Skip to main content

All You Need is Love (da da da da da) Love is all you need

Of late Papa Bergoglio has uttered ambiguous sayings on the Church’s need to apologize to homosexuals for the manner in which she has treated them. Judging from the popular brouhaha in the social media, perhaps there is  confusion in people’s thinking between homo-philia, chaste friendship, and homo-eros, people who desire sex with people of the same sex

We all know of the etymology from which these phrases derive. In the Greek there are four words for “love:” agape, pure unselfish love, philia, the love of friendship, especially between brothers, storge, affection love, a deep bond usually borne of spending a long time with another and, of course, the one most familiar, eros, which is passionate, sexual love, seeking pleasure from the other.

In the Catholic view, as Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est, all loves must be included under agape, which is the term Christ uses, and the Church has adopted, to mean “charity--” pure, unselfish love which wills the good of the other, without necessarily seeking our own good.

Our over-eroticized culture, however, often considers “love” as erotic love. This usually applies to persons of the complementary sex, a man and a woman. But what of “love” between persons of the same sex?  There is nothing wrong, and indeed much that is good, in men loving men and women loving women.  True friendship between “brothers” and “sisters”is only possible, however, if the love remains chaste.

What the Church warns against in same-sex friendship, following natural law, is eroticizing this natural and healthy bond, turning homo-philia, into homo-eros, with its accompanying unnatural vices.  Our culture’s fascination with homoerotic tendencies has obfuscated the natural homophilic friendships of men and women. 

Pope Benedict XVI also stated in Deus Caritas Est that modernity has warped eros, not the Church and Christianity, which very early on in the Roman Empire purified eros from its pagan inclinations, so toxic for women and children, subjugated as they were and used as sexual slaves and prostitutes (a plight that threatens them today as well).

In a genuinely Christian culture, men attempt to be chaste in relating to women, or at least held to account if they are not. Women thus hold all the cards in the sexual relationship.  It is the opposite in a pagan culture, cut off from Judeo-Christian revelation, Here women are objectified and sexualized, taken by force if need be.  So anyone who says the Church is anti-woman knows not history, nor that Her teaching is her best defense.
So eros must be controlled and channeled, incorporated under the higher love of agape, willing the good of the other.  As John Paul II and Benedict both taught clearly, this is possible only within monogamous and faithful marriage, wherein the true “gift of self” can occur, with eros ordered to the mutual complementarity and union between husband and wife and the procreation of children.
All of our other friendships should be non-sexual and non-erotic. 
Yet modernity thinks that all this matters not, though there remains a seeming aversion to adultery, pedophilia and rape. Be forewarned: even these are becoming increasingly difficult to explain as we cut ourselves off from the vine of Christian revelation and reason. Just recall the idolizing of Alfred Kinsey, an entomologist who malformed himself into a “sexologist,” carrying out sexual experiments on children, depicted fawningly by Liam Neeson in the film linked above.

So we now think that any sexual activity between “consenting adults” is OK. But how to define “consensus,” with all of the obvious and implicit disetortions of power and authority, and the problem of saying who really is an “adult.” Does one measure with the yardstick of biology? Psychology? Spirituality? Who determines? Furthermore, something harmful does not cease to be harmful just because one consents to it.

As Paul VI once wrote, we must not underestimate the power of libido, and how it affects us and those around us. In a homily in 1972, which served as the basis for my book, he opined that unleashed and ungoverned eros, whose origins lie in the deeply wounded libido of Man, is at the basis of many contemporary societal ills:
·        the breakdown of the family and redefinition of traditional marriage
·        the epidemic of sexual diseases
·        abortion,with the unborn killed daily in far greater numbers than any other modern massacre.

So we do people with a homosexual orientation, and anyone else with an inclination to sexual deviancy, no favors by supporting their disordered inclinations and actions. Rather let us render them a service in love by revealing to them the full truth of who they are, and who they are called to be, in God’s image and so loved.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You Headed to Heaven or Hell?

While I think I would need some Purgation if I died today, here is an important question as boomers get up there in age: How can spiritual direction help you on the road to heaven? To answer this question, be sure to register for  our webinar  “ Understanding Spiritual Direction: Finding a Director and Thriving in the Relationship ,” scheduled for September 14, 2015. Read more:  http://www.spiritualdirection.com/2015/09/07/are-you-headed-to-heaven-or-hell#ixzz3l3ujESca Spiritualdirection.com | Catholic Spiritual Direction | Are You Headed to Heaven or Hell? - SpiritualDirection.com Catholic Spiritual Direction : 'via Blog this'

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D:   This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Why the Devil is Pope Francis Talking about the Devil?

Because he is a Jesuit! As one who has written on spiritual warfare in the history of the Catholic Church, it is refreshing to have as Pope one so attuned to preset day realities!

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with  Fox News Digital.  "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years.  Listen to her testimony.    

Nuns' Story, or Call the Sisters

(Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham / Fr James Bradley) I have been watching the PBS series, Call the Midwives , which f ollows the nurses, midwives and nuns from Nonnatus House, who visit the expectant mothers of Poplar, providing the poorest women with the best possible care. As I observe the way these Anglican nuns are portrayed, it strikes me that they are more like Catholic nuns than many Catholic nuns after Vatican II (see chapter 5 of my book). Thus, the story featured in this post does not surprise me, especially after Pope Benedict's  launching of the United States’ ordinariate for disaffected Anglicans seeking communion with the Catholic Church.  From  the Apostolic Constitution  Anglicanorum Coetibus , given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on Nov. 4, 2009: “In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately.”

Et Lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt

What Is the Source of This Darkness of Our Times? |Blogs | NCRegister.com : What prompted me to write a book about the current spiritual war ongoing in the world in which we live?  Stumbling upon this quote by the Pope of the  council,  Pope Paul VI : We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned instead was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties .  I am an avid reader of Msgr. Charles Pope, who has written recently on this our adversary in the NCR link above.
George Weigel has just published a proposed blueprint for  the “New Evangelization,” entitled Evangelical Catholicism which, to the extent that it is read will greatly amplify the New Evangelization, i.e., t he Church’s duty   everywhere and at all times  to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was Pope Paul VI   who in Evangelii Nuntiandi observed that the work of evangelization was so necessary because of the de- Christianization of the twilight year of the 20 th century. Pope Montini noted the multitudes of baptized Catholics living lives that did not distinguish them all that much from those ignorant of the Gospel; also those who, while ignorant of the full gospel, nevertheless had faith and lived according to the natural moral law, and Catholics who desired a more heartfelt relationship with Jesus Christ not given emphasis in the catechesis they received as children. His successor Pope John Paul II said that his predecessor’s use of “New Evangelization” in Evangelii Nu

Divide et Impera

Mr. Patrick Boyden has penned a reflection   worth noting. In 2013 I wrote: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things.  Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Thus the schema of “liberal” (progressive, left) vs. conservative (traditional, right) which followed upon the close of Vatican II is wholly inadequate for explaining the present-day crisis of faith within the Church of Jesus Christ, though it is most unfortunate that usage of these terms persist among ma

Dancin' With Mr. D: The brave new age of gender-neutral kids - The Globe and Mail

M The brave new age of gender-neutral kids - The Globe and Mail : 'via Blog this'