Gays?
The devil's fault, says the oldest Catholic newspaper in the United States.
"The Pilot", 182 years running and an official department of the Archdiocese of Boston, published an editorial according to which the devil is responsible for homosexual attraction.
In the controversial article, Daniel Avila, director of the center for political studies of the U.S. Bishop's Conference, offers a spiritual explanation of homosexuality that implies the action of the Evil One.
Homosexuality (that is, the condition of those "who feel a sexual attraction, either exclusive or predominant, towards persons of the same sex"), manifests a disorder in the human inclinations introduced by original sin. Asmuch as they contradict the plan of God, homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
Those who commit them are guilty of grave sin. The Bible condemns homosexual activity as a serious deprivation and as "the sad consequence of rejecting God".
The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns homosexual relations "as serious deprivations", remembering that the Church has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered" and "contrary to natural law", but it is attentive not to condemn homosexuals and transsexuals, to whom it does not bar the gates to Paradise.
"A non-negligible number of men and women", reads the text approved by John Paul II and written by a committee presided by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "show deeply rooted homosexual tendencies. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for the great part of them a trial. Thus, they are to be welcomed with respect, compassion, and tact. In their regard", it recommends, "one must avoid every trace of unjust discrimination".
"These persons", the Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls, "are called to fulfill the will of God in their life, and, if they are Christian, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's cross the difficulties they might encounter as a result of their condition. Homosexual people are called to chastity. Through the virtues of self-control, the source of interior freedom, and through support, at times, of a disinterested friendship, with prayer and sacramental grace, they can and must, gradually and resolutely, approach Christian perfection".
The condemnation of homosexual behavior, for the Catholic Church, does not necessarily imply that the individual who commits such acts is a sinner.
In 1975, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a Declaration which underlined "the duty to seek to understand the homosexual condition, and which observed how the culpability for homosexual acts ought to be judged prudently".
At the same time, the Congregation took into account the "distinction commonly made between the homosexual condition and tendency and homosexual acts".
In 1986, before an "excessively benevolent" interpretation, the dicastery presided by Joseph Ratzinger clarified in a new text that "the inclination itself is to be considered as objectively disordered", but also admitted that "in a certain cases, there can have existed in the past and continue to subsist circumstances that would reduce, or even nullify the individual's culpability; other circumstances, on the other hand, can increase it".
"There must at any rate be avoided", the Congregation affirms, "the unfounded and humiliating presumption that homosexual behavior by homosexual persons is always and entirely subject to duress and therefore blameless. In reality, one must also recognize in persons of homosexual tendency that fundamental freedom that characterizes the human person and bestows upon it its particular dignity".
What must a homosexual person do, then, who is seeking the Lord? "Substantially", the document answers, "these people are called to fulfill the will of God in their lives, uniting every suffering and difficulty that they may experience because of their condition, to the sacrifice of the Lord's cross".
In effect, for the Church, "homosexual persons are called, just like other Christians, to live in chastity. If they dedicate themselves assiduously to understanding the nature of God's personal of them, they will be able to celebrate more faithfully the sacrament of Penance, and to receive the Lord's grace, so generously offered in it, to be able to convert more fully to following Him".
Polemics immediately exploded regarding the "demoniac root" which the U.S.'s oldest Catholic newspaper espies in homosexuality. A repeat of the storm provoked two years ago by the declarations of an authoritative prelate of the Curia. Homosexuals and transsexuals "will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven", Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan affirmed in 2008, ex-Vatican "Minister of Health" at the time of the Eluana Englaro case, specifying however that "it is not our job to condemn" and that "they are nevertheless persons, and as such, to be respected".
"Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and it is not I who say this, but St. Paul". According to Cardinal Barragan, "one is not born homosexual, one becomes such. Because of various reasons, due to education, or because of not having developed their own identity in adolescence, perhaps they are not culpable, yet acting against the dignity of the body, they will certainly not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven", because "everything that consists in going against nature and against the dignity of the body offends God".
The ex-president of the Pontifical Council for pastoral care of health workers, now retired but still a member of various pontifical congregations, cited in regard to the issue a passage of the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, where he speaks of "impure" persons, abandoned to "degrading passions", the martyrdom of those who have "despised the knowledge of God".
"Homosexuality is therefore a sin", the Mexican Cardinal specified, "but this does not justify any kind of discrimination. Judgment is God's alone, we on Earth cannot condemn, and as persons we all have the same rights".
The reactions of gay associations were harsh. "The Vatican hierarchy once again inveighs against the dignity of LGBT persons with the words of Cardinal Barragan", protested Aurelio Mancuso, the leader of the movement "Omosex", underlining that this happens "while in Italy, violence against homosexual persons is rampant, and there are media campaigns against the dignity of transsexual persons".
An attempt was made to douse the fire by theologian-bishop Michele Pennisi, through "the distinction between tendency and acts".
"For there to be mortal sin, there must be serious matter, deliberate consent and full awareness", Pennisi explained. "What the Catechism defines as 'contrary to natural law' are the acts, not the inclination, and therefore homosexuals can reach Christian perfection".