An email I sent to the Bishop of Columbus, Ohio:
June 30,
2020
Dear Bishop
Brennan, I am a former resident in the Columbus diocese, and am a retired
writer and editor currently residing in Hungary. I have met Fr. Klee a number
of times and hold him in high esteem. His anti-abortion work is very
commendable. In castigating this good and holy priest, Fr. Klee, you write
that, "The Catholic Church proposes a beautiful, life-giving and
liberating vision to the world based on the truths about the human person,
human sexuality, marriage and the family. We proclaim with one breath the
Splendor of Truth and the Joy of the Gospel. The fundamental truth is that
every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and as such,
must be treated with dignity and respect."
If that is
so, dear Bishop Brennan, then why does Our Lord give such a carefully graded
explanation of how to remonstrate with persistent sinners in St. Matthew 18, ending
with if they will not listen even to the Church, then to treat them “as
Gentiles or tax collectors” (this is the same chapter has the famous
explanation of how the angels in Heaven rejoiced at the one lost sheep that has
been found, and the dire warning against anyone who causes “a little one to sin”
and also the “better to enter Heaven maimed than go to Hell whole” verses)? Persistent
sinners are not to be accepted into the body of the Faithful, even though they
were made in God’s image. Our Faith demands a very moral behavior on our part,
and thus I wonder why so often many in the Church deny this "liberating
vision" to souls in mortal sin regarding carnal sins such homosexuality? (But
hardly limited to homosexuality.) First Corinthians 6, in the latest New
American Bible version, says plainly, starting with verse 9, “Do you not know
that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived;
neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor
sodomites 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor
robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 That is what some of you used to
be; but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our
God."
As a life-long
Biblical scholar, I would insist a number of points are relevant in this
passage. Yes, homosexuality is certainly and clearly condemned, but so are
other grievous behaviors. St. Paul takes that as a given; he lists them all in
order to stress that to be baptized, confirmed, and to receive the Most Holy
Eucharist, and then afterwards to engage in sodomy (or these other sins), is
one of the most heinous acts a Christian can do, as it makes the Incarnated God
indwelling in the Christian to be personally partaking Himself in the
sins. St. Paul is very clear on this, as in verse 15 in the same First Corinthian
chapter above, he writes, “15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of
Christ? Shall I then take Christ’s members and make them the members of a
prostitute? Of course not!” Also, in the larger Biblical context, homosexuality
is one of the sins that "cried out from the ground", as Genesis says
of the sins of Sodom (and Jewish rabbinical tradition commonly holds that
homosexuality was prevalent in the days before the Flood). No Vatican II pastoral
document reversed all that, and that Council declared itself not to be a
dogmatic council, so no dogma was changed, either.
Homosexuality
also refutes Our Lord's grace, as well, destroying the "New Creation in
Christ" that a Christian is supposed to be. This is, of course, the “Divinization”
dogma, what the Eastern Christians famously call Theosis. The teaching
is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament, particularly in St. Paul and
St. John. 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, 8:15 (the famous “Abba!
Father!” verse) 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. And
of course, 3 John 3:1 “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may
be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not
know us is that it did not know him.”
God’s
Incarnation didn’t lower God so much than elevate human nature up to God. Theosis
is achieved through grace – not by nature – and is our incorporation into
Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2
Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, the
dogma insists our natures are changed. (This teaching is denied in Protestantism,
which teaches Imputation of Grace: God assigns grace to us but doesn’t actually
divinize or change our nature.) Yet because our nature is changed via the
sacraments, we cannot intentionally engage in a sin we refuse to see is
a sin. Rather, we are “to be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (St.
Matthew 5:48) The stakes are very high. As St. Athanasius wrote: "For the
Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25,
192B) and [CCC 460] Or as St. Thomas Aquinas put it: "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]
As a
professional writer, I find the Biblical writings, and the Holy Church’s clear pronouncements
over the past two millennia, to be obfuscated in all the modern-day pompous and
pretentious verbiage of the currently in-fashion (and very cliché) way of
speaking about the Church’s mission, such as you example in your writing about
Fr. Klee that I quote above. We must never betray the Holy Gospel, even if we
believe it is too difficult for modern people. In the case under discussion, about
which Fr. Klee’s Gospel witness is being discussed, active homosexuals who do
not repent of their sin – need I remind you that "repent" means turn
away? – are in serious danger of Hell? Do you deny that truth to them? That at
least is the plain meaning of St. Paul I quoted above, and the Church has
understood it that way for two millennia. Have we somehow "evolved"
beyond the Gospel? Are we now too nuanced, too sophisticated, too chic to “preach
Christ, and Him Crucified”?
In sum, are
we to mirror the irreligious zeitgeist around us? The Supreme Court ruled in
Roe (1973) that unborn people weren't people, and they ruled later ruled two
men could marry each other (Obergefell), or two women (but why not two men and
three women, or some other combo?) and thus ruling there's no legal difference
between a vagina and an anus, and in this very month, in Bostock, these supreme
legal mavens ruled that women weren't women – that any man who wanted to claim
he was a woman could do so and BE a woman according to law, thus, legally,
removing legal recognition of the female sex from actual biological women. Maybe
next they'll rule that shoes are ships and cabbages are kings. It's all a
farce.
Dear Bishop
Brennan, such are the famous “signs of the times” (St. Matthew 16:3) today. In
such an environment, where “plain speech” is rare, I quite understand it might
make a bishop unpopular to affirm Our Lord Christ’s traditional moral teaching
today, but then, bishops wear purple to remind them that they may well need to
be martyrs. Throughout history, the "Splendor of Truth" has been
witnessed in blood, martyrs' blood, because “the world” rejects it. As St. John
wrote (quoted above) “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not
know him.” Bishop Brennan, are you willing to be a martyr to your "Joy of
the Gospel" that has led to Our Lord's Crucifixion, the death by martyrdom
of all His Apostles, except for St. John, who died in exile? To be a
Christian is not to enter Public Service Club, still less is it what the Anglicans
like to call themselves, “a Church for all peoples” (thus becoming a Church of
very few people at all). Your martyrdom would be to garner the hatred of the
sinful culture in which we live. Is that too much for you? Today in the world,
according to opendoorusa site, between 8 and 11 Christians are killed every
day. Against this reality, is it too little to ask good priests like Fr. Klee be
supported, and indeed, honored, and that the all too common smarmy cant that
covers up the unconfessed, uncorrected sins of the flesh, eschewed? After all, not
fully preaching the Gospel is a direct affront to Our Lord and a mockery of the
Holy Spirit's inspiration of St. Paul's writings.
In closing, while
neither you nor I know whether any specific, individual homosexual, or fornicator,
idolater (this age worships sex, self, and pride), or adulterer will go to Hell
(unless you so bind one formally in your full ecclesiastical capacity) but we are
charged with witnessing the Gospel, you far more than I, a simple layman. And
you are supposed to see the sacraments refused to an unrepentant sinner. In the
spirit of Christian charity and in the umbra of Canon 212, I have witnessed to
you today, and on Judgment Day you can witness to God that I did.
In
Christ,
Ronald
Blackstone Crow
