This is my letter to Cardinal Lozano
To His Eminence Javier Cardinal Lozano y Barragán
Pontificium Consilium pro Valetudinis Administris
Via della Conciliazione 3, 00193 Roma, Italy
My Lord Cardinal,
The form and content of your statements about the currently “hot” issue of homosexual “marriage” have been such that I, as a fellow Catholic, opposed to the idea as you are, have to protest. They are shocking. They are, my Lord Cardinal, shameful. Is there no better way to argue about sin, than to compare sinners to cats or cockroaches? My Lord, we are both Catholics, and you do not have to argue to me that homosexual activity is sinful. (The action, my Lord, not the desire: recent papal statements have made the difference quite clear.) But I cannot conceive that in your 49 years of pastoral activity, you have never encountered a homosexual; or that, having had to deal with one, you could not find any way to argue against the activity, than to compare this intelligent creature of God, made in God’s image and likeness, sharing the promise of salvation and the gift of intellect, with dumb, and sometimes repulsive, animals?
Your Eminence, I understand what you were trying to do. You were arguing ad absurdum, trying to show what the opposing position would imply if taken to its extreme consequences. I am however bound to tell you that your argument is plainly wrong. Nobody, even the most extreme of our opponents, is intending to place animals on the same level as human beings. And think, not only of the foul taste of your statements, but of their inopportunity. Spain, about whose politics you were speaking, already has a government that hates the Church, inheriting the ancient anti-clericalism of those who, in the thirties, murdered over four thousand ecclesiastics. In our day and age, the Spanish religious are, thank God, in no danger of murder. But do you imagine that the Zapatero government would be in any way dissuaded or even encouraged to reflect, by such a form of words?
Worse than what the people currently in charge of Spain might think, is what homosexuals or their friends around the world will think. Your Eminence, your duty is to preach, to teach, to convert, sinners: and homosexuals are no worse or different than any other kind of person to whom the modern culture offers justification for their various sins and a pleasant salve for any sense of guilt they might have. Is this how you hope to get through to them with the message of the Church - the self-sacrificing love of God, the presence of God in the world, redemption, eternal life, eternal joy? Are you aware, my Lord Cardinal, that homosexuals are extremely defensive? That they are intensely conscious of being a minority, and react with fury to any behaviour they interpret as menacing in any way? Do you not realize that, to the ears of the majority of homosexuals throughout the world, your statement will have meant: “homosexuals are like cats and cockroaches”? Sure, that was not what you meant: you meant that one unnatural relationship can be compared to another. But that is how it will have been interpreted. And quite frankly, I am astonished that you did not take into consideration how an hostile person or group might have read your remarks, and that you did not take their likely reaction into consideration.
May I speak about my own experience? I have spent much of my adult life in close contact with homosexual and transsexual individuals and couples. They have never been allowed to be in any doubt about my Faith and my views. And almost every one of them has become a close friend of mine. Why? Because they were conscious that, whatever I thought of their sexual activities, I respected them as people, as individuals, as human beings, as creatures of God. Because I would help them when in trouble, and listen to their problems. Because I treated them as friends. These people, I hope, will have been less hostile to the Church, because of me, than they were before they met me. And it is on their account, too, that I protest.
Your statements, my Lord, are disastrous. They will have put confusion in the hearts of the faithful, anger in the hearts of opponents, and, in so far as violent and intolerant elements are found in the Church of God (and, my Lord, you know that they are), they will have encouraged them and them alone. If an enemy of the Church, resolved to damage her in the eyes of third parties, resolved to encourage her marginalization and persecution, had thought about it for weeks, he could not have struck a more efficacious blow at her. And it is too late now. Even supposing that you withdrew or explained your remarks, they will by now have been reprinted in dozens of publication, and become a part of homosexual folklore: “Cardinal compares gays to cockroaches”. And as in most of the rich world the Church argues from a position of weakness, they will have reinforced the viewpoint of potential or actual persecutors: of those who want to strip us of our endowments and church buildings, silence our preachers and laicize our charities, of those who want, in short, to annihilate the specifically Catholic position. You have lent all of these people aid, and weakened the position of the defenders of the Church.
There is a polite form of words with which a member of the Church should close a letter to a Cardinal; but I regret, my Lord, that I cannot in conscience call myself devoted or obedient to yourself. Allow me, therefore to sign myself: yours in Christ, truly and in charity
FABIO PAOLO EDOARDO VIGILIO BARBIERI-FANELLI
London, 14 October 2004
Pontificium Consilium pro Valetudinis Administris
Via della Conciliazione 3, 00193 Roma, Italy
My Lord Cardinal,
The form and content of your statements about the currently “hot” issue of homosexual “marriage” have been such that I, as a fellow Catholic, opposed to the idea as you are, have to protest. They are shocking. They are, my Lord Cardinal, shameful. Is there no better way to argue about sin, than to compare sinners to cats or cockroaches? My Lord, we are both Catholics, and you do not have to argue to me that homosexual activity is sinful. (The action, my Lord, not the desire: recent papal statements have made the difference quite clear.) But I cannot conceive that in your 49 years of pastoral activity, you have never encountered a homosexual; or that, having had to deal with one, you could not find any way to argue against the activity, than to compare this intelligent creature of God, made in God’s image and likeness, sharing the promise of salvation and the gift of intellect, with dumb, and sometimes repulsive, animals?
Your Eminence, I understand what you were trying to do. You were arguing ad absurdum, trying to show what the opposing position would imply if taken to its extreme consequences. I am however bound to tell you that your argument is plainly wrong. Nobody, even the most extreme of our opponents, is intending to place animals on the same level as human beings. And think, not only of the foul taste of your statements, but of their inopportunity. Spain, about whose politics you were speaking, already has a government that hates the Church, inheriting the ancient anti-clericalism of those who, in the thirties, murdered over four thousand ecclesiastics. In our day and age, the Spanish religious are, thank God, in no danger of murder. But do you imagine that the Zapatero government would be in any way dissuaded or even encouraged to reflect, by such a form of words?
Worse than what the people currently in charge of Spain might think, is what homosexuals or their friends around the world will think. Your Eminence, your duty is to preach, to teach, to convert, sinners: and homosexuals are no worse or different than any other kind of person to whom the modern culture offers justification for their various sins and a pleasant salve for any sense of guilt they might have. Is this how you hope to get through to them with the message of the Church - the self-sacrificing love of God, the presence of God in the world, redemption, eternal life, eternal joy? Are you aware, my Lord Cardinal, that homosexuals are extremely defensive? That they are intensely conscious of being a minority, and react with fury to any behaviour they interpret as menacing in any way? Do you not realize that, to the ears of the majority of homosexuals throughout the world, your statement will have meant: “homosexuals are like cats and cockroaches”? Sure, that was not what you meant: you meant that one unnatural relationship can be compared to another. But that is how it will have been interpreted. And quite frankly, I am astonished that you did not take into consideration how an hostile person or group might have read your remarks, and that you did not take their likely reaction into consideration.
May I speak about my own experience? I have spent much of my adult life in close contact with homosexual and transsexual individuals and couples. They have never been allowed to be in any doubt about my Faith and my views. And almost every one of them has become a close friend of mine. Why? Because they were conscious that, whatever I thought of their sexual activities, I respected them as people, as individuals, as human beings, as creatures of God. Because I would help them when in trouble, and listen to their problems. Because I treated them as friends. These people, I hope, will have been less hostile to the Church, because of me, than they were before they met me. And it is on their account, too, that I protest.
Your statements, my Lord, are disastrous. They will have put confusion in the hearts of the faithful, anger in the hearts of opponents, and, in so far as violent and intolerant elements are found in the Church of God (and, my Lord, you know that they are), they will have encouraged them and them alone. If an enemy of the Church, resolved to damage her in the eyes of third parties, resolved to encourage her marginalization and persecution, had thought about it for weeks, he could not have struck a more efficacious blow at her. And it is too late now. Even supposing that you withdrew or explained your remarks, they will by now have been reprinted in dozens of publication, and become a part of homosexual folklore: “Cardinal compares gays to cockroaches”. And as in most of the rich world the Church argues from a position of weakness, they will have reinforced the viewpoint of potential or actual persecutors: of those who want to strip us of our endowments and church buildings, silence our preachers and laicize our charities, of those who want, in short, to annihilate the specifically Catholic position. You have lent all of these people aid, and weakened the position of the defenders of the Church.
There is a polite form of words with which a member of the Church should close a letter to a Cardinal; but I regret, my Lord, that I cannot in conscience call myself devoted or obedient to yourself. Allow me, therefore to sign myself: yours in Christ, truly and in charity
FABIO PAOLO EDOARDO VIGILIO BARBIERI-FANELLI
London, 14 October 2004