REVIEW: Fr. Gerald Murray v. Jesuit homosexualist activist Fr. James Martin

I have some homework for you.

First, read at the National Catholic Reporter the outstanding, comprehensive analysis of what homsexualist activist Jesuit Fr James Martin is attempting.  It is written by Judy Roberts. HERE

Then read my friend Fr. Gerry Murray’s obliteration of Jesuit James Martin’s recent book, which is a manifesto of homosexualist activism and worse.  This is also at the National Catholic Reporter.  HERE

Father James Martin Proposes an Alternate Catechism
BOOK REVIEW: The popular Jesuit priest puts forth the notion that the Church has misunderstood God’s plan for human sexuality for her entire history.
Father Gerald E. Murray

In his new book, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity (HarperCollins), Jesuit Father James Martin has written a critique of the Catholic Church’s dealings with what he calls the “the LGBT community.”

What is the “LGBT community”? This acronym describes three groups of people: those who engage in, or feel drawn to engage in, homosexual activity (lesbians and gays); those who engage in, or feel drawn to engage in, both heterosexual and homosexual activity (bisexuals); and those persons who reject their sexual identity and think that they are in fact a member of the opposite sex (transsexuals/transgendered persons).

Is this, in fact, a community? Not really.

This is a lumping together of those who reject the natural order of human sexuality in different ways, and who thus share a common interest in seeing that laws and societal norms and customs that support that natural order be proscribed. [There is a movement in the Church to detach human sexuality from the purpose for which God intended it.  Once it is detached from procreation and marriage, anything goes.  That’s the brass ring.]

Father Martin’s book has practically nothing to say about bisexuals and transsexuals/transgendered persons. His book is about homosexual persons, and more specifically about Catholic homosexuals. Yet even this category of persons is not fully treated. Father Martin writes about Catholic homosexuals who embrace the “gay identity.” He ignores completely those Catholics who experience same-sex attraction and do not positively embrace this as their identity.  [What a surprise.]

He never once mentions Courage, a Catholic apostolate founded in 1980 by Cardinal Terence Cooke and entrusted to the direction of the late Father John Harvey.

In a book that alleges to analyze and critique the Catholic Church’s outreach to homosexual Catholics, this omission cannot be accidental.

The point of this book is not to suggest ways in which the Church, in fidelity to the teaching of Christ, can improve her outreach to those persons who feel attracted to commit the sin of sodomy in the hope that they will reject this wrongful tendency and embrace chastity. If that were the case, then the very successful experience of Courage, which has spread throughout the United States and internationally, would have been at least mentioned, if not highlighted.

[NB] The real purpose of this book is to advocate for a relaxation of the Church’s teaching that sodomy is gravely immoral and that any attraction to commit acts of sodomy is an objective disorder in one’s personality.

Father Martin rejects the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that the “inclination” to “homosexual tendencies” is “objectively disordered” (2358). He writes:

“The phrase relates to the orientation, not the person, but it is still needlessly hurtful. Saying that one of the deepest parts of a person — the part that gives and receives love — is ‘disordered’ in itself is needlessly cruel” (pp. 46-47).

In a recent interview, he called for the use of the replacement phrase “differently ordered.” That would be a change in the Church’s teaching. [NB] It would mean that God created two different orders of sexual behavior that are both good and right according to his will: Some people are homosexual by God’s express design and some are heterosexual by God’s express design.  [Which we reject.]

If that were the case, then homosexual acts themselves could no longer be described, as they are in the Catechism in Paragraph 2357, as “intrinsically disordered.” If the inclination is simply different, and not disordered, then acting upon that inclination is simply different, and not disordered. Homosexual activity would simply be natural behavior for “differently ordered” people.  [This is the goal for these activists.  Fr. Murray identified it clearly.] […]

 

[… The vivisection continues as Fr. Murray provides quotes from the Jesuit’s book …]
Here we have the danger posed by this book: Father Martin puts forth the notion that the Church has misunderstood God’s plan for human sexuality for her entire history and that she must now switch to a new teaching, namely that the union of man and woman in marital love is not the only path for the true and good expression of human sexuality.

The thesis of this book is that lesbians, gays, bisexual persons and transsexual/transgendered persons have been made to be such by God, [wrong] and thus they should gladly live and express their God-given, differently ordered sexuality in a differently ordered way.

The truth is very different.

God in his goodness helps all of us to deal with our problems and temptations, no matter what they might be. One of his first mercies is to reveal to us the truth about our common human nature, including the truth about human sexuality, which is differentiated between male and female and is only rightly expressed by a husband and wife in the martial embrace that is in itself procreative and unitive.

Inclinations or tendencies toward sexual acts that are neither procreative or unitive, and thus inherently immoral, do not represent who we are or how we were made by God. They are deficits, ultimately traceable to original sin, which need to be dealt with by God’s grace and our willingness to believe firmly that God’s law is good and will produce the greatest happiness in our lives.

Fr. Murray did an excellent job of exposing this Jesuit’s false positions.  Be sure to read the whole thing over there.