The Virtue of Chastity is for All

06-09-2024Pastor's LetterVery Rev. Richard C. Wilson, VF, Pastor

Dear Friends in Christ,

It’s June of 2024, and again we see, all across our nation, that President Biden, dozens of agencies of the federal government, NASCAR, major league baseball, and countless corporations are aggressively pushing “Pride Month.” We are told that we are to accept and promote the sinful lifestyles associated with the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Now we must acknowledge that having same sex attraction is indeed a heavy cross. However, acting out on that attraction in a sexual way is a grievous sin. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC, 2357)

Many of us have family members or friends who are in this lifestyle. We must love them, pray for them, but also courageously speak the truth. One man who has done this is Daniel C. Mattson, who in 2017 wrote a book entitled, Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed my Sexual Reality and Found Peace. In his book, Mattson recounts his journey into a homosexual lifestyle, pornography, sinful relationships, and finally a slow climb out of the lifestyle to embrace chastity. Along the way he first adopted a Protestant evangelical faith and later came into full communion with the Catholic faith.

In his foreword to Mattson’s book, Robert Cardinal Sarah wrote: “People who have homosexual tendencies “are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” (CCC, 2358). They “are called to chastity,” and we demean them if we think they cannot attain this virtue, which is a virtue for all disciples.”

I heartily recommend this text for anyone who struggles with same sex attraction, for those parents who have children who are dealing with this attraction and for all who have friends in this lifestyle.

J. Budziszewski, Ph.D., Author of On the Meaning of Sex indorsed the book writing, “If you read only one book on the subject of same-sex attraction, it should be this one. Yet Daniel Mattson’s luminously truthful book is about so much more besides, such as humility, magnanimity, true manhood, purity of heart, and the gift and disciple of friendship. Superb.”

St. Maria Goretti....pray for us.

All the best…in Christ,

Father Wilson