Thursday, August 10, 2017

RESOLVING THE CATHOLIC SEXUAL ETHICS MESS

As  the  number  of  Catholics  in  the  pews  at  Mass  in  Catholic  churches  dwindles  Sunday  after  Sunday,  church  finances  grow  ever  more  desperate  --  despite  the  sale  of  one  Catholic  parish  after  another.   

Our  parish,  St.  Gregory's  Parish  in  Magnolia,  Camden  County,  New  Jersey,  no  longer  exists.  At  the  busy  intersection  of  White  Horse  Pike  and  Evesham  Road,  it  had  a  big,  big  parking  lot.  Its  finances  were  solid,  in  large  part  because  of  the  parking  lot  --  although  there  were  fewer  large  families  and  fewer  young  adults  married  or  unmarried  in  the  nave  every  Sunday,  Mass  attendance,  generally,  remained  strong.

Nonetheless,  as  a  parishioner  and  as  a  member  of  church  council,  I  could  read  the  writing  on  the  wall  --  the  Catholic  Church  was  clearly  in  trouble,  as  the  Diocese  "consolidated"  Catholic  parish  after  Catholic  parish,  and  confronted  the  declining  number  of  pastors  with  the  need  to  sell  Catholic  Church  properties  in  their  parishes  for  lack  of  manpower  or  users.

On  one  Sunday  at  Mass  at  St.  Gregory's,  I  noticed  something  odd  about  the  Church:  A  crack  ran  though  a  beam  comprising  a  rafter  in  the  ceiling,  into  the  adjacent  ceiling,  down  the  wall,  and  into  the  basement.  I  went  and  got  Monsignor  Korda,  and  pointed the anomaly out  to  him.   Monsignor  called  a  private  inspection  service,  who  agreed  that  the  ceiling  and  adjacent  wall  and  floor  were  in  danger  of  collapse  due  to  an  insufficient  foundation.

He  said  to  me,  "Peter,  I  have  to  spend  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars  to  fix  this  defect  you  discovered."  I  said,  "Father,  why  do  that?  The  Diocese  is  shortly  going  to  close  this  parish  anyway."

"Ah,  Peter,"  he  responded,  "The  Diocese  would  never  close  this  parish.  We're  one  of  the  few  parishes  'in  the  black.'  Our  location  and  parking  lot  are  a  big  draw  for  Mass."

I  answered,  "Monsignor,  that  is  why  they'll  close  down  St.  Gregory's.  If  they  sell  it,  it  will  generate  cash  proceeds.  It  will  sell  for  a  good  price  because  it's  an  excellent  commercial  location,  with  no  mortgage  to  pay  off.  The  Diocese  needs  the  money  because  of  declining  overall  finances  generated  by  Catholics  alienated  by  Humanae  Vitae,  the  priest  sex  cases,  and  growing  Catholic  materialism  due  mostly  to  modern  communications.  Haven't  you  noticed  the  pattern  in  the  sale  of  Church  properties?  They're  selling  the  good  stuff,  and  keeping  the  heavily  mortgaged  properties  with  bad  parking  lots."

Lo  and  behold,  after  Msgr.  Korda's  retirement  and  replacement,  St.  Gregory's  Parish  was  ridiculously  merged  into  Mary  Mother  of  the  Church  Parish  in  Bellmawr,  over  4  miles  distant.   Alarmed  parishioners  asked  me  to  try  to  verify  that  St.  Gregory's  would  not  be  closed  and  sold.   I  secured  from  the  Bishop's  Office  a  letter  personally  signed  by  the  bishop  promising  that  there  were  "no  plans  to  sell  St.  Gregory's."  Today,  St.  Gregory's  is  demolished  and  is  being  replaced  by  a  commercial  gas-station-and-convenience-store  combination.  So,  "No  plans"  functionally  meant,  "No  plans  today,  but,  hey,  tomorrow,  who  knows? ..."  A  lie  in  writing  by  a  bishop?

No  matter  what,  the  prevailing  role  of  dissonance in  the  Catholic  Church  over  sexual  issues  in  its  slow  decline  is  so  important  to  analyze,  to  understand  all  of  this.   

BIRTH  CONTROL.  About  20  years  ago,  a  federally  financed  study  verified  that  about  72.4%  of  church-going  Catholics  made  regular  use  of  artificial  birth  control  in  their  sexual  relationships;  among  all  Catholics,  the  numbers  approximated  95%.  The  one  son  who  will  discuss  the  issue  with  me  says,  "Dad,  in  my  generation,  the  number  is  100%."  He's  wrong,  but  his  attitude  is  telling.  It's  close  to  100%.

Now,  think  about  that.   Between  72%  and  100%  of  those  regularly  attending  Mass  when  the  Church  passes  the  hat  at  Sunday  Mass  regularly  disobey  infallible  Humanae  Vitae in  and  outside  marriage.

The  priests  saying  Mass  know  this.  Have  you  ever  seen  a  priest  decline  to  give  communion  to  a  parishioner  he  knows  to  be  a  regular  and  persistent  violator  of  Humanae  Vitae?  I  tripped  into  this  question  in  this  form ...

Years  ago,  in  the  early  1980s,  I  went  to  Saturday  confessions  at  St.  Gregory's  for  the  first  time.  Father  Robert  Cairone  --  a  gentle,  forgiving  soul  --  was  the  priest  in  the  north  side  confessional.   The  pastor,  Monsignor  Edward  Korda,  was  the  priest  in  the  south  side  confessional.   Fr.  Cairone's  confessional  had  no  line.   Msgr.  Korda's  confessional  had  about  10  penitents  in  waiting.   I  said  to  a  neighbor  at  the  end  of  Msgr.  Korda's  line,  "What  gives?   Why  does  everyone  seem  to  be  avoiding  Fr.  Cairone  for  confession?"

My  neighbor  smiled.  "This  is  the  birth  control  line.  In  Msgr.  Korda's  line,   we  can  come  in  week  after  week  and  confess  to  use  of  birth  control  in  our  marriages.  If  Fr.  Cairone  catches  us  doing  that,  he  finds  that  there  is  no  true  repentance  and  declares  the  sin  'retained.'"

I  thought  about  that,  and  said,  "Everyone  who  does  that  on  this  side  is  making  an  invalid  confession.  Fr.  Cairone  is  correct.  Msgr.  Korda  is  probably  abusing  the  sacrament."  I switched  sides  and  went  to  Fr.  Cairone  for  confession.

I  bumped  into  the  issue  a  second  time,  with  Msgr.  Korda.  I  once  commented  to  him  that  in  my  Bible  study  program,  we  had  discussed  one  of  the  New  Testament  verses  on  oral  contraceptives.

"Peter,"  said  Msgr.  Korda,  "There's  no  such  Bible  verses!"

"Humanae  Vitae  doesn't  cite  them,  Msgr.,  but  there  are  actually  four  of  them."  I  ran  through  the  list,  and  showed  him  the  corroborating  proof -- an  Early  Church  catechism  called  the  Didache,  and   an  early  Epistle,  respected  but  not  included  in  the  Scriptural  canon  --  the  following  day.

I  bumped  into  the  issue  a  third  time  as  follows.  One  Saturday,  Mgsr.  Korda  called  me  and  asked  me  to  discuss  something  with  him  at  the  rectory.   I  went  over  immediately  and  he  had  me  read  an  express  written  order  from  the  bishop  to  all  priests  in  the  Diocese  to  dedicate  the  following  Sunday's  homily  to  the  moral  importance  of  obeying  Humanae  Vitae  vis-a-vis  use  of  artificial  birth  control     --  the  great  Contraception  Sunday  experiment  in  Camden  Diocese.

"The  faithful  are  going  to  hang  you  from  the  rafters,"  I  commented.

"That  was  my  reaction,"  he  answered.

Nonetheless,  all  three  priests  in  our  parish  obeyed  the  order.  In  the  Diocese's  dozens  of  other  parishes,  about  one-third  of  the  priests  simply  disobeyed  the  order  (according  to  an  insider  I  shall  not  identify).  Masses  where  the  order  was  obeyed  generated  hundreds  of  walk-outs  and  thousands  of  letters  of  protest  to  the  bishop  (according  to  the  same  source).

The  experiment  was  never  repeated.

And  our  priests  regularly  give  communion  to  contributing  church-going  Catholics  even  if  it  is  clear  that  they  are  disobeying  Humanae  Vitae  --  where  are  the  kids  beside  them  in  the  pews?  --  while  the  number  of  church-going  parents  with  multiple  kids  next  to  them  in  the  pews  at  Mass  on  Sunday  is  embarrassingly  rare.

Functionally,  most  of  the  Faithful  are  knowingly  living  in  a  state  of  rebellion  against  the  Church,  week-in  and  week-out.

SEX  ABUSE  OF  KIDS  AND  YOUNG  ADULTS  BY  OUR  PRIESTS.  Even  my  comments  here  will  generate  controversy  in  an  uncontroversial  moral  realm...

It's  a  gay  problem.

An  unimpeachable  source  one  asked  me,  "Pete,  how  many  of  our  priests  are  gay,  do  you  think?"

"A  third,"  I  opined.

"That's  my  guess,"  he  responded.  "How  do  you  feel  about  gays  as  priests?"

"My  answer's  complex,"  I  said.  "I  believe  the  articles  claiming  that  gays  have  trouble  keeping  their  pants  on.  One  was  an  article  by  a  psych  explaining that  males  are  grazers  and  women  are  nesters,  and  that  gay  men  retain  their  grazer  characteristic,  and  lesbians  remain  nesters,  and  that  male  gay  relationships  involving  two  grazers  are  almost  never  genuinely  committed,  marriage  or  no;    and  that  the  reason  why  police  hate  lesbian  domestics,  involving  two  nesters,  is  that  the  couples  drive  each  other  crazy  with  mutual  emotional  smothering  generating  explosive  battles  with  no  insight.  Another  article  was  by  a  Catholic  priest  who  said,  'I  sought  celibate  relationships  with  fellow  gays  in  the  priesthood.  All  the  other  guys  ever  wanted  was  sex.  It  was  hopeless.'  If  the  Church  discovers  that  a  priest  is  gay  but  keeping  his  pants  on,  God  bless  him.  I  would  like  that  gay  man  as  my  pastor.  If  a  priest  clearly  isn't  keeping  his  pants  on,  he's  gotta  go,  period.    If  the  Church  wants  to  bar  gays  from  the  priesthood  as  a  matter  of  policy  because  gay  men  are  innately  promiscuous,  then  God  bless  the  Church.

"I  also  read  an  article  by  a  gay  guy  arguing,  'Let's  face  it  --  gay  guys  like  prime  beef,  the  younger  the  better.'  Thus,  the  priest  sex  abuse  cases  involve  young  male  victims  in  five-sixths  of  the  cases,  without  question.  The  priest  sex  cases  are  really  a  gay  problem.  It  exists  because  so  many  priests  are  gay.  Why  do  we  have  so  many  gay  priests?  I  believe  that  it  is  because  'having  a  vocation'  comprises  a  good  way  to  'stay  in  the  closet.'"

Most  church-going  Catholics  are  not  Catholics  because  of  their  love  of  Catholic  doctrine.  Most  are  Catholics  because  of  inculcated  habit.

But  the  habit  shrivels  and  dies  easily  when  non-Catholic  neighbors  comment  to  them,  "Oh,  isn't  that  the  Church  of  Perverted  Priests?  Why  do  you  attend  it?"

HOMOSEXUAL  MARRIAGE.   In  essence,  God  makes  homosexuals,  to  the  extent  that  He  imposes  the  consequences  of  Original  Sin  on  humanity.  I  happen  to  ascribe  to  psychologist  Joseph  Nicolosi's  "super  male"  analysis  of  male  gays  --  a  gay  male  is  born  straight,  but  direly  needful  of  an  affectionate  father  figure  to  "tool  around  after"  in  his  infant  years.  If  there  is  such  a  male  in  his  life,  he  "imprints  "male"  at  or  around  the  age  of  4.   Lacking  a  father  figure,  because  father  is  rarely  at  home  or  sadly  unavailable  to  his  young  son,  emotionally,  the  son,  in  or  around  his  fourth  year,  substitutes-in  the  next  best  source  of  information  on  the  subject  of  gender  characteristics,  mom.  In  a  study  that  supposedly  met  with  great  success,  Nicolosi  identified  "super  male  infants,"  and  instructed  cooperating  parents  to  make  sure  that  dad  was  physically  and  emotionally  a  strong  presence  in  the  boy's  life,  with  the  consequence  that  homosexuality  did  not  emerge  among  the  maturing  infant  test  population.

Now,  if  Nicolosi  is  correct,  the  mainspring  of  the  problem  is  the  rather-well-hidden  emergence  of  the  super-male  component  among  our  infant  males  created  by  God.  And  if  Nicolosi  isn't  correct,  and  gays  will  simply  be  gays,  the  dysfunction  is  really  God's  fault  in  that  case  also.  Those  who  argue  that  gays  are  misbehaving  straights  are  all  wet.

That  doesn't  morally  justify  gay  behavior.  But  then  my  proclivity  to  engage  in  straight  sex  doesn't  justify  non-marital  fornication  or  adultery.

But  if  the  homosexual  dysfunction  is  such  that  gay  men  are  innately  promiscuous,  then  I  can  see  how God  conceivably  can  be  more  forgiving  of  gay  fornicating,  in  or  out  of  the  sham  of  gay  marriage,  than  He  is  of  heterosexual  fornication.  I.e.,  the  moral  rules  are  there  for  both,  but  God  is  less  forgiving  of  heterosexuals  because  their  relationships  lack  that  innate  promiscuity!

Legally,  the  homosexual  marriage  Supreme  Court  case  is  improper.  The  Court  relied  on  the  Fifth  and  Fourteenth  Amendment  substantive  due  process  rule  and  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  Equal  Protection  Clause  to  support  gay  marriage  in  the  Obergefell  decision.  But  --  think  --  how  possible  is  it  that  such  was  within  the  intent  of  the  Amendments'  framers?  Wouldn't  the  Framers  have  declined  to  pass  the  5th  Amendment,  or  declined  to  pass  the  14th Amendment  and  to  rejoin  the  Union,  had  they  been  told,  "You  know,  because  of  these  amendments,  our  federal  courts  can  order  troops  into  your  states  to  force  judges  to  marry  men  to  men  and  women  to  women"?

Nonetheless,  suppose  a  modern  amendment  to  the  Constitution  is  ratified  to  require  gay  marriage  where  desired.  How  should  Catholics  respond?

To  be  non-hypocritical,  Catholics  must  respond,  "Heterosexual  and  homosexual  masturbation,  birth  control,  fornication,  and  adultery,  including  fornication  between  gays  under  cover  of  marriage,  are  all  sinful,  and  must  be  punished  criminally  to  an  equal  extent."

In  other  words,  are  "heteroes"  entitled  to  a  "free  ride,"  sexually  at  the  same  time  God  punishes  gays?   No.  If  you  are  hetero  and  expect  a  free  ride  every  time  you  slip  on  a  rubber,  then  if  gays  want  to  "play  marriage,"  or  if  society  wants  to  experiment  with  the  marriage  concept,  then  God  bless!

Because  adults  having  sex  with  kids  is  not  morally  justifiable  under  any  analysis,  then  gays  "doing  it"  with  the  young  must  always  be  severely  punished.

Most  will  be  thoroughly  dissatisfied  with  how  I  handle  Catholic  sexual  ethics  in  this  article:
(a)  Humanae  Vitae  is  right  --  Scripture  says  so  4  times!;  (b)  Catholic  priests  hiding  their  homosexuality  under  the  disguise  of  having  a  vocation,  caught  "doing  it"  to  young  male  victims,  should  be  very  severely  punished!  The  Church  must  cooperate  with  the  prosecution.  Catholic  bishops  caught  abetting  the  gay  offenders  should  be  very  severely  punished!  The  Church  must  cooperate  with  the  prosecution;  (c)  the  Supreme  Court  decision  in  favor  of  gay  marriage  is  illegal;
(d)  however,  Catholics  enjoying  freedom  from  criminal  prosecution  of  their  sex  sins  owe  a  hearty  "welcome"  to  their  gay  neighbors  engaging  in  sex  under  cover  of  gay  marriage,  sham  or  not.  Christ  hates  hypocrites  most  of  all.

None  of  this  will  staunch  the  chronic  bleeding  of  contributing  parishioners  so  badly  needed  to  support  the  Church  in  our  current  age.   However,  I  believe  that  we  have  entered  the  time  of  the  2  Thessalonians  2  "apostasy"  --  the  so-called  Great  Falling  Away.  So,  don't  fret  as  things  fall  apart.  Just  be  faithful.










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