Why some Catholics are skeptical of Pride Month

June 7, 2018 CNA Daily News News Briefs 4 Print

Washington D.C., Jun 7, 2018 / 05:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- While the month of June is marked by LGBT pride events, some Catholic critics have voiced wariness and concern that the events draw people away from God’s plan for humankind.

“Pride Month fills me with sadness, for gay pride parades are events that ultimately show how much man has forgotten God and how much he loves us, as a loving Father who created us in his image, solely as male and female,” Daniel Mattson, author of the book “Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay,” told CNA.

“Gay Pride Parades are masquerades that obscure man’s dignity, rather than honor it,” he said.

Mattson voiced gratitude for the opening words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s section on Life in Christ, a passage from a sermon of St. Leo the Great, which says “Christian, recognize your dignity.” Mattson also voiced gratitude that the Church “points the path away from pride in what are ultimately socially constructed identities to the truth of our nature.”

Mattson suggested that parade marchers will find true happiness only through “humility before God, their creator, recognizing the inherent dignity he gave them, as his sons and daughters, created male and female.”

LGBT pride parades and other observances are held in June to commemorate the June 1969 riots and protests against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar in New York City. This month’s events range from low-key events, marches and advocacy, major corporate-backed events, and events that include public nudity and immorality.

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island has also commented on the observances.

“Catholics should be very wary of events in the June LGBTQ month. It’s not a fun-filled, family-friendly celebration of respect,” Tobin said in a June 1 Twitter post. “It promotes a lifestyle and agenda that, in the extreme, is morally offensive.”

Mattson said he was grateful for Bishop Tobin’s “clarity and warning” about attending the events.

“I pray that many will heed his words of caution,” he said.

Pride events also drew comment from Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of America Magazine. In several June 2 Twitter posts that seemed to counter Bishop Tobin’s remarks, Father Martin said: “Catholics need not be wary of June’s Pride Month. It’s a way for LGBT people to be proud that they are beloved children of God, they have families who love them as they are, and they have a right to be treated with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity’ after years of persecution.”

Father Martin received an award from the dissenting Catholic group New Ways Ministry and his speech to the group became the basis for his 2017 book “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.” The book drew praise from Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, as well as Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark.

However, the Guinean-born Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, criticized the book in a September 2017 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, saying that Catholic outreach to LGBT individuals must always include the truth about Catholic teaching and chastity.

“As a mother, the Church seeks to protect her children from the harm of sin, as an expression of her pastoral charity,” the cardinal said.

Mattson, who did not comment on Martin’s tweets specifically, suggested that the Church’s message for those who self-identify as LGBT should be “Recognize your dignity and reject the limiting reductionist sexual labels of the world.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those who experience same-sex attraction “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” while explaining that LGBT individuals, like all Catholics, are called to the virtue of chastity with regard to the sexual expression.

“You were called into being by God the Father who knit you in the womb, made male and female, in His likeness. Claim your true nature, in humility, recognizing that you are a creature, made by God,” Mattson said. “Humility, not pride, is the only path to peace and true human freedom.”

He suggested another appropriate response to pride parades is “sorrow, bowed heads, and prayers for all those who march around the world.” These prayers should be “guided by the confident hope that through the grace of God, they might one day come to know the Father’s love for them, and in his tender gaze, finally understand who they truly are.”

“Such has been the gift the Church has given to me,” Mattson told CNA.

 

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Should fears about climate come before kids?

March 5, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Washington D.C., Mar 5, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- Catholic academics have said that concerns about climate change should not discourage millennials from having children.

 

Recent discussion of millennial concerns began after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested that younger people might not have children because of fears about climate change.

 

“And so, it’s basically like, there is a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult and does lead, I think, young people, to have a legitimate question. You know, should–is it okay to still have children?” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video posted on the website Instagram.

 

But academics have suggested Ocasio-Cortez’s comments misunderstand why couples decide to have children.

 

Professors from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, told CNA that while the concept of bringing a child into the world is always daunting, environmental factors should not be enough to dissuade someone from having children altogether.

 

Dr. Joseph Capizzi, professor of moral theology and executive director of Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, told CNA that he does believe the concerns of millennials are justified, and that “it’s not unreasonable to worry about the world into which one brings children.”

 

But, he said, having children is an expression of both love and faith, and that includes “faith in each other, faith in the goodness of God, faith in His creation.”

 

Capizzi told CNA that he thinks people overlook this basic fact because “so much in the world distracts us from the role of faith in the loving relationship of parents.”

 

“Concerns about the world and its future are distracting: in faith we are taught God saves and loves the world,” he said.

 

A recent online poll by the website Bussiness Insider suggested as many as one-in-three Americans shares Ocasio-Cortez’s fears, with 30 percent of all respondents saying parents should consider the effects of climate change before having a child, a number that climbed to 38 percent among Americans aged 18-29.

 

Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, assistant professor of social research and economic thought at Catholic University, said that having children is a sign of optimism and that climate concerns should take a backseat to other factors.

 

“I think it takes a lot of courage to have a child, in any time,” Pakaluk said. “Having children in general seems to require a lot of courage and optimism.”  

 

Pakaluk, whose primary research area is in demographics and families, told CNA that having a child is an intimidating task, but one that is made easier with what she called “spiritual resources.”

 

She said she is afraid that the spiritual resources needed to inspire couples to raise children are “waning” in today’s society, resulting in fewer births.

 

She did not, however, place the blame squarely on climate change, noting instead that the climate has undergone massive changes for thousands of years, “apparently without our affecting it.”

 

Pakaluk also said rhetoric about overpopulation should be tempered by experience, and that while many believe vital resources are becoming more scarce, the opposite is often true.

 

“As the world population has grown, together with research, industry, and innovation, in fact, most of those scarce resources have actually become less scarce,” she said.

 

The professor noted that while the world’s population had typically ebbed and flowed before steadily rising over the last century, the “golden age” of sustained population growth is coming to an end.

 

Pakaluk noted that about four decades ago, people simply ceased having large families –a trend she said cannot entirely be blamed on concerns about changing climate.

 

Pakaluk told CNA that while the threat of climate change does not worry her too much, one thing does: the recent Center for Disease Control announcement that the United States’ fertility rate was at its lowest ever, and that no state is currently having children at replacement level rates.

 

“Certainly, for (Ocasio-Cortez) and other millennials–I don’t think they have a lot to worry about (in regards to climate change),” Pakaluk said. “I think they should probably be a lot more worried about what our economy looks like without kids, because that actually does give me a moment of fear.”

[…]

4 Comments

  1. “While the month of June is marked by LGBT pride events, some Catholic critics have voiced wariness and concern that the events draw people away from God’s plan for humankind.”

    One would wish that *all* Catholic critics, and in fact all Catholics, would be wary and concerned.

    What else are people going to be proudly marching about? Adultery? Murder? Theft? “The Perjury community is having its Perjury Pride Month parade today! Come and join us in celebrating how uniquely wonderful we are!”

    Reply

    • With all due respect, our lives are pejury, fraud, theft or murder. We are talking about our identities, where we celebrate our God-given gift of sexuality and love. This is something that so many people miss, being LGBT is not a vice, neither is the expression of that identity, per se, just like expressing heterosexual love is not a vice per se.

      Reply

      • Homosexual acts are sinful. Always.

        Being tempted to commit a sin is not sinful; but committing it is. There is no circumstance at all in which homosexual activity is good. It is a mockery of God’s plan for humanity.

        Expressing “heterosexual” love through sexual intercourse is not a vice in the context of marriage. Outside of marriage, it is.

        Calling yourself “LGBT” is identifying yourself solely by the sins you are tempted to commit. How sad that is.

        Reply

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