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.
