Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister: pride, fulness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and to the poor. And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me: and I took them away as thou hast seen.
Ezechiel 16:49-50
This essay will treat two sources - sacred scripture and Papal instruction - to demonstrate that neutrality, indifference, and tacit approval of the sin against nature both disqualifies from the priesthood and damns souls.
As harsh as those words sound, they are integral to the Church's magisterial teaching and have been affirmed by many Doctors and Saints.
Father Thomas Gomulka concludes in this essay that situation in the hierarchy is grim:
The latest sexual study of “actively ministering or retired priests” in the U.S., undertaken in 2012, reported that 26.9% of the priests identified as heterosexuals; 67.3% self-identified as gay/homosexual; and 5.8% reported that they were bisexual. When I first read that study, I thought the percentage of straight priests was low at around 27 percent. However, after confidentially polling both straight and gay priests from various dioceses throughout the U.S., I discovered that those figures were not only correct, but that the percentage of straight priests is even lower today. Based on recent estimates provided by priests themselves, I estimate that the percentage of heterosexually oriented American-born priests today varies in most dioceses between 5 and 20 percent.
In 2005 Pope Benedict XVI issued this instruction due to the crisis that festered unabated under his predecessor John Paul II:
…this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question[9], cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture."Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders
This instruction clearly identifies three categories of candidates unfit for priestly formation and for the sacrament of holy orders: (1) active homosexuals; (2) those with deep-seated tendencies; and (3) those who support the homosexual lifestyle. One wonders why the editors of the instruction felt the need to express "profound" respect for those intending to corrupt the divine institution of sacerdotal ministry, but we'll leave off from that point for now.
This blog has treated the subject that abstinence from sodomitical acts is not chastity; this is a myth currently dominating the thinking of most practicing Catholics who simply accept that men unqualified, unfit, and without supernatural faith are assigned as their pastors and priests.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor teaches
1. A man who receives the sacrament of orders is set to lead others. Therefore, he should be a man of holy and exemplary life. Yet this is a requirement of precept and of propriety; it is not of the essence of the sacrament. Even a sinful man who receives orders is validly ordained, although he does great wrong in accepting ordination.
2. A candidate for orders should have knowledge adequate for the proper discharge of his sacred duties. He must have a sufficiency of knowledge of the scriptures, and know the doctrines of the faith, and the requirements of Christian morality.
3. The personal holiness of an ordained man has nothing to do with the sacrament itself; an ordained man does not advance in degree of orders as he advances in personal holiness.
4. A prelate who knowingly ordains a candidate wholly unworthy of the office he assumed, commits a grave sin, and shows himself an unworthy servant of the Lord.
5. A man in orders who, apart from necessity, exercises his office while he is in the state of mortal sin, is guilty of another grievous sin every time he performs a sacred function.
Summa Supplement IIIa, 36
In another place, St. Thomas explains
“However, they are called passions of ignominy because they are not worthy of being named, according to that passage in Ephesians (5:12): ‘For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of.’ For if the sins of the flesh are commonly censurable because they lead man to that which is bestial in him, much more so is the sin against nature, by which man debases himself lower than even his animal nature.”
Super Epistulas Sancti Pauli Ad Romanum I, 26, pp. 27f
St. Pius V ruled that
"... If someone commits that nefarious crime against nature that caused divine wrath to be unleashed against the children of iniquity, he will be given over to the secular arm for punishment [of death]; and if he is a cleric, he will be subject to the same punishment after having been stripped of all his degrees [of ecclesiastical dignity].”
- St. Pius V, Constitution Cum primum, April 1, 1566, in Bullarium Romanum (Rome: Typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, Mainardi, 1738), vol. 4, chap. 2, p. 284, apud Atila S. Guimaraes, Vatican II, Homosexuality and Pedophilia, TIA, 2004, pp. 19-20
Pope John Paul II decriminalized clerical sodomy in his 1983 reform of the code of canon law.
In conclusion we see that even the moral acceptance and rhetorical support for homosexuality disqualifies one from seminary formation and holy orders. St. Thomas charges such persons with "debas[ing] [one]self lower than even his animal nature.” He adds that aside from emergency, such a one "is guilty of another grievous sin every time he performs a sacred function."
Saint Paul provides the description of the devolution of human vice into reprobation in Romans 1, 21-32:
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
The last phrase of this passage is clear: those who approve of these depraved acts deserve death.
The crisis in the Church today is very much attributable to a hierarch utterly corrupted by men in a state of intransigent mortal sin bereft of supernatural faith. When one takes into consideration the percentage of unfit men in the priesthood along with those who fear to speak up and speak out about it, the amount of actual faithful priests may be shockingly few.
Pope Francis openly defied the 2005 instruction when shortly before his death he encouraged a man rejected from seminary formation in Italy to proceed for priestly formation. Brazen acts like this desecrate divine doctrine and ravage the Church's reputation.
No renewal is possible for the Catholic Church under these putrefying circumstances. At some point all these unfit men must be purged from the hierarchy, even if that means leaving just a fragment of a percentage of faithful priests behind. It will be addition by subtraction. These men - men of depraved minds and incapable of possessing supernatural faith - can do nothing but gravely harm the Church Militant.
May God grant us mercy in raising up a Supreme Pontiff like Pius V who will purge the ranks of the hierarchy with deliberate, forceful action.
According to [St. Peter] Damian [Doctor of the Church], the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because:
"Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things ...
This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons. This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God. She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be pierced by the spears of every vice ... She humiliates her slave in the church and condemns him in court; she defiles him in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm and consumes his flesh like fire. ... this unfortunate man (he) is deprived of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind's vision is darkened. Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment