Dipping into the Prairie Messenger.

My family and I were delighted to be able to stop by Holy Rosary Cathedral in Regina last summer as we returned from our holidays in Ontario to our home in Powell River, B.C. It was our first time in this lovely city.

As we were leaving the Cathedral after Mass, I picked up the Prairie Messenger--which I had never read before--to get a sense of what had been going on in the Church in the past few weeks. We had been out of touch for some time.

I didn't read many articles in the paper. Eugene Kennedy's "Does infallibility mean the Pope cannot learn?" (August 2, 2000) stopped me in my tracks. What knocked me about was the fact that this article did a grave disservice both to the Holy Father and to the Church's courageous stand in support of the dignity of homosexual persons, and yet the article was being given ink in a Catholic newspaper and distributed in the Regina Cathedral. Kennedy might have been writing for the Globe and Mail, given the brazenness with which he misrepresented and then ridiculed Pope John Paul II's attitude to homosexuality.

Near the beginning of his ramble, Kennedy made the following assertion:

"Having a dialogue with John Paul II on homosexuality is operationally impossible for scientists, researchers, and even Christian moralists and Catholic pastors who have learned a great deal about the subject."

Kennedy's bold statement flies in the face of the growing body of research in support of the Church's 2000-year-old teaching on homosexuality--by such well-regarded scientists as Jeffery Satinover, Joseph Nicolosi, Vanden Aardweg--as well as the wonderful work being done by so many priests and Catholic homosexuals to help others break free of the destructive "gay life style".

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is surely one of the most crucial issues of our day, at the very forefront of what has been called the "culture wars", and therefore something we all need to consider and understand. Perhaps the first thing to reflect on is that there is a legitimate homosexual agenda, which is that homosexual persons should be treated with the same respect and dignity as every other person.

In pleading their case, homosexual activists have effectively employed the language of victimization and a call for tolerance, in order to advance an agenda that has broadened dramatically in recent years, an agenda which now includes the teaching of homosexuality in the schools and the acceptance of homosexual partnerships under the legal definition of marriage.

Activists have often been willing to put cultural and political gain ahead of common civility and respect for free speech. Today even reasoned and conscientious disagreement with their claims and tactics is reflexively attacked and shouted down as "homophobia", a social tumor to be expurgated, rather than a body of thinking to be argued with.

A deliberate strategy of mixing these political agendas with the tragic personal aspects of the homosexual issue has been successfully used to demonize anyone who objects to the radical agendas now proposed. This strategy has received considerable support from many in the liberal press, and even, as in the present instance, from the Catholic press.

Eugene Kennedy

In the article under discussion Eugene Kennedy rebukes the Holy Father for his criticism of the World Gay Pride festival held in Rome in early July. The choice of Rome for the event -- during a time when Christian pilgrims would be flocking to the city for the Millennium celebrations -- was no coincidence. It was planned to be a highly visible show of strength against the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality.

"In the name of the Church of Rome," declared the Holy Father, "I cannot fail to express my bitterness for the affront caused to the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, and for the offence against Christian values in a city so dear to the Catholics of the entire world."

Kennedy expresses outrage at the Holy Father's comment, declaring it to be "an expression of his resistant and resentful feelings about homosexuality."

"Gay Pride" and the radical agenda of the Gay Movement threaten not only society, but homosexual people themselves. As just one of many examples, there is no question that the failed AIDS education policies (safe sex) promoted vigorously by the movement have had an effect. We now have a generation of twenty-year-old "gay" men with a certain mortality of 30 percent. We can only wonder how many twenty-year-olds might have been spared had activists made it their number-one priority to protect individual lives rather than the "gay" lifestyle.

One book worth reading is David Morrison's Beyond Gay. In it he candidly describes his own journey from "gay" activist to chaste Catholic and offers realistic hope for those with unwanted same-sex attractions. It is a gutsy description of his own transition, revealing a faith that goes beyond doctrine into the heartfelt experience of the grace of God.

J. Fraser Field is executive officer of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center (www.catholiceducation.org).