But vampires are sad creatures. They speak to us of confusion and the longing to be human. They struggle in the darkness, lamenting the loss of light.  Perhaps the whole vampire craze can be related to the age-old yearning for a loving, eloquent supernatural presence that will save us from the perils and disasters of ordinary life (Anne Rice “The Angels Among Us” in Parade 12/20/09).

What’s ironic in a way is that a lot of human people are not much different than the way Anne Rice describes vampires.  The sadness that many people experience, the unhappiness of life, is sin, as Barron would put it.

Isn’t sin our attempt to be human in the way we think will make us happy and fulfilled?

And yet our happiness and our humanity is ever so close before our eyes this time of year.

As the days of Advent draw to an end, may the light of Christ shine ever more deeply in our lives to dispel the darkness of sin so that we may see what it means to be human and the true happiness that we seek.

… a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St Peter springs to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like this: “Castificantes animas nostras in oboedentia veritatis“. Obedience to the truth must “purify” our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright action.

In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul.

The “purity” to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth.

And I think that this is the fundamental virtue for the theologian, this discipline of obedience to the truth, which makes us, although it may be hard, collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of truth, for it is not we who speak in today’s river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we can truly be harbingers of the truth.

The role of a theologian is not to seek applause and accolades but to serve with and speak the truth, no matter how difficult it is; this not only applies to how theologians should teach in their writings and lectures but also in their lives.  Without a faithful witness who continually seeks  to purify himself in obedience to the truth, how can we ever achieve upright speech and action regarding the truth for others to follow?

The first obvious place to start is with her selective use of Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate.  She argues that:

In truth, though, Obama’s pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists. When Obama meets the pope tomorrow, they’ll politely disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality, but Catholics back home won’t care, because they know Obama’s on their side. In fact, Obama’s agenda is closer to their views than even the pope’s.

It’s fitting that Obama’s visit comes just days after the publication of “Charity in Truth,” a Vatican encyclical that declares unions, regulation of capitalism’s excesses, and environmentalism to be ethical imperatives. The document gives moral credence to Obama’s message and to progressive politics writ large.

Never mind the obvious points within the encyclical that clearly call out for the respect for human life:

Openness to life is at the centre of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.⁶⁷ The acceptance of life strengthens moral fibre and makes people capable of mutual help. By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens, and instead, they can promote virtuous action within the perspective of production that is morally sound and marked by solidarity, respecting the fundamental right to life of every people and every individual. (paragraph 28- Emphasis in the original)

For a president who does not respect the fundamental right to life of every people, how can Pres. Obama teach Pope Benedict anything about politics and Catholic political life?  Indeed, I think it is the Pope who is teaching the world about what a true politics looks like – esp. one that respects human life and protects the weakeast amongst us.

Then Townsend proceeds to tell us more of what a politics should look like, esp. for Catholics:

Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others’ shoes. Obama might call it empathy. While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women’s equality and gays’ cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong. Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation: “If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches.”

Is anybody struck by how she enumerates a modern liberal politics that seems to be grounded in the notions of equality and justice which are what we make them out to be?  Shouldn’t we be more concerned with loving our neighbors and helping them see the TRUTH of things?  Heaven forbid the Catholic Church try to teach anything that it regards as true about the human person.  Instead we should listen to our feelings and bodies and allow ourselves to construct our own view of the world and ourselves – atleast that is what Townsend believes that Obama can teach us about, esp. the oppressive Catholic Church which has constructed this power struggle over sex and gender.

Then comes another great section from Townsend about Humanae vitae:

That attitude has resulted in some heinous decisions. Most famously, in the lead up to the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” in 1968, an advisory body of theologians and laity empaneled by the pope advised that the church should reverse its position on birth control and concede that the issue should be a question for morality and for science. But authority—not truth, not love—prevailed: Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority.

Authority won the day with Humanae vitae.  Get that?  Has Townsend even picked up a copy of HV and read it?  If anything, it is an effort to speak the truth about love and the human family.  As far as I am concerned, love and truth won out in the encyclical; I wish I could say the same for the world we live in.  Furthermore, I don’t remember anything in HV telling me, “Pope Paul VI declares such and such to be the case and it is on my authority that I tell it to be so,” or “let it be written, let it be done.”  If anything was lost, it was authority because HV represented a moment in which the dissent of theologians and bishops became more apparent and outspoken; it is the moment in which those who were to teach the truth began to turn against the truth in a way that has not been seen in modern history.

Now we get right down to it from Townsend and her message about American Catholics:

Yet polls bear out that American Catholics do not want to be told by the Vatican how to think. Despite the rhetoric of love and truth, the Vatican shows disdain (if not disgust) toward gays. But 54 percent of American Catholics find gay relationships to be morally acceptable, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. Meanwhile, against all scientific evidence and protestations from clergy on the ground, the pope claims that condoms aggravate the spread of AIDS. Seventy-nine percent of American Catholics disagree, according to a 2007 poll by Catholics for Choice.

Yes. Polls tell us exactly what we should believe and indeed we should put the Catechism and the teaching of the Church up for a democratic vote; anything that does not receive a majority vote should be removed from the Catechism.  Okay.  That was a bit harsh.  Indeed, this is a typical maneuever of more left-leaning Catholic theologians – the voice of the people speak the truth of things.  I remember Robert Blair Kaiser saying such a thing.  The people have decided he said when it came to the issue of contraception.  As far as Mrs. Townsend is concerned, the people have spoken on gays and condoms.  Who cares what the church thinks? I must say, in all my reading of  church documents and theologians writings on same-sex attraction, I cannot recall one disdainful or disgustful writing about those who struggle with same-sex attraction and behavior.  Indeed, it is very difficult to admonish our brothers and sisters who struggle with a condition that leads toward sinful acts.  Indeed, it is difficult to admonish our brothers and sisters who struggle with every other sin.  Does that mean we should give up?  No.  Indeed, it is out of the concern for truth and love that the Church teaches what it does.  It does not get some high or kick out of making people suffer.  Indeed, it wants people to reach heaven.  The Church wants the salvation of souls; and in order for that to happen, the Church has to teach the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

For the issue of AIDS and condoms, I refer my few readers to the fine article of Fr. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., “Can the Distribution of Condoms Stop the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa?“   Fr. Austriaco is a Dominican Friar who teaches at Providence College.  Here is a snippet:

as Dr. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies explained in a recent interview, the best scientific evidence supports the Holy Father’s comments.   Author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries, Dr. Green concluded: “”There is a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology” [6].  In other words, according to Dr. Green, condom users engage in riskier sexual behavior because they believe that using the condom would decrease the risk of becoming infected with HIV.  To put it another way, the reduction of the spread of HIV that may have resulted from increased condom use is offset by the increase in risky sexual behavior that promotes the spread of the virus.

Research has shown that the Church is quite right when it comes to the use of condoms to reduce HIV.  Promoting condom usage increases risky behavior that helps spread the virus.

Mrs. Townsend’s article came out before the visit between Pres. Obama and the Pope.  Not surprising, Pope Benedict gave Pres. Obama gifts of the recent encyclical as well as a a copy of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s instruction on bioethical issues, Dignitatis personae. No doubt the Pope is hoping to teach Obama. Not the other way around.

Finally, on a note concerning Pres. Obama and his way of doing politics, we have heard about how Obama plans to reduce abortions.  If you should ever get bored one day, feel free to visit the Campaign Spot at National Review Online or google for a few of his posts.  The writer, Jim Geraghty, has noted many times over the past 5 months in which Obama has done things he said he wouldn’t do.   As Geraghty writes, “All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date. All of them.” Here’s waiting for this reduction of abortions to happen.  Oh wait. This promise already has expired.

every alcoholic is compulsive, but not every homosexual is compulsive.  A.A. steps apply strictly to the compulsive homosexual, but they apply only analogously to the non-compulsive homosexual person.

Indeed, Courage’s use of the Twelve Steps aims more directly to those who struggle with compulsive/addictive forms of same-sex attraction/behavior.  This does not mean that those who experience same-sex attraction to a lesser degree can’t benefit from the Twelve Steps.  Such benefit for these individuals will be of a different kind in the end since these individuals experience less forms of compulsion towards same-sex behavior. The overall benefit these individuals would receive consists in living out the Christian life and working towards ending other areas that are deficient.

What does it mean for a person to struggle with a compulsive form of same-sex behavior?  These same-sex inclinations are attachments that focus the sexual appetite with certain same-sex sexual behaviors and other same-sex persons in a disordered fashion. “Disordered” here should be understand as the sexual appetite deviating away from the true purpose of the sexual faculties which are to be used in the state of marriage between a man and a woman.  In other words, the person becomes “addicted” to same-sex behavior.  And such addictions can have greater or lesser forms of intensity.  Addiction here is described as that which “attaches desires, bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain specific behaviors, things, or people” [Gerald G. May, M.D., Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 3. Emphasis in the original text].  So in a compulsive form of same-sex attraction, a person’s sexual desires attaches to a specific type of behavior, thing, or person(s).

Through repeated same-sex behavior, a person becomes attached to these objects of desire through the misuse of the sexual faculties; thus same-sex persons are caught in a struggle to either live freely according to God’s plan  or to live according to their disordered desires and plans which leads to attachments. In a sense, same-sex inclinations and homosexual acts “make(s) idolaters of us all, because it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another,” and they breed “willfulness within us, yet again, paradoxically, it erodes our free will and eats away at our dignity”(May, 4).

So same-sex attraction in more aggressive forms erodes at a person’s ability to turn away from such behavior.  It is very hard to break the attachment to same-sex sexual activity once an individual becomes habituated to it. This is so for two reasons.  First, psychologically speaking, it is because an individual has learned to associate a certain behavior with a certain response.  In the case of same-sex activity, a person comes to associate homosexual behavior with intense, physical pleasure.  The brain of that person “automatically associates these effects with the behavior” (May, 58).  And every subsequent time that behavior is repeated, the association is “reinforced, making me more likely to repeat it” (May, 58).  Repetition of the behavior paves the way toward the development of a habit.  After some time, this habit becomes “an integral part of my life” in which “any upset or distress” or “absence of stress” may trigger a desire to repeat the behavior that has been associated with the pleasure sought; in other words, a dependency has been formed (May, 59). Second, even more distressing than how this dependency is formed is that the fact that the brain cannot unlearn what it has associated with certain behaviors and pleasures.  As Gerald May puts it,

The brain learns how to ‘do’ its attachments far better than it learns to ride a bicycle or drive a
car, and it remembers them more powerfully. (90)

It truly seems as if the person who is struggling with same-sex behavior (or for anyone struggling with an addiction really) cannot break away from these attachments formed.  As May poignantly states:

The only effective way of ending an addictive behavior is to stop it.  Anything less will almost aggravate the situation.  But of course I will neither be able to accept nor to accomplish this simple reality.  All the pieces of the circle of attachment have reinforced my addictive behavior, making me repeat it.  And with each repetition, my learning has become more deeply ingrained.  With the circle complete, addiction is born.  Even when I consciously try to stop the behavior, my brain is unconsciously learning it better and seeking it more.  My motivations are mixed, and I am fully at war with myself.  My attachment has become like quicksand; the more I struggle and flail about with my willpower, the more mired down I become. … My self-esteem crumbled as I sense how truly out of control I am.  I am in the clutches of the enemy, and the enemy is myself. (60, emphasis in the original text)

Such cases seem hopeless.  But in reality, it is these very addictions that bring a person to the realization that things have to change. As Gerald May says, “We will never really turn to God in loving openness as long as we are handling things well enough by ourselves.  And it is precisely our most powerful addictions that cause us to defeat ourselves, that bring us to the rock bottom realization that we cannot finally master everything…. Thus, although in one sense addiction is the enemy of grace, it can also be a powerful channel for the flow of grace.” (May, 19-20). When things seem most hopeless, it is in fact when a person is most open to God and God’s grace to change one’s life for the better.  For any one who has struggled with bad behaviors or with a friend or relative who has struggled with an addiction, it is very hard to convince yourself or another person to see things for how they really are.  That an attachment has been formed that is causing one to become self-centered to the detriment of everything and everyone else.  And when a person finally reaches rock bottom, God is there.

Before a person can truly begin to start on the path towards a better and more fulfilling Christian life, one must come to the realization that things aren’t working anymore.  The pleasures aren’t quite the same anymore.  Once a person reaches rock bottom, hopefully he will come to the realization that things have to change.  As Alcoholics Anonymous puts it:

We had to quit playing God.  It didn’t work.  Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director.  He is the Principle; we are His agents.  His is the Father and we are His children.  Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.

It seems like such an easy beginning doesn’t it? But to renounce one’s very own attachment(s) becomes a very tall order and even more difficult becomes the path towards sanctity.  Yet we should be reminded with the words from the Gospel:

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

In my next installment, I will begin going through the Twelve Steps of Courage.

From careful reflection upon the Twelve Steps I believe that any Christian can benefit from their practice.  One must get beyond the particular problem to which the Twelve Steps are applied and discern the universal principles upon which they are based. (John F. Harvey, O.S.F.S., The Homosexual Person: New Thinking in Pastoral Care, 157.)

Such universal principles are none other than ways to learn how to live as a Christian.  Such a spiritual solution can be applied to any person seeking to live a more full Christian life.  No doubt everybody struggles with particular sins or emotions, and it takes God’s grace to move us to be better and to work in us so that we can more fully fulfill the very dignity we have been given as sons and daughters in Christ.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church eloquently puts it:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls
together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. (CCC ¶ 1)

This is something fundamental that we must realize about all of us; we are called to perfection in Christ and God has given us the resources, his very life of grace, to sustain us and make us anew, to truly be the image and likeness of God.  Thus the spiritual solution underlying the Twelve Steps provides a substantive basis for anyone seeking to live the Christian life.

In my next post, I will begin discussing the nature of addictive behavior and how a person can come to the spiritual solution of the Twelve Steps as a means to live a full Christian life while still struggling with same-sex attraction.

The Catholic Church teaches that all those, who are not in a marriage between a man and a woman, should live a life of chastity in the form of continence.  What does that mean? Chastity is a sub-virtue of temperance.  Temperance, a cardinal virtue, is a habit of having well-ordered desires regarding food, drink, sex, and recreation.  Continence refers to the refraining of activities.  In the case of sex, continence refers to refraining from all forms of sexual activity.  Note that the church calls all those who are not married to live such a life of chastity in the form of continence.  It is not reserved just for those with same-sex attraction.  

What is wrong with same-sex sexual acts?  

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2357)

the person with homosexual orientation lives in the occasion of sin in a special sense; that is to say, the occasion of sin is within his own heart and mind.  He may find himself immersed in homosexual ways of thinking and acting. (The Truth about Homosexuality: The Cry of the Faithful, 118).

I spent most of October working on a German translation project, which thankfully got approved this month. That cleared the way for me to apply for my candidacy to the S.T.D. program, which should officially begin in January.  I also have been working this month on sending out my c.v. since I am looking for a full-time position, and I have been trying to get my S.T.D. dissertation topic approved by my area faculty before it gets sent to the Ecclesiastical Degrees Committee in January. Last, but not least, I have preparations underway for the four undergraduate courses I am teaching in the spring. 

I hope and pray that with the new year coming I may have more time to write at least one post a week and catch up on all the good material that I have been waiting to write about for the past 6 months. 

May all of you have a blessed Christmas and a joyous New Year!

In 2004 a group of United States Bishops, acting on behalf of the USCCB and requesting counsel about the responsibilities of Catholic politicians and voters, received a memo from the office of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, which stated:  

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.  When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.” 

Could a Catholic in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports legalized abortion when there is a choice of another candidate who does not support abortion or any other intrinsically evil policy? Could a voter’s preference for the candidate’s positions on the pursuit of peace, economic policies benefiting the poor, support for universal health care, a more just immigration policy, etc. overcome a candidate’s support for legalized abortion? In such a case, the Catholic voter must ask and answer the question: What could possibly be a proportionate reason for the more than 45 million children killed by abortion in the past 35 years?  Personally, we cannot conceive of such a proportionate reason.

I have a hard time understanding the struggle of Catholics on who to vote for this November in the presidential race.  I think the choice is very obvious and clear.  How could anyone ever hope for a more just society that benefits the poor and the immigrant and establishes peace when innocent new human life continues to be slaughtered everyday?  Without a protection of life itself, how can the world ever hope to improve?

My S.T.L. thesis sought to explore the development of the virtue of chastity in the form of continence in those who suffer with same-sex attraction.  This development occurs within the confines of the Catholic group Courage, an excellent and fully Catholic organization that gears itself to help those who struggle with same-sex attraction to live full Catholic lives.

It is quite amazing the lack of theological discussion of the Catholic group Courage.  For all the effort and work that Fr. Harvey, Fr. Groeschel, and the other men and women have put into it, they get very little recognition or consideration.  Part of my own writing effort was to begin to bridge that gap and give a serious theological examination of what Courage proposes to do through their use of the Twelve Steps.

I propose to take a few posts to bring to light some of the discoveries of my thesis and hopefully encourage some conversation regarding the work of Courage.