Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

I know many gays and lesbians who are very nice persons. So why should they be rejected by the Catholic Church?

 
I, 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.

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.

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?

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?”

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.

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.

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):

    “. . . The root of the scopic drive is to be found entirely in the subject, in the fact that the subject sees himself. . . . in his sexual member. . . . Whereas making oneself seen is indicated by an arrow that really comes back towards the subject, making oneself heard goes towards the other” (pp. 194–195).

 


 Back to the list of questions

 


 

DID MY WORK help you? Have you found insight into your behavior? Have you found information unlike anywhere else? Then why not make a Quick & Easy donation to this freewill website to express your gratitude for my labor in creating something substantial, something that can change your life for the better?

Huh? Donations? Freewill website?
What’s this about?


No, you cannot place your ad here, because I refuse to sell advertising on this website.


 

Chastity

In San Francisco?

www.ChastitySF.com

CATHOLIC PSYCHOLOGY

in association with
A Guide to Psychology and its Practice
 
Copyright © 1997-2008 Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
San Francisco, California USA