This is good ... something about sentimentality and the approval of ... you know.

The sentimental fool don't see ...

Some people question my responses to issues related to LGBTQ.  That's fine.  It can get frustrating because people on the right and left and in the middle seem not to trust anyone who doesn't condemn or endorse or say what they are supposed to say to those who want to hear what they think you should say.  Does that make sense?  Many ssa-gay people go through life conflicted about Catholic teaching in relation to social acceptance anyway.  Some make it through that labyrinth, some think they have made it through, only to be pulled back in.  That's life.

One very sane voice in the discussion is Dan Mattson - whose book I am still reading.  I found a post online where Dan discusses How Sentimentality Leads Young Catholics Astray - some of them at least - and their Catholic parents and friends too - but parents especially.  Citing sentimentality is also something I had written about Fr. James Martin's new book Building A Bridge - his point of view, or offering of pastoral care seems to me to be motivated by genuine charity, yet somewhat tainted by an inordinate affection more or less rooted in a sentimental concern for a person's material happiness and emotional well being, rather than the truth about authentic love and God's plan for mankind.  I have written that his book is not for me, it doesn't speak for me, and so on.  A woman online more or less called me a hypocrite for that.  I can't win for losing.  LOL!


What a fool believes ...

I'm not a moral theologian, but the acceptance of ss marriage and the approval of homosexual acts, which I am against, is a sentiment often expressed by parents or friends who say they just want their loved ones to be happy, not lonely, and so on.  Nothing wrong with that, but when it comes to the approval of homosexual acts and ss marriage, that's not love.  In our day, sexual freedom and choice - e.g. lust, is mistaken for love.  Anyway, this is what I meant when I wrote that the conversation Fr. Martin started with his book is based upon a sentimental concept of love.  As Cardinal Sarah has said, "we mistreat souls by depriving them of the true teaching of the doctrine regarding God, regarding man, and the fundamental values of human existence."

When lust is mistaken for love, it has very unhappy consequences, as Garrigou-Lagrange notes, "From lust proceeds: Spiritual blindness, poor judgment, impetuosity, inconstancy, love of self even to hatred of God, attachment to the present life which destroy hope of eternal life."

Dan Mattson expresses it more intelligibly than I can - but I expressed my thoughts above to try and explain myself - to at least one blogger who believes my critique of Fr. Jim Martin's book was a condemnation of him.  It's not.  Though I disagree with him, I still respect him and would go to him for sacramental care.  As I have said before, his POV is a sort of rehash of Fr. John McNeil's works, and as we know, falls in line with the erroneous opinions of Jean Gramick and New Ways Ministry and so on.  I feel bad about that.


What's so bad about sentimentality?

The problem here, I believe, derives from a failure in catechesis. 

In the fight for the right to life, emotional appeals have proven invaluable, yet appeals to emotion are insufficient guides to moral truth. Many attribute the increase in young people’s pro-life sentiments to advances in ultrasound technology that clearly reveal to the eyes of young people that the child in the womb is, in actuality, a child. 

Here, they see reality clearly, and many young Catholics embrace the pro-life movement because they rightly see abortion as snuffing out the life of an innocent baby. The same sentiments, however, guide many of them in their consideration of the Church’s teaching on same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption.

Many pro-life teenagers at my talks have questioned the Church’s teaching on same-sex adoption for the same reason they hold pro-life views: they believe it is cruel and mean to children when the Church is opposed to adopting children to same-sex couples.

Why would the Church deny children loving parents, and keep them in foster homes, when two men or two women desire to love them and provide a home for them? And why would the Church deny two people from sharing their lives together? 

They cannot imagine that the Church’s invitation to chastity for men and women with same-sex attraction is an invitation to a better quality of life than same-sex relationships.

Man is a curious creature: he can only imagine ever being happy in the way he’s ever imagined he could be happy. For most young people, happiness looks like some form of marriage, or family, and they have a hard time understanding the stories of men and women like me who found the promises of the “gay rights” movement to be empty mirages. - Mattson