Today, on the feast Albert the Great, father of the natural sciences, I have written a letter to Father James Martin SJ, author of amongst others “Laughing with the Saints” and – recently, “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity”. From Belgium, Europe, where I learned about his work via the internet, about his great sense of humor, I wanted to share with him some of my thoughts on what I read about his book concerning sexuality or ‘LGBT’. As a 60 years old former biology teacher from the Netherlands, husband, father of six and since sex months grandfather, I have specialized in the relationship between biology and faith as well as bioethics, sexual morality included and studied at the Institute for Theological Studies in Brussels of the French speaking Jesuits in Belgium. This has lead to my apostolate ‘Biofides’, al things biology and faith (both philosophically and ethically). This is what I wrote.
I would like to react on your stands in “building a bridge between the Church and the so called LGBT community”. I recognize the need for a most respectful way in reaching out to people who experience same-sex attraction or gender identity problems. I have had two homosexual brothers, living in faithful relationships with their parters (one of them deceased because of leukemia, but I still meet his parter at family gatherings). I wil always defend my (still living) brother(s) and their partners, even if they would be attacked on their homosexuality.
But what I can not defend is the way you define ‘people’s sexuality’, as far as I can read in the (catholic) media on the internet, as if sexual orientation en gender identity are sort of natural things. Peoples sexuality is defined by human nature, not by what the feel. The language of their body’s (as JP II calls it in his ‘theology of the body’) speaks volumes. One can not reduce human sexuality to ‘feelings’ or ‘attraction’. That is what you seem to do all the time.
This also leads to a very un-catholic anthropological dualism: as if one’s body is something completely distinct from a persons feelings, beliefs and ‘lifestyle’. This seems to me completely unreasonable.
The ‘discernment’ on which you (and pope Francis) put so much emphasis on, as faithful jesuits, can not exclude ‘discernment’ of the truth about human nature from falsehood, and that is what you seem to do. The wording of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) on homosexuality in terms of being if ‘intrinsically disordered’ (CCC 2357) is of course painful for those who live these attractions and have difficulties in ‘the successful integration of sexuality within the person’ (CCC 2337). But their main problem is, in my view, that – probably by disinformation – they do not recognize fully the way God has created them as a human person: male or female (Gen. 1), a fact that is confirmed by the natural and human sciences. For these sciences, I refer you to the 2016 study ‘Sexuality and Gender. Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences’. Confusion about the nature of mankind is what makes it hard to accept the word ‘disorder’.
I am afraid that you are contributing to this confusion, by adopting a language that is in my view unbiblical, based on bad anthropology and un-scientific, wanting to ‘build a bridge’ between the so called ‘LGTB community’ and the ‘Catholic community’. That would be a bridge built on very un-solide pillars. Even more: the ‘LGTB community’ is a as such – in my view – non-existing entity: their are people with issues regarding their sexuality, and they may form groups, here and there, but their is no ‘LGTB community’ as such, like their is a ‘Catholic community’: those who recognize the Catholic Church as the ‘Body of Christ’ and have chosen to belong to is. The two ‘communities’ are incomparable, if existing as such. Building a bridge between two incomparable entities of which one of the two may even be non-existing is in my view a fruitless enterprise. We’d rather be loving in truth, and not in fantasies.
I also have a problem with your desire to call ‘LGTB-people’ ‘the way they want to be called’. I understand the respect that you want to give to them, but is it wise to call somebody by a name that ‘ontologically’ is senseless. Would it not be their perfect opportunity to speak to them in a “respectful, compassionate and sensitive’” manner about the nature of human sexuality, in stead of confirming them in there inaccurate beliefs about their nature. Why reducing their identity to their perceived sexuality?
Sorry for being critical about your way of thinking about these important questions, as far as I have been able to learn about them, here in Europe, via the internet. I would be very interested in your argumentation, as far as may have misunderstood your thoughts. And be assured: I have an good relationship with my still living homosexual brother, his partner and the partner of my deceased brother. “A friend of my brother is my friend” is what I tend to say, even if it is within a homosexual relationship. I would not be able to subscribe to the idea that such a sexual relationship as ‘OK’ and I would not be happy to invite them to receive holy communion, for instance (but they are very far from the Church, so that’s not the point for now), but that does not relieve me of the obligation to respect their loyal friendship. And for the rest, I would say with the pope: “Who am I to judge (them)?” We are not called to judge persons. A moral judgement on a situation, that’s something else.
Again, I would be happy to receive your answer and your thoughts.
On the feast of Albert the Great,
November 15th, 2017
Respectfully in Christ and his Church,
Vincent Kemme
www.biofides.eu
