I'M STILL CONFUSED. ARE YOU AS WELL?

I don’t know about you, but I am still scratching my head and wondering about the upcoming World Meeting of Families and its conflicted messaging.

The Church has been wounded, some contend mortally so, with multiple scandals involving predatory homosexual Bishops and Priests preying upon boys and, in the most recent shocking revelations, seminarians and Priests as well.

Added to the injuries the Church has suffered, there is the insult of powerful forces among the members of the hierarchy who have shielded such homosexual immorality, not allowing it to be exposed and dealt with openly, honestly and justly.

Yet, even as these scandals continue to plague the Catholic faithful, Church leaders continue to signal their sympathy and support for homosexual relationships as a legitimate alternative to the Sacramental Marriage of one man and one woman instituted by God.

A preparatory pamphlet for the upcoming 2018 World Meeting of Families in Dublin states: 
“While the Church upholds the ideal of marriage as a permanent commitment between a man and a woman, other unions exist which provide mutual support to couples. 

The pamphlet, originally published last year and then subsequently edited after considerable negative reaction by concerned Clergy and laity, had featured a section on same-sex couples. 

Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting lifelong married love, noted an equally disturbing development. 

On the “very day the news about Cardinal McCarrick broke, the Vatican released the working document for the upcoming Synod on Youth,” she noted. “It used the ‘LGBT’ acronym, the first such use in a Vatican document.”

Pope Francis has rightly emphasized the need to respect the dignity of persons with same-sex attraction.  But, the Holy Father also has repeatedly warned that men with deep-seated homosexual inclinations should not enter seminaries or supervise the education of future priests. 

However, there appears to be highly-placed forces within the Vatican who are eager to promote moral confusion and complacency at the very moment that the new Clergy-abuse scandals in the Church point to a need for moral clarity and vigilance.

The cleverest screenwriter couldn’t create a screenplay replete with such irony if he tried.

Christ promised that the Church could withstand an attack of the Enemy at its very gates.  

The present Enemy is not from without the Church but from within.

May the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus as the Church’s Paraclete and Comforter, come to the aid of the Body of Christ quickly and efficiently.