Ten years ago, I wrote a CWR editorial titled “Welcome to the Reign of Gay”. In some ways, it seems more like fifty years ago, as the cultural and moral landscape has not just shifted, but undergone tectonic violence.
And the Church—or at last many in the Church—have not been immune. Quite the contrary.
That is the subject of my new essay at the What We Need Now Substack, titled “Welcome to the Reign of Gay, Ecclesiastical Edition”.
Here is an excerpt:
The “LGBTQetc” movement (which is not a “community,” but a political construct) and its allies rely on a combination of falsehoods, emotivism, abuse of language, and alleged victimhood to pursue its goals. Cardinal McElroy’s claim of an “enduring animus toward LGBT+ persons” is a good example. It makes a specious generalization using loaded and emotional language, while relying on descriptives that have no root in reality.
To accept terms such as “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “transgender,” or “queer” is to, first, accept that attractions and inclinations form one’s identity rather than indicate weaknesses and passions that must be addressed and mastered. Since a man cannot be a woman, or a woman be a man, the category of “transgendered” is entirely subjective and contrary to biology, commonsense, and natural law. McElroy’s use of the bigoted card is, however, certainly effective; the vast majority of people, including Catholics, want to avoid being portrayed as “homophobic” (another misleading term) or “hateful.” But fear and sentimentality are powerful forces; they play a significant but too often ignored role in the new and powerful der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen.
This new “long march” also builds upon the many capitulations and failings in the West when it comes to contraceptives, abortion, cohabitation, fornication, adultery, pornography, masturbation, and so forth. It takes advantage of Catholics who are either complicit or cannot see what has transpired and is transpiring now. Deflections, false dichotomies, and misrepresentations appear. Pope Francis, in August 2023, lamented to a group of Portuguese Jesuits about certain “very strong, reactionary” American Catholics (which he deemed “backwardists”), saying: “What I don’t like at all, in general, is that we look at the so-called ‘sin of the flesh’ with a magnifying glass. If you exploited workers, if you lied or cheated, it didn’t matter, and instead relevant were the sins below the waist.”
Ironically, many workers, foster families, and others in the United States are faced with pressures and demands that flow directly from “below the waist” obsessions from those openly attacking traditional beliefs about sexual morality. Furthermore, it’s nearly impossible to find any American whose life has not been directly affected by the sexual revolution and the “LGBTQetc” cultural blitzkrieg.
Most importantly, sexual sins are not trivial, but deeply damaging, leading to a vast range of ill effects, damaging or destroying lives, and undermining social order. (Besides, one can be against two sins at one time; it’s not impossible by any means.) “Shun immorality,” wrote Saint Paul to the Corinthians, who were living in a sexual cesspool of a society, “Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18). Yes, by all mean, let’s have fair labor practices, but let’s not labor under the shallow notion that mis-using and abusing our very bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit, is of no immediate or everlasting consequence.
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So, who needs a papal magnifying glass?
The tip of the iceberg: an estimated 5 million are trafficked each year for trivialized “sins below the belt,” of which one million are children. https://traffickinginstitute.org/breaking-down-global-estimates-of-human-trafficking-human-trafficking-awareness-month-2022/ The entire culture is sexually intoxicated, and yet we hear myopic nonsense about isolated “sins below the belt.” And, silence on the upstream causes for the LGBTQ political construct. Together with blessings for the downstream symptoms, aka “irregular couples” (Fiducia Supplicans).
Causes? Anti-binaries are multiplying like rabbits, but do not reproduce physically…
Genome research points to no causal gene, but instead to a few indecisive “markers” dwarfed by other sociological causes for the complex pandemic…absentee and abusive fathers, early and damnable sexual abuse, a porn culture, getting locked-in by early and random sexual experimentation, the overall anti-family predisposition, etc.
Instead, “God made you that way.” Galileo weeps.
And then there’s the rest of the story: the marketed contraceptive mindset, abortion, euthanasia, IVF, and expendable wads of protoplasm under the transgender option (intercultural since convergent with female mutilation in parts of the Islamic world). It’s almost as if the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Commandments are interwoven rather than myopically separable as between “sins below the belt” versus everything else.
The progressive symbiosis of paganism and temple prostitution all over again! How “backwardist” can you get?
Luke 17:1 – ‘Jesus said to His disciples: “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come!”‘
This is a seriously excellent piece that is desperately needed. I urge you all to go to the linked article to read it in its entirety — it is not very long.
That way you can see the gay brigade’s cartoonish arguments dealt with as they deserve to be — summarily, and without equivocation.
Bergoglio and his cadre of heresiarchs have done terrible damage to the Church. This carefully crafted, thoroughly documented response exposes their surprisingly shallow and emotional appeals to the bright light of truth.
Which is the best place to start.
I’m sharing this article with several friends. Every Catholic should be able to read it.
Bravo, Mr. Olson. Decades from now, historians will be trying to piece together how so many Church leaders went mad in unison and tried to steer Catholics down the broad cultural path to perdition.
Your article will help illustrate why their eventual failure was inevitable.
I find homosexuality to be repulsive. Perhaps it is either a severe psychological problem but I really suspect it is a problem of demonic oppression. A phrase that was common just a few decades ago is never heard today – ‘there is no compromise with evil’. And evil never stops in its goal of destruction – the gross mockeries of womanhood in the garish get-ups of the Trannies is an ‘in your face’ celebration of Satanic degradation mankind. It is a shame so many of our heretical clerics champion the sexually perverse agenda while the Church spends billions on sex abuse case and Catholic schools are ignored.
It is reported that 60+% of ‘Catholics’ approve of murder of Holy Innocents in the womb. A vile and demented President abuses the Church in a malicious and self serving manner and his Bishop simply dismisses it as cafeteria Catholicism.
If we are not in chastisement then God help us for soon we must seek refuge in catacombs.
Remarkable that the Whirlpool of sexual disorder [Gay now encompasses the myriad variations still decomposing the human soul] consuming Mankind is thought extraordinarily opposed in the US. Reactionary backwardists, Americans are deemed in the forefront opposing Francis’ vision of progress. Aquinas’ words that homosexuality is an abomination that violates the natural order, as ordained by God, still holds weight here.
Below the belt obsession however is more evident in documents issuing from the Vatican. Obsession to embrace theoretically and literally disordered sexual conduct. Normalization is the Vatican order of the day, a slew of willing advocates drafted by His Holiness including key players from the US, McElroy a standout. So it’s remarkable that America is deemed recalcitrant with the gay agenda enforced legally and wildly popular. Perhaps a guise for identifying the required goat.
Carl Olson identified the “LGBTQetc cultural blitzkrieg” a decade past. Now, I may add, the queers and their allies are engaged in mopping up operations. I repeat the conviction I had as a boy, that Queerdom [JR’s word in admonishment of his gay son in the series Dallas] is the Devil’s work to destroy jealously hated Mankind, that the day the Church were to grant the Reign of Gay its blessing would be the day ushering in Final Judgment.
“… the day the Church were to grant the Reign of Gay its blessing would be the day ushering in Final Judgment.”
The Church already did it. It happened recently – in an ambiguous form (‘Fiducia Supplicans’) it is true but I suspect it is enough, just like it was enough of the absolute majority of Christians to accept the abortion-tainted vaccines without making a squeak. Christians also swallowed the news titled like “Muslims are comforted to learn that there is no pork in vaccines” or “Vegan can take these vaccines in good conscience”. Thus, a sophisticated sci-form of benefiting from a murder of human children is acceptable while using animals is not, for some, and their sensitivities are worthy of respect, unlike the sensitivities of those humans who do not wish to benefit from the murder of fellow humans (children). I truly saw a sentence to humanity in those news titles and in a zero reaction.
And so, I see what is happening as a progressive judgement, a very strange judgment of all humanity given to us in the shapes of our time – a kind of grotesque insanity. Homosexual marriage -> vaccines made with the usage of human fetuses which became “a communion” for the masses -> the Church blessing the homosexual unions -> etc. The Red Dragon on the day of Candlemas (by the way, we had one and not just a dragon but also special trees and other symbolic non-Christian stuff in the sanctuary). And if one thinks of it, what is better than that red dragon? No one expects a true huge red dragon after all and the interpretations can be endless. I think we are living in the Apocalypse.
Revelation 14:12 – “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.”
Yes Anna. As it’s presented to the intellect for evaluation, as to its necessary consistency with revelation, we have an extremely intelligent diagram for providing assurance that there’s no change whatsoever to the deposit of faith, whereas there has occurred a presumed reconcilable, radical change in interpretation and practice.
The tendency for many who hold to Apostolic tradition is to write off the heterodoxy usually implied by word of mouth or written word, AL, FS, DI as clumsy attempts at relaxing permanent doctrine in favor of mercy. We have a mixed body of supporters who believe the intent is for exceptions to the rule regards intrinsic evils, others who believe [like myself] the actual effect is to diminish permanency of all doctrine because the principles that undergird permanency, revelation, submission of conscience to revelation rendered subject to endless relativistic debate [per Synodality].
Consequently we have divisions between the heterodox and orthodox – and significantly divisions within the ranks of the orthodox as to the lasting effect of this policy attributed to this pontificate. For example, whether this is simply a passing moment or whether it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that there’ll be unity, say with a new, more orthodox pontiff.
The standard goal stated from the beginning by Francis’ consigliere Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ, editor in chief La Civiltá Cattolica is to create a process of irreversible change. That amounts to the disintegration of a unified Catholic Church and with that its consistent message to the world.
Thank you, Anna, for your thought-provoking posts.
Did your pastor or liturgical minister offer any explanation for why they placed in the sanctuary a “Red Dragon” (?statue?, ?balloon?, ?picture?) on Candlemas?
JMJ. Ever since the APA was forced to remove Homosexuality from the DSM II by radical homosexual activists in 1973, it has become a pandemic. Even our legal system is infected. Homosexuality will not be contained until the APA reinstates it as a Mental Illness in the DSM II. Only then will they get the help they need to heal. Until then it will continue to reap havoc in every facet of Society.
Thank you for speaking the truth. Most apostles of the Lord stay behind locked doors for fear they might be censured or fired; what great martyrdom would that be. If one calls sin no-sin then “you call God a liar” says Saint John. This lady last week said “God loves us; he loves all of us no matter what!” Yes, that is why He gave us His only Beloved Son to wash our sins in His Blood. Jesus Christ said: “Repent and believe in the Gospel. God loves us but we can only be saved into heaven and immortality with Him, if we love Him, believe His Words, follow Him obeying His commandments, and wash in His Blood. Even the Prophet Moses has condemned it calling it an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22). Satan wants you in this trap and makes it addictive because he knows it disgraces God Himself in His Sacred Manhood. His significantly dominant principal divine attribute, His Holy Fatherhood, Sonship and His most holy Spirit. The greatest lie of Satan that all go to heaven but the Lord Jesus Christ tells us: “And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words … the word that I spoke , it will condemn him …” (John 12) When a soul appears before the judgement Throne of the King of Glory in all divine splendor, being the Divine Beauty and “Brightness of His Glory” (Hebrews 1:1), the soul that has blasphemously rejected Him will condemn Himself. Look at the Crucified how much it costs to be redeemed. Saint Paul and Edith Stein also spoke: “I am not mine anymore”. CHRIST DIED FOR ALL,THAT THOSE WHO LIVE MAY LIVE NO LONGER FOR THEMSELVES, BUT FOR HIM, WHO DIED FOR THEM AND IS RISEN, ALLELUIA” 2 Cor 5:15)
Great, King Jesus Christ-centred comment, dear Edith. Thank you, thank you . . .
Am weeping that the Pope, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Nuns, Deacons, Brothers, and most lay leaders have given up on witnessing the fullness and sufficiency of our LORD. Most of them now serve other gods.
Yet, Jesus will never change: “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, they follow Me. I give them eternal life, they will never perish, no one can snatch them from My hand . . .” John 10:27 – .
I’m proud to be a backwardist!
The failure of the young adult to control with virtue and grace his strong sexual inclinations is likely to eventually and inevitably lead to the older man’s rationalization of sexual incontinence as similar to that of the GI tract–incapable of control. What else could lead men to view and (Church men to espouse) sexual sin as less than other forms of evil? because not easily tamed? Because of its urgent power? What else but such faulty thinking could lead to man’s apostasy that God is not because the man has not been able? This brings us to inanely ridiculous statements from the likes of this pope and this papal cadre.
Traditional moral and ascetical theology and doctrines of grace and sanctification have taught that the pursuit of illicit pleasure darkens the intellect; the pursuit of illicit pleasure veils both God’s and reason’s truths. Further, illicit pleasure cannot restfully, joyfully, or peacefully be satisfied. Increasingly degrading and more horrendous evil acts are needed so that consummation and appeasement of increasingly disordered desires may be had.
What is happening in our culture and our church today? Germany’s “Sexual Reform” in the decade prior to 1933 was a movement for sexual liberation. Russia’s legalization of abortion in 1920 was a move toward the same. Our Lady of Fatima has a message for the Church if it/we could be so moved by a Marian apparition supported by massively observed empirical proof. One cannot help but wonder. Will Tucho and the pope ignore the Blessed Virgin’s secrets? Will they deny or denigrate? Will they creatively rationalize? Let’s listen to what the next document says. But if past history is any indication of future performance, then……
Meanwhile, let us call what we experience in our church and our culture what Shawn Marshall correctly calls it: Chastisement. Some of us in the Church will accept it as a sign of God’s love for us. Others will identify the crisis as opposition by the rigid and the uncharitable. Those who love God will accept whatever He sends since He simultaneously gives grace to develop the courage to endure. All we need do is beg it of Him. Accept it and beg for more as if we were His slaves and He our master.
Excellent piece Mr. Olsen. Of all the manifestations of bankrupt Catholic moral thought I’ve encountered in my non-scholarly but substantial exposure to Catholic voices both good and bad over the last half century, I never found anything more disturbing than Francis’ shallow disconnect from the ravages of the sex revolution. His inability to find the most glaring connection of all, causes me to believe even his professed distaste for abortion is little more than the sort of cover that cynical politicians seek.
I have been trying to articulate these issues for some time. Thank you for making this very clear and I now will be able to use the correct language when these LGBTQ+ issues arise especially in my parish.
Yes, gay activists can be a problem. That said, there are many gay people who quietly lead their lives and cause no one any trouble. What about them? Should they be arrested and put in prison, like in the “good old days?”
You seem fixated on sexual sins, to the omission of greed, cruelty and other sins. There is more to morality than sex. Your essay is a right wing rant.
The great heresies of our time are mostly anthropological, and the collapse of the family and social bonds are bound up in how we understand man, woman, children, sex, marriage, procreation, etc. And, really, the essential characteristics of sexual sins are greed, selfishness, cruelty, coercion, lack of justice.
So, no, my essay is not a “right wing rant”. Such a statement reveals, first, that you cannot think outside of stupid, infantile political labels and, secondly, that you refuse to really read and think. That’s a shame.
More insults. You didn’t answer about gays who don’t bother anyone. Should they be arrested and imprisoned? I seem to have hit a nerve with the right wing rant comment.
Neither Carl nor anyone here except you and Bunker below has suggested gays be arrested, imprisoned, or inquisitorially judged. What are you afraid of?
Let’s get some facts straight. This is a ‘Catholic’ web site, written within the U.S., so under the authority of its Constitution which grants rights to freedom of the press, to freedom of speech, and to freedom of religion and its expression without hindrance of law. You seem to have a problem with principles of the U.S. constitution as well as with the Church and with Carl as representative truth-speaker of long-standing Church scriptural, moral, and dogmatic principles.
Obviously one should reasonably expect to read Catholics discussing issues germane to Catholicism at “Catholic” World Report. One should reasonably expect to read Catholic teaching which the Church and her founder Jesus the Christ and his Jewish heritage have held for some 2000+++ years.
That not everyone accepts the gay lifestyle as the be-all-end-all some tout it to be should be obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. No one here suggests—in either dramatic imagination or in hard-core reality—plots or plans or dreams of arrest, imprisonment and inquisitorial judgment of gay people. You and Bunker below and alone seem to show much irrational fear. Such speech showing such fear is nothing more than hyperbolic, heated, untrue, sophistical, and ludicrous rhetoric. That’s truth for you.
Now. If your body is not a temple of the Holy Spirit, some temple-cleansing and removal of idols may be in order. That’s a job for the owner of the body. Not us here. We’ve got our own temples to cleanse, and you are not our idol. Good day to you.
Neither you nor Carl represent the Church any more than I do.
Dear ‘Will’. Aren’t you reading insults where there are none?
In response to your claim that there are Catholic gays (LGBTQ etc. ?) that don’t bother anyone. My personal experiences over many years have shown that even the quietest gays are invariably quiet proselytists for sexual immorality, and pose a real danger to our children and teens.
As a Catholic with extensive experience in healing/deliverance ministry I can’t comment on all gays but the many who I’ve met over the years have all been badly hurt at some stage and have acquired oppressive spiritual influences. In other words any parish that incorporates gays is also incorporating subverting spirits.
Always in the grace and mercy of King Jesus Christ: love and blessings from Marty
I will try to explain. Indeed, there is no problem, so to speak, with “many gay people who quietly lead their lives and cause no one any trouble”. The problem arises when some “ideologists” begin claiming that homosexuality is a biological norm – while it is a biological abnormality. (This abnormality does not make a homosexual person less than heterosexual by the way, just like a person with any disorder is not a lesser being.)
And so, we are dealing here not with sexual sins as such (at least I do not) but with a fundamental violation of the truth. Because, if it is accepted that homosexuality is a norm then homosexual people can marry, can have children via surrogacy, artificial insemination or in vitro etc. – i.e. it is no longer a private business of a couple but the children are affected, their psyche as well and their formation into men and women. And not just children – very broadly speaking, the whole system of normal human attachments is blown off. For example, a child is taken from his mother and placed with a homosexual couple – the most powerful attachment, of a mother and her child, is broken for an entirely selfish desire of a couple to have “their own”. Children brought up by two lesbians grow with zero idea and example of fatherhood and likewise, of motherhood if they are brought by two homosexual men. A child needs a man and woman as parent, or a parent figure of a matching sex for a normal development.
In my opinion, while dealing with this issue it is more profitable to focus on attachments, on what the lie “homosexuality is a norm” does to the children. Likewise, the consequences of “transsexual ideology” can be only understood via a real suffering person, a mutilated child. And transgender ideology is also a lie based on “fluid gender” or whatever.
So, it is far more complex than a plain sexual sin.
As a 68 year old gay man and former Catholic who lost his husband of 33 years to a brain tumor, I find your essay cruel and offensive. Fortunately, the influence of the Catholic Church is declining by the day. We will not return to the days of the Inquisition.
What did the Inquisition have to do with homosexuality?
The Spanish Inquisition (in Aragon only) did punish sodomy and also executed more than 20 men there for bestiality. Overall, eight per cent of the Spanish Inquisition’s cases involved morals offenses. So saith historian William Monter in RITUAL, MYTH, AND MAGIC IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE.
Dear Mr.D., “A PLAN OF THE FATHER’S HEART” to give His only Beloved Son for the salvation and redemption of humanity to lead them to eternal life in participation of His very divine life. “Just as God’s will is creation and is called “the world”. so his intention is the salvation of men, and it is called “the Church”. (CCC (catechism) 760). You are grieving the loss of a beloved friend. Now is your chance to reconcile with God and start new. The devil never sleeps, he can be as cruel and merciless as he wants to be, he has nothing to lose. “Sin is thus love of oneself even to contempt of God” (CCC1850). The Church is God, Christ the head and his members make the mystical body of Christ. “In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation.”(CCC1850). I am old enough to remember that friendship was all we longed for; a true friend always here for us. The curse of this wicked age is that everything has to be physical and sexual. “I am love and mercy personified” said Jesus to Saint Faustina (diary 1074). Go to confession and pray to a picture of the Divine Mercy. Jesus the radiant Holy One, true God and true man, He wants to be your friend. Don’t miss the opportunity, get renewed! And feel the love of Him who died for love of us! God bless and I will pray for you.
I’m very sorry for your loss Mr.Bunker and I hope and pray that you will find your way back to your faith, but the Catholic Church is actually growing and flourishing demographically, especially in the Global South.
Minimizing below the waist sins is the Vats way of bringing more people into the so called big tent that the church has become in the past number of years.The move toward acceptance of same sex unions and irregular second or third marriages without annulments is part of it. Mercy without justice is an illusion
D. Bunker I’m a 70-year-old man whose mother died ten years ago. What does that have to do with Sexual Sin, moral disfunction. Yes, the influence of the Catholic Church has and is in decline. We see evidence of it all around us a sick, depraved warlike society that some apparently choose to wallow in. I will pray for you in coming to the truth. We all need to repent of our sins, overcome our selfishness, wounds traumas and all the other stuff that excuses sin and personal degradation.
Oh and Mr. Bunker, I find it sad that you define yourself by your actions rather than your dignity as a human created in the image and likeness of God.
When we use the term “gay” to mean homosexual, we advance the homosexualist agenda.