We’ve all heard of clergymen converting people. Yet in Joe Biden’s case, he just might have converted a clergyman.
Some may draw this conclusion with news that the Washington, D.C., church frequented by Biden held a “Pride” Mass yesterday evening — and that the parish’s pastor robustly defended the event.
The service took place at 5:30 pm at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in the Georgetown neighborhood. It was Trinity’s “3rd annual LGBTQIA+ Pride Mass,” according to the parish website.
As for the pastor’s defense, the Washington Examiner relates: “‘This celebration is an expression of our parish’s mission statement TO ACCOMPANY ONE ANOTHER IN CHRIST, CELEBRATE GOD’S LOVE, AND TRANSFORM LIVES,’ the Rev. Kevin Gillespie said of the liturgical celebration. ‘Our celebration of Pride is not celebrating personal vanity, but the human dignity of a group of people who have been for too long the objects of violence, bullying and harassment. Our parish reaches out to LGBTQIA+ people as it reaches out to all Catholics in our area.’”
“The Georgetown parish is hosting the Mass despite the fact that Catholic teaching holds that homosexual activity is a ‘grave depravity’ and is ‘intrinsically disordered,’” the Examiner continues.
“A group of conservative Catholics has organized a rally outside the church to pray the rosary during the Pride Mass,” the site adds. “The group said it plans to pray ‘in reparation for Catholic masses being held to honor and celebrate LGBTQ Catholics.’”
The Examiner is correct about the Catechism’s dictates, but makes an innocent error in describing the protesting Catholics as “conservative.” “Conservative” and “liberal” are provisional terms inappropriate for describing positions on definitive, unchanging teaching laid down in official church documents.
To analogize the matter, it’s one thing for people to disagree on what a speed limit should be; it’s quite another, however, when the law states it’s 65, for people who think it should be higher to treat those driving 85 as if they’re law-abiding. Moreover, it would be ridiculous to describe those speeding enablers as “liberal” and those protesting their enabling as “conservative.” On the matter of what the law is, the former are simply wrong and the latter right.
Likewise, insofar as the sexual-speeding (and swerving) enablers deny the reality or legitimacy of the relevant Catholic teaching, and insofar as their opponents uphold such, the proper terms for describing them are, respectively, heterodox (or heretical) and orthodox. Using parallel political terminology to characterize them implies they’re on the same plane and lends the heterodox undeserved moral parity.
As for Reverend Gillespie, his defense of Wednesday’s Mass is an insult to intelligence. While it’s notable that the movement in question calls itself by the most destructive Deadly Sin (the one inspiring Lucifer to rebel against God), it’s self-explanatory that Wednesday’s Mass was not celebrating pride as in “pridefulness.” Gillespie’s statement is but a dodge.
The Real Issue
A second analogy is in order: Imagine there were another Pride Mass, one celebrating the AFADPASM community. That acronym stands for adulterer, fornicator, alcoholic, drug-abuser, porn-watcher, auto-eroticist, sadist, and masochist. You might say this would never happen, as the Catholic Church (CC) defines the urges in question as disordered and the behaviors they prescribe as sinful.
But the same is true of LGBTQ.
Now, some could aver that LGBTQ describes feelings-determined status, not actions, and that only the latter can be sinful. True that. Thus does the CC teach that mere feelings of same-sex attraction aren’t sinful (they’re “disordered”); acting upon them is. This is rational because people rarely if ever choose their feelings; in fact, no small number of drunkards, drug users, porn watchers, etc. desire freedom from their disordered urges. (Consider Paul the Apostle, who implored God to remove the “thorn” in his “flesh.”) But there are two problems with using this as a sexual-devolutionary Mass defense.
First, it’s rarely the case that “out” “LGBTQ” individuals are living chaste lives, but simply want freedom to be what “they are” (or think they should be considered). Why, for all of history there were old spinsters and odd bachelors beset with disordered sexual feelings but who, living apparently chaste lives, were at worst considered eccentric. Rather, today’s sexual devolutionaries want the freedom to act upon their feelings not only without judgment, but with societal endorsement. Their very movement is defined and driven by a desire to engage in behaviors the CC (and others) considers sinful. For this reason, celebrating “Pride” is celebrating sin.
Second, it could also be said that AFADPASM relates to status, not actions. Regardless, wouldn’t it be ridiculous to define yourself as AFADPASM, to make it, essentially, your master status? Why would you even think to do so if believing the feelings/behaviors in question were disordered/sinful? Are you not so much more than a sinful tendency? Are you not a child of God, in fact?
The bottom line is that an urge, sinful or not, does not make you what acting upon it would. Merely having continual desires to golf doesn’t make you a golfer. You actually have to play golf, regularly.
In other words, the clear message embracing the “Pride” movement sends is that you endorse, or at least are indifferent about, both the feelings and behaviors in question — and thus reject the CC’s teachings on these matters.
If Reverend Gillespie doesn’t mean to send this message, he can and should welcome all who wish to worship God, but must reject the destructive “Pride” movement. And if he does mean to send it, he then is in a state of mortal sin according to his church — and is in the wrong business.
