Showing posts with label LGBT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LGBT. Show all posts

Monday, July 29, 2019

The LGBT Conspiracy and Eros, the Demon of Love

The LGBT Conspiracy and Eros, the Demon of Love

It’s become impossible to keep up with the activities of the relentless juggernaut known as the “LGBT community.” Seemingly every day, we see a new story more outrageous and shocking than the last. University professors and children’s book publishers are defending the practice of bringing young children to “Pride” events, not by downplaying their sex-fueled and nudity-filled nature, but by assuring us that “nobody likes nakedness more than children” and that witnessing “kink” and nudity is “an excellent opportunity for parents to do unbiased sex education.” In March, a library in Texas hosted one of the now infamous Drag Queen Storytime events, accidentally featuring a 32-year-old convicted sex offender. Let’s not forget Desmond Is Amazing, the 12-year-old drag queen who seems to know a lot about hard drugs.

Many decent people get the sense — and rightly so — that the wholesale normalization of pedophilia is next on the LGBT lobby’s tyrannical to-do list. The above examples of mass child grooming are only a highlight reel, and at any rate, looking at these events in and of themselves is useful only to a certain point. What we are dealing with is, in fact, a global conspiracy made up of tens of thousands of people, poised to reconfigure society as we know it. I’m quite serious. Back in March, I wrote about the dangers of a surface-level opposition to feminism:
The present feminist domination of society and politics is not surprising when we understand that the very language we often use in regard to our opponents is based not on truth, but on usefulness – that is, language that has no regard for truth and therefore no regard for us as human beings created in the image of God. This is justified in the minds of many who use such abusive language (if they consider the implications of their language at all), because we as well as they have accepted a priori that the moral superiority of feminist thought is self-evident.

Thus, it becomes a self-perpetuating system. There is no need for a shadowy cabal of man-hating feminist overlords. All that is required is that the masses never question whether the two statements of belief qualifying radical feminism (listed above) are acceptable or not. All that is required is that the very same people who can see the “problems with feminism today” go on to de facto accept the feminist version of history, of language, of first principles, as gospel truth.

We can observe similar phenomena within the LGBT movement. They’ve been highly successful in their general abuse of history and language, not to mention their ability to frog-boil us to the point where hearing of young boys in women’s outfits stripping for grown men warrants at most an exasperated petition signing or Facebook share. It is difficult to understand the seemingly impossible cohesion of various revolutionary movements when examining only the material evidence.
Not only do various groups work toward their own goals with remarkable efficacy, but they also manage to aid the groups around them in attaining theirs — even those that are completely disparate, such as the aspirations of feminism, LGBT groups, and Islam. In this way, these become the most dangerous and baffling conspiracies of all. Those who decry “conspiracy theorists” are quick to point out that the more people a conspiracy involves, the less likely it is that it will be able to maintain the secrecy it needs to operate. They’re right, and it’s right to ignore them.

They’re missing the point, because they do not understand the supernatural forces guiding these seemingly fragmented conspiracies. It’s true that purely ideological means can bring a conspiracy far, but the more I witness the decay around me, the more I am convinced of the direct influence that God is allowing the prince of the world and his cronies to have in shaping our societies.

I was at a great disadvantage when writing the aforementioned contra-feminism article, as I had not yet read an incredible book called The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis. Understanding the “spirit of feminism” seems obvious enough from Sacred Scripture — it subsists largely within the sin of pride. However, though the LGBT movement shares in the spirit of pride as a root cause (the celebration of it alone should be a warning bell), upon reading this book, I have come to believe that a warped spirit of love — specifically Eros, romantic love — is what plagues them most intensely. More importantly, it is this same spirit that has led the majority of normal, “cisgender,” “straight” people to their incredible tolerance for the collapse taking place around them.
Lewis writes:
The real danger seems to me not that the lovers will idolise each other but that they will idolise Eros himself.

I do not of course mean that they will build altars or say prayers to him. The idolatry I speak of can be seen in the popular misinterpretation of Our Lord’s words “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she loved much” (Luke VII, 47). From the context, and especially from the preceding parable of the debtors, it is clear that this must mean: “The greatness of her love for Me is evidence of the greatness of the sins I have forgiven her.” (The for here is like the for in “He can’t have gone out, for his hat is still hanging in the hall”; the presence of the hat is not the cause of his being in the house but a probable proof that he is). But thousands of people take it quite differently. They first assume, with no evidence, that her sins were sins against chastity, though, for all we know, they may have been usury, dishonest shopkeeping, or cruelty to children. And they then take Our Lord to be saying, “I forgive her unchastity because she was so much in love.” The implication is that a great Eros extenuates — almost sanctions — almost sanctifies — any actions it leads to.

When lovers say of some act that we might blame, “Love made us do it,” notice the tone. A man saying, “I did it because I was frightened,” or “I did it because I was angry”, speaks quite differently. He is putting forward an excuse for what he feels to require excusing. But the lovers are seldom doing quite that. Notice how tremulously, almost how devoutly, they say the word love, not so much pleading an “extenuating circumstance” as appealing to an authority. The confession can be almost a boast. There can be a shade of defiance in it. They “feel like martyrs.” In extreme cases what their words really express is a demure yet unshakable allegiance to the god of love.
I immediately recognized the painful truth of these words in many regrettable actions I have undertaken in my own life. When Eros becomes a god himself rather than being submitted to God, we give him powerful sway over us. He can lead us to do the unthinkable out of this hollow feeling of intense love — and perhaps even more dangerously to society at large, he can lead us to justify the unjustifiable in the behavior of others.

Mere decades ago, the cry of love became an argument for couples of the same sex having relationships together, with a demand for “marriage” following soon after. Is it so hard to imagine that most people in the not too distant future will find themselves able to stomach “consensual” ephebophilia and pedophilia, slaves as they are to this unchained Eros? The foundation for this acceptance is already being laid.

It’s easy to view the LGBT lobby and especially the pedophilia-as-sexual-orientation faction purely from the perspective of carnal desire. Even aside from the most sex-crazed antics of “Pride” parades and gay bars, they base their entire existence as group on the erroneous concept of “sexual orientation.” We need to understand once again as a society that sexual desires may be complex and nearly infinite, but chastity in spite of temptation is simple and universal (and, with the aid of grace, possible!). This must be emphasized, particularly now, as we see the push for severely disordered pedophilic tendencies to be recognized as an “identity.”

However, though it is undoubtedly important, it is not enough to control what C.S. Lewis calls Venus — sexual love. We must think broadly of Eros, of romantic love, as well in order to truly understand the actions of these confused human beings, particularly when we consider just how many of them are victims of sexual abuse themselves. They, like us, live in a world awash with free pornography, immodesty, and contraception, which no doubt fuels their disordered inclinations even further. Instead of speaking the truth in charity, we await their evil actions with open arms, closing our hearts to the person whom God has made in order to embrace a ghost crafted by human hands. We’re all looking for love, in one way or another, and it is those most starving for love whom Eros is quickest to devour.

It would be foolish to ignore him in this clash of mores, thinking that once we sort Venus out, all will be well. Eros is not to be underestimated. He’s a lot harder to keep on a leash.

Image: Joseph Kranak via Flickr.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Cardinal Sarah- From Hollywood to Gender Ideology to ISIS

Synod Fathers: From Hollywood to Gender Ideology to ISIS

Cardinal Sarah and Archbishop Gomez trace the crisis of the family back to a loss in the sense of God's Presence and Truth

VATICAN CITY — Two newly released interventions by Synod Fathers offer insight into the gravest threats facing the family today, and unite in calling for a rediscovery of the beauty of Christian family life and the transforming power of the Gospel.

Expressing deep reservations over certain synodal procedures, Cardinal Robert Sarah advised the body to “help the Holy Father to enunciate clearly certain truths and useful guidance on a global level,” as “gender ideology and ISIS” spread across the globe assailing humanity from opposite poles: “On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism.”

Cardinal Sarah serves as the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. On Monday he released jointly to Aleteia and the National Catholic Register the intervention he delivered at the opening general congregations of the Synod.

“What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the twentieth century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today,” the Cardinal said in his strongly-worded intervention. “The church must promote a true “epiphany of the Family,” he added, “…for the marriage crisis is essentially a crisis of God, but also a crisis of faith…”
Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, while citing the “virtual world” of Hollywood movies, television shows and fantasy sports as major contributing factors to the crisis in the family, wove a similarly threaded message: “Our culture has lost its sense of the meaning of the human person and creation. This loss is rooted in the loss of God.”

Counseling a renewed appreciation of the human person, Archbishop Gomez, in his intervention of October 10, recalled Pope Francis’ visit to the US and his reminder that “God entrusted his loving plan for creation to the family.”

“This divine Word is the authentic starting point for understanding the family’s vocation and mission,” he said.
The Los Angeles Archbishop voiced his belief that “we must proclaim the beauty of God’s plan of love for creation, for the human person, and for the human family.”

Also on October 10, Aleteia spoke with the Cardinal Sarah following a meeting of the bishops of Africa. The Guinean cardinal voiced his concern about three controversial paragraphs being included in the Instrumentum laboris, saying that by retaining the paragraphs which did not receive a two-thirds majority at last year’s meeting, he believes “there is an agenda they are trying to impose.”

He also expressed his opinion that the starting point of the synod’s working document was “somewhat mistaken” in beginning with modern difficulties rather than “God’s plan for the family.” But he added that, in the first week: “I saw that the Holy Spirit was guiding it well.”

The cardinal therefore encouraged the faithful to pray, especially as “the gravest and most serious point is the third part.”

“There are still bishops’ conferences — some, not all — in the West that want to open the doors [to everything], but they are few. The bishops of the East, Africa, and America are orthodox. But the few who are are insisting, with the help of the media.”

Here below we publish a translation of the full text of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s intervention, followed by the full text delivered by Archbishop Jose Gomez, preserving the emphases indicated in the original text.

Robert Cardinal Sarah
Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments
Text for Synod on the Family, October 2015
Your Holiness, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, participants of the Synod,
I propose these three thoughts:
1) More transparency and respect among us
I feel a strong need to invoke the Spirit of Truth and Love, the source of parresia in speaking and humility in listening, who alone is capable of creating true harmony in plurality.
I say frankly that in the previous Synod, on various issues one sensed the temptation to yield to the mentality of the secularized world and individualistic West. Recognizing the so-called “realities of life” as a locus theologicus means giving up hope in the transforming power of faith and the Gospel. The Gospel that once transformed cultures is now in danger of being transformed by them. Furthermore, some of the procedures used did not seem aimed at enriching discussion and communion as much as they did to promote a way of seeing typical of certain fringe groups of the wealthiest churches. This is contrary to a poor Church, a joyously evangelical and prophetic sign of contradiction to worldliness. Nor does one understand why some statements that are not shared by the qualified majority of the last Synod still ended up in the Relatio and then in the Lineamenta and the Instrumentum laboris when other pressing and very current issues (such as gender ideology) are instead ignored.
The first hope is therefore that, in our work, there by more freedom, transparency and objectivity. For this, it would be beneficial to publish the summaries of the interventions, to facilitate discussion and avoid any prejudice or discrimination in accepting the pronouncements of the synod Fathers.

2) Discernment of history and of spirits
A second hope: that the Synod honor its historic mission and not limit itself to speaking only about certain pastoral issues (such as the possible communion for divorced and remarried) but help the Holy Father to enunciate clearly certain truths and useful guidance on a global level. For there are new challenges with respect to the synod celebrated in 1980. A theological discernment enables us to see in our time two unexpected threats(almost like two “apocalyptic beasts”) located on opposite poles: on the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS. Islamic massacres and libertarian demands regularly contend for the front page of the newspapers. (Let us remember what happened last June 26!). 

From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West through quick and easy divorce, abortion, homosexual unions, euthanasia etc. (cf. Gender theory, the ‘Femen’, the LGBT lobby, IPPF …). On the other hand, the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy, female subservience, sexual slavery, child marriage etc. (cf. Al Qaeda, Isis, Boko Haram ...)

Several clues enable us to intuit the same demonic origin of these two movements. Unlike the Spirit of Truth that promotes communion in the distinction (perichoresis), these encourage confusion (homo-gamy) or subordination (poly-gamy). Furthermore, they demand a universal and totalitarian rule, are violently intolerant, destroyers of families, society and the Church, and are openly Christianophobic.

“We are not contending against creatures of flesh and blood ….” We need to be inclusive and welcoming to all that is human; but what comes from the Enemy cannot and must not be assimilated. You can not join Christ and Belial! What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today.

3) Proclaim and serve the beauty of Monogamy and the Family
Faced with these two deadly and unprecedented challenges (“homo-gamy” and “poly-gamy”) the Church must promote a true “epiphany of the Family.” To this both the Pope (as spokesman of the Church) may contribute, and individual Bishops and Pastors of the Christian flock: that is, “the Church of God, which he has obtained with his own blood” (Acts: 20:28).
We must proclaim the truth without fear, i.e. the Plan of God, which is monogamy in conjugal love open to life. Bearing in mind the historical situation just recalled, it is urgent that the Church, at its summit, definitively declare the will of the Creator for marriage. How many people of good will and common sense would join in this luminous act of courage carried out by the Church!
Together with a strong and clear Word of the Supreme Magisterium, Pastors have the mission of helping our contemporaries to discover the beauty of the Christian family. To do this, it must first promote all that represents a true Christian Initiation of adults, for the marriage crisis is essentially a crisis of God, but also a crisis of faith, and this is an infantile Christian initiation. Then we must discern those realities that the Holy Spirit is already raising up to reveal the Truth of the Family as an intimate communion in diversity (man and woman) that is generous in the gift of life. We bishops have the urgent duty to recognize and promote the charisms, movements, and ecclesial realities in which the Family is truly revealed, this prodigy of harmony, love of life and hope in Eternity, this cradle of faith and school charity. And there are so many realities offered by Providence, together with the Second Vatican Council, in which this miracle is offered.
***
Archbishop Jose Gomez’s October 10 Intervention:
Holy Father, Synod Fathers, brothers and sisters,
The Word of God reveals our Creator’s plan for his creation and for human history. This divine Word is the authentic starting point for understanding the family’s vocation and mission.
As the Instrumentum Laboris (nos. 39, 44), recognizes, we can discern a “divine pedagogy” in the history of salvation that unfolds in the Sacred Scriptures.
To strengthen marriage and the family in our time, I believe the Church must recover the divine pedagogy found in the Scriptures. Just a few weeks ago, when he was in the United States Pope Francis reminded us again — that God entrusted his loving plan for creation to the family.
And as I see it, the crisis of the family in our time is, to some extent, a crisis of anthropology. Our culture has lost its sense of the meaning of the human person and creation. This loss is rooted in the loss of God.
My perspective is shaped by my experience as the Archbishop of Los Angeles. The family of God in Los Angeles is made up of people from every continent and nationality.
Los Angeles is also the home of Hollywood — the place where the “virtual world” of movies, television programs, fantasy sports and all kinds of media products are created. So Los Angeles has a great influence on the perception of the human person and the family in contemporary society.
I believe that the Church must present a new evangelical catechesis on creation, as an essential element of the new evangelization. We must proclaim the beauty of God’s plan of love for creation, for the human person, and for the human family. Our new evangelization must proclaim an integral human ecology that reveals the nature, vocation and teleology of the human person as created by God.
The Church needs to recover and reflect on the “family” images found in the Scriptures and most ancient Tradition, and in the universal Church’s liturgy and popular piety:
•     the human person as the imago Dei;
•     the Church as “family of God”;
•     the family as the “domestic Church”;
•     Divine filiation and the Christian life as spiritual childhood.
In the face of the widespread crisis of the family, I believe our society needs to hear once more the beautiful truth about the human person and God’s loving plan for creation and history, a plan that is centered in the family.
Counting on the intercession of the Holy Family we need to illuminate, by our pastoral priorities and practice, how the family is the crucial “way” for the Church and for God’s plan for human society
And in the words of our newest American saint, St. Junipero Serra, we will go, siempre adelante!
Thank you very much.
Diane Montagna is Rome correspondent for Aleteia’s English edition.