Tag: Same-sex attraction

Roman synods ain’t what they used to be

From our friends at Family Research Council, which in lieu of one or other Roman synod serves to enlighten us on threats to family life (quick reference here):

President Barack Obama is now promoting a sexual revolution more extreme, more perverse, more bizarre than anything you or I have ever imagined possible.

Specifically, he is backing legislation that would ban parents—including Christian parents—from arranging counseling to help protect their own children from engaging in a variety of forms of sexually immoral behavior.

Sexually immoral behavior. One or other Roman synod does not use such language these days, does it? Not that I warm to such talk, no more than I warm to some stuff Jesus said, not to mention Paul, that evangelical blunderbuss of truly biblical proportions.

What to do, therefore, in our age of libertinism (word we also do not or rarely hear) that is also an age of dismissing words from our vocabulary as no longer useful? Keep a stiff upper lip, for starters. Make Jesus your friend, for another.

Making Him your friend calls for reading about him, for starters. The four Gospels are your main source. Get a good translation and go for it. Also for starters, work on getting to know him by attending Mass on a regular basis and absorbing what that’s all about. Which might not be completely clear at first, or never completely, for gosh sakes; it’s deep stuff.

Granted, mass may do nothing for you at first, or even after a long time. Mother Teresa had long, long dry spells in her prayer life, we read. But there’s much to be said for going through the motions of something that people you trust say has lots of potential. The first thing, Woody Allen said, is to show up. Worth trying.

I have more to say, it’s percolating, about Jesus as your friend. But there’s an old gospel hymn in celebration of the concept, of course, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” It opens:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

The next stanza has a final couplet, “Jesus knows our every weakness; /Take it to the Lord in prayer.” He knows. That’s the point. He knows, He knows, He knows. Live with it.

Courage came to Mundelein

Column appeared 08/16/2010 at online, now defunct Chicago Catholic News:

The Rev. Jeffrey Keefe’s first encounter with a same-sex-attracted (SSA) client had a “profound effect” on him, he told priests and other pastoral workers at Mundelein Seminary July 30.

The man had confessed to another priest and then heard a “grunt of disgust” from the other side of the confessional screen. Father Keefe, a Syracuse, NY, Franciscan ordained in 1952 and a Ph.D. psychological counselor since 1965 with decades of experience with same-sex-attracted clients, was the first person he discussed his SSA condition with who didn’t make him feel like “a barrel of shit.” He “needed someone he could trust,” Father Keefe said.

He spoke at the 22nd annual conference of Courage, the national Catholic ministry to the same-sex-attracted, held July 29 to Aug. 1 at the seminary (U. of St. Mary of the Lake). Three hundred people were registered for the conference, including 70 priests and seminarians and three bishops, among the latter Bishop Thomas Paprocki, formerly of Chicago now of Springfield, IL. . . . .

The head reads, aptly: “Church Reporter: At Mundelein, man tells of “spiritual journey” from “practicing homosexual to practicing Catholic” [No longer linked] Aptly, because this is the grabber: the St. Augustine-like story of a Courage member.