I just withdrew Fr West from my friends list. Mark Shea had called a dead man a saint who during his life had same sex attraction, Fr West said there was something deeply wrong about Mark Shea. Now Mark Shea is a married man, and he was assuming the "gay saint" by love of Christ had lived in celibacy. He assumed Perry Lorenzo had been as chaste as Socrates confronted with the beautiful Alcibiades - or that he had repented sufficiently and been forgiven. I do not see how such assumptions about Perry Lorenzo can stamp the one making them as "there must be something deeply wrong with him". I therefore consider Fr Peter West, until he clears this up, as more Pharisaic and envious about Mark Shea's fame and money than Christian in his stance. He might even have reacted as soon as he saw the title and assumed "gay" meant "active sodomite" or "gay activist" or something.*
"Mark Shea is just using the Catholic Faith as an income generator. That is his main motive. He should be removed from doing spots on EWTN radio as well. Someone let Teresa Tomeo know. He is a fraud." [said by one M. M.]
Here is my response to that as well as to situation in general: Sorry folks, I am not primarily against FatherPeter West as a person, but I am for Mark Shea, and therefore I will not agree to stay on a thread or a friendship leading up to threads before Fr West explains how this all happened. As for Mark Shea using Catholic Faith as income generator, we are not looking for genuine sanctity, there is such a thing as defending the faith when attacked. And a married man doing that full time needs money for writing. I am not getting money for it, I am not married either and as a result I am cursing both God and whoever among Catholic laymen make attacks like that about "income generator" and whoever among priests or religious are so much listening to them that they feel a need to pray for my continued involuntary poverty and celibacy./HGL
*The sound procedure in general is reading the text before one judges it. But if Fr Peter West had done that, I would conclude he was too uncharitable.
This post is sinful on a number of levels and should be removed. Your friend in Christ, C.
RépondreSupprimerIs it sinful to admit that stupid people praying for things they should not have prayed for instead of helping me when they should have as I asked have provoked sins in me? Would it not have been more sinful to hide the fact?
Or, as you spoke about a NUMBER OF LEVELS, I assume you did not mean only that. Can an impenitent sodomite be a saint? No. Did Mark Shea think there was any chance of Perry Lorenzo being an impenitent sodomite? No. Can a penitent former sodomite be a saint? Yes. Can a gay non-sodomite be a saint? Yes. Probably. And what did Mark Shea assume about Perry Lorenzo on that issue? That he had either kept chaste or done penance. I mean St Mary the Egyptian was a Prostitute from age 12 to age 29 before doing penance, St Christopher had been both wordly and devil-serving before penance. And they are ... guess what? ... saints.
Is there any level I forgot? Oh, Mark Shea is just a blogger, Fr West is a priest! Of course! But since when is either blogging a sin or supporting a particular layman against a particular priest sinful in a particular quarrel, even if one thinks the priest is the one who is wrong on precisely CATHOLIC principles?