An LGBT invention.
HuffPo celebrated St. Nicholas Day with a misleading post titled,
Joan of Arc and 9 Other 'Queer' Saints:
While many would freely admit that most of the men and woman of yore were not gay or transgender as defined by our modern standards, they would assert that these people were involved in non-heteronormative relationships, presented non-traditional gender identities, or understood, approached, and complicated aspects of faith with relation to sexuality and/or gender identity.
Performing a "queering" (or re-appropriating/re-imagining/claiming based on available evidence) of religious texts and lives is one tactic LGBT people have widely used throughout history to see or find themselves and each other in a world where they have been forced to remain hidden. It is a way to celebrate and honor those who did not live "straight" lives and to discover role models and trail blazers who may have been obscured, forgotten, or stripped of their queerness. - HuffPo
It is a cheesy piece of sensationalist, conspiracy theorist, historical revisionist, and heterodox garbage. 'They' literally make this stuff up, they imagine what they want to imagine, and to paraphrase St. Jude,
'these revisionists pollute the flesh, they spurn God's dominion and revile the saints.' [Jude: 8]
As I've said so often in the past,
Homosexual activists love to accuse the Catholic Church of lies and deception when it comes to Catholic teaching on homosexuality and so-called same sex marriage.
For a variety of reasons, homosexual persons have long looked for a saint who was 'gay'. Gay activists speculate about many great souls, insisting they were gay. Their conclusions are based upon 19th and 20th century understanding of homosexual behavior and culture. The modern concept of homosexuality did not exist before the late 19th century. In this case, I think looking for 'gay' saints represents a kind of 'pious narcissism' - with the aim to canonize same sex attraction.
.
I once asked a monk if he thought any of the saints had been gay, and he answered that he did not know of any. He went on to explain that the temptation to homosexual acts was likely to have afflicted some of the saints, but it wouldn't have been any different from other temptations to lust. Before the 20th century non-sexual same sex friendship would have known and preserved boundaries, especially as regards that sin they used to say was too awful even to name. We today can't even imagine that kind of discretion.
.
Now days many people want to claim this or that saint was gay. Even very good Catholics do this. Not a few insist Blessed Cardinal Newman was gay because of his extraordinary friendship with Fr. Ambrose. Others speculate that the Carmelite Fr. Hermann Kohen was involved in intimate same sex relationships, yet there is absolutely no evidence for such a claim, especially as it is well known that before his conversion he had love affairs with women. Such speculation demonstrates the human desire to have saints be just like ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that, although in some cases it opens the door to validating immoral inclinations or acts, and leads to what I mentioned, a 'pious narcisissm'. Wishful thinking is nothing but a deception and a trap.
.
Having said that, all of the saints are powerful intercessors and models for the faithful for a variety of needs, thus it is good to look for those with whom we have some affinity and can identify with. Yet even the most pure and chaste, such as Therese of Lisieux knows and understands the suffering of souls, her sensitivity for the weakest amongst us surely makes her one of the greatest helps and models for survivors of all kinds of abuse, sexual disorders and addictions, and so on. Of course, it is the Heart of Jesus who understands the suffering, wounded soul the best - he alone knows the most hidden recesses of our hearts and descends into depths of our misery to redeem us in his Blood.
.
I think in our day and going forward, we will get to know of candidates for sainthood whose intimate lives are very well known. I'm sure we will be hearing of saints who were raped and died, or those who survived to become saints, as well as survivors of abuse. And undoubtedly, there will be saints who had been former sex workers, as well as former active homosexuals, who repented and abandon those lifestyles. Perhaps some of these will even be martyrs.
Links to my other posts on the subject:
Photo: Pier Vittorio Tondelli.
The controversial Italian homosexual writer, who died in 1991 due to complications of AIDS, had been reconciled with the Church before he finally succumbed to the disease. He died a Catholic. I mention Tondelli today, as a sort of patron saint for those who struggle with the issues of homosexuality and Catholic teaching.
Posts
