Something from Fr. Hardon: Is sodomy a sign of the Church’s “self-destruction”?

From Pope Paul VI.

Yes, as Pope Paul VI declared in one of his most outspoken denunciations of homosexuality. In context, he is speaking of the immoral practices among professed Catholics who are defending homosexuality:

“The Church finds herself in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one might even say of self-destruction. It is like an acute and complex interior upheaval, which no one expected after the Council. One thought of a blossoming, a serene expansion of the mature concepts of the Council. The Church still has this aspect of blossoming. But since “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,” the aspect of sorrow has become most notable. The Church is also being wounded by those who are part of her.” (Allocution to the students of the Lombard Seminary, Dec. 7, 1968)

How did Pope John Paul II describe this self-destruction in our day?

He spoke to the religious and priests participating in the First Italian National Congress on Missions to the People:

“One must be realistic and acknowledge with a deep and pained sentiment that a great part of today’s Christians feel lost, confused, perplexed, and even disillusioned: ideas contradicting the revealed and unchanging Truth have been spread far and wide; outright heresies in the dogmatic and moral fields have been disseminated, creating doubt, confusion, and rebellion; even the liturgy has been altered. Immersed in intellectual and moral “relativism” and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism, a vaguely moralistic illuminism, a sociological Christianity, without defined dogmas and without objective morality.” (L’Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981).

How do professed Catholics further promote the practice of homosexuality?

They do so by receiving support from priests, even bishops, and from religious men and women.

What is at the heart of the strategy of the promoters of homosexuality among Catholics?

In one word, the heart of this strategy is gradualism. It is assumed that homosexuality will not soon be approved by all Catholics, and still less soon by Catholic Church authority. The following quotation is lengthy, but it deserves to be quoted in full. Publicly stated by the chairman of the Department of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of Louvain, it clearly expresses the gradualist strategy for the Church’s acceptance of sodomy.

“Is the teaching going to continue to evolve? With respect to the homosexual relationship, will it evolve toward encompassing it? Yes, it will! We have already taken the first step. Begrudgingly as we might like to admit, even the teaching of the Church has recognized the homosexual person, the homosexual orientation. It may be very uncomfortable with its own statements, but it’s there! The homosexual person is a person and no less of a person than anyone else. This is the first step.

The second step is the recognition of the homosexual relationship. I think we are virtually on the edge of accepting the homosexual relationship. The Church will accept the homosexual relationship, like those divorced and remarried: We must live as brother and sister or brother and brother and sister and sister as the case may be… [The audience laughs.] What is important is that the relationship be recognized as a valuable, fruitful, meaningful, affirmative, creative relationship. We are on the verge of accepting this.

The third step is: Can we accept the homosexual act? Before we can talk about the morality of the homosexual act, we have to define it, to understand exactly what it is…. Our whole understanding of human sexuality needs to be rewritten, but rewritten not from a “procreative or reproductive” point of view. It needs to be rewritten from a ‘relational’ point of view” (The Meanings of Human Sexuality, New Ways Ministry, Fourth National Symposium). - Fr. Hardon Archives on Homosexuality

Isn't that interesting?

Song for this post here.