One is hard pressed to make it far into the month of June without being confronted with images of a rainbow or slogans like "love is love" or "love wins." It seems that, "The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself [LGBTQ+]."
Lacking in all of this enthusiasm and advocacy seems to be a measured consideration of what is being discussed and distinctions surely critical for the good of souls. While some might argue it is only a matter of respecting all people, certainly the rhetoric of "pride" implies more than just that.
What is being celebrated during June? Before we answer that, let us make some distinctions.
At the outset, I am assuming the human dignity of every individual person -- made in the image and likeness of God. This means that I believe that every human being should be treated with respect and is created for ultimate union with God. To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "[Those with homosexual inclinations] must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." (CCC2358)
That said, a distinction that is seemingly never made in our public square is that between a human person and their passions or inclinations. People are not simply desire or inclinations. Thanks to Original Sin, we all suffer concupiscence, or disordered passions. We are all called to subject our desires to reason, and use our free will to reign in what is disordered or sinful.
The Catechism, drawing on the discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas on the subject, notes that, "The term 'passions' belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil." (CCC1763) Further, "In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will....It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason." (CCC1767)
Hence, our passions, inclinations, and desires are, in themselves, not good or evil, but ordered or disordered. A desire is either leading us, in accord with reason, toward some good, and it is then ordered, or away from the good and toward irrational and sinful actions, and is thus disordered. The morality of the situation arises from what we choose with our will. To find oneself experiencing a disordered passion is a temptation, but not a sin until you consent to it or act on it.
With our wounded natures, scarred by Original Sin, we all experience disordered passions; yet, we are called to restrain those passions in accord with reason and moral integrity. Thanks be to God, we are not simply slaves to our passions. We are all "born with" disordered desires, however. I will not enter into a consideration of what range of desires are acquired or not; the morality of the action is not based on how I specifically came to have such desires. That is, frankly, a distraction to the moral discussion.
I might find myself "in love" and experience desires in a range of situations: imagine a man "falling in love" with a woman not his wife, with someone else's wife, with a student of his, with a little child, with another man, with a sibling, or even with a goat. I would submit that in every one of those cases, the individual who finds himself with those desires has a moral responsibility to restrain himself. Every one of those desires is disordered; consenting to them or acting on them externally would be sinful and wicked. Merely to experience those desires is not to sin, however; it is to be tempted. To quote the Catechism: "Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices." (CCC1768)
Now, obviously those desires are not all equally disordered or disordered in the same way. The first in the list, a man's desire for a woman not his wife, is at least directed toward something that might be made right: that man, gaining the consent of the woman and assuming no impediments, might marry her, placing those desires in a rightly ordered context. Nevertheless, even that love might go astray if the man is, himself, already married or if the woman doesn't consent. "Love" may be love, but adultery and rape are both morally wrong. On the other hand, on the opposite extreme, there is no way for a desire for a goat to be rational, ordered, or morally right. It matters not how strong the passion or how seemingly receptive the animal.
The degree to which the desire can never be rightly ordered, is the degree to which it is contrary to our nature and sinful if acted upon. What does it mean for such desires to be ordered, in the first place? Simply, it means in accord with reason and the natural purposes of the act. In this context, we are speaking of acts involving the reproductive system of the human person.
"Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out." (CCC2332-2333)
Our biological sex (leaving the term "gender" for linguistics; there are three in English, for instance, masculine, feminine, and neuter) -- our sexual identity -- is a profound aspect of who we, body and soul, are. The complementary and fruitful pairing of male and female is profoundly meaningful and spiritually significant as a type of Christ and His Church.
Now, homosexual tendencies run afoul of the natural purposes of our sexual identity and the purpose of the reproductive act: "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. ... Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." (CCC2357)
To call a homosexual relationship a "marriage" is to essentially redefine not only marriage and the purposes and meaning of sexuality, but also human nature itself. It is to imply that either we lack immortal souls, so being animals without significant moral agency, we may do what we wish with ourselves; or to imply that we are only souls, whose bodies are accidental additions with which it matters not what we do. If we are body and soul, however, we should governor ourselves with intellect and will, and our bodies really matter, for they are part of who and what we are. Homosexual activity utterly lacks the possibility of fruitfulness -- it is not a proper utilization of the reproductive system -- and lacks the complementary nature and unity demanded by the marital act.
This is the reason that a marriage is to be exclusive between a single man and woman, and to be indissoluble: a marital union should be, by nature, fruitful and stable for the good of spouses and children (though there is no fault for those for whom such fertility and stability is naturally impossible; we don't blame the infertile or the widowed or abandoned). To divorce the notion of marriage from the fruitfulness and good of children -- and their education -- is also to radically redefine the institution. Contraception and no-fault divorce are contradictory to marriage, too, and crucial steps that clearly led us to a place where "marriage" is only about some sense of emotional and sexual attraction. What an impoverished notion of marriage, indeed.
So, what do we make of "pride" month. Taking the term pride in a positive sense, not in that of the capital sin, in what is pride being taken? In a lifestyle based on acts "contrary to the natural law"? In having a particular set of disordered desires?
Those who struggle with such homosexual desires, "are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection." (CCC2359). Like all others of the faithful, their dignity is in their being made in the image and likeness of God and, if they are Christians, in their baptism. Associating identity with inclinations, especially those that are disordered, seems problematic at the least, and reductive of the person to their desires. People are so much more than their desires!
Actual "pride" in a lifestyle founded on homosexual activity, to be sure, is destructive and hateful to a life of virtue and grace. It is actually contrary to the dignity of those with such inclinations and it would be authentically uncharitable to encourage someone to indulge in such a lifestyle. The "pride" celebration, of course, fails to make any distinctions, seemingly implying the acceptability and desirability of such actions. That seems manifestly destructive to the good of individuals who might struggle with such inclinations. In sum, even assuming the best, it is hard to reconcile the celebration of LGBTQ+ "Pride" with the authentic good of souls.
Live well!
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