Preventing bullying or promoting the LGBT agenda?

I have a few problems with the new CES document, Made in God's Image: Challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying in Catholic Schools.

My problems start with the title. I don't like the ambiguity, which I suspect of being deliberate; and this is a recurrent theme in the way the document reads throughout. Made in God's Image is true of all humanity; however, there is a strong propaganda message put out by the LGBT lobby that people who identify as LGBT are 'made that way.' The risk is that this title is interpreted as supporting that (at the very least unproven) claim, and further, claiming that it is God who has made them 'that way,' and further still, that this is therefore a morally positive state.

However, Catholic teaching is different. The CCC states that the psychological genesis of such aberrant desires is largely unexplained, but that homosexuality is a state which inclines people towards acts of grave depravity,  which are intrinsically disordered (CCC § 2357). What this document, here and throughout, steadfastly ignores is Catholic moral teaching, and Catholic teaching on the Fall and Original Sin, with resulting concupiscence.

And that problem recurs throughout the document, which uses the language of Stonewall and other LGBT lobbyists throughout, and completely uncritically. Anyone familiar with Orwell will know how that works: those who would control what we think always strive to control what language we are allowed to use.

It is hard to pin down more precisely where this document offends, precisely because of the ambiguity throughout. For example, it states:

Catholic teaching on homosexuality is not founded on, and can never be used to justify ‘homophobic’ attitudes. 

A lot depends on what is meant by 'homophobic' attitudes. I am sure that Stonewall and their allies would say that the teaching in the CCC is homophobic, and likewise the teaching of the Church on Marriage. Because their propaganda has so saturated society that a slogan like 'equal marriage' is widely unchallenged, it is problematic for Catholic schools to anathematise 'homophobic' attitudes without some definition of the Catholic, as opposed to dominant secular, understanding of these words. Yet nowhere does this document offer such a definition.

The document also abounds in inherent contradictions:  for example, it quotes the CDF:

‘The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductional reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but has challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as heterosexual or homosexual and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: a creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.’ 

However, it also repeatedly and unquestioningly uses language such as 'gay people' and 'a gay pupil' and so on. This reification of 'gay' as being a valid category of human person is deeply problematic and assumes an anthropology completely at odds with a Catholic understanding.

The document also states: 

Sexual identity is a constituent part of self-understanding – it is not chosen in the same sense that a sporting allegiance, group belonging or hobby is, nor is it temporary like delayed puberty might be.

This is presented as true.  But there is no reference to support these claims: they are simply part of the LGBT propaganda that has been swallowed whole by the authors of the report. 

And so it goes on.

And then there are the lesson plans. Reading these through, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that indicates what the Church teaches about chastity, marriage or sexuality. Any pupil subjected to them would be left with the very clear understanding that any querying of, let alone objection to, homosexual or bisexual behaviour is prejudiced and bullying.

Joseph Shaw has pointed out some other interesting issues: including, inter alia, the way in which this accepting, non-bullying document is not accepting of, and indeed could be used to support the bullying of, those who hold to Catholic teaching about human sexuality.

All in all this is a lamentable document, and would seriously call into question the credentials of the CES - were it not that any informed Catholic in this country already has a clear understanding of how compromised the CES is already... 

Let us hope and pray that some of our courageous and orthodox bishops recognise the need to denounce this as unfit for circulation to our Catholic schools.

And pray.


UPDATE: and see here for the Stonewall link and here for the link to lgbtyouthScotland. There are serious questions about unacknowledged use of their material...


UPDATE 2: It seems that this post is being read by people beyond my usual readership. For their sake, I should make it clear that I have no hostility towards (nor fear of) those who identify as LGBT. I merely disagree with them on some things.  The Church teaches that we are all damaged by Original Sin, that we are all sinners, and that we all sin in many and various ways: that is certainly true of me.  Likewise, made in the image of God, we all have intrinsic worth and are worthy of respect and should love each other. The path to salvation is to deny ourselves, take up our cross (whatever that may be) and follow Christ, who became Man - like us in all things but sin - and lived, died and rose again, so that we might be divinised and share in eternal life and happiness. That is my wish for myself, for those I love and for those with whom I disagree.