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Fr. James Martin in a March 7, 2018 America Magazine Youtube video titled ‘Spiritual Insights for LGBT Catholics.’ America Magazine / Youtube

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February 2, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholics from around the world are asking the Jesuit Order to publicly censure one of its most prominent members, U.S. priest Fr. James Martin, for promoting a bastardized pro-LGBT version of one of the world’s most revered images of Our Lady – the Black Madonna.

Last month, Martin, a celebrity priest who has made a name for himself with his books and talks promoting the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church, tweeted an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the most revered icon of the Polish people, where the Blessed Virgin and the Christ-child sported LGBT rainbow halos instead of the usual golden ones.

“In Poland, where homophobia is rampant, LGBT people are on trial for ‘desecrating’ a copy of the Black Madonna. But Mary is for everyone, including LGBT people, and there is a long history of portraying her as part of different faith communities,” tweeted Martin on Jan. 19. “The LGBT community has few images like this. So it is not surprising that they would add their own symbol, the rainbow, in a respectful way, to a beloved image of their mother. How appropriate that she is weeping, for it (is) her son who suffers whenever an LGBT person is persecuted,” he added.

Martin was referring to three female leftist activists who were arrested in 2019 for profaning the image of Our Lady with pro-homosexual rainbow colors. They were charged with offending religious sensibilities. Elżbieta Podleśna, Anna Prus, and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar went on trial on Jan. 13. The activists admit that they attached the bastardized images to the outside walls of St. Dominic’s Church in Płock in retaliation against the Church having a display inside that called gender ideology sinful.

The rainbow was originally a religious symbol of God’s covenant with man that God used to convey to Noah (Genesis 9:13-17) that he would never again destroy the world by a flood. There are seven colors in a naturally-occurring rainbow. The number seven in the Bible often symbolizes completion, perfection, and the fulfillment of promises and oaths. LGBT activists co-opted the rainbow in the late 1970s, creating a flag where the different colors are often interpreted as signifying sexual “diversity.” The LGBT rainbow flag, however, has only six colors, one short of a real rainbow and the perfect number. In the Bible, six is often associated with sin, imperfection, and even Satan. The book of Revelation says that the bringing together of three sixes is the number of “the beast.”

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is one of the four sins that cry to heaven for justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “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). The Catholic Church furthermore teaches that the homosexual inclination is also “objectively disordered” since God created sexual attraction for the purpose of drawing a man and a woman together to become husband and wife in marriage.

St. Peter Damian, an 11th century Italian Catholic reformer and Doctor of the Church, described homosexuality in his famous Book of Gomorrah as a “diabolical” corruption of God’s plan for sexuality between a man and a woman. “This vice is the death of bodies, the destruction of souls, pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the intellect, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, introduces the diabolical inciter of lust, throws into confusion, and removes the truth completely from the deceived mind … It opens up hell and closes the door of paradise … It cuts off a member of the Church and casts him into the voracious conflagration of raging Gehenna,” he wrote. 

Life Petitions has launched a petition urging the Superior General of the Jesuits to “publicly censure James Martin, SJ, for the scandal he caused in insulting Poles everywhere, their culture, their traditions and their religion.”

“Fr. Martin clearly crossed the line with his decision to subvert this holy icon. His actions are a stain on the Jesuit Order,” the petition states. “Martin needs to get the message that his erroneous ideas about religion and culture, coupled with his recklessness when it comes to others' religious sensibilities and beliefs, cannot be given a free pass.”

The petition will be hand-delivered to the headquarters of the Jesuit Order in Rome.

Michael Hichborn, president of Lepanto Institute, called out Fr. Martin for promoting a “depraved perversion” of a cherished image of Our Lady.

“Depicting Our Lord and Our Lady with halos symbolizing one of the four sins which cry to Heaven for vengeance is so far beyond sacrilege and blasphemy that it’s downright satanic,” he said.

“Our Lady is the summit of all purity and all humility, and the LGBT movement is the abysmal trough of filth and pride. The attempt to wed the two is an insult of infinite proportions,” he added.

Hichborn criticized Martin’s comparison of this “blasphemous and sacrilegious symbol” of the LGBT movement with various cultural depictions of Our Lord and Lady.

“How many souls will this man be allowed to lead to Hell before he is finally censured?”

Contact info for respectful communication: 

Jesuit Order headquarters in Rome
Telephone: +39-06-698681
Leave an email message using their contact form: https://www.jesuits.global/about-us/contact-us/

Headquarters in the US:
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