Ealah sexy

Even within the Catholic Church, charismatic individuals can inspire a cult-following. Religious communities (and a parish is a religious community) can fall victim to the cult phenomenon. In his book "Cults, Sects, and the New Age," Father James LeBar, who has served as a Consultant on Cults for the Archdiocese of New York, notes, "...to be sure,..cultic behavior is possible at any time in any place. It has also been demonstrated that some legitimate actions of Catholic Church groups can be carried to excess, so that the cult label is applied....Church leaders must be vigilant to make sure that cultic practices do not creep into otherwise legitimate groups." (p. 99).

So the Catholic Church is not necessarily immune from cults.  Fr. LeBar stresses this truth in his book writing, "Are there 'Catholic' cults?  Are there practices in the Catholic Church that can be compared to the cults?  Are there groups operating with church approval that use the same techniques, the same methods of operation that may confuse people?  Unfortunately, each of the above questions can be answered affirmatively, with the possible exception of the first.  In the strictest sense, there are no Catholic cults, because of our system of accountability and responsibility.  Should a person or group go astray, the competent authority, be it local (the pastor), regional (the bishop), or international (the Vatican, or the Holy Father himself), after due investigation, corrects them, or excludes them from the Church."

That there are groups which occasionally spring up within the Catholic Church and which operate using the same techniques that cults employ is a given.  Some recent examples are The Fatima Crusaders (also known as the Tridentine Latin Rite Church - TLRC)  which denied the legitimacy of the last four popes; the Bayside Movement, also known as "Our Lady of the Roses," which was founded by Veronica Leuken; the Apostolic Formation Center which was the brainchild of L. Roy Legere; and the Integrated Humanities Program which was conceived by three Catholic professors at the University of Kansas.

One of the chief characteristics of a group which engages in cultic behavior is that it does not tell the truth about itself.  As Rev. Wm. Kent Burtner explains in his "Outline for a Talk on Cults, Thought Reform and Mind Abuse":

"Most people want us to believe the best about their group.  They are also willing to tell the truth about their: ideology, the meaning of becoming a member, what the goal of the group is, what is expected of new members.  But cult groups are NOT willing to do so.  Cult leaders know that if they do, people might not join, or might leave..."

Bearing this in mind, let's read what Father John Unni of St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston's Back Bay had to say about his parish and the "Rainbow Ministry" which plays such an important role there:

"The Cardinal’s been supportive, he’s been very clear what the Church teaches and what it doesn’t, and he knows I have no other agenda there. That’s not going to please everybody, but that’s the Gospel….My thing is, nobody gets excluded from the door, and nobody gets excluded from the table, and then from there, I’m just assuming we’re all trying to do the best that we can do."


But here we immediately encounter a serious problem.  Joe Sacerdo explains:

"Yes, we know the Cardinal’s been supportive. That’s a big part of the problem. He has been only somewhat clear on what the Church teaches and doesn’t teach by the mixed messages coming out from him and his spokesman. If Fr. Unni has 'no other agenda there,' then why has he sponsored speakers who have worked in favor of gay marriage talking in favor of gay marriage, in direct opposition to what the Catholic Church teaches? Fr. Unni, Cardinal O’Malley, and Terry Donilon, can we get an answer to that question? And 'nobody gets excluded from the table'? Does that mean that regardless of the level of mortal sin anyone might have committed, and an absence of repentance for that sin, they should still receive the Eucharist?  

To which I would add, if Father Unni has no other agenda, why does his "Rainbow Ministry" Blog link to a Blog post entitled "Mychal Judge embraced his homosexuality as a gift of God" (Father Mychal Judge was a Franciscan priest and chaplain for the New York Fire Department who lost his life during the World Trade Center attack on 911), in which the author writes, "Some have asked, Why do we need to know that Fr. Mike was gay? First, because Mychal himself brought it up. He felt it important to share this aspect of himself, to put a human face and name upon the despised label of 'homosexual'. Recall how Christ, when asked, 'Who is my neighbor?,' tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, putting a human face on the Samaritans who were despised by the Jews. To truly understand Mychal Judge, to fully appreciate how God worked through him, we must recognize this truth about him. Mychal’s gayness was a major reason for his deep empathy with others, especially outcasts. He was holy in part because he was gay, not despite the fact.


Second, we should know that Fr. Mike was gay because Rome wants to purge many good, gifted gay seminarians. Mychal Judge and many like him would be barred from the priesthood under this regime. Christ had no problem with Mychal’s orientation, but Rome does.

Third, awareness of Fr. Mychal’s gay identity saves lives, and we are a pro-life Church. 1500 gay and lesbian teenagers commit suicide each year in the U.S., succumbing to intense rejection and internalized shame.

Mychal intervened in at least one family whose teenage son came out to his parents. That story had a happy ending, but thousands of gay kids are still rejected, abused, driven to suicide, and thrown out to the streets by their parents.

Public awareness of Mychal's gay identity continues to save lives by providing greater understanding, fulfilling Christ’s command to “go and do likewise” as the Good Samaritan.

Some have asked, Shouldn't sexual orientation be kept private?

Intimacy is a private matter. But identity and prejudice are public matters affecting the mental, social, physical, and spiritual health of millions of families and individuals.

Those who are embarrassed by this serious, mature discussion wrongly associate guilt and shame with homosexual orientation and relationships. They ought to examine where their visceral reactions really come from. They ought to question Rome’s faulty assumptions and, indeed, Rome’s own 'objective disorders' which more often resemble a severely dysfunctional family than the Body of Christ.

For centuries, Catholics were also taught to fear left-handed people as 'servants of the devil,' and the left-handed were burned at the stake along with faggots and heretics. (The word faggot, literally “burning bundle,” derives from these church burnings of gay men).

Now we know that homosexuality is no more 'disordered' or 'sinful' than left-handedness. Medical and scientific research strongly point to sexual orientation as determined at birth; that it’s nature over nurture for most people. Therefore, homosexual orientation, like left-handedness, is a Divinely created, normal variation within natural law. As such, gay people face the same moral challenges as everyone else.

The truly disordered homosexuals, psychiatrists say, are the ego-dystonic ones -- the self-loathing and dis-integrated, those who don't accept themselves. The most strident homophobes often have unresolved fears and wounds of their own which they project onto others. Christ warned of such projection: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but not the beam in your own eye?!”

Homophobic guilt, shame, and fear are pathological reactions; they are not of Christ. Christ spreads healing, not pathology -- holiness, not neurosis. Whatever is psychologically unhealthy can never be spiritually holy. (The very words “holy” and “holiness” derive from healthy, happy, and wholeness).

Mychal Judge rejected pathological shame, and embraced his homosexuality as God's will for him."

Again, one of the chief characteristics of a group which engages in cultic behavior is that it does not tell the truth about itself.  Father John Unni has not told the truth about his agenda.  Nor have other members of the "Rainbow Ministry." 

The competent local authority needs to investigate St. Cecilia's "Rainbow Ministry." 

We read here that: "Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, has noted that, "sects are marked by dissent from the Church’s teachings, promoting heresy and even schism."  Now John Kelly, Chair of the "Rainbow Ministry," has said that he doesn't look to the Vatican for guidance or teaching.  His group has promoted same-sex "marriage," and links to a Blog which describes the homosexual orientation as a "Divinely created, normal variation within natural law" while accusing Rome of "faulty assumptions" and "objective disorders."

It doesn't take a theologian to discern that something is radically wrong with the "Rainbow Ministry."  Only someone whose eyes are open.

Father Leonard Kennedy, c.s.b., in a review of Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg's book "The Battle for Normality," writes: "...homosexual 'love' is not love but ego-satisfaction, and acting it out only deepens the void inside.  That is why 'the vast majority of active homosexuals are promiscuous, and much more so than promiscuous heterosexuals.'  The fairy tale faithful homosexual 'union' is a propaganda item, to win privileges from the law and acceptance within Christian churches." 


Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality, says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. Dr. Aardweg notes that, "The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).

At its website, St. Cecilia's "rainbow ministry" has a photograph of the late Franciscan Father Mychal Judge and a quote from the priest who was a self-identified homosexual: "Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?" Fr. Mychal here assumes that all discrimination is "unjust."  While it is true that we must accept homosexual persons with "respect, compassion and sensitivity," we're also told in 2358 of the Catechism that the homosexual inclination is "objectively disordered." And this paragraph does not say that homosexual persons must be accepted "without discrimination." Rather, it states clearly, "Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." What's the point I'm trying to make? Not all discrimination is unjust.  "Homosexual love" is not possible because it seeks to transform the love of friendship between two people of the same sex into conjugal love.  But conjugal love requires psychological and physical complementarity which can only exist between opposite sexes:

"There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family.  Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.  Homosexual acts '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.'" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, No. 4).

So the answer to Fr. Judge's question is: yes.  Not all discrimination is unjust.  Reflect upon Pope Benedict XVI's teaching in No. 11 of Deus Caritas Est: "The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God's decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh' (Gen 2:23). Here one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving with all his being to possess it and thus regain his integrity. While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become 'complete'. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: 'Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh' (Gen 2:24).


Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who 'abandons his mother and father' in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become 'one flesh'. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature."

This is the teaching of the Catholic Church.  The "Rainbow Ministry" of St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston, the "Gay Pride" parish, does not advance this teaching but instead a dissenting view.  Thus far, after weeks of ongoing controversy, Cardinal Sean O'Malley has not addressed the dissent of the "Rainbow Ministry."  It is not enough to simply articulate or re-affirm the teaching of the Church in a Blog post.  A Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ has a deeper responsibility than that.  See here.