Catholics do not hate persons who
happen to be homosexual -- but they condemn homosexuality as they condemn every
other perversion or sin
By Christopher Zehnder
No one writing about events in California can ignore homosexuality. The issue
is omnipresent. It cannot be avoided. A Catholic journalist has the added task,
in dealing with homosexual issues, to deal with them from the Church’s
perspective: namely, that homosexual acts are sinful; the homosexual
orientation, disordered. Finally, no one writing to defend Catholic tradition
and natural law in society may fail to take up the pen betimes to oppose
attempts to order disorder (by law or in public opinion) or to make the sinful
respectable. To so fail would be a dereliction of duty.
When a Catholic, however, does speak his mind about homosexuality, he is called
all sorts of unpleasant names -- hard-hearted, bigoted, fear-mongering,
obscurantist, right-wing, extremist, cruel, unprogressive, or, simply, not
nice. He is even said to suffer from that neurosis moderne, “homophobia,” a
word presumably meaning “fear of homosexuals.” What’s more, he himself is
thought probably to be a closet homosexual, striking out at his co-sexualists
because he fears to come to grips with his own suppressed desires.
But any such account of a Catholic mind is merely an unreasoning attack on a
reasoned position. It is just a dust kicking ad hominem, a more or less
disingenuous attempt to obscure an opponent’s position with emotion-charged,
badly conceived rhetoric.
But the attack on the Catholic position on homosexuality goes deeper than
rhetoric; it is the latest example of what the Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc
in his 1929 book Survivals and New Arrivals called the “Modern Mind.” The
“Modern Mind,” said Belloc, is not a doctrine or system of thought but a “mood”
and so cannot be defined. It can, however, be described. “We all know the
thing,” wrote Belloc:
It is the spirit which tells us, on hearing any affirmation or hypothesis not
within its own limited experience, that the affirmation or hypothesis must be
false. It is the spirit especially prone to take for granted the falsity of an
unfamiliar idea if that idea is known to have been familiar in the past. It is
the spirit which confuses development in complexity with the growth of good and
the process of time with a process of betterment. It is the spirit which
appeals, as to a final authority, to whatever has last been said in a matter:
“the latest authority.” It is the spirit which has lost acquaintance with
logical form and is too supine to reason. It is the spirit which lives on bad
science and worse history at third hand. It is the spirit, not of the populace
or of the scholars, but of the half-educated.
“There stands the ‘Modern Mind,’ a morass,” said Belloc. But since Belloc’s
time, the morass has spread to include not only the “half-educated” but the
“scholars” and the “populace” as well. The mark of this most modern “Modern
Mind” is a rejection of definition, the conviction, in particular, that we
cannot speak about a fixed human nature and about human acts and “orientations”
as objectively good or bad. The “Modern Mind” today does not believe in human
nature but in individuals who define their own reality based on their
subjective feelings and desires.
This explains the growing rejection of Catholic notions not only about
homosexuality but also about human sexuality as such. Sexual intercourse is not
seen as having any objective purpose. To the Catholic mind, sexual intercourse
is understood only in relation to procreation; this is its primary purpose,
which means that it is only valid within marriage, the foundation of the
family. Thus, any use of the sexual organs outside the marital embrace and
excluding the possibility of conception is, according to the Catholic Church, a
perversion, a “turning away” from the purpose and nature of the thing. The
“Modern Mind” today, however, denies any objective purpose to the sexual organs
and the sexual act; rather, it is the individual that gives them meaning based
on his own notions, feelings, and desires.
A truly Catholic criticism of pro-homosexualist policies in the state (and,
sadly, Catholic dioceses) arises from a worldview opposed to reducing
everything to personal preference. Catholics -- at least, if they follow the
Church -- do not hate the persons who happen to be homosexual but they condemn
homosexuality as they condemn every other perversion or sin.
Opposing the ideas and policies that promote the normalizing of homosexuality
is, at its deepest level, a fight for the souls of homosexuals themselves and a
defense of society in general from false ideas and destructive practices. It is
a struggle to preserve the integrity of the human person. As such, it is not
any kind of “phobia” but an act of love.