Most Holy Trinity Seminary Newsletter - April 2014
My dear Catholic people,
I said in my last newsletter that there were other topics to address. One of them is this ever-growing ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ revolution in the Novus Ordo.
Cardinal Dolan’s “Bravo.” Some time back you will recall that a noted athlete made the announcement that he was “gαy.”1 When publicly questioned about this, Novus Ordo Cardinal Dolan said, “Bravo.” Dolan’s full statement is the following: “I would have no sense of judgment on him. God bless ya. I don’t think, look, the same Bible that tells us, that teaches us well about the virtues of chastity and the virtue of fidelity and marriage also tells us not to judge people. So I would say, ‘Bravo.’”
The attraction and the sin. In speaking about homosɛҳuąƖity, one must distinguish between the attraction and the sin.
The attraction is an appetite in someone for perverse sɛҳuąƖ acts, i.e., sɛҳuąƖ acts with persons of the same sex. This attraction can be acquired through a bad habit caused by repeated sins against nature. This is certainly the case in what is known as environmental ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, that is, the inclination to perverse acts in persons who never see members of the opposite sex.
It often occurs in prisons and sometimes occurs in the military. It means, essentially, that due to desperation to find an outlet for sɛҳuąƖ passion, these people turn to persons of their own sex for pleasure, even though they would not do so in a different and normal environment.
This kind of activity and appetite was common among the Greeks and Romans, who regarded sodomy as merely one more way in which to obtain pleasure. The ancient peoples were debauched beyond all imagination.
The attraction to perverse sɛҳuąƖ acts, however, can be found in people for other and as yet mysterious reasons. Some people arrive in their teenage years and discover an attraction to the wrong sex. Many causes have been suggested: (1) broken homes; (2) soft living; (3) domineering mothers coupled with passive and cowering fathers;(4) a feminization of boys through excessive protection by mothers, or a masculinization of girls through excessively aggressive training by the mother or the father. Others say that the cause is genetic, which is not impossible. Repeated sins of ancestors may cause a propensity toward a certain sin in the children. Indeed, an appetite for evil is what we have all inherited from Adam and Eve.
Whatever be the cause of this appetite, it must be established that the appetite in itself is not a sin. Sin is in the will, and if someone never acts in accordance with an evil appetite, he never commits sin.
The appetite for the same sex is, however, an intrinsic disorder. For male and female are clearly meant for each other as complements. Male and male do not go together, nor female and female. This principle is everywhere in nature. It exists even in man-made objects: nuts and bolts, plumbing fixtures, electrical couplings, even in hooking up audio equipment. It is also obvious in the very structure of reproductive organs in all humans, animals, and even plants that the distinction of male and female is ordered essentially toward reproduction.
If the athlete, therefore, was announcing that he is only attracted to sodomy, but does not in fact sin by sodomy, he is announcing that he has a terrible affliction. This appetite is terrible because it inclines someone to moral perversion and eternal death. Sins of impurity which are contrary to nature are much worse than those which are in accordance with it, since they involve a special malice of the refusal of God’s order. There is a rebellion against God in them; a revolt against what is right, natural, and reasonable. On the other hand, sins in accordance with nature involve merely weakness, and are less grave.
To announce that one has this affliction, whatever be its cause, would be analogical to announcing that one had hemophilia, polio, or alcoholism in the physical order, or paranoid schizophrenia, kleptomania, or a suicidal tendency in the psychiatric order, or an appetite to commit arson or sarcophagy2 in the order of criminality. Shall we say “bravo” to those who are attracted to dead bodies (necrophilia) or to animals (bestiality)? These are all disorders of one type or other.
Cardinal Dolan’s bravo in this case is sick, sinful, and even cruel. What person in his right mind would congratulate someone who announced that he had an intrinsic sɛҳuąƖ disorder that inclined him to eternal death?
If the athlete, on the other hand, is announcing not merely an inclination to perversion, but as well the practice of perverted acts — which is usually the case in these announcements — then Cardinal Dolan’s bravo is nothing short of the approval of sins of perversion.
Furthermore, Cardinal Dolan’s citing of the gospel text that we should not judge is a gross misinterpretation of Our Lord’s words. All commentaries apply His words to rash judgement, that is, the condemnation of someone, either in thought or word, without sufficient evidence. If we take it to mean that we can never judge someone’s activity as sinful, then it makes the gospel absurd. It would mean that people sitting on juries should not judge criminals. It would mean that it would be wrong to incarcerate people, since “we should not judge.” Shall we refrain from judging Hitler’s activity or Stalin’s, saying “who am I to judge?”
Putting a new face on an old perversion. There is a very strong movement to exempt the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ tendency from the realm of disorder. The reason is multiple. The first is the modern intellectual disease of subjectivism, in which nature and essence are denied, as if nothing has an objective nature which demands, in turn, activity in accordance with nature. The modern mind is poisoned with the idea that reality is what you make it, that the mind is the source of reality, and that it has no objective, unchanging order to which it must submit. Consequently, there is no natural law. The second reason is hedonism, which holds that whatever is pleasurable is necessarily good, regardless of the acts necessary, whether good or bad, which one uses in order to obtain the pleasure. Man exists for pleasure, according to the hedonist. He has a short life to live before he ceases to exist. There is no afterlife for the hedonist. Consequently the hedonist says that it would be immoral to deny to the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖs the pleasure which they obtain from sodomitic acts, since man’s ultimate purpose in life is to obtain pleasure. The third reason is pluralism, by which all systems of thought, no matter how contradictory they should be, can have a value for those who sincerely adhere to these systems. This is the entire basis for ecuмenism. It is “truth without teeth,” that is, truth which does not exclude its contradictory opposite, namely falsehood. It would be something like light which does not exclude darkness. Imagine how insane you would have to be to say, while standing in the noonday sun, that you were also standing in a total absence of light. Yet it is this insanity which rules the world, and makes it so sick, and makes it so depressing to live in.
Vatican II embraced pluralism as its fundamental principle, its fundamental conformity to the modern world. It abandoned the very notion of objective truth and enshrined human conscience as the ultimate source of truth and reality. In so doing it poisoned everything in the Catholic Church: (1) sacred and changeless doctrines both dogmatic and moral; (2) the sacred liturgy (3) holy laws and disciplines, and (4) piety which flowed directly from the unchanging doctrine. In the same manner that the eye is attracted to light, so the human mind is naturally attracted to definition and form, like that of a simple triangle, and is repulsed by fuzziness, obscurity, and formlessness. The beauty of the Catholic Church, and the reason for its endless success in drawing souls to itself, is that it is the changeless bulwark of changeless doctrines. In being this, it is a very picture of God and the heavenly court itself. This it always was despite any of the sins of its popes, bishops, or priests. It never lost this supernatural luster, and always attracted to itself souls interested in the truth. Because of the constancy and perpetuity of this light, like that of the sun itself, the Church always had a never-fading ability to renew itself and find new vigor, despite the most appalling setbacks and the most devastating persecutions.
This everlasting and constant light can still be seen, but only in the little pockets of traditional Catholics around the world. They refuse the pluralism of Vatican II. It is for this reason that they have the ability to attract, for the human mind loves consistency, clarity, lucidity and continuity, and demands that these qualities be present in religious truths, since they are unchanging dogmas which describe an unchanging God.
The bulk of once Catholic institutions, however, have been gassed by the pluralism of Vatican II, and are populated by persons who think in terms that are undefined, confused, vague, nebulous, and unintelligible.
The real reason for Dolan’s “bravo.” Dolan has enough Catholic training in his past to know that ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ acts are very serious mortal sins, and are intrinsically evil. But Dolan is running for pope. It is obvious to everyone. He has sensed that the new trend in the Vatican and among the bishops is to alter the pastoral practice of the Church in such a way as to deny traditional moral doctrines in the practical order, while at the same time changing nothing in the theoretical order. It is nothing less than to institutionalize hypocritical pharisaism. It is to say one thing, and to do another. Like whited sepulchers, they look respectable in their catechisms and official docuмents. In pastoral practice, they are filthy. Our Lord said to the Pharisees: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness.” (Matth. XXIII: 27)
The Novus Ordo has been practicing this hypocrisy for a long time, ever since Paul VI condemned the use of the birth control pill in 1968. 85% of Catholics today think that it is perfectly all right to take the pill, because they were told by their Novus Ordo clergy that it was all right. They could “use their conscience.”
This dichotomy between doctrine and practice, however, was in secret, since most people do not talk about their birth control habits. Now, however, this same pastoral hypocrisy is being applied to public sins: sins of adultery, and sins of sodomy.
The incident in Cordoba, Argentina. Recently in the cathedral of Cordoba in Argentina, a very elderly priest who once had the reputation of being extremely conservative, performed the baptism of a child who “belonged” to two “married” lesbians. So public was this act that the President of Argentina, a leftist and a socialist in favor of every perverse and wicked thing, decided that she wanted to be the “godmother” of this unfortunate child. And so she was.
All of this was with the smiling approval of Bergoglio. For although he said nothing, the fact that this public act, involving the head of State and in the cathedral itself, passed by with his silence, means that he approved of it. It is a general moral principle that silence must be taken as consent if a superior has the responsibility and opportunity to condemn the wrongdoing.
Catholic law and discipline require that the baptizing priest have a founded hope that the child will be raised in the Catholic Faith. Otherwise he cannot baptize. How can this hope be there when the child will be raised by two “married” perverts who glory in their perversion?
Holding hands with sodomites. On March 21st of this year, Bergoglio was seen holding hands with a Novus Ordo priest, a certain Luigi Ciotti who is a pro-ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activist and friend of the recently deceased Fr. Andrea Gallo, who was a public communist, Modernist, and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activist. He actually called for a ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ pope.
Why is Bergoglio holding hands with this pro-ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activist? Since when do men hold hands? Do not lovers hold hands? If you saw two men holding hands on the street, would you not consider them to be ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖs?
A major development for the Novus Ordo. The new “anything goes” approach to pastoral practice is a major step downward in the general decay which this new religion has brought upon us. It is a new threshold for the Novus Ordo, since it is nothing less than the public approval of unnatural sex acts. Nor can they hide behind the whited sepulchers of their catechisms and docuмents. People pay attention to action and not theory. Actions speak louder than words. Besides, who reads the windy and obtuse verbiage of those “papal” docuмents, in most cases impossible to understand?
This new — but inevitable — moral collapse of the Novus Ordo is frightening to behold, and one only wonders what the ultimate outcome will be.
In the meantime, the Novus Ordo conservatives still say that nothing has changed, and are still squinting to see clothes on their naked emperor, but this time their emperor is holding hands with another man.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Rev. Donald J. Sanborn
Rector
1 I put this word in quotation marks, since it was always a derogatory term for these people, but has now become the standard word for those who are inclined to the sin of Sodom, and this by their own choice.
2 The practice of eating human flesh
Topic: ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ revolution in the Novus Ordo (Read 814 times)