Jennifer Hartline: In Defense of Disordered: Why the Catholic Church Must Not Change Its Language on Homosexuality

The language of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear and loving. No change, no update, no softening is required.

To all our shepherds: deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Holy Father -- you must never waver at all in teaching this fundamental truth. It is not bigoted or hateful in the least to call homosexual sex acts and inclinations disordered. It is undeniable truth. The enemy of our souls wants the generations to come to be deceived and confused about this foundational truth, and it is your duty to hold fast to it.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - The Catholic Church is taking a beating these days for its use of the word disordered in regards to homosexual acts and homosexual inclinations. Such language is now deemed hateful and intolerant and supposedly contrary to everything Christ is about in some circles.

The LGBTQ community demands that Catholic Catechism Sections 2357 and 2358 be rewritten to eliminate the words intrinsically disordered and objectively disordered.

Here are the sections:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. 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. (CCC 2357)

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. (CCC 2358)

Shamefully, many Catholic clergy are among the voices clamoring for the Church to change this language and adopt nothing but what they claim is accepting and loving language toward homosexuals and their orientations.

I watched a video in which a man was talking about his homosexual nature, and how he thought it squared perfectly with God and the divine plan, and he remarked that people who don't embrace homosexuality as morally good, just as good as heterosexuality, are saying that God doesn't know what the hell He's doing.

Really? I think not.

Let's talk about it plainly, even if the candor makes us squirm in our seats a little. A false veneer of beauty and purity has been plastered over the reality, and it's time to rip it off.

No sane adult expects his stomach to pump blood through his body. No one believes their eyes should be able to hear. I've never met anyone who was determined to breathe through his kidneys.

Someone with a heart condition still understands that the purpose of his heart is to pump blood through the body. A blind man still knows that his eyes were meant for sight. An asthmatic knows all too well that the lungs are designed to breathe air. Illness or injury may impede the proper function of certain organs or systems in our bodies, but we still understand that those organs and systems have a specific purpose. We don't expect kidneys to breathe or ears to see. We know that's absurd.

So why do we hang up our right reason when it comes to our sexual organs?  Why do we suddenly pretend the absurd is rational and good? And to add insult to our absurdity, why do we claim that God has deliberately done something absurd, and that it is evidence of His love and goodness?

If we believe God is a God of order and reason, then there is no way to conclude that He creates some of His children to be homosexual. There is no way to conclude that homosexual sex acts are part of His plan for the human person.

When the eyes serve their purpose, it does not cause the body injury. It does not hurt the person seeing. When the heart pumps blood, it does not make the person ill. When the lungs breathe, and the intestines digest food, their healthy, proper function within the body does not cause harm. These organs are doing what they were made to do.

The sexual organs are no different. They were designed by God for specific purposes. No reasonable person can deny that the male penis was made to be received by the female vagina. They were designed to fit together perfectly, and their rightly-ordered joining does not cause injury or disease when the marriage bed is kept sacred. In their physical union, their purpose is fulfilled. Their procreative function remains latent unless they come together. On their own they accomplish nothing. Together they achieve a miracle, and they serve their divine purpose.

The reproductive system is the only human bodily system in which each human being only possess half. God designed us this way. It is built-in to the human person that male and female require each other to be complete.

It is not possible to conclude that two males or two females have the physical ability to be joined together. It is plainly impossible. For men, the attempt to force such a physical joining leads to serious bodily injury, and to terrible disease. Pardon the indelicacy, but it must be said that the rectum was not designed to receive anything at all, least of all the male penis. It is the means of evacuation from the body. It's the digestive system's exit door. That is its proper and only function.

(If you think this topic unnecessary or irrelevant, I dare you to read Joseph Sciambra's raw account of surviving homosexuality and the brutal reality of gay sex.)

Who in their right mind would imagine the rectum is the proper place for sexual joining? What sort of absurdity thinks that what was made strictly to eliminate waste from the body ought to be utilized for sexual activity?

And to the point of the man from the video, who can possibly believe that God would do this on purpose? That God would deliberately create some of His children to have a homosexual orientation, and then force them to resort to dangerous, injurious, and unhealthy practices in order to have sexual satisfaction?

No, it's the man from the video who believes God doesn't know what the hell He's doing. He believes God -- the God of order and reason -- has made some of His children with a sexual drive totally contrary to their physical bodies, and then failed to provide for them a safe, healthy physical way to express their sexual desires, and also failed to allow their reproductive organs to serve their intended purpose. For them, God has made the reproductive organs useless.

We are all to believe God has done this intentionally, and out of love?

It's like saying that God expects some people to spend their lives trying to see through their ears, even though He explicitly created the ears to hear and the eyes to see. Tough luck for those folks, I guess, because God didn't deign to accommodate their orientations (which He gave them). That is utterly absurd. That is not the plan of our loving God.

No, the day the Catholic Church ceases to preach without apology the divinely-designed order of the human body as male and female, and the rightly-ordered purpose of sexual intercourse, and the goodness of God's plan for the human family is the day the Church fails in Her mission. A dreadful, terrible day it would be!

To all our shepherds: deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Holy Father -- you must never waver at all in teaching this fundamental truth. It is not bigoted or hateful in the least to call homosexual sex acts and inclinations disordered. It is undeniable truth. The enemy of our souls wants the generations to come to be deceived and confused about this foundational truth, and it is your duty to hold fast to it.

If you fail to uphold Church teaching, or engage in the effort to change Church teaching for the sake of a feigned notion of acceptance, accompaniment, or tolerance, then you are effectively telling men and women that God is not a God of order and reason. You are telling men and women to ignore the purposeful design of their physical bodies and the mystical, beautiful truths those bodies point toward.

You would be contradicting the truth of marriage, and the very Word of God Himself. You would be abandoning same-sex attracted men and women to real spiritual and physical harm. You would be robbing them of hope by robbing them of the truth.

The language of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear and loving. No change, no update, no softening is required.

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Jennifer Hartline is a Senior Contributor to The Stream. She is a proud Army wife and mother of four children. She writes passionately on the issues of Life, faith, family and culture, and has been published extensively at Catholic Online and at Catholic Stand. She is currently pursuing a degree in Theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. She runs on dark chocolate and peppermint mochas.

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