Jean Lloyd wrote an interesting piece for The Witherspoon Institute on being a same-sex attracted person. It is a good exploration of 1 person’s struggle, in a culture which encourages or even demands that same-sex attracted people be anything but chaste.

Jean notes that true love is not one in affirming these desires, but one of sharing truth. That is far more difficult and rarely well received. Encouraging people with same-sex attraction to yield to their passions or even being affirming in the name of tolerance is not to have their best interests at heart. Jean says “If unmarried heterosexuals are called to celibacy and are presumed in Christ to have the power to live out His commands, then so should I be. To treat me according to a different standard is to lower my dignity before God. I too am called to be holy.”

You will enjoy this thoughtful and honest piece.

May I make two requests? Love me, but remember that you cannot be more merciful than God. It isn’t mercy to affirm same-sex acts as good. Don’t compromise truth; help me to live in harmony with it.

Over thirty years have passed since same-sex attraction rushed up from deep within my twelve-year-old frame. This attraction was unbidden and unwanted, yet simultaneously forceful and compelling.

As a Christian, the conflict between my sexuality and my faith would become the deepest and most intense of my life. Now in my forties, I’ve gone from being closeted to openly lesbian to celibate to heterosexually married. The fact that I need to qualify my marital union as a heterosexual one reveals how much the cultural landscape has changed in that time—just as much as my own personal landscape has, though in very different ways.

During my upbringing, I heard a few fiery sermons on homosexuality. These days, I hear declarations of love instead. They make me shout for joy. Amen! It always should have been so! At the same time, however, many pastors have begun accompanying this love with an eschewal of Biblical sexual morality as oppressive, unreasonable, or unkind. Hence, loving homosexual persons also comes to entail affirming and encouraging them in same-sex sexual relationships and behaviors.

Although I appreciate the desire to act in love, this isn’t the genuine love that people like me need. Love me better than that! Thomas Aquinas scholar Josef Pieper put it this way:

love is not synonymous with undifferentiated approval of everything the beloved person thinks and does in real life. . . . [nor is it] the wish for the beloved to feel good always and in every situation and for him to be spared experiencing pain or grief in all circumstances. “Mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except [the beloved’s] suffering” has nothing to do with real love. . . . No lover can look on easily when he sees the one he loves preferring convenience to the good.

Loving me with this kind of love is neither quick nor easy. But knowledge and truth can help us both stand against the growing tide of moral capitulation. In light of this, here are seven things I wish you knew about homosexuality.

1. I wish you knew that just because I didn’t choose this orientation, it doesn’t follow that I was “born this way” or that “God created me gay.” While genetics influences these traits, there is not a fixed predetermination. It is not hardwired like eye or skin color.[1] I can look back and understand where it came from in my own life. Of course, others” experiences may be different from mine. But ultimately, the etiology doesn’t matter. Same-sex sexual activity is outside the design and will of the good plan of God. To claim otherwise requires ignoring Scripture, historical Christian authority, and natural law. So I need help in living chastely, regardless of how my same-sex desires came to be.

2. I wish you knew a better way to help me honor my body by living in accord with the Creator’s design. I was born this way: female. God did create me a woman. Please don’t fall into the gnostic dualism that divides my spiritual life from the life I now live in my body. Christ became incarnate; my very body is now part of His body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. To act against its design in same-sex sexual action harms the dignity of my body. For my homosexually attracted brothers, same-sex sex harms their bodies even more because of their physiological design and the physical effects of going against that design. These bodies will be raised again. They matter.

3. I wish you knew that you aren’t helping me follow Jesus either by demanding that my attractions change or by not allowing them to change. No one can promise me that my attractions will change. Jesus certainly didn’t. But don’t deny me that possibility either. (Especially if I’m an adolescent!) Both secular science and human experience attest to sexual fluidity and the potential for change.

The piece continues with 4 more points and some concluding thoughts. Read the entire post: Seven Things I Wish My Pastor Knew About My Homosexuality.

A good related piece on this topic is Msgr. Charles Pope’s Some with Same Sex Attraction Choose Celibacy. He reflects on a recent Washington Post article and a post he wrote last year in which he asked “What does the Catholic Church offer for those with same-sex attraction? The answer is ‘the truth’.” Yes, the same as she offers everyone else!

Most of us have grown-up in homes and neighborhoods where the notion of this being a “Christian country” was assumed, even by non-Christians. In God we trust, one nation under God. Expressing Christian beliefs was nothing out of the ordinary, just a check with truth.

Those happier times are long gone. Far fewer people identify with Christianity and many of those who do are nominal, genuinely understanding little and practicing even less. Christianity for many has been replaced by being a “good person,” general “spirituality” and faith in political ideology. Even within that political focus people seem to more and more prioritize “what’s in it for me.” These changes have literally led us away from happier times.

Secularism has in many ways become the state religion and the state has become a theocracy in its enforcement. It is a jealous god, tolerating no other viewpoints. Expressing Christian beliefs now seems threatening to the emperor and those hateful, intolerant, bigots from the unenlightened middle ages must increasingly be dealt with by force. Complacency is no longer a luxury for faithful Catholics and other Christians.

Fr. Martin Tripole, SJ has written a thoughtful piece on exactly this point for the exceptional Catholic World Report:

It would come as a bit of a shock, I think, to many Catholics comfortable with current developments in our society, to hear the Pope speak of a clash between current values and Jesus’ teaching. It would come as an even greater shock for them to hear the remarks of Prof. Robert P. George of Princeton University, when he addressed the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, on May 13, 2014:

The days of socially acceptable Christianity are over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. It is no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel. A price is demanded and must be paid. There are costs of discipleship – heavy costs, costs that are burdensome and painful to bear.

According to George, if one wants to be a good Catholic today, one must be “prepared to give public witness to the massively politically incorrect truths of the Gospel” regarding “Biblical and natural law beliefs”: about “the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions,” about the “core social function of marriage” to “unite a man and woman as husband and wife to be mother and father to children born of their union.” To be sure, it is still possible to be “a comfortable Catholic” and “socially acceptable”; but to be a Catholic who professes openly fidelity to the teachings of the Gospel and Christ’s Church, one must be prepared “to take risks and make sacrifices,” “to make oneself a marked man or woman.” The “costs of discipleship” are high:

It is to expose oneself to scorn and reproach…   to place in jeopardy one’s security, one’s personal aspirations and ambitions, the peace and tranquility one enjoys, one’s standing in polite society. One may in consequence of one’s public witness be discriminated against and denied educational opportunities and the prestigious credentials they may offer; one may lose valuable opportunities for employment and professional advancement; one may be excluded from worldly recognition and honors of various sorts; one’s witness may even cost one treasured friendships. It may produce familial discord and even alienation from family members. Yes, there are costs of discipleship – heavy costs.

Read the entire piece: The Time for Complacent Catholicism is Over.

CNN’s Lisa Ling produces specials called This is Life with Lisa Ling on a very wide variety of subjects. Last week they aired Called to the Collar (subtitled “He’s 26 and a Catholic priest”).

I found it very interesting. Not interesting in understanding the vocational call of the priesthood, but of how the secular (or at least non-Catholic) world sees our spiritual fathers. There are rough edges including awkwardly worded questions and a fascination on how anyone could choose celibacy (called the “ultimate sacrifice” – where do I begin…). The sex abuse scandal is repeatedly featured aspect, of course. While these things elevated my spidey sense a few levels, on reflection I concluded they were representative of questions a non-Catholic audience would have.

Yet, (surprisingly I must admit) this is NOT another priest or Catholic bashing exercise. Ling seems honestly interested, curious and even unexpectedly surprised at what she finds. It is a fair presentation (which I would not believe CNN capable on any genuinely Catholic topic).

Sure, it could be better. They make it seem like this diocese is an anomaly when in fact many similarly orthodox dioceses have strong vocations. Older priests, religious brothers and sisters along with deacons and so many amazing lay people are ignored. The real story is much bigger than that which is told. None-the-less, this is a good start.

The young priests featured aspect do a wonderful job presenting their calling. Their bishop (Most Rev. Earl Boyea) answers the sex abuse question quite well. Although it is 1 hour show length (less commercials weighing in at 42+ minutes), you will enjoy the video. For another review and a text summary, see Patti Murphy Dohn’s piece at Catholic Review.

Francis Cardinal George, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, has written and commented often in recent years on the Church in America. He recently wrote A tale of two churches in the Archdiocese newspaper – Catholic New World.

His Eminence looks at the founding of America and our embrace of religious freedom. Cardinal George gives a solid summary of how that has “evolved” into a new state imposed religion, centered not on God but on government.

When I was a newly confirmed Catholic (2010), I was trying to size-up the hierarchy in the US. My initial read of Cardinal George was progressive, liberal or whatever other description you prefer for one who is not a defender of orthodoxy – the certain, true, dogmatic and doctrinal teaching of the Church. Fr. Michael Pfleger and his antics contributed to that opinion. He has however, shown himself to be quite orthodox. He also has no blinders on about the direction we are headed, famously noting “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Cardinal George is a good shepherd of his flock.

UPDATE: Cardinal George was a good shepherd of his flock. His retirement due to age has been expected, but was just announced. Pope Francis appointed Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, WA as the successor.

There was always a quasi-religious element in the public creed of the country. It lived off the myth of human progress, which had little place for dependence on divine providence. It tended to exploit the religiosity of the ordinary people by using religious language to co-opt them into the purposes of the ruling class. Forms of anti-Catholicism were part of its social DNA. It had encouraged its citizens to think of themselves as the creators of world history and the managers of nature, so that no source of truth outside of themselves needed to be consulted to check their collective purposes and desires. But it had never explicitly taken upon itself the mantle of a religion and officially told its citizens what they must personally think or what “values” they must personalize in order to deserve to be part of the country. Until recent years.

In recent years, society has brought social and legislative approval to all types of sexual relationships that used to be considered “sinful.” Since the biblical vision of what it means to be human tells us that not every friendship or love can be expressed in sexual relations, the church’s teaching on these issues is now evidence of intolerance for what the civil law upholds and even imposes. What was once a request to live and let live has now become a demand for approval. The “ruling class,” those who shape public opinion in politics, in education, in communications, in entertainment, is using the civil law to impose its own form of morality on everyone. We are told that, even in marriage itself, there is no difference between men and women, although nature and our very bodies clearly evidence that men and women are not interchangeable at will in forming a family. Nevertheless, those who do not conform to the official religion, we are warned, place their citizenship in danger.

When the recent case about religious objection to one provision of the Health Care Act was decided against the State religion, the Huffington Post (June 30, 2014) raised “concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen.” This is not the voice of the nativists who first fought against Catholic immigration in the 1830s. Nor is it the voice of those who burned convents and churches in Boston and Philadelphia a decade later. Neither is it the voice of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s and 1850s, nor of the Ku Klux Klan, which burned crosses before Catholic churches in the Midwest after the civil war. It is a voice more sophisticated than that of the American Protective Association, whose members promised never to vote for a Catholic for public office. This is, rather, the self-righteous voice of some members of the American establishment today who regard themselves as “progressive” and “enlightened.”

The inevitable result is a crisis of belief for many Catholics. Throughout history, when Catholics and other believers in revealed religion have been forced to choose between being taught by God or instructed by politicians, professors, editors of major newspapers and entertainers, many have opted to go along with the powers that be. This reduces a great tension in their lives, although it also brings with it the worship of a false god. It takes no moral courage to conform to government and social pressure. It takes a deep faith to “swim against the tide,” as Pope Francis recently encouraged young people to do at last summer’s World Youth Day.

Swimming against the tide means limiting one’s access to positions of prestige and power in society. It means that those who choose to live by the Catholic faith will not be welcomed as political candidates to national office, will not sit on editorial boards of major newspapers, will not be at home on most university faculties, will not have successful careers as actors and entertainers. Nor will their children, who will also be suspect. Since all public institutions, no matter who owns or operates them, will be agents of the government and conform their activities to the demands of the official religion, the practice of medicine and law will become more difficult for faithful Catholics. It already means in some States that those who run businesses must conform their activities to the official religion or be fined, as Christians and Jews are fined for their religion in countries governed by Sharia law.

The entire piece is excellent and insightful. Read The Cardinal’s Column: A tale of two churches.

Secularism (typically liberalism) has molded many non-Catholic ecclesial communities. They have “progressed” away from Christ into updated, modern, non-Christian values. Traditional, orthodox (true) values are viewed as outdated. A “poster-child” for this are the Episcopalians, but most other mainline groups have been affected as well. Some have historically had orthodox/liberal internal splits.

Part of the attraction for such “evolution” is seen as meeting people where they are, inclusiveness and “not judging.” All good, except the problem is they do this at the expense of truth. To put it bluntly, they simply redefine truth to accommodate sin. So, how has this worked out for them? Spoiler: they are on the fast path to extinction.

Please consider this coming Sunday’s readings:

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.

Matthew 16:24-27

Alexander Griswold has written about this phenomenon recently for the Federalist:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) was formed in 1987, when three Lutheran denominations merged to create the largest Lutheran church in America. For most of its history, gay men and women were permitted to be pastors, so long as they remained celibate. But in a narrow vote at its 2009 Churchwide Assembly, ordination was extended to gay men and women in “committed monogamous relationships.” In addition, the Assembly passed an amendment allowing churches “to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

From ELCA’s formation in 1987 to 2009, the average decrease in membership each year was only 0.62 percent. But after the liberalization of the ELCA’s stance on sexuality, membership declined a whopping 5.95 percent in 2010 and 4.98 percent in 2011. Since 2009, more than 600 congregations abandoned the denomination, with almost two-thirds joining conservative Lutheran denominations like the North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.

By the end of 2012, ELCA had lost 12.3 percent of its members in three years — nearly 600,000 people. If the present rate of defections holds steady, ELCA will cease to exist in less than two decades.

The United Church of Christ

The United Church of Christ (UCC) has long had a reputation for unfettered liberalism, sometimes bordering on the radical. In 2008, for example, the pastor of the largest UCC congregations in the country was one Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The UCC’s tendency for pushing traditional boundaries has led to unquestionably positive developments (such as the first African-American pastor as early as 1785) and the unquestionably silly (such as the first hymnal that refuses to call Jesus male). Needless to say, in 2005 UCC became the first U.S. mainline Protestant denomination to support same-sex marriage, and has been an outspoken voice in the gay marriage debate ever since.

While UCC has been bleeding members for decades, its decline rapidly accelerated after the gay marriage vote. Since 2005, UCC has lost 250,000 members, a decline of 20.4 percent over seven years. While an average of 39 congregations left UCC annually from 1990 to 2004, more than 350 congregations departed in the following three years. The UCC’s own pension board called the 2000’s decline “the worst decade among 25 reporting Protestant denominations,” and admitted that ..”.the rate of decline is accelerating.”

2013 marked a particularly grim milestone for the denomination, as membership finally fell below one million. If the post-2005 rate in membership losses doesn’t taper out, the denomination will cease to exist in 30 years.

More groups are covered in the piece, including Presbyterians and (of course) Episcopalians. The article concludes with a comparison to those who have not gone down this rabbit hole. Read the whole post: How to Shrink Your Church In One Easy Step