Those Who Promote Marriage will be Attacked
I am conscious that I have been repeating Sr Lucia’s words to Cardinal Caffara regularly in my talks and in my articles. She said that “anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” I have begun lately to notice that we are indeed under attack. The attacks take on various forms. Some are personal in the form of temptations to sin or to discouragement, others are more direct and can affect family or friends.
Several years ago, when I was battling, sometimes unsuccessfully I must admit, against a particular temptation to which I had become prone over the course of my life, my spiritual director responded to a mail I sent him as follows.
“Saint Benedict gives as the last “instrument of good works”: TO NEVER DESPAIR OF GOD’S MERCY. Come what may, always trust in Him and in the Mother of Mercy. If God lets you fall, it’s because He wants to humble you, and make you ripe for the work He has destined for you.”
Consecration to Our Lady
I still battle against these temptations and recently, I needed to hear this message again because I had become aware that, because Legio Sanctae Familiae is leading me out into the front lines of the battle, these attacks will probably increase. It also became clear to me that I need protection, so I decided to renew my consecration to our Mother Mary using Fr Michael Gaitley’s book ’33 Days to Morning Glory’. I will finish on 23rd December, just in time for Christmas.
I was therefore delighted to see the Catholic Voice covering this very book and the consecration to Our Lady in the last issue. I also received another confirmation of this course of action when I recently attended the office of Terce and Holy Mass in Silverstream Priory, on the first Saturday of this month. Dom Kirby spoke of the importance of consecration to Our Lady in his homily during the Mass.
Catholic Parishioner Concerned over Promotion of LGBT
Because we are in the season of advent, I was hoping this week to write a nice article on how we can prepare for advent. But I got a phone call during the week from a concerned Catholic who sent me a copy of the weekly newsletter from St John’s Parish, in Tralee, Co Kerry. The following notice appeared in the newsletter
“Exploring and Owning my Own Spirituality: A reflection morning for members of the LGBT community is being held at Manor West Hotel, on Saturday December 2nd from 10a.m. to 1p.m.”
A contact phone number was listed, and a contact e-mail address was also given. The person who got in touch with me was quite shocked by the inclusion of this notice in a church bulletin, so I forwarded the newsletter on to Anthony Murphy and asked him if he thought that we should cover this. His response was, that the wording was too vague for us to make an issue out of it. I told him that I was doing a little digging and that I would get back to him.
Kerry Diocese Promotes LGBT Agenda
I then found out that this meeting was also being promoted on the Kerry Diocesan website and there I found out the name of the ‘facilitator’ of the reflection morning. Her name is Anne and she is a psychotherapist and a member of the Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy (IAHIP).
Now, as Catholics, we know that Christ founded only one Church, the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic church has the full truth. The Catholic Church, being founded by Christ, is perfect and indefectible, and when she teaches invoking her magisterial authority in matters of faith and morals, she cannot err. Therefore, in matters concerning human morality, all other sciences must be measured according to the moral authority and teaching of the Catholic Church. This holds true for the fields of psychology and psychiatry.
Two Fundamental Truths for Psychology & Psychiatry
In these two disciplines, there are two truths that are paramount for the foundation of all psychological and psychiatric treatments. These are, that man is a creature, and that since the fall of Adam, man’s nature is also fallen, and he is inclined towards evil. These last two are the effects of original sin. To develop techniques or counselling sessions which ignore these two truths, is to build on a foundation of sand which ultimately will not be of any help to those who come looking for that help.
The ideology of Humanism is incompatible with Catholicism. On the IAHIP website they state.
“Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy emphasises that persons are self-regulating, self-actualising and self-transcendent beings, responsible for themselves;” (Code of Ethics 2.1)
This view of the human being is contrary to the Catholic view which sees human beings as being created in the image and likeness of God. We are not ‘self-transcendent’ beings, we are fallen creatures who depend entirely on God. This raises a question mark as to whether the facilitator of these LGBT reflections, Anne, submits completely to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
The Truths of the Catholic Faith Not Proclaimed
I found an article that Anne had written on the IAHIP website titled “The challenges of supporting the spiritual and religious journey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients.” In this article Anne identifies six stages in the development of sexual identity, but nowhere does she proclaim the truth that ‘so called’ LGBT identities are merely human constructs. God only created Male and Female humans. There are no transgender human beings. There are no men walking around in women’s bodies, or women walking around in men’s bodies, even though this may be what some people think about themselves.
God did not create a heterosexual/homosexual divide either. I am not a heterosexual, I am a man. My wife is not a heterosexual, she is a woman. Both of us are created in the image and likeness of God. The heterosexual/homosexual divide is a man-made, worldly construct, one of the purposes of which is to promote the acceptance of homosexual behaviour within society and within religious communities.
Opposed to Conversion Therapies
Anne also seems to be opposed to conversion therapies which seek to help those with same-sex attraction to overcome this attraction and to readjust and normalise their attractions to those of the opposite sex. She says, “This stance is fraught with psychological and spiritual mine-fields.” Anne then goes on to make this dramatic statement.
“It is my belief that in all cases where religion isolates LGBT individuals from their core value system, especially a personally held belief system that includes a relationship with the Transcendent, a spiritual violation or abuse occurs:”
She Does Not Accept Catholic Church Teaching
It seems to me that here, Anne clearly shows that she does not accept Catholic Church teaching on human sexuality for the implication given by this statement is that the Catholic Church, in condemning disordered homosexual practices, isolates these individuals from their core value system and thus abuses them. This stance is confirmed by the books that she recommends at the end of her article. One of those concerns a man who engages in disordered relations with other men. Another one deals with stories of women ‘coming out’ as lesbians in later life. The blurb on the back of this second book says that the book will be:
“examining how the role of marriage in American culture stifles a woman’s self-awareness of her sexuality in order to help clients avoid the mistake of a heterosexual marriage before husbands and children are involved”
So, the role of marriage when seen as being the union of one man and one woman, stifles a woman’s self-awareness of her sexuality.
The Bishop of Kerry is Neglecting His Duties
There is no way that the Bishop of Kerry, Bishop Raymond Browne, should be facilitating this harmful nonsense on his diocesan website, or that he should allow parishes to promote it. But as I dug deeper, I found out that it gets worse.
I found out that in 2011, the group, ‘Kerry Youth Pride’, an LGBT group for young people aged 15-18 years of age, began holding their weekly meetings in the Kerry Diocesan Youth Service centre, in Denny Street, Tralee, with the full support of the diocese. We contacted the diocesan youth centre and they confirmed that these LGBT meetings are still happening on a weekly basis.
Promoting LGBT Theories to Children is a form of Abuse
This is scandalous. National groups, who promote the homosexual lifestyle, are being facilitated and promoted to 15-year-old children through a Catholic diocesan youth service. Many of our young people become confused about their sexuality in their teenage years, partly because the world does not accept human sexuality as God created it, partly because Catholic schools in Ireland no longer uphold and teach the truth and meaning of human sexuality, and partly because the Irish bishops have fallen silent about the truth and meaning of human sexuality for fear of causing offence to those who live the homosexual lifestyle. These young people should not be encouraged to get in touch with groups who have a vested interest in promoting the same-sex lifestyle, and this encouragement should not be coming from a diocesan organisation.
The Kerry diocesan LGBT youth meetings are being promoted by such homosexual lifestyle advocates as ‘belongto’ ‘Gay Community News’ and the HSE. There is no way that these groups would be promoting these meetings, if it were true that these meetings are teaching chastity and the Catholic truths about human sexuality.
The Development of Same-Sex Networks
The danger with these meetings is that they can develop into same-sex networks which lure young people into the disordered same-sex lifestyle. This lifestyle causes huge damage to these young people and it can take them years to break free from the corruption that such a lifestyle entails. These meetings can also become occasions of sin because people are being brought together based on a disordered attraction to those of the same sex, and they are meeting others who may suffer from the same disorder in an environment which does not uphold Catholic teaching on chastity. Young children, in the 14 -18 group should not be segregated within any Catholic diocese on the false basis of a disordered attraction to people of the same sex which may in fact be a temporary phase in their lives.
These meetings may also falsely confirm to a confused young person that they were created this way and that God is accepting of this disordered lifestyle. We saw, during the 2015 referendum campaign, that many Catholics have fallen for the lie that people are born with same sex attraction.
Kerry Diocesan Youth Service promotes the same-sex lifestyle.
The Kerry Diocesan Youth Service Facebook page promotes the same-sex lifestyle. On June the 23rd this year they shared a congratulatory post about young people marching in the Dublin pride parade, a parade which celebrates the disordered ‘same-sex’ lifestyle. The Kerry Diocesan LGBT group, also have a separate Facebook page which sports the same-sex rainbow flag. It is obvious that this group is not promoting the teachings of the Catholic church and on their Facebook page they state that the weekly meetings are for those as young as fourteen.
The Curious LGBT Rainbow Flag
It is interesting to study the same-sex rainbow flag. You will notice that it has only six colours instead of the real rainbow’s seven colours. Seven is the number of perfection. It is also the biblical number of the days of creation and we know that, on the seventh day, God rested from His work. The same-sex promoters have only six colours, representing the six days of work, they do not rest from their work of promoting disordered lifestyles on the Sabbath, or on any other day of the week.
We saw, that in the time of the Maccabbees, the Jews who refused to fight on the Sabbath were slaughtered, a thousand in one day. The book of Maccabbees tells us “And every man said to his neighbour: If we shall all do as our brethren have done, and not fight against the heathens for our lives, and our justifications: they will now quickly root us out of the earth.” (1 Maccabbees 2:40)
Kerry Diocese has not learned from recent Scandals
It seems that perhaps, in the Diocese of Kerry, nothing has been learned from the recent scandals that rocked the Church. Many of the children that were abused, were abused by ordained males with same-sex attraction. Now, the Kerry Diocese is facilitating the promotion of a disordered sexual lifestyle to children as young as fourteen years of age. As Catholics, we have a duty to fight against this scandal.
I am convinced that this is part of a bigger (secret) narrative that is taking shape within the ‘Irish Catholic Church’ to bring the so called ‘LGBT’ folk into the fold without encouraging them to change their lives. They seek to create a ‘same-sex, safe-space’ within the church so that the Catholic Church doesn’t appear to be homophobic. They want to appear to be caring without talking about the salvation of souls and of the necessity of chastity.
The Call to Resist
As lay Catholics we must resist this, we must rise to defend our children and the children of others from the disordered same-sex lifestyle and so, once again I encourage you to take up the challenge and to write to the Bishop of Kerry, Bishop Raymond Browne. As always, try to write the letter from your own perspective. I would also encourage anyone who has been led astray and into the same-sex lifestyle but who has managed to return to chastity, to contact the bishop to warn him of the dangers involved. Here are some questions you might ask Bishop Browne.
“Why is the Kerry Diocese promoting the LGBT culture through its LGBT youth group in Tralee and through its youth Facebook pages?”
“Why is a lady who does not uphold Catholic teaching on sexual morality and who is facilitating LGBT meetings and a disordered lifestyle being promoted in the Kerry Diocese?”
“Why does the Kerry Diocese not promote the ‘Courage Apostolate”? This apostolate seeks to help people with same-sex attraction to life chastely or to see if they can recover from their same-sex attraction.”
You may have other questions that you would like to put to the bishop of Kerry on this matter.
Make Sure Your Voice is Heard – Write to the Bishop
If you are in the Kerry diocese, explain your concerns to your bishop and explain to him the difficulty you now have in contributing to diocesan collections which go to fund these corrupt activities. Seek an assurance from Bishop Browne that he will close the LGBT youth group, and that he will ensure that there will be no more promotion of the same-sex lifestyle on Facebook pages connected with his diocese or on the diocesan website.
I would also encourage you to get in touch with either myself or Anthony if you discover something going on in your own parish that is not in accordance with Catholic teaching either on this matter or any other matter. We must come to Christ’s defence when He is being disrespected in His Church. We must stay close to Our Lady as we seek to give glory to her Son.
Please remember to be respectful in your communications with Bishop Raymond Browne. This is not an attack on the bishop, but rather it seeks to encourage him to take some real, effective and truthful actions in helping those who suffer from same-sex attraction to live chaste and wholesome lives.
Bishop Raymond Browne, e-mail: bishop@dioceseofkerry.ie
Bishop’s House Tel: 064-6631168
Killarney
Co Kerry
Wishing you the joys and blessings of the Christmas season.
© John Lacken 2017
These articles are free to download, to print and to distribute provided that authorship is acknowledged and contact details for the author are provided as follows.
Author: John Lacken
‘Legio Sanctae Familiae’ – The Legion of the Holy Family
E-Mail: john@truedevotions.ie
Mob: +353 (0)85-1208779
Website: www.truedevotions.ie
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