Islam, Protestantism, Homosexuality, and the Catholic Church Part I

Islam, Protestantism, Homosexuality, and the Catholic Church
Individual Homosexuals vs Corporate Homosexuality

The Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Scandal,
The Conceits of a Narcissistic Age,
And Heresy, Past and Present
Part I

Preface

We live in a Narcissistic Age, wherein "everything is about you" and your needs, and no one can interfere with your pursuit of satisfying your needs. 

It is the Age of Relativism, wherein "what's good for me is good for me, whatever it might happen to be, so keep your old-fashioned morality to yourself" has showed itself to be a "Dictatorship", and Benedict XVI once said. It is the age of Moralism, the tedious preaching of "Social Justice Warriors" in a perpetual condemnation of traditional society. 

These are the conceits of the age, and they're wrong, stupidly so. What people do privately has tremendous affect of the larger society, and even on the civilization itself. The Emperor Augustus once called young aristocrats into his presence to upbraid them for not marrying and starting families. The Roman state needed them to do so, the emperor explained, or there wouldn't be anyone to run the Roman state. Their personal pursuit of deviant pleasures was creating dire consequences for everyone. 

The Priest Sex Abuse Scandal (now quickly morphing into the Bishops' Sex Abuse Scandal), is yet another example of a horde of hedonists (heathen hedonists, actually), working in a mafia-style network of lies so they can scratch their itches on young men and boys – in the hopeless process of trying satisfy their perverse desires. They betray everything they took vows for, and betray the laity they're consecrated to serve, and also, of course, they betray God. They "have other gods before God", breaking the First Commandment. They take God's Name in vain every time they celebrate Mass. They break every Commandment. And they're bringing down the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church into the gutter with them. 

This sex abuse scandal is the worst thing to happen to the Catholic Church in its long history. Currently, it is edging out Islam and Protestantism in that regard (see Introduction in Part II). 

This essay is the first in a series here reflecting on this situation, and it takes a Traditionalist view of the Church, Church teaching (esp. about Homosexuality). Having no desire to go to the trouble of reinventing the wheel, I shall take traditional morality as true. To me this is self-evident. For example, I know that Amsterdam, infamous for its lack of rules and morality, became a Mecca for crime and drugs; so the government handed out clean needles in an effort to reduce disease but merely increased addiction, and made the problem much worse – San Francisco's Leftist junta is finding out the same is true for them, too. As a social conservative, and a conservative in politics and human nature, I – and many other such – could have told the Dutch and the San Frans what would happen. Human nature, in other words, is immutable. 

Of course, people exist who think differently. Thus we get a "conservative vs liberal" bifurcated political world. And a bifurcated social world. And a cultural world. And a religious world, as well.  

Many don't like to apply the phrase "Left and Right" to religion. They're foolish. At bottom, the difference between "Left and Right" involves how human nature is understood, and then how that understanding is applied to everything. "Conservatives" are conservatives because they believe people are basically bad, or naturally prone to being bad, rather than good. It's much easier for people to be bad than good, at least. The Christian teaching of Original Sin fits this: G. K. Chesterton said you could prove the doctrine of Original Sin by merely opening the daily newspaper. 

A "liberal" or "Progressive" or Leftist believes people are basically good, however, and they actually think that rules, from the Ten Commandments on down, are what make people bad. Remove the rules, they think, and watch a 100 flowers bloom (to conjure Mao). Marx, for example, thought money was bad and people were on the evolutionary path to a "Communist state," and earthly utopia wherein no one cared about money. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." (Of course, to get there, those who did care about money all had to be shot.) It's sort of a heretical understanding of what St. Paul says about law and sin in Romans 5:12-14.

So, the bottom line: if you're liberal/Leftist, then live without rules in your own life. See how that works out. (Hint: it didn't work out for Jean-Jacques Rousseau: 1712-1778, the philosophical founder of all Leftism; it won't work out for you, either.)

Now, on to business:
As for the American Catholic Church and Homosexuality, this report below suggests how bad the situation is:

About half the U.S. bishops are homosexual:

Recent revelations about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick are only “the tip of the iceberg”, according to Father Dariusz Oko, a University lecturerer in Krakow, Poland.

Oko said to LifeSiteNews.com (July 26) that it is estimated that about 30-40% of priests and 40-50% of bishops in the USA have homosexual inclinations.

According to Oko “at least half of them, at least periodically, may commit serious abuses”.

He adds that the problem lies in the fact that [liberal] gay mafias are ruling dioceses, monasteries and seminaries. They even prevent the ordination of normal men.

An Préachán again:
Even assuming this is only half true (and most observers of the Catholic scene are coming to think half might be too optimistic!), it is still a devastating revelation.

And it's been around awhile, too. For example, Francis "Franny" Cardinal Spellman, Cardinal Archbishop of New York from '39 to '67, was widely reputed – it was just a given – to be an active homosexual; but leave aside the gossip: one point that subtly suggests it is true is because "Franny" was equally widely known to be a friend of the Traditional Mass of St. Gregory the Great, and in general an "arch conservative" in many things (yes, he is today considered a true hypocrite by both the Church's Left and Right) yet he unaccountably "folded" in defending Church tradition against "The Spirit of Vatican II". (Spellman died in December of 1967.)

One way to explain that is that he just suddenly changed his mind about it all; but it is more believable, more logical, that he was blackmailed. Blackmailing homosexuals was a long-standing pastime of blackmailers, especially those involved in espionage. It certainly was a literary cliché. But back in the pre-World War II days, we never had the sort of numbers of homosexuals in the priesthood or the episcopacy as we do today: it's prevalent, something we've never seen the scale of before, at least not since the days of Saint Peter Damian (1007 to 1072), who was involved in a huge Church housecleaning at that time. The Medieval Monastic Church, which lasted from the invasion of Islam in the 7th century till 1053, was on its way out, and a new, High Middle Ages Church was aborning. As one avatar of the Church collapses, there's always another one in the offing.

Reviewing some of the evidence as to how deep and widespread the unspeakable rot is in the present-day Church, the Vatican II Church, especially via Rod Dreher's columns in The American Conservative, I would have to agree with "James", who was abused by Theodore McCarrick when a child, that "If Pope Francis doesn’t act clearly and strongly to clean up this mess, says James, the Catholic Church will collapse under the weight of the bishops’ corruption." ("James" has left the Church, BTW.) 

I don't think Pope Francis will remotely do what is necessary. In fact, just recently, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a truly evil sex predator, resigned his cardinalate. Resigning is too good for him, but maybe he'll be the first "domino to fall". We'll have to see. However, the pope should have "defrocked" him rather than waiting for the wretch to do it himself.

John Paul II didn't do much about it either, after all, and he was not only a Believer, but quite orthodox (for a Vatican II prelate). Pope Jorge Bergoglio seems to be a Believer in a non-Catholic theology, and definitely in an all-permissive deity – one who presumably tolerates a lot of priestly sodomy, or at least is not a "rigorist" about it. (This is a joke, as Bergoglio is always on about "rigorists" priests.) Benedict XVI tried to address the Homosexual crucifixion of the Church a lot more than did either JP2 or Bergogio, or both of them together – and for B16's pains he was ousted. 

So...

The Catholic Church will indeed collapse under the weight of the bishops' corruption. But to be specific, it's the Vatican II Church that is breaking to pieces as we look on. Honestly, it's been a slow-motion "crash and burn" train wreck since it came into being. We've not had a more immoral, or at least morally lax, Church than Vat 2 since the Bourbon Church (1648 to 1789.) And the degenerate Bourbons still taught orthodox Catholic teachings – they just didn't live them. 

A remnant of the Church will survive, of course, just as was the case with Ancient Israel. What will survive will be what's called "Traditional Catholicism" in the Latin Rite, what I like to hopefully call The Reconquista Church. That, and of course the small, numerous Churches in Communion with Rome who worship via Eastern liturgies.

One of the issues killing the Vat 2 Church, besides bad bishops (many of whom are homosexuals themselves, as suggest above), is simply that we've not "turned the corner" on Homosexuality in our own minds. 

Turning the Corner on Homosexuality

By that I mean Homosexuality isn't an aggregate of individuals engaged in a particular kind of physical intimacy. It's greater than that. Just as democracy isn't just some city states here or there, or a nation now and then, that practice "rule by the people" but is instead a powerful, glorious (and dangerous to many), and even quite unstable, idea of government. And just as a national literature is more than merely a collection of authors over a period of time in one national language, but a "mystic chord of memory" (to quote Lincoln) that gives identity. Lincoln applied his phase to a shared history – and it works there too: literature and shared history can actually create a people and sustain them over time. Same with religion. Islam and Judaism and Christianity (and the others) are NOT just the private belief systems of accumulated individuals. They're life-shaping, cultural-defining angels of creation. Powerful. Real. Reality shifting. 

It is ironic that all of this insight modern culture denies. "Democracy isn't much, just a myth we told each other in the past, as we abused one another for our own gain. Literature and history are just pathetic narratives, woven mythologies design to fool the ignorant." 

And religion? "None of your business. Private. Subjective. Personal. And physically intimate relations, too: just what adults do with whom they want, or by themselves, and no one's concern." 

I am describing, of course, what Benedict XVI called the Dictatorship of Relativism.

So it is that many bishops – and a good portion of the modern Vatican II laity – haven't come to see how dangerous a thing Homosexuality itself is. (Note that I capitalize it here, but not in adjectival reference to individual homosexuals.) "What two (or more) individuals do in their privacy is no concern of anyone else. That they happen to be both males or females is immaterial." This is false, false manifestly, and deeply stupid. Only being so narcissistic an idea does it survive a moment's reflection, for we live in a Narcissistic age: for any society that doesn't believe its own history is going to blow apart. Any society that has no common literature or tongue will suffer the Curse of Babel. And any society that removes the ancient controls on sexual behavior turns vicious, misogynist, and childless. The histories of classical Greece and pagan Rome perfectly example this. 

The modern (and Modernist) bishops and laity see the trees, not the looming Mirkwood beyond, and certainly not the deeply embedded Dol Guldur in the dark heart of it. 

For just as with a company, or a government department, or a church, as well, the thing itself is greater than the sum of its parts. This is crucial to understand: regardless of the spiritual and moral state of individual homosexuals, regardless of their personal struggles with it, regardless of individuals and family members we know and love, and whatever pity their struggles should elicit in us, it is the thing itself, Homosexuality per se, what one might call "Corporate Homosexuality" that is the elephant in the room – or more precisely Xochipilli, the Aztec demon-god for the vice, for Homosexuality is indeed far more than the sum of any group of individual homosexuals. ("Gay" websites, i.e., websites supporting the "Gay Party Line", proudly list many, many such deities, not realizing these are demons, demons who are, obviously, "legion".)

It is essential, in other words, to "turn the corner" and realize we're not dealing only with individuals – important as they are, but a vice that has a mind of its own, a program that easily runs counter to what a great many individuals caught up it it want; it is a system contrary – not parallel to – traditional man-woman intimacy. And it is like a computer program that will, like a malware virus, rewrite the source code of civilization. (Assuming, as conservatives do, that Western Civilization is founded on one-man, one woman family life.)

Added to that, many Catholic hierarchs and their attendant minions don't think homosexuality is a sin. That Vatican II Church chestnut about homosexual attraction not being a sin, or perhaps in more modern language, "being gay" is not a sin, but acting on it is – is worthless. It is worthless because any gay ideologue will tell you the whole point is to "act on" it, to "be yourself" or "be true to what you are." Not to "live a lie" by being celibate. To be, in a word, "free" to be "out" and proud and not crippling yourself by somehow not practicing it. 

To put it in a more logical way: if feeling X is not a sin, then why is practicing X a sin? It's a classic Vatican II type of argument, almost self-contradictory and clearly not thought out. In contrast, Our Lord said if one even looks at a woman with lust, one commits adultery. That is a very high standard, indeed. But we live in a hedonistic world, such a relativist world, and clearly a very Narcissistic one, so naturally Xochipilli is widely worshiped. With "pride". 

Continued in Part II

An Préachán