The Church's Teaching on Sexuality is What Every Man Needs

This talk was given at St Mary's in Bayswater, London, on May 1, 2013, as the second of a series on the Theology of the Body for the Archdiocese of Westminster (North and West London).

The next talk is by Christopher West and is about his new book, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing on Saturday, May 11th at 6pm with wine and cheese afterward (£5 at the Door).

For more info, or to register for future events, call Catherine Macgillivray on +44 207 931 6064 or email cathmacgillivray@rcdow.org.uk

On Wednesday 15th May there will be a Feedback and Foment Meeting for all those who have attended the talks so that we can all decide where we like to go next – Some may wish to attend Theology of the Body groups, Endow groups, Encourage groups etc.  This is a meeting for all those who have been inspired and provoked by what they’ve heard and want to go further.

The evening will be facilitated by Edmund Adamus and Fr Richard Nesbitt and Sarah de Nordwall.

Here are my notes from the talk:

My father was a carpenter.  Some of my happiest memories as a small boy were working along side him with a hammer and nails.  When I was 9 years old he sat me down alone, gave me a serious look and said, 

“Can you help me?  I need someone to bolt down the foundation of the house and I think you could do it.”  We were building our house in Minnesota together.  

“You want me to help you bolt down the house?”

“Yes, and it to be really tight because if the wood joyces are not fastened tightly to the concrete foundation the house will blow away when a storm or tornado comes.”

I couldn’t believe it.  Why did he want my help?  So I took the rachet socket wrench and nuts and got to work.  It wasn’t easy for my small hands and used my whole strength to try to turn them into place.  

When I was finished he said,

“That is great.  I am so proud of you!”

This experience changed my life.  Forever.

I didn’t know it, but what my dad was doing, was putting his heart in me; strengthening my inner man; teaching me to identify myself as someone who is capable of doing difficult things.  It was in the shadow of my father’s watchful care that I started to experience myself as a man.

St Hildegard of Bingen, a great mystic, poet, hymnologist, biologist, and a consultant to popes and bishops, said in the twelfth century in her work the Scivias:

“We have entered into an effeminate age where men are not men.”

She was referring to the clergy and state leaders of the time, saying that the “virility of the apostolic age has vanished,” because there was a lack of moral leadership because the “scriptures are neglected” and men were becoming “lukewarm and sluggish.”

Where are all the real men?

Real men are rare

In the book of Ecclesiastes (7:28) we read that a real man is “one in a thousand.”  St Francis de Sales, speaking of men that could spiritual lead or direct souls, said, a man who can lead you is one in a thousand “St Teresa of Avila says - and I say among ten thousand, for there are fewer than one would think” (Introduction to the Devout Life Part I Chapter IV)

Where have all the real men gone?  Are they hiding under a rock?  Why do little boys seldom become men, sons who even though they have children never really develop their paternity in its fulness?

Because men are not men, women are not allowed to be women and their dignity and vocation is not protected and nurtured.  Because men are not defenders of the weak, abortion on demand rages and public violence ensues.  Laziness, dissipation, irresponsibility, carelessness, foolhardiness, even effeminate, indecisive, oversensitivity reigns among persons who ought to be men, but appear to be stuck in little boy mode, or worse, little girl mode.

Why is there such a terrifying crisis of manhood, fatherhood, and masculinity?  To answer this question, I would like to answer the question of this talk.

What is it that every man needs?

God?  Love?  Strength?  Confidence?  Hope?

The answer is deeper, or I shall say more refined, more specific, than these.  God, love, strength, confidence, hope have a face.  Jesus Christ?  No.  Even the Lord Jesus Himself would be the first one to point out that He is only the beginning of the completion of each man, who find their end in the same person in which Christ Himself finds His rest, His end, His strength and confidence.  God the Father?  Yes, but I would be even more expressive than this.  What Name of the Father does every man’s heart cry when the Holy Spirit has searched his depths?

ABBA!!!!

Each man seeks the tender yet mighty, gentle yet giant, happy yet holy embrace of the Eternal Father, whom they must come to know with a kind of intimacy, the way a little boy knows his dad, which can only be called, “Daddy!”  

I remember when I was very young my own father told me many times that he would make mistakes and that I should not be discouraged when I discovered his flaws, but that I should know that I have a Father in heaven who has no flaws, who will never fail me or let me down, for whom every earthly father, corporal or spiritual, is a very poor substitute.  

Earthly dads fail us.  Even the best fall short in perfect love and faithfulness.  Priests are only a representation of God the Father.  They stand in “loco Dei Patris,” (Bl. Pope John Paul II, Pastores Gregis 34) in the place of God the Father.

What earthly fathers are supposed to do is hand us off to the real thing.  This is when their fatherhood soars above what their humanity is capable of.  

Sadly, few do this.  The result is that many men feel very deeply orphaned, unloved, unaffirmed, abandoned, alone, in darkness and desolation.

Usually when I talk about this subject the result is that many men in the audience or congregation start to be reminded of something that they spend a lot of time trying to forget or cover up, something they feel has no cure or hope.

Good News?

The Good News is that Jesus Christ has given us Our Father.  In the Theology of the Body, Blessed Pope John Paul points to the way we encounter our REAL FATHER, by taking us back to the beginning.

The TOB is a kind of encounter with Christ who speaks to us of the nature of our bodies, our manhood, and our masculinity.  It is theology, properly speaking, the study of God, but the study of God revealed in scripture about the human body.  Some have called it “scriptural anthropology” (George Weigel, Michael Waldstein, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

It is Christ in his talk with the Pharisees who says, speaking of divorce, “In the beginning it was not so.”  In the first part of the TOB he takes us back to the beginning.

We read in Ephesians 1:3-14

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.”

ABBA is our beginning.  Before time began, before sin began, before our personal history began, before there was anyone in our life to love us or not love us, to heal or hurt, before anything at all there was our Eternal Abba, who was the first one ever to gaze upon us, as he held us in his mind in perfect love.  Each man’s beginning is Abba.  Each man’s masculinity, manhood, paternity must be found by going all the way back to its start.

By allowing ourselves to be filiated, to be sons in the Son, to live the tender spiritual childhood of Abba Father, we grow into manhood.  

In the Theology of the Body, the holy father goes through a long discussion of what is the primordial experience of our bodies, not just in the book of Genesis, but the in the book of the genesis of each man.  

In the beginning, not just of all men, but of each man we find our masculine identification, our identity as men, in the Father who 

1.  Created us in his image and likeness - in a communion of persons - to be a person capable of loving and being loved

2.  Created us male, as men, with men’s bodies and souls, as he is the source of our masculinity, with a seed of life and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply

3.  Created us to cultivate the garden of the earth, to have dominion over it, to fill it and subdue it.

Here we have to make an important note.  A man does not have a body.  He is a body.  God created two diverse ways of being a body, as a man or a woman.  This flies in the face that masculinity and femininity are social or cultural constructs that are merely products of evolution.  God created them male and female, in God’s image and likeness, male and female.  Masculinity and femininity find their beginning in the eternal communion of the Trinity!

There is some kind of distorted anthropology being perpetrated on modern society that the inmost core of a person is neuter, that the soul is asexual.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The soul is sexual!!!  It is either that of a man or a woman.  The differences between man and women are eternal in that they replicate the relationships within the trinity itself.

Man is imaged after the person of the Father.  Woman is imaged after the person of the Son.  The Father Loves.  Loving He eternally gifts himself to the generation of the Son.  The Son receives himself as a gift of the Father.  In this mutual and intimate communion of persons they love each other so perfectly that together they eternally spirate the Holy Spirit.  Man gifts himself to Woman.  She gifts herself to him by receiving the gift of his manhood.  Their intimate communion of persons gives life to something that never existed before, another human person.

This moment of man and woman’s perfect communion is so powerful that at this moment God chooses to create something out of nothing.  At that moment when man’s life giving seed intermingles inside woman with her fertility, God breathes into existence another human soul that did not exist before.  

THE FALL

Adam did not live up to his role as protector and defender.  He was to cultivate the garden.  The Hebrew word used here means also to protect.  He did NOT protect his woman from the serpent and because he was lazy and unwatchful his wife fell.  Who had the first sin?  Man.  Once God addressed Adam, instead of manning-up and facing the consequences of his actions he hid in shame and blamed the woman.

JESUS CHRIST

Abba did not leave man alone nor does he leave each man alone.  He brings Christ to meet each man and bring him back to Himself.

The way the Father has done this is that the he sent God the Son to a woman!  God the Son entered into a relationship with a woman by becoming born of her, taking from her His Most Sacred Manhood.  He redeemed men and women’s relationships by being in relationship with woman - he did this for 30 years!!!  We often overlook Jesus’ primary relationship with a woman as the foundation of our daily relationships.

Jesus took from her His humanity, which is masculine.  Jesus is the perfect man.  Let us note here: THE PERFECT MAN WAS A VIRGIN!!!  His whole life Jesus was a virgin.  He was chaste.  He gave the gift of his inmost heart to whom - directly to the Father.  

What do you think of when you hear the word virgin?  Manly?  Masculine?  Mighty?  Strong?  Courageous?  Probably not.  This means that there needs to be an adjustment of your heart to understand that purity is something that is very masculine, very manly, and takes a great measure of holy boldness and mighty courage to be chaste in body and pure in heart.

Jesus was a virgin not only of body but of mind.  His inmost heart was “set like flint” toward ABBA FATHER in our redemption.

Christ meets us where we are at.

Where are we at?

First of all let us recognize one very important thing.  Right exactly as we are now, with all that we are going through, with everything we are and have, with all our sins, faults, failures, wounds and brokeness, just as we are, Christ loves us.  He gazes upon us with infinite love not for who we should be our who we are not but because we came from the Father his gaze of love is from the Cross where he came to know perfectly “what is in man” and “what is in each man.”  

Christ appeals to the human heart to show us.  In the sermon on the mount he said,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [in a reductive way] has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27–28).”

This is a key text to the TOB because it unlocks the mystery of our hearts gaze.  Being a man is mostly about the heart.  Yes it is good to have strong muscles, more important to have strong virtues, but even more important to what defines a man is his inmost heart’s gift of self.  

It could be said that this is a definition of sexuality and therefore of what it means to be a man - the inmost heart’s gift of self to the other.  This gift of self is what Blessed Pope John Paul II calls, “the Spousal Meaning of the Body.”  Our bodies, our inmost hearts, were made for a gift of self to be conjugated to the other in intimate personal communion.

Christ gave the Spousal Meaning of His Body to the Father in intimate communion that bore fruit in the salvation of souls.  Christ calls some men and women to do this, to be consecrated totally to God for spiritual paternity and maternity in bearing souls to heaven.

A married man gifts the gift of his manhood to his wife and becomes one with her in intimate personal communion.  Yet ultimately he gifts himself to God mediated through his wife and the only way he can truly succeed in this gift of his manhood to his wife is to do it through God.  So he goes to God through his wife and to his wife through God in the gift of his manhood.

Christ points out that man is wounded in this gift of himself in three ways, called concupiscence, which comes from the two Latin words con cupere, which means, with desire.  The three fold concupiscence is found in 1 John 2:16-17:

1.  The pride of life 

2.  The concupiscence of the flesh

3.   The concupiscence of the eyes

In other words:

1.  Pride

1. Lust
2. Greed

These correspond to the three gifts that God endowed man with in the beginning:

1.  He arrogantly wants to make himself in his own image - pridefully deciding for himself what a man is, particularly what good and evil is

2.  He is wounded in his maleness, his masculinity, his fruitfulness, particularly with regard to his gaze at woman, which is no longer love but use

3.  Have dominion over the earth has turned to domination over the earth and cruel use to get out of it as much as he can, desiring more and more goods

Christ gives him three gifts from the sermon on the mount to help heal these:

1.  Prayer - to gain humility and worship God rather than self-idolatry

2.  Fasting - to chasten his manhood by curbing his desires

3.  Almsgiving - to curb our greed and gain mastery over the desire to acquire

HOLY SPIRIT

The healing of man, that is to bring him to where he is now in Christ to where God the Father has called him to be is a work of the Holy Spirit.  It is only his infinite love that bring us from where we are now to where we need to be.

“Deep calls to deep in roar of mighty waters” (Psalm 42:17) 

That is, God the Holy Spirit searches the depths of man and “searches the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10) and joins the misery of man to the mercy of God in Christ. You could say that the Holy Spirit finds the riches of the depths of Redemption, of the merits of Christ crucified, of his sacred wounds and sews them into the very wounds of man. For it was man’s wounds that wounded the redeemer and his willingness to be wounded by love for our sake that releases the mighty waters of the Holy Spirit, so that the inmost depths of man are eternally transformed into the depths of God.

The Holy Spirit also shows us that ultimately our manhood is only completed in ABBA FATHER.  Yes marital love can be beautiful but the gift of one’s manhood finds only its completion in God.  If not, a wife becomes a kind of idol and men would tend to treat her not as a royal daughter of God the Father, but as a kind of Barbie Doll on a pedestal, a trophy to be acquired and admired, but worst of all this means for woman that man doesn’t give himself to woman as a complement and partner and she is forfeited and deprived of real intimacy with man.

Pope John Paul II calls the completion of our sexuality in God the “Virginal Meaning of the Body.”  Blessed Mother Teresa put it concisely,

“Only Jesus.

Always Jesus.”

This means that even out of your wife you are only and always looking for Jesus.  This also means that in your sexual relations with her you are able to restrain yourself, your own desire to use her for pleasure, but to see your marital intimacy as a time of encountering the beauty and glory of God.

What is interesting about this kind of sexual intimacy is that it makes a man’s sexual encounters with his wife more frequent and intense because God is at the center.  I’ll never forget the time Mary Beth Benocci came to talk at my University and told all the young university students an interesting statistic:

“The people who have the best and greatest sex, according to the gallup polls, are highly religious married couples.”

Why?  Because they are not just looking to use each other for pleasure but are seeking God, seeking deeper beauty and meaning in sexual intimacy.  Also because they are most likely not sinning by using contraception.

Contraception is the final word of the Theology of the Body.  The whole reason for it was to provide an adequate commentary on the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics, particularly in regard to its condemnation of contraception.

Why is this?  Because contraception allows a man to use his wife.  It stops not only being open to life and therefore to God, but also facilitates the arousal of his concupiscence, his desire to use his wife for pleasure instead of gift her with beauty.

Mary the Woman on Fire

In conclusion let us turn to Mary, the Woman clothed with her Son, who shines forth as the Woman on Fire, the burning bush, whose virginal Motherhood was the source of our redemption.

May her prayers and intercession help men be men and come to the full maturity of the manhood of Christ.

The Catholic Church's Teaching on Sexuality is What Every Woman Wants

This talk was given at St Mary's in Bayswater, London, on April 18, 2013, as the first of a series on the Theology of the Body, for the Archdioces of Westminster (North London). 

For more info, or to register for future events, call Catherine Macgillivray on +44 207 931 6064 or email cathmacgillivray@rcdow.org.uk

Here are my notes from the talk:

Introduction

The first question you might have is, "what is a man doing giving this talk?"

"You have never given birth what would you know?" In Blessed Pope John Paul II's Introduction to Love and Responsibility he says about priests and marital life:

"Their lack of direct personal experience is no handicap because they possess a great deal of experience at second-hand, derived from their pastoral work.  For in their pastoral work they encounter these particular problems so often, and in such a variety of circumstances and situations, that a different type of experience is created, which is certainly less immediate, and certainly 'second-hand,' but at the same time very much wider.  The very abundance of factual material on the subject stimulates both general reflection and the effort to synthesize what is known."

When it comes to topics they may not have first hand experience in like womanhood, marriage, or other things they DO have secondhand experience that has:

-depth - confession, spiritual direction, rich psychological content-breadth - sheer number of women, age, state in life, culture 

-height - relating to the gospel 

- Charity - I am consecrated to women

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY - Women need men's affirmation and vice versa because many of the wounds that women carry around were caused by men and only by a man would they be fully healed.

The second question you might have may pertain to the title of the talk.  What do we think of when we hear that title?
- How to sexually satisfy women
- Sexuality - we hear "sex" or "sexual intercourse"
YET - I will in fact talk about this but this is not deepest in woman's heart and NOT what the Theology of the Body is primarily about, despite it's presentation as such by some - This is a symptom of the misconception that we don't even realize we are dealing with

What does it mean to be a woman?

Listen to the Song "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys

She's just a girl, and she's on fire
Hotter than a fantasy, 
lonely like a highway
She's living in a world, 
and it's on fire
Feeling the catastrophe, 
but she knows she can fly away  

Everybody stands, as she goes by
Cause they can see the flame that's in her eyes
Watch her when she's lighting up the night
Nobody knows that she's a lonely girl
And it's a lonely world
But she gon' let it burn, baby, burn, baby

This girl is on fire
This girl is on fire
She's walking on fire
This girl is on fire

I'd like to think she has the same understanding of woman's dignity of the Church:

"And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" Revelation 12:1

The Blessed Virgin Mary appears here as the Woman on Fire!  She is the model and measure of womanhood.  She is the perfect woman, walking in royal dignity, lifted up to the heights of heaven, ennobling and enriching everyone with whom she comes into contact.

However, sadly we know all too well that most (not necessarily Alicia - haven't sat down with her yet) feminism is another vision, this is true especially because when Alicia sang a song about a wonderful man at the London iTunes festival last year, a song about a man who is a good and faithful friend, she prefaced the song with, "I identify in no way with this song," meaning, she probably has been hurt by men and likes to think of a strong woman not like Mary, as the complement and co-worker with man, but as independent from him, his competitor, maybe even his predator.

Femininism and womanhood appears from women who have been hurt by men:
- Women must assert themselves to be men's equal, or better, superior
- Women are in competition to men, set at odds with them
- "Men are pigs" and therefore women must be liberated by men
- Feminists are not some evil people who simply hate the Church, but have been hurt
- This is the result of most women who have been hurt, particularly by men
- Many wonderful women develop this philosophy, this armor, this battle gear

New Feminismfrom Wikipedia:

New feminism is a philosophy which emphasizes a belief in an integral complementarity of men and women, rather than the superiority of men over women or women over men.[1] 

New feminism, as a form of difference feminism, supports the idea that men and women have different strengths, perspectives, and roles, while advocating for the equal worth and dignity of both sexes. Among its basic concepts are that the most important differences are those that are biological rather than cultural. New Feminism holds that women should be valued in their role as child bearers, both culturally and economically, while not being viewed as a "home maker" in the broader sense of the meaning.[citation needed] It main aim is to promote the idea that women are individuals with equal worth as men; and that in social, economic
and legal senses they should be equal, while accepting the natural differences between the sexes.  

History

The term was originally used in Britain in the 1920s to distinguish New feminists from traditional mainstream suffragist feminism.

New feminists campaigned strongly in favour of such measures as family allowances paid directly to mothers. They were also largely supportive of protective legislation in industry.   

Recent Use 

In recent years, the term has been revived by feminists responding to the Vatican's call for a "'new feminism' which rejects the temptation of imitating models of 'male domination' in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation".[2] "The true genius of women" is the idea that all of the ways in which women give of themselves are ways that reflect their capacity for physical or spiritual motherhood.  

John Paul II had begun his theologically-based affirmation of integral gender complementarity in his Wednesday audiences between 1979 and 1984, in what is now compiled as the Theology of the Body. In this work, he describes his belief that men and women are formed as complementary human beings, whose purpose, strengths and weaknesses are reflected in the physical make-up of their bodies. In 1988, John Paul II sent out an apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, or, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.[3] In this letter, John Paul II called on women to value their "feminine genius"[4] as mothers and caregivers as well as  their participation in politics and economics. He describes the 'feminine genius' as including empathy, interpersonal relations, emotive capacity, subjectivity, communication, intuition and personalization. 

John Paul II continued this call in his Apostolic Letter to Women prior to the 1995 Beijing Women's conference.[5]

So...What is it that women really want?

This can be reduced to one word. 
Love?  Too misunderstood and not personal enough.  What is love's face?
God?  Still too abstract and not personal enough.
Jesus?  This may be surprising to some but Jesus Himself would be the first person to say that he is not the end of the spiritual life and still not the deepest reality in a woman's heart, there is one person yet deeper.
God the Father?  Yes, but what is a better word for him that reveals at one in the same time His tenderness and woman's littleness?

ABBA!!!  He is the only thing that can fully satisfy woman in the deepest aching of her heart.  He is woman's deepest longing, her highest aspiration, he hearts true love.

Only God the Father is the completion of the Son - Even Jesus is "incomplete" - He would be the first one to tell you that you come to him so that you may come to the Father.

Theology of the Body - Triptych

Three chapters of the TOB - Beginning, Now, End - Father, Son, Holy Spirit

The Father - sees woman in Christ before time began as his beloved daughter 

Jesus - Accepts Woman with all of her armor - the Woman at the well - peeling away the layers

Mary Magdalene is the icon not only of all mankind but of every woman:

- Jesus frees her from her demons by his pardon
- She then sits at his feet taking instruction
- She gifts her woman hood to him by wiping his feet with her hair
- He calls her by Name in the Resurrection - He is SO new she doesn't recognize

-Her womanhood is so new she would never recognize him
Holy Spirit - Brings us to bridge the gap in between where we are now and where we need to go

- Brings us to do the same for others in a specific calling and vocation

Each woman's vocation is:

- TO gift yourselves to Abba Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit
- Married woman gives herself to God through her husband and to her husband through God
- Consecrated Life - gives her body directly to God

Women have a special role in the world and in the Church

Pope Francis at his Easter Wednesday, General Audience, April 3, 2013 said:

"Women were the first witnesses. This implies that God does not choose in accordance with human criteria: the first witnesses of the birth of Jesus were shepherds, simple, humble people; the first witnesses of the Resurrection were women. And this is beautiful. This is a part of the mission of women; of mothers, of women! Witnessing to their children, to their grandchildren, that Jesus is alive, is living, is risen. Mothers and women, carry on witnessing to this! It is the heart that counts for God, how open to him we are, whether we are like trusting children.

"However this also makes us think about how women, in the Church and on the journey of faith, had and still have today a special role in opening the doors to the Lord, in following him and in communicating his Face, for the gaze of faith is always in need of the simple and profound gaze of love."

What is woman?

Pope John Paul says - the language of the body of woman tells us what her interior is like:

- to receive the gift of man - of humanity - this is where she is most fertile, most fruitful -
-Actively Receiving God that he may be made Real or Incarnate - TO give new life to humanity through the agony of childbirth - the Cross
-Mary was wailing aloud in agony to give birth to anew humanity

This is what she does in all of her human activities:

-First place this is important is in actually giving birth to persons and caring for them
-PJPII not afraid to talk about consecrating woman to the undivided care of persons

- What is the highest commodity in society? Money or persons?
- The most excellent of creatures should be consecrated to care of persons

- Consecrated Life

- The vocation to be a homemaker here is elevated to the utmost - it is to be consecrated to the undivided care of persons
- Woman's Body is beautiful - should not be objectified - nor should it be thought of as ordinary
-When women dress with elegant modesty they raise the bar of society

Married Love -
Follows the language of the body - sexual intercourse is itself an icon of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit
-Father and Son love each other so perfectly there eternally issues forth the Holy Spirit 
-Man and woman love each other so perfectly nine months later you have to give it a name a woman gifs her womanhood, her femininity, her fertility, her motherhood to God through husband

-When the husband protects, cares for, cherishes till death does part this act is heavenly

-He makes love to her whole person - body and soul -
-This is when a woman is most frequently and intensely sexually satisfied.
-The people who have the most and best sex are highly religious married people
- Contraception is a lie of the body - use me for pleasure - kills off real love
Natural Family Planning is the truth of the body and soul - 99.98% success rate while contraception besides causing cervical and breast cancer has a 50% success rate in keeping couples together 
-IVF has a 20% success rate - NFP has a 80% success rate in conceiving life.

CONCLUSION

BE WOMEN ON FIRE! Clothed with the Father's Love.  We must follow the glorious example of Our Lady to gift God to the world by the way we love and nurture it in the wonderful witness of motherhood, whether it is of children of the womb or of the spirit.

Pope Paul VI at the close of Vatican II and PJPII's beginning of Mulieris Dignitatem:

"But the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling." 

Powerful Chastity is Electric - It has Both a Positive and Negative Charge, a Yes and a No

In this talk, we discuss the chapter of Love and Responsibility entitled, "The Problem with Continence" in which we discover that true chastity, in order to be truly powerful and transforming, has both a positive and negative charge.  On one hand we know that it involves continence, or the containing of sensible gratification and sentimental expressions, while sublimating the value of the person to everything else experienced.

Theology of the Body at Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy

This talk was given on Thursday, January 25, 2013 to a group of students at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy.  It is the second of a two part series, the first of which was given by Robert Colquhoun, the head of 40 Days for Life in the UK, a prayerful and peaceful way of witnessing the dignity of life.

We discuss the psychological and emotional underpinnings of the theology of the body's fundamental and explosive statement, that man and woman live in the image of God together as a covenant of communion, like the Blessed Trinity.  In particular, we look at the necessary affirmation of masculine and feminine love of the human person that can only come about by a one-man, one-woman, permanent, exclusive, mutual, covenant of communion we call holy matrimony.

Theology of the Body at Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy by Fr Samuel Medley SOLT

Boundaries in Relationships Anyone? Love and Responsibility Session 7: Shame

In this talk, we look at Blessed Pope John Paul II's book, Love and Responsibility's chapter on "The Metaphysics of Shame," which is really about boundaries in relationships.  What is the function of shame?  - to protect and reveal love between man and woman

Is Chastity Evil? Does it take away happiness, freedom and deep joy, or does it set freedom free?

This is the 6th session of our discussion group on Pope John Paul II's book, Love and Responsibility.

Is chastity evil?  It has been demonized by pop culture as something that doesn't give happiness, freedom, joy, and deep stability.  It is seen as an enemy.  Pope John Paul II attempts to rehabilitate the name of chastity.

The Modern Family: the Big, Stinky Elephant in the Room that Nobody Wants to Talk About

Theology of the Body in Cardiff: Graced Friendships in the Trinitarian Communion

This is the third talk of four given for the people of the Archdiocese of Cardiff, Wales, on healing our relationships through Graced Friendships with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with all those with whom the good Lord brings us into communion.


Theology of the Body in Cardiff - Trinitarian Communion in Graced Friendships

Contraception and the Clash with Authentic Christian Culture

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From the Ocean to Ocean blog.

Love and Responsibility Session IV: The Psychological Analysis of Love

In this session, recorded on October 27th, 2012 in Hythe, Kent, UK, we look at the psychology of love, or the experience of it in the human soul - how it is sensual, sentimental, and the task of integrating these into the whole person.

Sensuality is experiencing a reaction to objective stimuli, and emotion is a reaction to a value perceived.  This is very profound and has a deep richness when we speak of man's experience of woman and vice versa.  Sentimentality is the susceptibility that a person has toward the person of the opposite sex.  It is a person's attraction toward the other person, and therefore allows for affection.  Affection is open to more spiritual values such as goodness, truth, and beauty.  Sensuality can tend toward objectification or use of the other person for one's enjoyment or it can tend toward a more rich experience of love, if is integrated in the love of their personhood.  Sentimentality has the possibility for idealization of the other and therefore an unrealistic approach to them, resulting in disillusionment or even hatred for whom one had previous affection.

These things need to be integrated or brought into the spectrum of the whole person.  This is done with objective truth and love.  Truth and truth alone can free a person so that sensuality and sentimentality are not the reigning factors in a relationship.

Love and Responsibility Session III: Metaphysical Analysis of Love

This session, recorded in on October 13th, 2012 in Hythe, Kent, UK, we discuss the three essential elements of love between man and woman which Pope John Paul II explores in chapter two of Love and Responsibility: Love as Attraction (philo), Love as Desire (eros), and Love as Goodwill (Agape).  We go on to look at how sympathy (syn pathos) may break forth into camaraderie (storge), but if left on its own is empty.  Finally we look at how this love ought to mature into betrothal if it is true.

We also discuss what to do if you find yourself attracted to someone and desiring them if it is not in theirs or your best interest, and how desiring the good for the other can help you live chastity.  We also discuss how loving someone for a specious good or apparent good may be a false, or evil, love.

Interpretation of the Sexual Urge - Session II of Love and Responsibility Discussion Group

In this session we talk about the Sexual Urge being much more than just an animal instinct but a whole orientation of the person of the man toward the person of the woman.  The urge, rather than determining a person's freedom actually is just the context of it, or the arena in which man finds himself.

There are several interpretations of the sexual urge.  The religious interpretation is that it is the very work of God himself to bring forth life, love, and happiness for us.  The rigorist interpretation tells us that it is to be used to procreate and prolong the species enduring pleasure as a necessary evil.  The libidinistic interpretation tells us that it is to be used and persons as well to get as much pleasure as possible, even if this means limiting the life giving capacity of sexual intercourse so as to allow man to have as much pleasure as he can have.  The truth is that never can a person be used either for creating life or for mere pleasure, but the sexual urge is to be interpreted as a gift that we much guard and cherish.

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The Person and the Sexual Urge - Love and Responsibility Session 1

This session was a commentary on the Introduction and the first part of Chapter One of the book by Blessed Pope John Paul II, Love and Responsibiltiy.  In this session we look at what a person is and what it means to have personal interior dignity, what it means to use, and to use for pleasure.  Also how the personalistic norm of Karol Wojtyla can be the foundation of the Greatest Commandment of the Gospel.

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The Prophetic Language of Manhood and Womanhood Speaks Against Same-Sex Marriage

The following was a homily preached at St Timothy's in Maple Lake, MN, on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Mass Readings), July 8th, 2012 at the 10am Mass.

My parents and I as a young religious

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One Christmas I met a woman at my uncle's house who was under a dark cloud.  She was so sad, depressed, and felt abandoned, rejected, and alone, because her husband and boys had left her to go ice fishing immediately after she had slaved over their Christmas dinner!  I made it my mission for the next two hours to cheer her up and pour as much love as I possibly could out on her, trying to make her laugh.  I saw her two days later at the gas station where she worked.  Besides giving me two dozen chocolate covered doughnuts she exclaimed, "You're the greatest man to walk the face of the earth!"  I laughed so hard hearing this, thinking of myself on par with St Paul and St Francis, but besides the absurdity, there is some truth in the fact that when someone totally loves you, they become the greatest person for you.  Ask any child about who the bestest person is and they will probably say mommy and daddy.

When we love, we become prophets of God, for we not only reveal God who is love but also reveal to the person the same thing God reveals, that they are lovable.  Jesus Christ is the one who knows us and loves us exactly as we are right now, who understand exactly what we are going through and are suffering, and he loves us as we are.  Love is the only thing that gives us hope for authentic change and conversion of heart.  We are called to be prophets of Jesus Christ in our baptism, to reveal the great love of God for each person.  It only the authority of love that opens ears that they may hear the truth.

Truth is not a something but a somebody, Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6).  Jesus is truly imparted only by the threefold revelation of the Word of God in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church.  Scripture was written under the Tradition of the Church and was done so under the only authenticated authority of God, the Pope and his successors.  As the Second Vatican Council explained:

It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God's most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls. Dei Verbum 10

It is only by this kind of sacred tripod, all three put together, and without one the revelation of Christ does not stand and is not fully truthful that we can hear the words of Jesus fully: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32).  This truth can never be spoken of apart from love for if it is imparted without love it ceases to be a proclamation of Christ and tends to be rather self-righteous.  For the Christian, there ought to be no moral high ground, and there is never any time we can claim the authority of having better virtue, a better life style, for we are servants who find ourselves beset by the same or greater weakness than of those to whom we are sent.  We always take the position and posture of the moral low ground, of being sinners who can speak not of being perfect in following the law, but knowing firsthand all to well that the law of sin needs to be addressed by the righteousness of Redemption in the blood of the lamb.  Jesus washes the feet of the poor and sinful.  "Where the master is, so the servant shall be."

Yet we are not only called to be prophets to speak the truth in love.  There is a deeper order than what we do.  It is who we are, the order of being, a much simpler level of being human and living the image of God our Creator.  Who is Jesus?  God.  We are we?  God's beloved.  The deepest identity we can claim therefore is that we are loved by God.  This is the order that parents teach children.  It is children's first identity, memory, and deepest movement of their whole life.

The truth about the human person is that each is created by and for a loving communion of persons.  In the beginning we read:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

This means that, as Blessed Pope John Paul II says in his theology of the Body,

“man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons”

For just as the Eternal Father is one with the Eternal Son and from their intimate communion of persons is conceived and flows the Person of the Holy Spirit, so too, from the intimate communion of man and woman is conceived and flows a new human person.  This new life happens in the conception of the womb but also it ought to happen every day in family life.  The very same love of the Eternal Family of the Blessed Trinity is replicated and echoed in the love of man and woman who not only in the act of conception but by their communion and friendship daily give life to their children.

It is amazing to see the connection between trinitarian theology and the differences between man and woman.  God the Father is the origin (what the name actually means in Greek) of the Son and Holy Spirit.  He is the principle or initiation of the other two persons.  God the Son is eternally receptive to the Father and his love.  From the love of both Father and Son comes the Holy Spirit.  In this understanding of the Blessed Trinity, we can understand the pattern of masculine and feminine complementarity and fertility.  Dr Philip Mango, a psychologist who teaches a kind of “psychology of the body” that accompanies the theology of the body says:

“The definition of masculinity is the male who takes initiative regularly.  He initiates something that is good for others at a cost to himself, at a sacrifice to himself, and sustains what he has initiated with power and love, as a positive leader, as a protector, defender, lover, and a wise counselor.“The definition of femininity is active receptivity.”

Masculinity and femininity are from God, have their origin in his image and likeness and a person who has underdeveloped their manhood or womanhood is not living the fullness of their dignity as a son or daughter of God.  We can see that masculinity and femininity have been lived out in different ways throughout the ages and in different cultures, but their origin is in God and is not simply sociological evolution or mere cultural conditioning.  These are ultimately made for life.  What does man initiate in the seed of his body and woman receive within her body?  LIFE!

It is written into our nature, which by scientific studies, can be observed and noted.  According to the social sciences:

There is no fact that has been established by social science literature more convincingly than the following: all variables considered, children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father. David Popenoe (1996) summarized the research nicely: "social science research is almost never conclusive, yet in three decades of work as a social scientist, I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families" (p. 176).  (Gender Complementarity and Child Rearing by Dr A. Dean Beard PhD)

THE EFFECT OF MASCULINE AND FEMININE VOICES

There was a study done in a pediatric ward with small infants.  They had a room full of babies whose neurological activity was being monitored.  When a man walked into the room and started speaking to the babies, they started to kick and wiggle and move about.  Their brain activity became very active, their eyes widened, and they looked around the room full of excitement.  When a woman walked into the room and started talking to the babies, they lay still, their neurological activity became calmer, their eyes started to close, and some started to fall asleep.

Another study shows that father’s around the world in different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds have a kind of universal tendency to hold their baby out from them, to look them in the eye, and yes, even to throw them up in the air and catch them.  The study was not limited to cultural conditioning.  Yes that is right, it is a universal tendency in father’s to actually throw their children up in the air.  For women it is exactly the opposite.  They desired to hold the child close to their hearts, pull them in, and give them nurturing and gentle caresses.  If you’d ask the woman they would tell the man to not throw the child so high and his reaction would be that it wouldn’t quite be high enough.  Different studies show the complementarity of masculine and feminine touch in rearing children:

“Male and female differences emerge in ways in which infants are held and the differential ways in which mothers and fathers use touch with their children. Mothers more frequently use touch to calm, soothe, or comfort infants. When a mother lifts her child, she brings the child toward her breasts providing warmth, comfort, security and protection. Fathers more often use touch to stimulate or to excite the child. Fathers tend to hold infants at arms length in front of them, make eye contact, toss the infant in the air, or embrace the child in such a way that the child is looking over the father's shoulder. Shapiro notes that each of these "daddy holds" underscores a sense of freedom (1994).

“Clarke-Stewart (1980) reported differences in mothers' and fathers' play. Mothers tend to play more at the child's level. Mothers provide an opportunity to direct the play, to be in charge, to proceed at the child's pace. Fathers' play resembles a teacher-student relationship-- apprenticeship of sorts. Fathers' play is more rough-and-tumble.”

MEN AND WOMEN ARE EQUAL BUT DIFFERENT - COMPLEMENTARY 

The complementarity of man and woman serves the communion between them in sexual attraction and fertility in the procreation of children, but it also serves to develop different parts of the person.  Let’s look at the person from a Catholic anthropology, looking at man from the point of view of St Thomas Aquinas, who probably better than any has been able to discriminate within the human organism, the subtle differences between different faculties, i.e. the intellect and will, passions and powers, and how they relate to one another.

Men have a very developed reason (ratio) for the use of a kind of hyper-focus, to get a difficult job done and persevere in doing it until the goal is accomplished.  Reason is able to dissect a situation, compartmentalize it and analyze abstract principles, essences, and ideas.  Women have a highly developed intuitive intellect (intellectus), which helps to look at the whole situation and see things in a holistic approach, helping them to embrace the emotional content of a situation and draw out from it an intimate meaning and purpose.  Some have said that men are more “right-brain” and women are “left-brain,” however, if you actually look at the physical organ of the brain of an actual man it is in two compartments with a super conductor in the middle of two lobes.  A woman’s brain is so interconnected by a spaghetti super network that it almost appears that it is one lobe.  So actually, the whole right-brain/left-brain thing is only applicable to men.  Each human person needs to develop both parts of the intellect the abstract ratio and the intuitive intellectus.  It is clear from studies that the complementarity of both and man and woman raising a child that both parts of the mind are exercised, challenged, and matured.

Also the will needs to be developed.  Aquainas said that there are two basic sets of volition or willing within man, two types of appetites.  One is for the enjoyment of the pleasurable good, the concupiscible appetite, and another is for desiring the good that is difficult to attain, the irascible appetite.  Femininity seems to embody all of the qualities of the pleasurable good, a voice that is gentle, a eyes that are soft and welcoming, a nurturing and sensitive touch.  While masculinity seems to embody everything about obtain the arduous or difficult good: decisive actions, courageous execution of plans, anger at the good that is threatened, a hatred for what is evil.

One thing must be clarified here.  While men and women’s complementarity does embody or exhibit a particular trait of the human person, each human person must develop all of these faculties.  However, men tend to develop the feminine qualities albeit in a masculine way, and vice versa for women.  In fact, St Edith Stein said that the a person has not fully developed into their masculine manhood or feminine womanhood unless they embody both the masculine and feminine qualities, yet possess them and express them in keeping with their sexual identity.  Who shows more womanly assertiveness, decisiveness, and protectiveness than the Blessed Mother, whose womanhood had perfectly matured in its fullness?  Who is more gentle, nurturing, and sensitive than Jesus, albeit in a masculine way? 

HOW FATHER & MOTHER EFFECT THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSON

What is amazing is that studies show how essential it is for a person to experience the both masculine and feminine affirmation in order for all their faculties to develop properly.

Perhaps this is seen most strikingly in those who are deprived of it.  Children who grew up without a fatherly influence:

-Exhibited a general lack of courage and confidence, especially in accomplishing difficult goals

-"there may be something unique to fathers that provides children with different opportunities to regulate their emotions" (Broughton 2000)

-Were statistically more promiscuous and found it difficult to live chaste relationships well, which is particularly difficult for women in later years who develop “daddy issues”

-Showed high sense of aggression and could not express anger in a healthy way or found it highly uncomfortable when someone is angry with them

Children who grew up without a motherly influence:

-Found it difficult speak about their feelings, experience connectedness, and found intimacy awkward

-showed high insecurity and need for attention, physical contact, emotional and affirmation

-Had difficulty showing affection, warmth and developing depth in romantic relationships with their spouses.

In today’s world, the high percentage of broken families is giving rise to persons who would be described by many of the above traits.

Dr Conrad Baars, PhD, an expert psychiatrist who was a consultant for Pope Paul VI on psychological matters, was famous for his intuition in understanding the affirmation of the person.  Clearly, he said, that most people experience a kind of birthing of their person before the age of 5.  In fact 80% of the person is already developed into who he or she will become for the rest of their life: including their capacity to love and be loved, their gender identification, and their overall understanding of what it is to be a human person.  Yet there is another kind of birthing that happens usually in a persons late teens and early twenties, a kind of psychological birthing of their personality.  This too happens by way of affirmation, that the person begins to see themselves as an adult who is capable of loving and being loved.

The problem is that so many people find themselves unlovable and unaffirmed either by father or mother or both.  This can be true even of persons who grew up in homes with both parents physically present but emotionally absent.  In fact, it can even be more painful when a parent is there but is incapable of loving and affirming the child.  Blessed Pope John Paul II in his letter to Families, also spoke about the egocentric and hedonistic tendencies of parents that brings about the terrifying phenomenon of children being “orphans of living parents,” which is a wound of being rejected and unloved.  In these cases a person is almost better off having lost a parent through death rather than having the parent reject the child and refuse to show love to him.

I find, as a priest, the pews of the Churches full of such orphaned, unloved, unaffirmed persons.  It wasn’t that somebody did something to them that was terrible, but it what someone didn’t do to them - love them.  Dr Conrad Baars, together with Dr Anna Teruwe was responsible for the discovery of a very modern emotional disorder, Emotional Deprivational Disorder.

“Emotional Deprivation Disorder is a syndrome which results from a lack of authentic affirmation and emotional strengthening in one's life. A person may have been criticized, ignored, neglected, abused, or emotionally rejected by primary caregivers early in life, resulting in that individual’s stunted emotional growth. Unaffirmed persons are incapable of developing into emotionally mature adults until they receive authentic affirmation from another person. Maturity is reached when there is a harmonious relationship between a person’s body, mind, emotions and spiritual soul under the guidance of their reason and will.”

REACTION TO LIFE

Most of the time people don’t like to think about the evil in their lives, who didn’t love them, who abandoned them, who might have hurt them.  So unless a person is able to look it in the eye and deal with it, it gets buried and people develop a whole intricate system of learning how to ignore it, cope with it, “medicate” it: drugs, alcoholism, being a workaholic, perfectionism, over-achieving, over-eating, promiscuous sex, pornography, avoidance of any kind or responsibility or stresses that are part of a normal life, and so on.  Yet these are perhaps the things that are the most harmful.  The deepest wounds that people have are not what has been done to them but what they do in reaction to it.  It is not what goes into a man that defiles him but what comes out of him, not what happens to him, but what he makes happen (Matthew 15:1).

It is particularly difficult when this reaction is not conscious, and therefore may appear to have a life of its own.  Aquainas differentiated between two parts of the will, the active and the passive, similar to what modern psychology calls the conscious and subconscious part of a person.  It is very common for a person to be subconsciously needy of masculine or feminine affirmation or attention if they were deprived of it when they were younger.  Because of the power of sin working in us this may at times be acted out in perverse ways.

SAME SEX ATTRACTION

Every single human person has a grave disorder.  It's called sin.  Each of us can say "There is a war in my members."  The best way we can describe it is with St Paul's words:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.  So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.  For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,  but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  (Romans 7:15-25)

This is not only the interior experience of every sinner, but also  of those who suffers same-sex attraction.  Some people would like to affirm people in a gay identity, but this cannot be the Christian response, because the act itself, not the person, is intrinsically disordered, and if we love someone, we would not want them to be in habitual grave sin.  What then?  Do we try to fix them or change them?  With this idea I would be careful of attempting to try to fix a person.  They are a person who needs to be loved not necessarily a problem to be solved and sometimes God might permit them to suffer this in some way for the rest of their life.  What they do need is the same as everyone else - Redemption!  Let's look at the causes of same-sex attraction to try to seek a path of redemption.

UNLOVED, UNAFFIRMED, 

AND IN NEED OF REDEMPTION

A person finds themselves sexually attracted to the same sex usually because of an unmet need for affirmation, love, and affection they had as a child from the same-sex parent or also as a result to the abuse or hurt received from the opposite sex parent, or differing variables of abuse and neglect from either parent.  In fact, many psychologists and counselors have had great success with those who have unwanted same-sex attractions in helping to heal this as one would do with a disordered affection in the passive will of the person.  This will undoubtedly upset many people who do not have a catholic vision of man and his anthropology found in the theology of the body, who attempt a kind of gay-affirmation therapy, focussing on depression or stress as results of social resistance to the gay lifestyle rather than something much deeper in the human heart.  These people say that would be unfair to ask a person to change something so deep in his heart.  Remember, that 80% of our sexual identity is formed before the age of 5 and therefore one could claim that he was always that way.

We must be clear that this kind of healing or change is not to be considered as a 

“categorical view of change, grounded in an essentialist view of homosexual sexual orientation that assumes same-sex attractions are the natural and immutable essence of a person,” but “it is far more helpful and accurate to conceptualize such change as occurring on a continuum.  This is in fact how sexual orientation is defined in most modern research, starting with the well known Kinsey scales, even as subsequent findings pertinent to change are often described in categorical terms.” (NARTH Statement on Sexual Orientation Change) emphasis added

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 One of the most honest and realistic looks at same-sex attraction comes from Melinda Selyms, who wrote, “Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism.”

“It's my suspicion that in a lot of cases, people who struggle for years with same-sex attraction are struggling because there are other factors driving their attractions, and these factors are not being addressed. For some people, it seems, the issues are rooted in psychological wounds received in their family of origin, and for those people reparative therapy seems to do a lot of good. Resolve the psychological substrata of sexual orientation, and the attractions sort themselves out of their own accord.” 

Especially for men, who are often more sensual, same-sex attraction is more of a matter of a libinistic sexual attraction, for women, who are often more sentimental, it  tends toward an attraction of the whole of the person to the whole of the other person.  For both of these it is still a need for love and affirmation.  Again here it is necessary to stress that one does not change their passive will overnight or categorically or by an act of the active will.  It happens when the person gifts their inmost being freely and consciously to the desire for Redemption.  This voluntary desire is key.  You know the joke, how many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?  It doesn’t matter.  The light bulb has to want to change.  For those who don’t want this, it is not an option and often by these people it is seen as an attack on their lifestyle.  From my experience in living in Christian mens’ households where a few of the men professed to experience an unwanted same-sex attraction, the two things they needed from me were:

1.  Brotherhood.  Healthy male “disinterested friendship” (Words of the Catechism)  supplied positive and chaste affirmation of them as men in a masculine identity.

2.  A condemnation of the “homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity” (Words of the Catechism)

I suspect this is because that it is an affirmation of them as a man but also a support to their choice of trying to live a chaste life through a reinforcement of the negative choice involved, like the positive and negative poles necessary for electric power.  The deeper changes in us are much more slow and permanent, yet also some may experience that they will have to suffer some degree of temptation the rest of their lives.  The courage apostolate has the appropriate quote of St Frances de Sales on their website:

"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew."

This apostolate has been most effective at least with helping many men and women come to terms with same sex attraction.  Their 5 goals are:

1.  Live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality. (Chastity)

2.  Dedicate ones life to Christ through service to others, spiritual reading, prayer, meditation, individual spiritual direction, frequent attendance at Mass, and the frequent reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist. (Prayer and Dedication)

3.  Foster a spirit of fellowship in which all may share thoughts and experiences, and so ensure that no one will have to face the problems of homosexuality alone. (Fellowship)

4.  Be mindful of the truth that chaste friendships are not only possible but necessary in a chaste Christian life and in doing so provide encouragement to one another in forming and sustaining them. (Support)

5.  Live lives that may serve as good examples to others. (Good Example/Role Model)

Yet some people have no intention of wanting or believing that a change in their sexual orientation is possible.  The media often reinforces this with a subtle kind of brainwashing by a constant propaganda line that “I was born this way” It is clear now that, even as Dean Hammer, who who supposedly coined the phrase of the “gay gene”  himself has said, “there is no gay gene” and therefore is not an variant of human nature or a genetic thing.  THERE IS NO STUDY THAT CLAIMS HOMOSEXUALITY IS SIMPLY GENETIC.  It is shown from studies of twins that it is not inherited, even though studies may show that it may be heritable or traced to certain biological traits.  It also therefore cannot be considered on par with other aspects of human nature such as age, race, gender, and ought not to be described as a “right” or encoded into discrimination laws as a variant.

Also it must be said very clearly that it is not a good thing even though it may be socially acceptable and legal, for two men or two women to claim to have the same “right” or capacity to raise a child in a healthy environment.  Dr Dean Byrd, a psychologist and counselor, who was a consultant for an adoption agency on this matter reveals that in many cases it may greatly harm the emotional and personal well being of the child:

“How healthy is the rejection of gender roles? What is more alarming is that both historical and current research provides significant concerns about the medical and mental health consequences of homosexual practices, as well as the stability of homosexual relationships. Medical health, mental health, longevity and relationship stability are essential issues to be addressed when considering the placement of children.” Gender Complementarity and Child-rearing: Where Tradition and Science Agree

Through analysing different studies he concludes that child rearing in a same sex home will:

-teach by example the rejection of our sexual differences that are inscribed in our nature

-teach children that sex is for pleasure and doesn’t have to include procreation

-due to the very high rate, even majority of couples that are not monogamous, even saying it is better to let their partner freely have sex with others to remain monogamous, the child will not learn stability that comes from monogamy

-the child will have a high rate of confusion of gender identity, a much higher tendency toward depression, emotional imbalance, and promiscuity

NO ONE IS A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE 

OR DOOMED BY HISTORY

Because of the identification that we have with the way we grew up and because so much of who we are depends on the formation we receive as tiny children, it is easy for a person to feel condemned to simply be the outcome of their past, marked forever by a distant mother or absent father or whatever kind of childhood.  You hear it all the time in popular culture, songs, and movies - almost like an excuse for self-pity or a definition of who a person is based solely on what has happened to them.  Yet what is most wounding in our lives is not what has or hasn’t happened to us, it is our own reaction to it.  However, we know that God is a Good Father, and his plan is for freedom and healing.

VOTE CATHOLIC IN NOVEMBER FOR THE REFERENDUM

Because homosexuality is not a right that can be legislated in law but a disorder, when there is an attempt to legislate it, the law becomes disordered.  Make no mistake, those who want to pass same-sex marriages don't give homosexuals their time and pastoral care like priests do and social workers don't give out their cellphone number like I do.  Who do people call when they are attacked by temptation to  hate themselves?  Their priests, those who really care!  Therefore to vote according to Catholic teachings is not a political motive, but it is said out of redemption that has political implications, which are rather severe.

In fact, most of our brothers and sisters who suffer same-sex attraction are not interested in the same-sex marriage legislation.  It is really the motive of a small minority of ideologues who want to control society by redefining its basic cell unity: the family.  Catholics are obliged to give prophetic witness in the way that they vote and by their political action, by not allowing this legislation to be passed in november.

BE NOT AFRAID!!!  This is a work of God, and if anyone tries to pass a law not in keeping with the natural law that God has sewn into the fabric of the universe, and into the depths of all hearts, they will end up fighting GOD HIMSELF!

May the prayers and intercession of Mary, Queen of the family obtain for us the necessary wisdom and courage we need to respond to our prophetic witness.