As an action it is a sin of the flesh. More troubling, however, than the act is the surrender to a faux identity, a persona.

Disparagement, shaming or condemnation of the homosexual is a grave sin against charity. Affirmation of the troubled LGTBQ identity is a sin against truth. 

Reality, as Creation, has intelligibility and form to it. Primary structures of human life include: masculinity/femininity, paternity/maternity, spousality, filiality, fidelity, chastity and other virtues. Also real is the universe of evil and suffering unleased by the primal sins of Lucifer, his legions and our ancestors. But the alphabet soup of gay-bi-trans-non-binary-etc. is not real, it is a fictional construct.

It may be objected that the Batman play and drag queen camp are consciously ironic, they are pretense while the gay or trans identity is not. That is, of course, the point: the sincere, interior acceptance of this "persona-identity" is self-destructive in the manner of the anorexic or schizophrenic. 

The gay-trans identity and culture is an effort to remove human suffering. It comes from an unspeakable depth of pain:  shame, isolation, despair, confusion, self-hatred, resentment, condemnation, and real desperation. Compassion and decency require recognition of this interior affliction. It is also undeniable that many find relief in acceptance of this identity and often in an exclusive, faithful, intimate, quasi-spousal partnership. We live with an acceptance of this and value the genuine good in such lives. 

Like most folks today, I have in my inner circle of family, friends and coworkers at least a handful who live this lifestyle. They are dear to me: men and women; talented, generous, devout, interesting, funny, delightful, admirable, intelligent.  We enjoy life together on many levels: shared work, interests, family, faith. We never talk about this gay stuff. It is "don't ask, don't tell." It is "live and let live." It is "I mow my lawn and you mow yours."  To me they are not gay or lesbian or trans. I love them for who they are, who they are in themselves, who they are to me. I do not see them as gay any more than I see Trump as the greatest president in history or Marie as queen of the universe or Paulie as batman or the starving anorexic as fat or Veronica as a woman.

Gay-affirmation is not love-in-truth. It is well intended for sure: the goal is to relieve  shame, self-hatred, and inferiority. But it is sentimental,  enabling and co-dependent as it affirms an erroneous identity.

I will surely be accused of hate and homophobia. I have neither fear nor hatred; I am comfortable with homosexuals and  homosexuality. I am not angry, or anxious or indignant. Any more than I am about the delusional anorexic, schizophrenic, or narcissist. I am, to be precise, an LGBTQ+-Denier. I don't see the thing as real; I see it as performative. Mine is a moral-intellectual judgment; I can be wrong; but my confidence is high because I stand on thousands of years of Catholic tradition. 

 Disregarding the performative persona,  I love, revere and cherish this person before me, man or woman, who is suffering, noble, delightful, fascinating, admirable, and charming. Let's get back to Veronica. How ironic that the feminine name he adopted means "true image!" The femininity was entirely a false image, the opposite of an icon. But I  enjoyed him. It was a fun game. And yet there was also some real connection with this male-faux-feminine person. More than once he said I reminded him of his 90-year-old, devout Catholic father. This was said with affection. But one day there was hysterical screaming in his room about me and my Church and (Freud would say) about his father problem. He agreed from the start not to use the common bathrooms, but the private one. After some melodrama, including police and crisis unit, he left peacefully.

If a friend tells me he is gay, or trans, or non-binary, or asexual...I will nod calmly. I will not affirm and will not challenge. In my head I will think:  "You are suffering. I am sorry. You are not what you think. You are the beloved son/daughter of our heavenly Father. You are destined for a life of filial, fraternal/sororal, spousal, and maternal/paternal generosity, in some form. You do not know that now but in God's grace and good time you will."

The gay identity and culture is an artifice, not a reality. Yet it also surges with compassion, kindness, generosity, creativity, and even religious devotion. We need not affirm the falsehood, but we can in peace rejoice in all that is True and Good and Beautiful in this interesting world and among these good, beautiful people.