ROME — Jesuit Father James Martin declared this week that Gay Pride celebrations show us “whom Jesus calls us to love” and therefore are “deeply complementary” with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Pride month and devotion to the Sacred Heart “are not contradictory but complementary,” Father Martin writes. “Because each tells us something about how Jesus loves. And it is providential that both are marked in June.”
Despite the gay mantra “love is love,” however, the LGBT movement has little to do with love and everything to do with sex, since the very initials of the movement signify sexual preferences and inclinations.
According to Catholic theology, and Christian morality more generally, Jesus wants us to love everyone but he does not want us to have sex with everyone we love. He does not want us to have sex with our mothers, for instance, or our sisters, our daughters, or our buddies of the same sex.
How Gay Pride “shows us whom Jesus calls us to love” is therefore a mystery, and one that Father Martin does not choose to elucidate.
In his essay, the Jesuit priest also asserts that “in ten countries you can be executed for being gay.” This is false and disingenuous. In ten countries you can be executed for sodomy, or performing gay sex, but not for “being gay.”
Following the publication of Martin’s essay, two Spanish priests rejected the Jesuit’s arguments as unworthy of a man of God.
Jesus did not come to tell us that “all paths are good,” Father Francisco Javier Bronchalo wrote Wednesday, and for a priest to compare a sinful path with devotion to the Sacred Heart “is imprudence and a great lie.”
Fr. James Martin should “reflect well on what he says. He can harm many people with these types of comparisons that aim to force his pro-LGBT position to the extreme,” Bronchalo added.
For his part, Father Juan Manuel Góngora insisted that that gay “pride” and the Sacred Heart of Jesus “are not complementary” but are “totally antagonistic in their essence and in their form. Humility overcomes pride.”
Earlier this month, Father Martin asserted that Christian churches have a special duty to celebrate Gay Pride, since much anti-gay violence has been “motivated by religion.”
A woman protests gun violence on Hollywood Boulevard in the annual Pride Parade on June 12, 2022 in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
“Can Catholics celebrate Pride Month?” Father Martin asked, before responding with a resounding “yes,” since Gay Pride is “a celebration of the human dignity of a group of people who have been for so long treated like dirt.”
“It’s especially important for churches to celebrate Pride, since a great deal of the rejection and even violence that the LGBTQ community has faced has been motivated by religion, or at least what people think religion teaches,” the priest declared.
In the case of the LGBT celebrations, “pride” is not sinful, Martin stated, because it is not a satisfaction in one’s accomplishments but “a consciousness of one’s own dignity.”
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