Jesuit LGBTQ apologist James Martin is at it again, promoting June as both the deeply Catholic month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the rabidly secular month dedicated to sexual deviancy. In a recent Twitter post, Martin wrote, “In June, Catholics celebrate the Month of the #SacredHeart. LGBTQ people celebrate #PrideMonth. LGBTQ Catholics celebrate both. One shows us how Jesus loves. The other shows us whom Jesus calls us to love today.”
The tweet included a link to an op-ed Martin penned last year for his pro-gay newsletter “Outreach.” In it, Martin wrote, “[A]s I see it, the two events are not contradictory but complementary. Because each tells us something about how Jesus loves. And it is providential that both are marked in June.” Those two events are the Catholic Church’s dedication of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the secular world’s dedication of June to sexual sins.
Martin notes that there are two chief objections lodged by Catholics against pride month. “The first objection is that pride is a sin,” Martin notes, “and sin should never be celebrated.” Thus ends the Jesuit’s fidelity to the Church’s teaching on both pride and sexual morality. He proceeds to rationalize by arguing there are two kinds of pride: vanity and what Martin terms “a consciousness of one’s own human dignity.” The Catholic Church draws no such distinction.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists “pride” as one of the “capital sins,” explaining that sin itself “is disobedience, a revolt against God…. Sin is thus ‘love of oneself even to contempt of God.’ In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation.” The capital sins — among which pride is chief — “engender other sins, other vices,” according to the Church. Martin’s far more orthodox fellow Jesuit, the late Fr. John Hardon, wrote in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, “Pride strives for perverse excellence. It despises others and, depending on its perversity, even looks down upon God.”
It is also held in Catholic tradition that pride is what led to the fall of Lucifer from Heaven to Hell. In his epic Paradise Lost, the great poet John Milton put pride into words rather neatly, when his image of Satan quipped, “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
A glance at the nature of “pride parades” is also enough to counter Martin’s rationalization. Far from celebrating human dignity, pride parades have become increasingly more depraved and degenerate, showcasing BDSM fetishes, nudity, and even demoniac costumes, especially those sported by drag queens. Two men in assless leather chaps publicly flagellating each other hardly seems to connote “a consciousness of one’s own human dignity.” So grossly debauched are pride parades that when Florida lawmakers barred children from attending the sexually explicit events, organizers in the state canceled them.
In his article, Martin claims that “[t]he other, more common, objection [to Catholics celebrating pride month] is that LGBTQ people are simply sinful or are always in conflict with church teaching.” This is demonstrative of how little attention Martin pays both to the sincere criticism leveled by sincere Catholics and to the teachings of the Church. No practicing Catholic I’ve ever encountered or heard of actually argues that “LGBTQ people,” as Martin calls them, are inherently sinful. The actions in which they are repeatedly encouraged to revel every June are sinful, but the people themselves are, from a Catholic perspective, suffering.
The Church explains that homosexual desires are “objectively disordered.” Acting upon them constitutes a grave sin, but the Church calls on those with same-sex attraction not to act on those desires: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom … by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”
Despite Martin’s second claim, struggling against same-sex attraction is not in contradiction to Church teaching — no more than struggling against alcoholism or a porn addiction. Giving in to and acting upon homosexual desires, on the other hand, is in contradiction to Church teaching. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church classifies sodomy as one of the “sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance,” and in Persona Humana, the Vatican’s doctrine office clarified that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.” The Church encourages those with same-sex attractions to fight against temptation and sin, just as she encourages all Catholics to fight against temptation and sin.
In short, the Catholic Church calls on those with same-sex desires to live chaste lives, to become more than just their sexual desires and impulses but to truly “approach Christian perfection.” The “pride” movement, on the other hand, reduces the individual to no more than his or her sexual desires and impulses, defines the whole human person by his sexual desires and impulses, denying him the fullness of “human dignity” which Martin erroneously claims is an essential trait in the celebration of “pride month.” Far from condemning “LGBTQ people” as inherently sinful, Catholics actually call on these fellow humans to rise above the lies of the LGBTQ lobby and actually live wholesome Christian lives — not to spend 30 days wallowing in sin and degeneracy and pretending that’s their whole identity.