In addition to my message in last week’s Father’s Focus, it’s worth taking this time to explain a bit of the reasoning behind why the Church teaches what it does and why it simply cannot, and will not, ever change. C.S. Lewis once said “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
In recent years, many prominent Catholic priests, sisters, bishops, and the like, have come to openly reject the Church’s teachings and stubbornly insist that the Church must conform itself to the world on LGBTQ issues. To be fair, insofar as these clerics are trying to make people feel legitimately welcome and loved when they have often deeply not felt that from the Church, that’s a good thing. And insofar as these clerics are trying to begin outreach not with a focus on sin, but with a focus on how much God loves you regardless of where you are in life, that also, is a good thing. And we must remember this: homosexual tendencies, movements of mind or body, are in themselves not sinful. Only sexual acts, freely and knowingly chosen outside of sacramental martial union, are. But insofar as these clerics are trying to downplay the freedom that comes as a result of virtue and chastity while making people comfortable with sexual immorality and sin and convincing them that the natural law, the moral law, Scripture, and the Church are all in error and will change, they place themselves in opposition to Christ and His holy gospel.
On the surface, these efforts seem so welcoming. It seems so loving, righteous, and decent, but it’s actually one of the most spiritually cruel things you can do to a person. Because the fact of the matter is that sin, all sin, including sexual immorality, can never in principle fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts, and will always in some way or another make us miserable. To become content with sin, to cease trying to overcome it, and to make peace with it by telling ourselves that it’s not so bad, is basically the same as that analogy C.S. Lewis made. To be content with sin is to be like a child who is so preoccupied with making mudpies in a slum, that we don’t even care about the offer to vacation at sea. To be content with sin is to sell ourselves infinitely short of the glory God has in store for us.
Therefore, to welcome someone into the Church while maintaining that the Church is in error and must come to embrace and celebrate sin is like seeing a homeless person freezing to death in a blizzard outside your house, welcoming them into your house, but then turning off the furnace and opening all the doors and windows the second they enter. It is a horribly cruel thing to do. The human heart longs for the perfect warmth of God’s love, but the cold of sin cannot come in with us. It is something we must endeavor to keep outside.
Furthermore, to do like these dissident clergy and tell someone that sin is not sin and that God won’t give them the ability to overcome sin, is silently to tell people “God doesn’t love you enough to give you the freedom that comes through virtue and holiness.” What these priests and bishops are telling people when they say that chastity is impossible and that sexual immorality is no big deal is that God sees the agony and bondage and addiction that sin keeps them in, and God’s only response is simply to say “I don’t care. I can’t be bothered enough to care to help them. The best they can hope for is a life that has some occasional pleasure and to receive the empty praise of others because I have nothing in store for them.”
This is the Satanic lie; not only does God care about the agony sin keeps you in, but as this gospel said He cares so much that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. God has not called us to settle and be content with a life where the high point is constantly chasing the hollow pleasure that accompanies addiction to sin, but rather He has called us to be completely and truly one with Him for all eternity. God has called us to enter into the indwelling life of the Trinity itself; to eternally behold the face of the Father in and through Jesus Christ the Son, sharing in the love of the Holy Spirit. To enter into divine life itself.
This is an infinitely greater thing than even the most intense pleasures that come from sin, but to enter into it, we can’t take the sin with us. We have to leave behind the mudpies and the slum in order to have the holiday at sea, and any attempt to convince people that the sea doesn’t exist and that slum mudpies are the best thing in life must be rejected as a lie, a lie that restricts our ultimate happiness and freedom. It is time for the Church to stop selling short the gospel of Jesus Christ to conform to the demands of the unbelieving world. We have to stop being so easily pleased with sin, and instead seek the infinite and perfect joy, peace, and meaning that is only found in the Most Holy Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Father Andrew Meng, Parochial Vicar