Islam, Protestantism, Homosexuality, and Catholicism Part III

Islam, Protestantism, and Homosexuality are Heresies.

Part III

Homosexuality a heresy?

That may seem odd, as Protestantism is certainly a heresy (maybe not to them), but Islam is a separate religion (definitely to Muslims) and Homosexuality is something different again – and whatever it might be, a heresy it would not be it.

But it is. Read this from Rod Dreher's column of July 25, 2018, here. A pull quote from "James", who was a child abuse victim of the evil yes, evil, Theodore McCarrick: "They believe that they are more important than the religion itself,” James says. “They believe that man is better than God. That’s not possible. McCarrick believed that he was my direct contact with God. He told me that hundreds and hundreds of times: God will only listen to you when you are with me.”

Clearly, the evil McCarrick had left the True Faith years ago, decades ago (and maybe never had it), and had been living a lie, a lost soul in a made-up religion (if he were not a total atheist). 

So, if Corporate Homosexuality isn't a heresy in itself, it certainly fosters unbelief and lies and, yes, heresy in others.

Yet, in actuality, all three are Christian heresies, and they're heresies about the Incarnation. Most Protestants would say, and probably now most Catholics, following as they do since Vatican II the Protestant lead, that Christ's death on the Cross is the main point of Christianity: "Jesus died for your sins!" But the real point – the essential idea – of Christianity is the Incarnation: that God became a human being in the first place. (The Crucifixion is a part of that, rather than the Incarnation being a part of the Crucifixion.) Therein lies a tale, alright. God became a human being to alter and uplift our nature, to change us into New Creations in Christ.

·   This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Examples:

·   John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation)

·   2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

·   Two Old Testament examples: Isaiah 65:17; Ezekiel 36:25-26

The Greeks call this theosis. Here are two great saints on it, one Eastern and one Western:

·   St. Athanasius: "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

·   St. Thomas Aquinas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

Protestantism formally disagrees with the Historical Church's* teaching on all this, the why of the necessity of the Incarnation, and Islam denies the Incarnation took place at all (because there are is only one "Person" in God, Allah, and "Allah's hand is not chained", i.e., He is required to do nothing, including save us. Whether we end up in Hell or the Garden of Allah is immaterial to Him, and he makes no promises, no covenants, because that would "chain His hand." (The most ardent Mujahideen Jihadi, no matter how many infidels he murders, has no guaranteed promised of anything in the Afterlife; certainly no virgins, all because Allah's hand is not chained; i.e. Allah makes no covenants. Sura 5.64)

Meanwhile, Homosexuality is a heresy in part because it denies Divine Revelation. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is, just as is Jesus in the New Testament, extremely concerned with our moral behavior. We simply MUST be moral, and give it our absolute best try -- there's no middle ground. "Be perfect," Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) 

This ability to be righteous, to be "perfect" is denied by Protestants, from Luther on. They insist we are saved judicially, by Divine Fiat, but that our nature is not changed: Simul Justus et Peccator, as Luther phrased it: Simultaneously (both) justified and a sinner. We go to Heaven, as Luther put it, as manure piles covered with snow. Our nature is fallen, and putrid, but if we make an act of faith, God will declare us saved by virtue of His Son's sacrifice, and allow us into Heaven – even though spiritually, we're a stinking, rotten putrescence. We're declared righteous, but we're NOT righteous, no "new creation" in Christ.

All Catholics and all Protestants need to understand this cyclopean gulf between to two versions of Christianity.

Thus Luther famously wrote his assistant Philipp Melanchthon that he, Luther, could sin many times a day and it not affect his salvation and that Melanchthon should sin greatly, engage in big sins, for "Christ did not die for small sins."

But as Deuteronomy, in the Offer of Life or Death, puts it: 

11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14) 

This implies the Holy Spirit enables one to keep the Law, the very breath, the Word, in one's mouth.

To prove this, the "Righteous" are found throughout Holy Writ. For example, from Luke 1:5-6

⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. ⁶ Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 

How did they manage that? No one is supposed to be righteous. Did not St. Paul say in Romans 3, and did not Luther start the Reformation on this, that no one is worthy? Not one? 

In Romans 3, St Paul had written, beginning with verse 10:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11     there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one."


This begins St. Paul's quoting of six citations from the Old Testament, all of them from Psalms (except one from Isaiah: Romans 3:15-17 is from Is 59:7-8) The sequence opens with verses from Psalm 14 (Romans 3:19-12), then lines from Psalms 5, 140, 10 and 36. Let's look at Psalm 14 in its entirety. 
Psalm 14

Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”

    They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;

    there is no one who does good.

2 The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind

    to see if there are any who are wise,

    who seek after God.

3 They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse;

    there is no one who does good,

    no, not one.

4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers

    who eat up my people as they eat bread,

    and do not call upon the Lord?

5 There they shall be in great terror,

    for God is with the company of the righteous.

6 You would confound the plans of the poor,

    but the Lord is their refuge.

7 O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!

    When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,

    Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

Psalm 14 goes along with clear denunciations of just about everyone, then suddenly, at verse 4, it begins to change. "My people" are mentioned, and then in 5, "God is with the company of the righteous."

Wait! Who the heck are these Righteous? No one is supposed to be righteous, right?

No, Luther got it wrong. All the Psalms quoted mention the Righteous, and compare/contrasts them with the wicked. (The Isaiah passages in that chapter don't have that, but the righteous are mentioned in nearby chapters.)

In other words, St Paul could not in any way have meant NO ONE, period, is righteous. When he quoted an OT verse, there were no chapter numbers or verses, and his audience was to immediately think of the section quoted, what the section overall was about. Psalm 14 is not long and was well-known, so clearly every Roman Christian reading Romans 3 – all of them trained in turn by Jewish Christians – would have understood what Paul was about. Luther, writing 1500 years later, was clueless.

So the Reformation was started by a German professor who didn't really understand his source material. Pretty pathetic, really.

But you see the importance of this related to Homosexuality, a thing Divine Revelation has always condemned, something directly contrary to God's intentions and also something that necessarily brings doom on those involved in it, as Romans 1 famously details. Today, wherein most male homosexuals have quite numerous intimate partners and are involved in drug and alcohol abuse – a doleful state homosexuals blame not on themselves, but on the large society not accepting them – and wherein most "Gay Marriages" are contracted without the partners intending to be monogamous. 

Men (most men, through a great part of their lives) have a tendency to be profligate, if possible. (Hence one aspect of the importance of Jesus' admonition about looking with lust.) Women, traditionally, wholly reject that because they need steady, permanent males to help protect them and their (and his) children. A tremendous amount of traditional Christian culture involves trying to encourage men to be Men, to fulfill their masculine duties to their females and children. 

Unless its adherents adopt, Homosexuality by its nature cannot give them any of this. It is one of the reasons Homosexuality tends to be unstable in relationships, and often violent. (Lesbians may have long-term relationships, for which they are famous, but they are hyper-intense connections and often violent.) And of course if they do adopt, they automatically deprive the child they adopted of the right to have a father and a mother. 

Therefore, Homosexual Inc, Corporate Homosexuality, denies traditional Christian doctrine, for as St. Paul wrote in First Corinthians 6:9-20

9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Glorify God in Body and Spirit

12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,”[e] and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple[f] of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

That is about as far from the lifestyles of most Homosexuals today as one can get, and still be talking about the same species.

An Préachán
Notes
* By "Historical Church" I mean the Orthodoxies: the Western Orthodox, i.e., Catholicism, whether the "Latin Rite" or its many Eastern Liturgy Churches who recognize the Pope; the Eastern Orthodox "in-communion-with-each-other" Churches who barely speak to each other – and can't anyway even if they wanted to because they're all hopelessly divided by their various national languages; and the Oriental Orthodox, which consist of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Copts and Ethiopes. ("Oriental" means Eastern, of course, but these are the original "Eastern" Churches, as what we in the West call "Eastern Orthodox" are breakaways from the Universal ("Catholic") Church. All of these Churches have Apostolic Succession and the Seven Sacramental System.