Blogs
Featured Image

(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis recently endorsed same-sex ‘civil unions’ aboard the papal plane. This interview with LifeSite’s Washington, D.C. correspondent Doug Mainwaring is from 2019 but is as relevant as ever. Doug discusses his past life as an active homosexual and how he came back to the Catholic faith. Enjoy!

Pope Francis is causing massive confusion on what the Church teaches on homosexuality. Doug told me the Church’s teachings on homosexuality are “a great beacon of light” for those struggling with same-sex attraction. When he was a freshman in college as an 18-year-old, he confessed to a priest that he was same-sex attracted. “My life was saved by God through that priest.” If the priest had told Doug to just go and live out those desires, “I’d be dead from AIDS.” But he didn’t. “He told me the Church’s teachings.”

Doug’s story is truly an inspiration. After the charismatic Catholic community he was involved in fell apart, he and his wife separated, despite having adopted two children together. He lived as a gay man for a dozen or so years and told me, “It was very freeing. I thought, ‘This is great!’”

But slowly he realized that many in the gay community had “adolescent” behaviors and saw others only as “sexual objects.” He found his way back to God, but only after realizing “I did tremendous harm to my kids and my wife.”

Doug told me that his long, “miraculous” journey back to God involved a lot of searching and looking into non-Catholic religious groups. But he said the Catholic Church’s teachings ultimately were what he needed to hear.

Those who think they are nice when they “affirm” someone in his homosexuality are not loving that person, he told me. The “opposite is true.” Same-sex attracted persons “need to hear the truth…we need to hear about sin.” There is “so much joy not giving in to the weakness of the flesh…but demonstrating you have mastery over it.”

Doug said this is why Pope Francis and others are doing such a “tremendous disservice” to homosexuals. It’s “dangerous,” he said, when the pope doesn’t call on persons who are same-sex attracted to leave behind that lifestyle. “They need affirmation as children of God…not affirmation in their deep-seated tendences.”

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

It is also available in audio format on platforms such as SpotifySoundcloud, and Acast. We are awaiting approval for iTunes and Google Play as well. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit the Acast webpage here.

We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Please sign up now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you’ll be notified by YouTube when there is new content.

You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].

Featured Image

John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.