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I know
many gays and lesbians who are very nice persons. So why should they be rejected
by the Catholic Church?
 , too, know many gays and lesbians
who are nice persons. But being a nice person—or a good person—in
the secular social sense does not mean that someone lives a holy
life.
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Many individuals
will present themselves socially as cooperative and accepting so as to hide
their dark unconscious feelings of anger and
victimization,
and under their mat of welcome you can find quite a bit of
dirt. Persons of true holiness, however, are
“men of good will” (Luke 2:14): those
who keep God’s commandments in chastity of body and mind and whose inner
purity diffuses its peaceful fragrance into the world around them. |
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In fact, many persons who live
in mortal sin are “nice” persons.
Mortal
sin is not limited just to egregious social offenses such as murder,
assault, and robbery. Sexual and reproductive sins are also mortal
sins.
And why are they
sins?
Well, as Saint Paul said (1
Corinthians 6:12–20), they are offenses against one’s own body,
the temple of the Holy Spirit. Psychologically,
these offenses are acts of
narcissism,[1]
and narcissism, by definition, is the psychological defense of self-love.
Self-love, when reduced to a
psychological defense, is a sin because it
offends true love: it places one’s self above
love of God, who made heaven and earth—including our bodies. The sin
of self-love makes the temple into a brothel, so to speak.
So, yes, persons who use artificial
birth control, who have abortions, who get remarried after divorce, or who
engage in sensual gratification that denies the reproductive function within
legitimate marriage between a man and a woman (e.g., masturbation, anal sex,
interrupted coitus) may all be nice persons, but they are also guilty of
the sins of self-love.
Artificial birth control is
narcissism because it renounces fertility. That’s self-love placed before
love of God who created us to be fertile.
Abortion is narcissism
because it makes life into a piece of garbage. That’s self-love placed
before love of God who created life itself.
Remarriage after divorce
is narcissism because it renounces a holy covenant. That’s self-love
placed before love of God who made a holy covenant with us to rescue us from
our sins.
And any activity that reduces
the sexuality of the body to something no more than a form of
entertainment is narcissism because it
seeks to make yourself seen through your desire
for another person. When you look at another person with desire, you do not
see a soul enrobed in chaste beauty; you see only the exuberant fantasy that
your aching throb of loneliness might be alleviated through someone’s
body. Narcissism makes your pleasure in having your body fondled
the focus of your satisfaction. It makes your pleasure in playing
with the body of another person—turning God’s temple into your
toy—into the focus of your satisfaction. That’s
self-love placed above love of God, isn’t it?
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Consider here
how the devil tempted Eve to disobey God (Genesis 3:1-6).
First, he led
her to doubt God by making Him seem irrational: “Did God really
tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the
garden?”
Then he led her
to doubt that God was being honest with her: “You certainly will not
die!”
Consequently,
Eve saw that the fruit was good for food and looked really nice. It
was natural, so it had to be good for her, she
thought. So, she disobeyed God’s command and satisfied her
desire.
And the
devil continues to tempt us in the same way today,
and we continue to disobey God, saying to ourselves, “How can there
be anything wrong with anything that seems so
nice?” |
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Now, in a
true marriage between a man and a woman, neither
the man nor the woman has to focus on getting noticed by the other, for the
spouses’ service to fertility and
family in their mutual love for God draws them close
to each other. There can be nothing narcissistic in a true
marriage.
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How can those
who defy the teachings of the Church and choose to live in
sin teach children to
love and to fear God and to keep His commandments? Well, they
can’t. |
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So those who defile true marriage
(and all the holy obligations it entails), for the sake of self-serving pleasure,
persist in narcissism. It’s not a matter of the Church rejecting them;
it’s they who reject the Church, for by placing self-love before love
of God they refuse to
repent their offenses to chastity, thereby
preventing themselves from accepting God’s
merciful call to forgiveness.
___________
1.
Narcissism, in its psychological meaning, refers to making oneself
seen and noticed; its operations are concerned entirely with the self
and its satisfactions, such that all motivation begins with the self and
returns to the self.
In complete opposition to this self-centered orientation, Christ,
who is the Word, calls us out of ourselves, to listen to Him, and to follow
Him. He is the good shepherd, the gatekeeper who opens the gate, “and
the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them
out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the
sheep follow him because they recognize his
voice” (John
10:4).
See Jacques Lacan, “The Partial Drive and its Circuit”
and “From Love to the Libido.” In The Four Fundamental Concepts
of Psychoanalysis. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981):
  
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