Jeepers! Who Could Possibly Have Foreseen This?

Director Nick Cassavetes makes the case for incest:

“No one should judge a brother and sister being with each other if they are in love…if you’re not having kids – who gives a damn?” “Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want?” “You’re not hurting anybody…”

Meanwhile, at another front of the Great Spiritual War of our time in the Land Where Consent is the Sole Criterion of the Good, Gawker makes the case for pedophilia.  Building upon the solid scientific and psychological insights of Lady Gaga, this article argues that pedophiles are born that way and that therefore this “orientation” deserves sympathy.

If by “sympathy” one means the sort of sympathy one has for a raging drunk in his wretchedness and ruin as a result of his capitulation to his fallen human nature, that’s one thing.  All sinners deserve sympathy, even the most wretched. God sympathizes with us  in our abysmal sinful wretchedness and sent his Son to die for the worst of us–even Hitler. But if by “sympathy” you mean “Whatever inclination you happen to feel deserves to be indulged because you feel it” then you are a fool and an enabler of monstrous evil.

The article wants to make the case that the orientation is inborn with some or is the result of some developmental trauma over which they have no control.  Fair enough, that may be so.  I suspect the same is true with incest.  But as Cassavetes demonstrates, in the Land Where Feeling is King and Consent is the Sole Criterion of the Good, we have no capacity for telling the difference between what is actually natural (i.e., in accord with nature and the dignity of the human person) and what is simply the outworking of the Fall through disordered human appetite.  So when Cassavetes and those like him meet perverts who want to screw their sister or their daughter or both, they are defenseless before the logic of our sexually deranged culture.  And so are most of the rest of Americans who–lacking any knowledge of natural law, human dignity, or the common good–have only custom to fall back on and the exclamation “Ewww!” to counter Cassavetes’ “Go for it!”.  “Ewww” was what they fell back on 40 year ago when gay sex was being proposed as a normal, healthy and good desire.  Do you seriously believe “Ewww!” will stand up to the concerted effort of our elites to destroy these next “taboos”?

Until we return to a healthy Catholic understanding of the fall and of mercy, we will continue to be helpless to face the increasing push toward radical perversion.  We will excuse and excuse till we hit the point where somebody does something we can’t excuse.  Then we will whipsaw to merciless condemnation without any possibility of redemption.  In contrast, the Catholic tradition calls us to recognized that all sin, that sin is really destructive and must be acknowledge and repented, and that Jesus has mercy on even the worst sinners if they will but repent.