The #1 Reason the Catholic Church Won’t Support Same-Sex Marriage…UPDATED

April 3, 2013 By Frank Weathers, Why I am Catholic
 

It’s quite simple, actually. Oh, you won’t see the reason talked about by folks being grilled by the Piers Morgans of the world. You won’t see the reason being discussed in philosophy papers, or papers expanded into book length dissertations on marriage, where all manner of other good reasons to protect and defend traditional marriage are enumerated, and bolstered with reasonable arguments.
The real reason is simple, and it’s not based on bigotry. It’s based 100% on love. The kind of love that only a mother has for her children.
But the reason isn’t popular, see, and I daresay you rarely, if ever, hear articulate, solid, well mannered, and well versed, New Evangelizers sharing this particular reason with folks they come into contact with.
So what’s absolutely, positively, the A-1, best reason why the Bride of Christ won’t recognize Same-Sex civil unions as being a good?

Because Hell burns, and for all eternity. That’s why. The Church teaches that engaging in homosexual acts will lead one to eternal damnation.


Namby-pamby New Evangelization? Wrong Saint.

Of course, the Church also teaches that committing all manner of other sinful acts, without compunction or repentance, leads one right to Hell too. Not much has changed in this regard since John the Baptist went around telling folks to “Repent!”
And the Church, that holy hospital built by Christ Himself to cleanse us, and lead us to the Promised Land, wouldn’t be doing her job properly for her Lord if she didn’t use every ounce of the Magisterial Authority she wields to do everything in her power to prevent souls from being destroyed forever in the Lake of Fire.
You want philosophical answers? Remember what St. Thomas Aquinas said in his Lenten homilies delivered in the final year of his life,

Man needs to know two things: the glory of God and the punishment of Hell. For through being drawn by His glory and terrified by His punishments, men are careful on their own account and refrain from sin.

Easy as that sounds, the Angelic Doctor goes on to remind us,



Got that?

It is also difficult to know about the punishments of Hell, for “no man hath been known to have returned from Hell,” which is said in the person of the wicked. But it cannot be said now, since just as He came down from Heaven in order to teach us heavenly things, so did He come back from Hell in order to teach us about Hell.

And as inconvenient to the zeitgeist (yesterday, today, and tomorrow) this truth may be, nothing is going to change the Churchs’ viewpoint on this. And I don’t just mean the Vatican either. I mean folks in the pews like me.
I joined the Church in order to be saved from the wide road leading straight to the Devils’ playground. I didn’t become Catholic in order to find a comfortable spot where I could get a free pass on all my sinful behaviors, while never having to change. If that was the case, I came to the wrong place, as Cardinal John Henry Newman reminds me.



I thought she was crazy too, until I didn’t.

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse. —Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

If the Church’s mission is to save as many souls as possible, make saints out of folks, and bring as many of us to Heaven as she can, then it’s obvious that she isn’t going to condone, or support, behaviors that will guarantee that souls are eternally put to death. Capice?
That would make absolutely no sense. It would be like your mother telling you to go outside and play on the highway, or get you drunk and then hand you the car keys with a peck on the check and a “go have fun” whispered in your ear.
It would be like giving folks, who have an equal chance for salvation (or not), and instead giving them a greater than equal chance for damnation. That isn’t the kind of calculus you want your soul saving physician to be making, is it? Blaise Pascal would point out that this is like playing with loaded dice that never roll in your favor.
That’s kind of how stuff rolls in the the world, though, what with phony-baloney teachings, and you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours gamesmanship, etc. But that isn’t what the Church is all about.
By the way, this is the same reason (Hell is Hot!) why the Church doesn’t teach that murder is okey-dokey, or stealing, or abortion, wars of conquest, rape, etc., etc., either. Nor does she condone any number of other acts that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has held as dangerous to our souls since the prophets started rebuking the children of Israel, up to when the Apostles were spreading the Good News, way back when the New Exodus was just getting off the ground.
So for folks to kid themselves that the Church would ever “get with the times, ” or up and decide to get on “the right side of history,” they are completely missing the fact that His Story is the one she has been called to share the world over, in a bid to save our very lives.
Thankfully, the Church has the power to take our sins, no matter how heinous they are, or how deep their crimson color, and make them whiter than snow. You supply the repentance and the contrition, and she provides the balm that heals. But the clean and folded laundry comes with a bill attached from Christ Himself that reads, “go and sin no more.”
If sinning is another way of saying “missing the mark,” then thinking that the Church is going to be hunky dory with folks shooting maggie’s drawers, and missing the broad side of barns over and over again, never once really trying to become more Christ-like, well…that is a pretty ridiculous notion.
It’s as ridiculous as arguing that same-sex unions are bad for society, while keeping mum on the fact that they are damning for the soul. Pope Francis knows better.

John the Baptist approves of this message

UPDATES:
Monsignor Charles Pope: What does the Catholic Church offer to the Homosexual Person?
The Compendium: Love and the formation of a community of persons.
Facebook page of note: We Defend Traditional Marriage – and We’re Gay.
Marc Barnes: The Difficulty With Engaging Gay Marriage
Terry Nelson:The Catholic Church’s ‘acceptance’ of gay people…
Taylor Marshall, Homosexuality: Does the New Testament Condemn It?
Deacon Greg Kandra: Clarity on an important news item.