Slippery Jim is at it again with his usual blend of half truths, subtle sentimentality and sneaky virtue signalling.

In a long Twitter rant he has whined about the Bishop’s treatment of a Catholic high school who dismissed a teacher who was in a same sex marriage. Let me say first of all, that this post is not particularly about the LGBT issue or homosexuality. I have no opinion on that other than the teaching of Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

But Fr Jim does. He tweets:,

 

Once again let’s cut through the fog of Slippery Jim’s sentimentality and deliberate obfuscation of the issues. Fr Jim points out the hypocrisy of lots of Catholics. They skip Mass, they don’t give to the poor, they are divorced and remarried, they use birth control, they teach in a Catholic school, but they are Protestants or Jews, .

He says the treatment of LGBT people are the only ones put under a “moral microscope”. Nope. Not true. LGBT people are not put under a moral microscope any more than other employees. It is not the fact that they are LGBT or even that they might be actively LGBT.

The problem is that they got married.

What is marriage? It is a public, formal action that leads to a permanent condition. You get married and stay married for life. That is what marriage is. According to Catholic teaching marriage is a sacrament that can only be contracted between a man and a woman. Therefore a same sex marriage is a formal, public, permanent renunciation of Catholic life and teaching.

Furthermore, because marriage is a sacrament, a same sex marriage for a Catholic is a profanation of the sacrament just as surely as it is to trample on the sacred host, urinate in the font or profane the confessional.

AND that profanation of the sacrament is a public and formal action.

This is not, therefore in the same category as skipping Mass, not giving money to the poor, using contraception, IVF or being married after divorce without an annulment.

A same sex marriage is, by its very nature, not only a profanation of the sacrament and a public repudiation of the Catholic faith,  but it also permanent and irremediable. That is, the condition cannot be changed. All those other sins can be amended. You can confess skipping Mass and start going to Mass. You can stop using contraceptives. If you are a Jew or a Protestant you could convert. You can confess the use of IVF and not do it again. If you are divorced and remarried there is a possibility that you might get a decree of nullity and regularize your marriage, and if that is not possible you could live together as brother and sister without sin.

But a same sex marriage is, by its nature a permanent, public repudiation not only of the sacrament of marriage, but also the Catholic faith. The only way this could be remedied would be for the same sex couple to get a divorce and live celibate lives.

The biggest problem here is not just Slippery Jim’s false teaching, but the fact that he must know that he is misleading the faithful. He’s a Jesuit. They are supposed to be among the brightest and best right? They’re the ones with the superior Catholic formation and education, right?

Therefore we must assume that Fr Martin knows exactly what he is doing in not only normalizing this behavior, but also encouraging the profanation of a sacrament of the Catholic Church of which (he is constantly reminding us) he is a “priest in good standing.”

What other “priest in good standing” can get away with publicly, repeatedly and noisily defending the profanation of a sacrament of the church, and attacking a bishop who seeks to define and defend the faith? Would any priest be allowed to publicly defend the profanation of the sacrament in such a way?

Let us say the sacrament in question is not the sacrament of marriage, but the sacrament of confession. Let us say for sentimental, “pastoral” reasons a priest had sex with a penitent in the confessional. Then let us imagine that another priest defended that priest and spouted a whole load of sentimental nonsense about how the priest was being “pastoral” and he knew the woman in question “was in need of genuine love” and how the priest “reached out in care and concern for the woman and how he was building bridges to the needy women in the parish.”

Then that priest who defended the profanation of the sacrament kept whining innocently “But I’m a priest in good standing! I’m a priest in good standing! I’m a priest in good standing!”

Everyone would suggest he try some good kneeling rather than good standing for a time.