Saw this helpful blog which resonates with what contemporary chaste Catholic persons with a homosexual orientation often share:
Brunetto Latini among the Sodomites (Illustration by Gustav Doré); Circle 7, Inferno 15 |
Just How Evil is Sodomy? The Saints
Weigh In.
BY STEVE SKOJEC ON JUNE 30, 20151P5 BLOG
In light of recent
events, a theological concept that I’ve seen dusted off and put back into
use with increasing frequency is that of a “sin that cries out to
heaven for vengeance.”
There are four such
sins – murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, and defrauding a worker of his wages.
Each of these is considered especially egregious to God. While there were,
until recently, civil legal restrictions on all four, the first two in
particular have been losing battles in the courts for at least half a century,
with sodomy making huge legal advances in both Ireland and the United States in
the past sixty days.
But just how bad is sodomy, really? If you listen to
those sympathetic to those in homosexual relationships, you’d be led to believe
it’s just a little harmless affection between people who are “in love.” So, on
the scale of the serious sins, where does sodomy fall?
At the blog, Musings of a Pertinacious
Papist, Philip Blosser cites St. Peter Damian, doctor of the Church, as excerpted in a 2002
article by Randy Engels. The below begins with commentary from Engels,
then transitions to St. Peter Damian in the double block-quoted portion:
Among St. Peter Damian’s most famous
writings is his lengthy treatise, Letter 31, the Book of Gomorrah (Liber Gomorrhianus), containing the most extensive
treatment and condemnation by any Church Father of clerical pederasty and
homosexual practices. His manly discourse on the vice of sodomy in general and
clerical homosexuality and pederasty in particular, is written in a plain and
forthright style that makes it quite readable and easy to understand.
In keeping with traditional Church teachings handed down
from the time of the Apostles, he holds that all homosexual acts are crimes
against Nature and therefore crimes against God who is the author of Nature.
… Damian decries the audacity of men who are “habituated
to the filth of this festering disease,” and yet dare to present themselves for
holy orders, or if already ordained, remain in office. Was it not for such
crimes that Almighty God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and slew Onan for
deliberately spilling his seed on the ground? he asks. Quoting St. Paul’s
letter to the Ephesians (Eph 5:5) he continues, “… if an unclean man has no
inheritance at all in Heaven, how can he be so arrogant as to presume a
position of honor in the Church, which is surely the kingdom of God?” [15]
… According to Damian, the vice of sodomy “surpasses the
enormity of all others,” because:
“Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction
to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels
the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the
devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from
the deluded mind … It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise … It is
this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and
slaughters virginity … It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all
things …
“This vice excludes
a man from the assembled choir of the Church … it separates the soul from God
to associate it with demons…. Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own
identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of
hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes
fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence.
Looking to other sources, St. Peter Canisius explains not
just the atrocity of this sin, but its origins. Does this sound familiar?
As the Sacred
Scripture says, the Sodomites were wicked and exceedingly sinful. Saint Peter
and Saint Paul condemn this nefarious and depraved sin. In fact, the Scripture
denounces this enormous indecency thus: ‘The scandal of Sodomites and
Gomorrhans has multiplied and their sins have become grave beyond measure.’ So
the angels said to just Lot, who totally abhorred the depravity of the
Sodomites: ‘Let us leave this city….’ Holy Scripture does not fail to mention
the causes that led the Sodomites, and can also lead others, to this most
grievous sin. In fact, in Ezechiel we read: ‘Behold this was the iniquity
of Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and
of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the
needy, and the poor. And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before
me; and I took them away as thou hast seen’ (Ezech. 16: 49-50). Those unashamed
of violating divine and natural law are slaves of this never sufficiently
execrated depravity.” (Emphasis added)
St. Catherine of Siena writes of
sodomy in what appears to be not her own mind, but God’s:
But they act in a
contrary way, for they come full of impurity to this mystery, and not only of
that impurity to which, through the fragility of your weak nature, you are all
naturally inclined (although reason, when free will permits, can quiet the
rebellion of nature), but these wretches not only do not bridle this fragility,
but do worse, committing that accursed sin against nature, and as blind and
fools, with the light of their intellect darkened, they do not know the stench
and misery in which they are. It is not only that this sin stinks before me, who
am the Supreme and Eternal Truth, it does indeed displease me so much and I
hold it in such abomination that for it alone I buried five cities by a divine
judgment, my divine justice being no longer able to endure it. This sin not
only displeases me as I have said, but also the devils whom these wretches have
made their masters. Not that the evil displeases them because they like
anything good, but because their nature was originally angelic, and their
angelic nature causes them to loathe the sight of the actual commission of this
enormous sin.
Imagine that: the sin
of sodomy is so unnatural that it is even repellent to the very demons who
tempt men to engage in it.
Returning to St. Peter
Damian, we are offered advice on how to deal with those who favor this sin and
who resent our Christian condemnation of the same:
“… I would surely
prefer to be thrown into the well like Joseph who informed his father of his
brothers’ foul crime, than to suffer the penalty of God’s fury, like Eli, who
saw the wickedness of his sons and remained silent. (Sam 2:4) … Who am I, when
I see this pestilential practice flourishing in the priesthood to become the
murderer of another’s soul by daring to repress my criticism in expectation of
the reckoning of God’s judgement? … How, indeed, am I to love my neighbor as
myself if I negligently allow the wound, of which I am sure he will brutally
die, to fester in his heart? … “So let no man condemn me as I argue against
this deadly vice, for I seek not to dishonor, but rather to promote the
advantage of my brother’s well-being. “Take care not to appear partial to the
delinquent while you persecute him who sets him straight. If I may be pardoned
in using Moses’ words, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, let him stand with me.’ (Ezek
32:26)
There are many more
such quotes from the saints – too many to include here. St. Bernardine of Siena
offers perhaps the most succinct verdict on the issue:
“Just as people
participate in the glory of God in different degrees, so also in hell some
suffer more than others. He who lived with this vice of
sodomy suffers more than another, for this is the greatest sin.”
(Emphasis added)
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