Audio only:
In this episode, Trent breaks down troubling writings from Cardinal elect Fr. Timothy Radcliffe.
Transcription:
Last week Pope Francis announced that he would be elevating 21 men to the office of Cardinal and one of them is a Dominican priest named Fr. Timothy Radcliffe. He’s created controversy with his past statements about homosexuality so I wanted to go through a recent article he wrote for Fr. Martin’s Outreach magazine and show what’s so pernicious about his rhetoric. And after that, I’ll give some brief thoughts about Pope Francis selecting him to be a cardinal.
First, like Fr. Martin, Fr. Radcliffe will talk out of both sides of his mouth making it seem like he’s perfectly orthodox. For example, some people quote him as saying regarding homosexuality, “I am convinced of the fundamental wisdom of the Church’s teaching” but they then leave out what he says next, “but I do not yet fully understand how this is to be lived by young gay Catholics who accept their sexuality and rightly long to express their affection.”
This can mean that he doesn’t know what positive steps a person should take in spite of this difficult cross to carry, or it could mean there is a way to express homosexual conduct that accords with some abstract fundamental principle like love your neighbor. Indeed, Fr. Radcliffe has previously disagreed with the Church’s policies on not allowing gay men to become priests and he wrote an article saying that in order to understand gay people we must do things like watch Brokeback mountain, a film about a gay adulterous relationship between two married cowboys.
In 2013 he contributed to a report from the Church of England where he wrote:
How does all this bear on the question of gay sexuality? We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So in many ways I think it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift
Cool, now do adultery, polyamory which is open adultery, masturbation, and bestiality. A person can be polite and still engage in perversion.
In 2016 Fr. Radcliffe said he didn’t support gay marriage claiming that “my position on gay marriage is the Church’s” but this is similar to what I call the Fr. Martin two step. One step forward in reaffirming orthodoxy on homosexuality, and then two steps backwards with statements that undermine that teaching. And all of this comes out in his recent article “What the church can learn from LGBTQ Catholics”.
First, Fr. Radcliffe talks about when he was invited to celebrate gay and lesbian masses in London saying:
These Masses are just like any others. Gay people do not need a special liturgy. Because so many feel rejected by the church, they need a community in which they are sure of a warm welcome. Sexual orientation should not be central to anyone’s identity. This lies in our capacity to love and so enter into the mystery of God’s boundless love.
First, when you look at video and photos online, you can see the pride flags and self congratulations is nothing like typical masses. I covered one such mass in my review of a documentary about Fr. Martin that is linked in the description below.
Second, I don’t know any conservative or even a far-off fundamentalist Catholic who would make someone feel unwelcome merely because of his internal orientations. We know that orientations in and of themselves aren’t sinful. But actions *are* sinful and failing to repent of sinful actions keeps us cut off from God, no matter what sexual orientation you have.
Finally, this message is hypocritical because liberal Catholics only want to welcome people who have socially acceptable sins from the perspective of their peers in the media, government, and academia. For example, they would be outright hysterical at the thought of a mass dedicated to celebrating the value of whiteness or European heritage for the purpose of being welcoming to White supremacists. They would never say that we need to celebrate the gifts these people bring to the Church while reminding people that the Church “prohibits racism” while showing love towards racists.
Consider this article Alice Camille wrote in 2022 called “Sometimes hate is the friendly man next door”.
It talks about “Bill” an EMT who seemed to be a stand-up guy and was about to be received into the Church. Bill then, of his own free will, sent Camille with articles he wrote that she considered racist. She writes, “It seemed our “model” parishioner-to-be was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi racist.”
She said Bill was uneasy about his identity and so she “urged Bill to denounce [his writings] and put them behind him. I urged him not to approach the Easter mysteries until he had expunged the way of hate from his life.”
The article then says she met him years later and she recounts the experience:
I didn’t see or hear from Bill for five years. Then I accidentally ran into him on the street one day. He saw me first and called to me. From a safe 10 paces away, he told me he’d burned all of his hate paraphernalia: books, magazines, flags, and keepsakes. He said he’d changed. He said it was over. I wanted to believe him and promised him my continued prayers. But I was too afraid to get closer and made no attempt to contact him again.
Once again, notice the hypocrisy.
Camille is also the author of an article called Even God got bored with the binary With the subtitle: Dualisms—whether black and white, male and female, or good and evil—are appealing, but often fail to tell the whole story.
And yet, for Camille there is no dualism when it comes to racism. It is evil. Period. And, even worse, racism is an unforgivable sin. Even if this man repented of his racism, he still needs to be treated like a leper.
Let’s change the story and imagine Bill was a transgender woman, a man claiming to be a woman, who had even written articles saying it was okay to kill so-called transphobes but then repented of this hatred. I’m sure many Catholic liberals would treat Bill as a hero and say his hatred was wrong but understandable given how traumatic transphobes can be. They certainly wouldn’t treat Bill like an unredeemable monster, even though transgender people have engaged in acts of violence like the 2023 Covenant School Shooter Aiden Hale who was born a woman Audrey Hale before identifying as a man.
But what’s worse is that in Camille’s article she never even says Bill expressed violence. She just assumed he would be violent because of Bill’s alleged white supremacy even though Liberals would consider it a sinful act of hatred to assume a gay person is a sexual predator even though some gay people are predators.
Liberal Catholics want to “build bridges” with socially acceptable sinners and they only denounce sinners who people on the View or MSNBC like to bash, basically racists and billionaires.
That’s why when I see someone going on and on about the so-called gifts of the LGBT community and using language that in many cases is a trojan horse designed to change church teaching I ask them two simple questions:
Number one, Are acts of racism wicked? I let them answer, which is usually a quick answer, and then I ask Number two, Are acts of sodomy wicked?
They almost always refuse to answer the second question because for many of them, deep down, they don’t think sodomy is sinful. And the questions work for the far right too who recently online I have seen defending racism. As a Catholic you should be able to instinctively answer yes to both questions and if you don’t, then I’m going to question your commitment to Catholic teaching.
Alright, so back to Radcliffe’s article. He writes:
Sexual orientation should not be central to anyone’s identity. This lies in our capacity to love and so enter into the mystery of God’s boundless love. Cardinal Basil Hume wrote: “Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected.
While sexual orientation per se isn’t a central part of our identity, being a man or woman is central. You can change my height and my weight and I’d be the same person. I could even imagine being the same person but belonging to a different race. But changing my sex is as impossible as changing my species. It is a central part of our identity and my sex entails natural or unnatural attractions.
Human beings are not minds who happen to inhabit sexed bodies that express love to other minds. That’s the vibe you get from Radcliffe’s quotation of Cardinal Hume’s 1997 note on homosexuality. When I’ve seen the line “Love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected” shared online, this acts like a dog whistle for those who think marital sex and sodomy are morally equivalent. But here’s the full context of the quote:
The word ‘love’ must never be thought of as being synonymous with the word ‘sex’. Love can take many forms. There is the love between parents and children, between relatives, as well as the chaste love of friendship. Of course, for married people their sexual relationship should be an important part of their love. In whatever context it arises, and always respecting the appropriate manner of its expression, love between two persons, whether of the same sex or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected.
He also wrote:
there can be no moral right to homosexual acts, even though they are no longer held to be criminal in many secular legal systems. No individual, bishop, priest or layperson, is in a position to change the teaching of the Church which she considers to be God-given.
When Fr. James Martin speaks about homosexuality, he often uses language like, the Church prohibits or the Church doesn’t allow homosexual acts, which leaves open the possibility the Church could change this teaching. Fr. martin doesn’t say what Cardinal Hume says that the teaching on homosexuality comes from God himself. In fact, in my recently released book Confusion in the Kingdom I wrote:
Following the Cardinal’s reasoning, when people ask me, “Why can’t two people love each other” I respond that I’ve never said two people can’t love each other. When married people express love, 99.9% of the time sex is not part of the expression. But for their union sex is the fullest way to express marital love because it is a one flesh union that consummates their union. That’s why I really can’t stand this line from Fr. Radcliffe:
My intuition is that most gay Catholics in mature, committed relationships usually move beyond much interest in sex anyway. What they seek most of all are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things” (Gal 5:22-23).
If they want to pursue those things they can do so through friendship. Commitment is only needed in marriage precisely because of the children that proceed from the sex that bonds those relationships together and make them marriage. Saying sex is something “mature committed relationships” doesn’t elevate same-sex parings, it devalues real marriages.
Finally, he writes, “The welcome of gay people is seen in some parts of the Church as evidence of Western decadence. But the Church must fight for the lives and dignity of gay people who are still liable to capital punishment in 10 countries and criminal prosecution in 70. They have the right to live. “
I agree with the Church’s teaching that the death penalty is inadmissible, but this gives the impression that the threat to people who identify as gay people comes from places where the Church can advocate for them. In reality, the vast majority of countries where it is illegal to practice homosexuality it also illegal to fully practice Christianity because these are Muslim theocracies.
Oh, and if you bring up Uganda supposedly giving the death penalty for homosexuality, the text actually says it is for aggravated homosexuality, which is defined as the homosexual rape of minors and other people who can’t consent to sexual activity.
So, if Fr. Radcliffe were honest he’d say the best way the Church can work for the rights of people with same-sex attraction is to work for the conversion of Muslims who persecute them.
Finally, what do I think of Pope Francis selecting him to be a cardinal? The only thing that makes me feel better is that in less than a year Fr. Radcliffe will be 80 and thus too old to vote in a conclave. And Pope Francis has selected a lot of solid cardinals from all over the world, including in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, where they tend to be more conservative.
The truth is, we have no idea what the next Pope will be like. John Paul II and Benedict’s selections gave us Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez, in spite of controversy surrounding him as reaffirmed that there is “’No room’ for ordained Catholic women deacons”.
All we can do is pray for the Church and it’s leaders and trust God is in control. However, in our own conversations we can engage rhetoric like Fr. Ratcliffe’s and show how detrimental it is to the Church’s witness. And if you’d like to learn more about how to do that pick up a copy of my new book Confusion in the Kingdom: How ‘Progressive’ Catholicism Is Bringing Harm and Scandal to the Church
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.