Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner
Lesson 7
Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner
Charity demands that we hate
the sin while loving the sinner.
Question 7
Hate the sin, love the sinner? (Who are we to judge?)
Thomas answers that . . .
“To correct the wrongdoer is a spiritual almsdeed. But almsdeeds are works of charity. . . . Therefore, fraternal correction is an act of charity. . . . The correction of the wrongdoer is a remedy which should be employed against a man’s sin.”
— Summa Theologica II-II, 33, 1
Natural Law, the Law of Concupiscence, and the Changing Laws of the Land
This chapter’s Thomistic life lesson is, unfortunately, among the most desperately needed lessons in our time. While sin has been with us since Adam and Eve’s Fall, so have institutions of family, church, and state, all around the civilized world, striven to help prevent, contain, or overcome sin. You’ll recall from our life lesson two, that Satan’s law of concupiscence did not totally eradicate the God-given law of nature. St. Paul wrote telling Romans that in Jews, Greeks, and all the Gentiles on earth, there is a natural moral law “written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:15). It is up to us whether we read that writing on our cardiac walls, so to speak, and “do by nature what the law requires” (Rom. 2:14).
Indeed, around the same time St. Paul was writing, a noble pagan Stoic philosopher by the name of Musonius Rufus (ca. A.D. 20–101) was providing the proof of this inborn natural law by the witness he bore. Rufus gleaned lessons from reason and natural law and applied them to some of the very most heated, controversial, and divisive issues in his day, issues that obviously remain so twenty centuries later. Rufus’s conclusions are so amazingly consonant with some of the Catholic Church’s most profound teachings on the value of human life, family, and society that I consider him a “profound, pagan, pro-family, pro-life philosopher.” Summarized below are some of Rufus’s most fundamental and striking statements on human sexuality, marriage, procreation, abortion, contraception, and large families, complete with comparative references to paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.46
How interesting that such moral truths can be gleaned from the light of the natural law alone! Watch the news in our time and such ideas are almost unfailingly associated with the strictly religious ideas of “the Christian alt-right,” with the declaration, or at least the implication, that Christians are seeking to impose their religious views on all the citizenry.
Similar moral truths are found in the writings of many other ancient Greek and Roman philosophers as well. Aristotle, for example, wrote that the morality of many behaviors, such as the expression of anger (as we considered in chapter 3), is determined by whether they are performed with the right people, at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reasons. Other behaviors, however, are intrinsically disordered, morally wrong by nature, and there is no right way to express them. He included adultery, for example, as such a violation of natural law. There is simply no right way to do it! The Stoic Epictetus, Rufus’s former pupil, spoke out at length about adultery as well, noting how it disgraces and abases the adulterer and harms not only the spouse and the family, but society as a whole.
As we saw in chapter 2, the divine laws revealed to Moses, such as those summarized in the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:2–7; Deut. 5:6–21; CCC 2051–2052) confirm the natural law and shed even further light upon our moral obligations to each other — and to God. Christ’s law of love did not abolish those commandments but condensed and fulfilled its expression in the Great Commandments to love God with all we are and our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–28).
A few centuries after the time of Musonius Rufus, the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (330–363), a descendant of the Christian emperor Constantine the Great (272–337), when he renounced his Christianity (albeit an Arian corruption) and strove to restore the ancient pagan religions, would admit that the fourth through tenth commandments, relating to how we deal with one another, are indeed universal and natural moral laws. Further, much to his discomfort, he felt he had no choice but to urge the would-be restorers of pagan religion to imitate the “Galileans,” as he slightingly called Christians, in their works of charity, including the establishment of hospitals.
But look at how far we descended in the last two thousand years, and indeed, in the last few decades, and even the last handful of years. As I wrote about deadly sins in 2015, I discussed the fact that many sinful behaviors that governments had historically prohibited for the public good were becoming legalized in America and throughout the world. One such hot topic was the push for same-sex “marriage” throughout the nation.48 The legalized killing of the unborn had, of course, been the law of the land in the United States since 1973. Since I wrote just a few years ago, same-sex “marriage” has become the law of the land, and not only in the United States. Ireland, for example, legalized same-sex “marriage” late in 2015, and the same “land of saints and scholars” legalized abortion in 2018.
What has changed, or become more pronounced, even in the last few years, however, is not merely the legalization of immoral acts by governmental bodies, but their active promotion and attempts to normalize, and even glamorize, acts that violate natural laws.49 Further, people are increasingly forced to pay for and subsidize acts they recognize as morally reprehensible, such as abortion. People who proclaimed decades back, “If you don’t like abortion, don’t get one!” have changed their belief, if not the words of their slogan, to “If you don’t like abortion, too bad, pay for mine!”50
Further, people in the United States and other Western nations are becoming increasingly pressured to speak and act against their consciences, as opponents of natural law seek to have their cake and eat it too, sometimes literally, whether forcing bakers to bake cakes in endorsement of same-sex “marriages” or forcing teachers to call a student with xy chromosomes (a male) “she,” and a person with xx chromosomes (a female) “he.” Such trends threaten freedom of religion and freedom of speech to replace them with freedom from religion and forced speech.
Even within the Church, we are scandalized by cases of sexual abuse of children, of teens, and of young seminarians and priests by older priests and prelates, approximately 80 percent of which have been found by studies, time and again, to involve the predation of post-pubescent adolescent males.51 Simply to point this fact out is routinely met by some priests and bishops with knee-jerk responses, implying that one is suggesting that all homosexuals are sexual abusers, which is clearly not the case. Some abusers are indeed heterosexuals, but they are far less likely to be credibly accused of abuse within the Catholic Church.
We find within the Church, as well, strong pressures to identify individuals by their sexual preferences. The acronym “LGBT,” for instance (why not spell it out as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual?) has appeared, for the first time in 2018, in a pre-synodal working document of the Catholic Church, Instrumentum Laboris, referencing “LGBT youth” in paragraph 197. It did not appear in the synod’s final document, but we must note that some in the Church would indeed prefer that we identify a person’s essence as a human being and child of God by his or her sexual inclinations. This could hardly be further from a Thomistic understanding of foundational essences and nonessential accidents of the human being.
Further, some prelates within the Church would have us legitimize the concept of “transgenderism,” implying that when “male and female he created them” (Gen. 5:2) God Himself was woefully unenlightened with such limited “binary thinking” regarding the human sexes, not to mention completely unaware of the modern world’s plethora of “genders.”52
Well, what are we to do today, if we believe in the facts of nature and of natural law, not to mention the law of Moses and the law of Christ? Must we remain silent, or must we speak out? How are we to act toward people we know, perhaps some of those most dear and close to us who have either embraced or actively promote a variety of fashionable sinful behaviors? What if we have done so or continue to do so? Who are we to judge, after all? These questions are so controversial and perplexing that it’s time we turned to Thomas.
How Hate Should Act Only in the Service of Love
I tried to lay down the natural law in our first section to show that we really are capable of judging what kinds of behaviors are sinful, even if we merely adhere to the natural law accessible to all through human reason. Still, according to Christ’s law of love, we are admonished not to judge persons — “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1) — but we are indeed called to judge sinful behaviors and certainly not to promote them. Again, in Christ’s words: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). Christ will judge us all at the Last Judgment. He will have the final word of judgment on every person’s soul, but He does call on us to judge sinful behaviors in ourselves, and also in others, if we desire for ourselves and for our neighbors a Last Judgment that awards us eternal bliss in heaven.
Here, then, we have the gist of the extremely important and legitimate lesson to “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” I’ve heard some people dismiss this concept as some sort of a disingenuous posture or even an absurd statement. How can we possibly hate what a person does while we love that person? To argue about the immoral nature of homosexual acts, of surgical destruction of one’s sexual organs, or of slaughtering babies in the womb is to face charges that one hates people with same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria,53 or those who’ve had abortions or support abortion for others. This is surely faulty logic.
Imagine the case of a loved one, perhaps a close family member, who is addicted to heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, or some other drug that has broken apart relationships, damaged his physical and mental health, and perhaps left him jobless, homeless, or incarcerated. (Sadly, many, if not most readers can probably think of such a person in their lives.) Now, does it not make the greatest sense to hate the drug-abusing behavior precisely because we love the person who has become addicted, as well as others who suffer collateral damage because of the addiction, perhaps their children, for one especially salient example?
Let’s call in Thomas now for some important explication to see how hatred and love are related. “Hatred of the evil that is contrary to one’s natural good is the first of the soul’s passions, even as love of one’s natural good is” (II-II, 34, 6). By our natures we love what we believe to be good. Love moves our wills to seek out the good, and a proper hatred comes into play when we will to avoid or remove the bad, harmful, evil things that keep us from the good. In this sense, an appropriate hatred for what is evil serves the love of the good.
Thomas makes clear that our love of neighbor can and sometimes must be manifested through the hate of the sin in our neighbor, but never through hate of the neighbor himself. He has posed the formal question “Whether Hated of One’s Neighbor Is Always a Sin.” To make a long story short, his answer is yes, but let him flesh it out:
Now love is due to our neighbor in respect of what he holds from God, i.e., in respect of nature and grace. But not in respect of what he has of himself and from the devil, i.e., in respect of sin and lack of justice. Consequently, it is lawful to hate the sin in one’s brother, and whatever pertains to the defect of Divine Justice, but we cannot hate our brother’s nature and grace without sin. Now it is part of our love for our brother that we hate the fault and the lack of good in him, since desire for another’s good is equivalent to hatred of evil. (II-II, 34, 3)
Thomas notes that God Himself, who is love, holds to this crucial distinction: “God hates the sin which is in the detractor, not his nature” (ibid.).
Correct Your Brother — and Prepare to Be Corrected
How is such hatred of a brother’s or sister’s sin, or anyone’s for that matter, to be manifested in such a way that it shows love for that person? The Church has long taught us of seven corporal works of mercy through which we tend to the bodily, physical needs of our neighbors, listed in Thomas’s day as “feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the harborless,54 visiting the sick, ransoming the captive,55 and burying the dead” (II-II, 32, 2). The Church has also taught seven spiritual acts of mercy through which we tend to our neighbor’s spiritual needs, listed by Thomas as “to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to reprove the sinner, to forgive injuries, to bear with those who trouble and annoy us, and to pray for all” (ibid.).56
In Thomas’s language, all fourteen of these almsdeeds57 are “works of charity through the medium of mercy” (II-II, 32, 1). “Charity” is another word for “love,” so each of these fourteen works of mercy is indeed an expression of Christian love. The “almsdeed” or “spiritual work of mercy” at front and center in this chapter’s lesson is, of course, “to reprove the sinner.” Thankfully, Thomas wrote an entire question with eight articles (II-II, 33) on the subject under the terminology of correctione fraterna (fraternal correction).
In the first article, Thomas makes clear that correcting a wrongdoer is “a spiritual almsdeed,” an “an act of charity,” and “a remedy against a [person’s] sin.” He makes an extremely important distinction too, noting that a sin may be harmful to the sinner, but it may secondarily be harmful to others too, “by hurting or scandalizing them, or by being detrimental to the public good.” Strictly speaking, the aim of fraternal correction is to do away with the sinner’s evil and to help him procure the good, which is a direct act of charity, or love. When fraternal correction prevents the sinner from harming other individual persons, or even the common good, then it is also an act of justice. So, indeed, when we take action to hate a sin, but love a sinner, our hate of sin may serve not only love, but the justice that gives each person his or her rightful due.
Thomas notes in his second article that fraternal correction is also a “precept,” something God bids us to do when we are confronted with someone’s sinful behavior, but Thomas clearly advises against going about hunting for others’ sins to correct, becoming “spies on the lives of others.” Further, when hating the sin and loving the sinner, we must never forget that we ourselves, as sinners, must remain open to fraternal correction ourselves when we merit it. We must also be especially careful never to criticize others for sins that we ourselves excel in! Thomas explicates this principle in his fifth article on fraternal correction. Christ told us not to point out the speck in our brother’s eye when a log is stuck in our own (Matt. 7:2–4)! St. Paul expands on the warning of the judgment we will receive from God if we judge another person’s sinful actions when we commit the same sins (Rom. 2:1–3).
Now, since “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8), this might seem to put the kibosh on any kind of fraternal correction. Indeed, who are we to judge? Well, both Christ and St. Paul immediately supply the solution to this dilemma. Paul tells us we must first repent of our own sins (Rom. 2:4), and Christ minces no words, telling us: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:5). Self-correction must precede fraternal correction in such cases. Not only must we hate our neighbor’s sin and love our neighbor; we must also hate our own sin, while loving ourselves.
Fraternal correction is clearly no easy thing. Thomas brings up yet another important caveat in his sixth article:
On the contrary. It is written (Prov. 4:8): Rebuke not a scorner lest he hate thee, where a gloss remarks: You must not fear lest the scorner insult you when you rebuke him; rather should you bear in mind that by making him hate you, you may make him worse. Therefore, one ought to forgo fraternal correction, when we fear lest we may make a man worse.
Surely you can relate to this if you have come across people (such as the contentious “aginners” we mentioned in chapter 3), whom, if you attempt to correct them regarding some behavior (such as being so darn disagreeable!), they will be even more likely to ratchet up their sinful behavior just to spite you. Such folk were around in Thomas’s day, and they likely will be in the day of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Hence, we must always try to exercise judgment in whether to correct a particular person at a particular time. Though we should never endorse or reward a person’s sinful behavior, we must be prudent to recognize situations where charity and justice bid us not to attempt to correct our neighbor, lest we make him worse.
Thomas discusses yet finer, but absolutely essential aspects of fraternal correction in his seventh article, and this regards whether we should correct someone’s sinful behavior one on one or publicly. Here, his fundamental insights are provided directly by the Son of God, beginning with these words: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (Matt. 18:15). Thomas cites St. Augustine, who noted that private corrections aim at a person’s amendment while avoiding the kind of public disgrace that might make a person defend his sinful behavior, making him worse, as we just discussed above. He then makes an important distinction: that private, “secret” sins in which a person sins only against you or harms only himself, should ideally be handled privately, at least at first.58
When secret sins are harmful to others — for example, when a person plots to betray his country, or when a heretic secretly works to turn people away from the Faith — then it is appropriate to correct such a person publicly, unless one firmly believes that private correction will induce him to stop. “Since, however, one’s conscience should be preferred to a good name, Our Lord wished that we should publicly denounce our brother and so deliver his conscience from sin, even though he should forfeit his good name. Therefore, it is evident that the precept requires a secret admonition to precede public denunciation.”
A Simple Summary on Pulverizing Sin
Because of the complexities of the issues involved in hating sin out of the love for sinners, we have included not one, but three sections on “penetrating the principle” of our lesson, the first concentrating on natural law, the second on the appropriate passion of hate, and the third on fraternal correction. Since the focus of this chapter’s whole lesson is on sin itself (and hating it), I will curtail this section on “pulverizing sin” to keep our lesson of digestible length.
Please note that, although our focus thus far in this chapter has been on sins that flow from the deadly sin of lust, such as the desire for recognition and approval of unnatural sexual behaviors, for behaviors that violate the insolubility of marriage, for sexually abusive behavior toward children or adults, both inside and outside the Church, or even the killing of innocent lives in abortion, our principles apply to all manner of sins. Because of the prevalence of such sexual sins in our modern world, when I have given public talks on the seven deadly sins and have asked for a show of hands for the sins wreaking the most havoc in our world today, lust is the hands-up winner every time. Hence, it has received the most attention here.
Still, we have a responsibility to hate all manifestations of sin in others, and in ourselves, so we might free others and ourselves from evils that destroy the good in our lives, and indeed, in their extremes, the very lives of the unborn. If we are to fight against sin, we must start that fight within our own souls, difficult as that may be in our culture so saturated with libertinism and unbridled hedonism.
Further, if a person we know openly engages in a sinful lifestyle or endorses other immoral practices, we must not directly endorse the practices, and we ourselves must not identify the person with his or her actions or lifestyle. He or she, as a person of inherent dignity made in the image and likeness of God, is far more than his or her sexual preferences or behaviors. Further, we should engage such people with warmth, kindness, and love, acknowledging their dignity as persons, and be as quick to lend them a hand to lighten their loads as we would for any other brother, sister, or neighbor, loving them as we love ourselves, through our love of God.
Virtues That Hate Sin and Love Sinners
Which kinds of virtues can help us hate sin but love sinners? First and foremost is the “mother of the virtues,” the love that is charity. This love of God and love of neighbor and self through Him, should motivate all our actions whenever we confront sin, since we must do so to help and not to hurt others.
For battling the kinds of sexual sins that make up the hotbed issues of our day, I believe that the practice of the intellectual virtue of science (or knowledge),59 is of paramount importance, because so much misinformation is circulated today in defense of sinful behaviors, including abortion, homosexual activity, and hormonal therapies or surgical operations on individuals, even young children, distressed by their male or female sex. These are all complicated issues, and part of the problem is that they are often presented precisely as if they were not complicated. Well, science is the intellectual virtue that seeks truth by carefully examining causes and effects, so let’s apply the virtue of science to dig into one extremely controversial issue to seek out its true causes and effects.
For example, a well-known priest has recently stated that virtually every competent psychiatrist or biologist acknowledges that people do not choose their sexual orientation any more than they choose to be left-handed. Such statements may suggest the false dichotomy that people either choose their sexual orientation or they were “made that way,” with the theological implication that God made them that way and the biological implication that it is in their genes.
So, what is the official position of current psychiatric and psychological experts on the cause of homosexual orientation?
According to a December 2013 position statement of the American Psychiatric Association, “the causes of sexual orientation (whether homosexual or heterosexual) are not known at this time and likely are multifactorial including biological and behavioral roots which may vary between individuals and may even vary over time.”60
The American Psychological Association reports on their current website as follows: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”61
Most people who make blanket statements about the biological determination of sexual attraction are probably unaware that there is a complete scientific discipline called “behavior genetics” that strives to ferret out the genetic and nongenetic influences on all kinds of human behaviors, characteristics, and diseases. Further, behavioral geneticists have some fairly powerful tools, including the comparison of traits shared by identical, or monozygotic (MZ), twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, and fraternal, or dyzygotic twins (DZ), who share 50 percent of their genes, as do other full brothers and sisters.
Findings from such research are very rarely seen in public discussions of the issue of same-sex attraction. (Have you ever seen them reported?)
Today, researchers can also directly examine people’s DNA sequences to explore possible connections between genetic markers and human behaviors. In fall 2018, headlines were made when a large study reportedly showed connections between DNA variants and same-sex behaviors, but the current researchers themselves noted that “there is no gay gene.” “We know almost nothing about the genetics of sexual behavior,” they said, “so anywhere is a good place to start.” They made clear that the four genetic variants found in this study could not reliably predict someone’s sexual orientation. The correlation was simply far too weak. “There’s really no predictive power.”62 In other words, if you knew a person’s DNA profile at these four sections, you would not do significantly better than chance at trying to predict whether the person had engaged in same-sex behavior.
I have belabored such points with scientific findings because there is so much propaganda out there today, both outside and inside the Church, that argues that sexual behaviors outside the natural law are not sinful because they are not voluntary. Recall that serious sin requires grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent. The propagandists argue that deliberate consent does not come into play in cases of homosexual behaviors because people do not choose to have a homosexual orientation. This is a potentially highly dangerous slippery slope, especially since the same arguments can be applied to pedophilia, an issue that plagues not only the modern world, but the modern Church. Some people already argue that adult-minor sexual acts should not be illegal if the child or adolescent grants assent.63
There may well be some kind of limited biologically based predispositions that play some role in sexual orientation or attraction itself, but the performance of sexual acts with other people does involve consent and choices of our free will. This applies to heterosexual behavior just as it does to homosexual behavior.
The bottom line is that we need to be informed about the realities behind sexual orientation and behavior, from the perspective of natural law, the teachings of the Church, and the scientific findings. We need to hate sins to protect sinners, whom we love, from the soul-wrecking, and sometimes body-wrecking effects of sin and disordered thinking. The last thing we need to do is to turn off our intellects about such matters, to fail to develop the virtue of science within our souls, and unthinkingly pass on the propaganda of the day, doing more harm than good.64 We must grow in the virtues of science if we are truly to love and help our neighbor.
Praying for Us Sinners
We can grow best in hating sin and loving sinners when we directly ask God for His help. Such requests are already present in many traditional Catholic prayers if we take the time to think about them carefully.
When we pray in the Our Father that God’s will be done, we are praying that we and others will act in accordance with the natural law and God’s law of love. When we ask forgiveness for our sins and promise to forgive the sins of others, we recognize that we, too, are sinners and we must love sinners while hating sin. When we ask God to lead us not into temptation and to deliver us from evil, we must recognize that we are to act as God’s instruments on earth. We should play no role in tempting others to sin or in promoting evils.
The Blessed Mother is there to help us as well when we pray for her intercession in the Hail Mary. We ask her to “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” This should remind us that we are not only surrounded by sinners but are in their number. Further, we should act out against sin and for the benefit of sinners, so that, in keeping with our first and foremost life lesson, we might all come to see God face-to-face — and the Mother of God too!
We can also simply pray to God to give us the courage, charity, and wisdom to give fraternal correction when necessary, but always in a loving, prudent manner. In the words of the great Polish theologian St. John Cantius (1390–1473): “Fight all error, but do it with good humor, patience, kindness, and love. Harshness will damage your own soul and spoil the best cause.”65
How the Sacraments Sever
Sin through Christ’s Love
Let’s conclude with a brief survey of a simple way that every one of the sacraments can help the cause of hating sin and loving sinners. Through the sacrament of Baptism, everyone on earth can potentially become a member of the Body of Christ and the Holy Catholic Church He established, thus opening the gates to potential fulfillment of life lesson number one of living in eternal bliss with God. May our Baptism recall our rejection of sin and inspire us to help reject sin in our culture to the spiritual benefit of all.
Confirmation strengthens us in all the graces God has bestowed upon us in Baptism, including the Holy Spirit’s gift of spiritual strength — that of fortitude. If it is difficult for us to speak out in public against sin or privately to correct a brother, let us remember that we can always call upon this special strength of the Holy Spirit. (We’ll spell this out much more clearly in our very next chapter.)
Through the sacrament of Reconciliation, there is hope for every one of us as a sinner. We should avail of it ourselves and encourage our loved ones, also sinners, to experience the relief and the joy it provides, reminding us that God always has mercy toward those who sincerely repent of their sins and strive to amend their lives. When we confess, we might consider whether we have been remiss in neglecting to offer fraternal correction or in receiving it poorly from others.
Those of us blessed with the sacrament of Matrimony should be thankful to God for how it sanctifies the sexuality of a man and a woman and opens it up to new life. We are also obliged to help each other get to heaven, which may at times involve administering (with utmost care!) spousal correction, if our spouse is doing something seriously sinful — and graciously submitting to it ourselves when we’ve done wrong!
Anointing of the Sick is also a remedy against sin and an act of love toward sinners. Whether or not God chooses to heal a physical ailment, this sacrament provides spiritual healing to all who are open to it.
The Eucharist should remind us of the ultimate act of hating (and conquering) sin while dearly loving sinners. We will ponder this Blessed Sacrament in more depth when we arrive at our final life lesson.
Holy Orders, for those chosen by God to receive it, becomes the source and font of all of the sacraments, through the priest who acts in persona Christi, “in the person of Christ.” The priest has an awesome power and duty to hate sin in himself and in his flock, to speak out and act out against it, to heal and forgive it, and to provide us with the God-given sacramental graces to conquer sin and grow in love.
Life Lesson 7 Summa
We are truly called as followers of Christ to hate sin out of our love for sinners, including ourselves. God has given us the natural inborn capacities to ferret out fundamental natural laws of morality, and He has made His will in such matters entirely explicit through His revelation. We are called never to endorse sinful behaviors and sometimes to speak out against them, even when such behaviors have become politicized and glamorized in popular culture, while those who speak their consciences may be vilified or demonized. St. Thomas’s nuanced writings on the corporal work of mercy of fraternal correction can aid us in the nuances of expressing our opposition to sinful behaviors in the right spirit, in the right manner, and at the right time, so that charity and justice are served. While our hearts must be filled with love for sinners, our intellects must also be open to the true causes and effects of sinful behaviors promoted in modern culture. We must pray for sinners, including ourselves, and recognize how every one of the sacraments can help us to conquer hateful sin and shower with love our neighbors and ourselves, so prone to sin when we reject God’s law and His graces.
46 For English translations of Rufus’s lectures, see Cora Lutz, Musonius Rufus Fragments (New Delhi, India: Isha Books, 2013) or Cynthia King, Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings (published by William B. Irvine, CreateSpace.com, 2011). These bullet-points first appeared in my book The Porch and the Cross: Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Modern Christian Living (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2016).
47 In the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas addresses adultery with the same conclusions based on natural law and Christ’s law of love when he explains the parts of the vice of lust in II-II, 154, 8, and when he discusses the sacrament of Matrimony in the Supplement after Part III. He addresses homosexual acts, which CCC 2357 describes as “intrinsically disordered” and Thomas described as “vitium contra naturam” (vice contrary to nature) and “sodomiticum vitium” (the vice of sodomy) in II-II, 154, 11, citing Romans 1:27.
48 And here is one reason I used the quotation marks. Such “marriages” can never be consummated, consummation referring to the intercourse of the male husband and female wife in the marital and potentially reproductive act. No amount of politically correct thinking or “identifying” as married can contravene nature and the natural laws of sexual reproduction. Some may argue there are more than two sexes and point to some rare genetic variants in which people are born with extra sexual chromosomes and ambiguous or extra sexual organs, such as is found in rare cases of hermaphroditism, but this does not alter the fact that two individuals of the same sex are unable to reproduce with each other, in accordance with the laws of nature.
49 For example, in November 2018, Pope Francis would note “in our societies it even seems that homosexuality is fashionable.” “In New Book on Clergy and Religious Life, Pope Francis Addresses Homosexuality,” Catholic News Agency, November 30, 2018, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/in-new-book-on-clergy-and-religious-life-pope-francis-addresses-homosexuality-27409.
50 Indeed, even since the few weeks past when I first wrote these words, state legislators and governors in New York, Virginia, and in other states, have passed or promoted laws amounting not only to abortion of the unborn, but to infanticide of children who survive failed abortions. In New York, this law was celebrated with smiles, cheers, and the lighting up in pink of the One World Trade Center (perhaps overlooking the fact that roughly half of aborted babies are female). Alas, the house and senate of my own state of Illinois have passed an even more heinous bill. See, for example, Catholic News Agency, “Illinois Bishops Denounce Rush to Advance ‘Reproductive Health Act,’ ” National Catholic Register, May 29, 2019, http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/illinois-bishops-denounce-rush-to-advance-reproductive-health-act; or “Update: Illinois House Oks Abortion Bill; Vote Called ‘Collective Moral Failing,’ ” Catholic News Service, May 30, 2019, https://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2019/illinois-house-oks-abortion-bill-vote-called-collective-moral-failing.cfm.
51 According to page 12 of the USCCB-commissioned 2004 John Jay report, 81 percent of clerical abuse victims were male. Astoundingly, some people have argued that this does not implicate homosexuality as an offender risk factor, confounding the abuse with a generalized pedophilia that seeks out whatever child victims are available. The vast majority of abuse victims were not pre-pubescent children, and their abuse can be more specifically classified as acts of ephebophilia from the Greek ephebos for “adolescents.” A full 78 percent of the victims from 1950 to 2002 were adolescents ages eleven to seventeen. Note that the World Health Organization defines adolescents as persons between the ages of ten and twenty-four.
52 One social media giant offered a mere fifty-eight gender choices in 2014 but was up to seventy-one at the time of this writing. I will not weigh readers down with any direct references to articles. A simple Internet search on “number of genders in humans” yielded 9,420,000 results in 0.73 seconds on the morning of February 18, 2019.
53 This is the current term for the officially classified psychiatric disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, 5th ed. (DSM-5), replacing the older term “gender identity disorder.” It “involves a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.” (Note that the APA itself is not content with the choices “he” or “she” but introduces for the singular noun “person” the plural pronoun “they.”)
54 CCC 2447 calls this “sheltering the homeless.”
55 “Visiting the imprisoned” in CCC 2447.
56 These are summarized as “instructing, advising, consoling, and comforting” in CCC 2247.
57 Thomas used the term eleemosyna, a Latinization based on the Greek word referring both to showing mercy and to giving alms. In the Summa Theologica, it is translated as “almsdeeds.”
58 Christ would go on to clarify that if a brother who sinned against you does not listen to private correction, you should bring along a few others and, if still unsuccessful, take it to the Church or ultimately to the public authorities (Matt. 18:16–17).
59 The English words “science” and “knowledge” are both used for this virtue called scientia by St. Thomas, because the base word of “science” means “to know.” I prefer to use the term “science,” because the modern conception of science tends to be respected in our world today. The ancient meaning, however, is much fuller and more comprehensive, since virtually any topic can be explored through a proper science. Thomas referred to theology, as “sacred science.”
60 A PDF of the APA Position Statement on Issues Related to Homosexuality, December 2013, is available online.
61 American Psychological Association, “Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality,” https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/orientation.aspx.
62 Michael Price, “Giant Study Links DNA Variants to Same-Sex Behavior,” Science, October 20, 2018, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/giant-study-links-dna-variants-same-sex-behavior.
63 Indeed, such a person ran for a U.S. Congressional seat in 2018. A quick Internet search of “pedophilia congressman” will provide all the sad details for those who would care for them.
64 For a concrete example of medical treatments that may do more harm than good, in my teens I became aware of the psychotherapeutic system of “Psycho-cybernetics” developed by Maxwell Maltz, M.D., in 1960. It was based largely on the power of visualization, self-affirmations, and proper-goal setting. Its relevance here lies in the fact that Dr. Maltz was neither a psychiatrist, nor a psychologist, but a plastic surgeon. He was inspired to develop this system of therapy because he saw so many patients who believed that a surgery altering their physical appearance would improve their quality of life but were bitterly disappointed. This has serious implications today for individuals considering surgeries to remove or alter their sexual organs.
65 As a university professor and theologian, St. John Cantius was a man after St. Thomas’s heart, and as a physicist who helped develop a theory of impetus, explaining the motion of projectiles against gravity, he was also a man after the heart of St. Thomas’s great teacher, St. Albert the Great (ca. 1200–1280), the patron saint of scientists.